“It was all confusion--a wild chaos--a nightmare of strange sounds and sensations--tempest, fire, earthquake--I know not what--but it meant deadly danger for you--death perhaps. I saw you hanging in space--a white figure, with piteous, pain-wrought face. Never have I seen you look like that--your eyes staring wildly as if they were looking at death; your features drawn and rigid, and through all the confusion, and noise, and ceaseless movement, I was trying to follow you--trying, but impotently--to save you. The white figure was always before me--far off--yet visible every now and then across the darkness of a world where everything was shapeless and confused. But the worst of all was that every now and then a black wall rose up between your distant figure and the stony difficult path that I was treading--a wall against which I flung myself, mad with rage and despair, trying to tear the stones asunder with my hands, till the blood ran in streams from my fingers. It was a dream that seemed to last through a long night, holding in it the memory of a painful past; yet I suppose it was like other dreams--momentary, for I had heard three o’clock strike before I fell asleep, and when I sounded my repeater it was only a quarter past.” “Rather a meaningless dream,” she said, in a sleepy voice, without looking up. “I don’t think it ought to have alarmed you.” “Ah, it sounds meaningless to you; but to me it was full of meaning! The idea of danger to you was so intense--so real. The cold sweat of deadly fear was on my face when I awoke, and it was some minutes before I could get my senses clear of that ghastly horror, before I could realize where I was, and that the thing I had seen was a dream. That stone wall seemed still in front of me, and I had still the feeling that you were on the other side of it, in ever-increasing peril.” “It was a horrid dream, certainly; but, you see, it had no meaning.” “There were such strange things mixed up in it--thunder and lightning, a roaring wind, a sound of rushing waters; and then, amidst wind and thunder, there rose the dark barrier that shut out everything.” “Was it long ago that you dreamt this horrid dream?” “Yes, a long while. It was just before Christmas. I made a note of the dream in my journal--wrote it down in fear and trembling, lest there should be some kind of fulfilment. But then came your letter--written at the beginning of January, with your description of the ball--and I laughed at my folly in brooding so long upon that phantasmal picture. I remember, by the way, it was two or three nights after your ball that I dreamt my dream, while you no doubt were sleeping just a little sounder than usual after your gaieties.” “Dreams are very strange,” said Isola, absently. “I wonder whether there is any good in them to counterbalance so much pain?” CHAPTER VII. “LOOK THROUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE, TRUE WIFE.”