r instance, a bell
rings when you're asleep and dreaming, as likely as not the noise is
introduced--not necessarily in the same form--into your dream, isn't
it? Very well. That shows the senses are working. The message
arrives distorted, but it arrives. Well, he said that in his opinion
practically everything that came to pass in my dream was originally
suggested by some outside influence. Water being poured into a basin
suggests a brook. A sewing-machine becomes a train. The hiss of a
burning log escaping steam. So much for the ears. Now for the eyes.
A maid helps the nurse to move a sofa--I see timber being hauled. The
doctor shakes his thermometer, and there's Winchester wielding an
axe.... It's a pretty theory, and the more you study it, the sounder
it seems." He crossed his legs and started to fill a pipe. "All the
same, I must have a fertile imagination. I think I always had. As a
child I was left alone a great deal, and I fancy that helped."

It was a lazy Sunday morning--the fourth in the month of May. John
Forest had been gone a month, and Lady Touchstone was properly at
church. Greenwich would have told you that it was ten o'clock, and the
gorgeous tapestry of Summer was still wrought with the brilliant
embroidery of a heavy dew. Lawns, flower-borders, and stiff box
charactery sparkled and shone in the hot sunshine. The sky was
cloudless: a haze kept to itself the distant promise of the park: there
was no wind. The sleepy hum of insects, a rare contented melody,
tilted the hat of Silence over that watchman's eyes. The wandering
scent of hawthorns offered the faultless day a precious button-hole.

Sitting easily among the cushions of a teak-wood chair, Anthony let his
eyes ramble luxuriously over the prospect. In a _chaise longue_ by his
side Valerie was engaged in the desultory composition of a letter to
her uncle in Rome. Stretched blinking upon the warm flags, Patch
watched the two vigilantly for any sign of movement.

"Did I ever have a red-haired nurse?" said Anthony suddenly.

Valerie shook her head.

"No," she said. "You had the same two all the time. Why?"

"I dreamed of a red-haired girl." Valerie sat very still. "Andre, her
name was. I met her first in the road... I remember she knew me.
She'd been hunting and looked like a Bacchanal. She turned up again
later on--one night. I was just going to bed." He frowned at the
recollection. "I wonder I didn't chatter abou