"The queer thing was, that it was so real. I dreamt that a woman came into my room. She came to my bedside. She stood looking down upon me as I slept. Suddenly she stooped and kissed me. That same instant I awoke. I felt her kiss still tingling on my lips. I could have sworn that someone had just kissed me. I sat up in bed and called out to know if anyone was there. I got up and lit the gas and searched the room. There was nothing and no one." "It was a dream!" "If it was, it was the most vivid dream I remember to have heard of; certainly the most vivid dream I ever dreamt. I saw the woman so distinctly, and her face, as she stooped over me, with laughter in her eyes. To begin with, it was the most beautiful face I ever saw, and hers were the most beautiful eyes. The whole thing had impressed me so intensely that I took my sketch-book and made a drawing of her then and there. I have my sketch-book in my pocket--here is the drawing." Mr. Lovell handed his open sketch-book to his friend. It was open at a page on which was a drawing of a woman's face. When Mr. Warren's eyes fell on this drawing, he sat up in his chair with a show of sudden interest. "Gerald! I say! You'll excuse my saying so, but I didn't think you were capable of anything so good as this. Do you know that this is the best drawing of yours I have ever seen, young man?" "I believe it is." "It looks to me--I don't want to flatter you; goodness knows you've conceit enough already!--but it looks to me as though it were a genuine bit of inspiration." "Joking apart, it seems to me almost as if it were an inspiration." "I wish an inspiration of the same kind would come to me. I'd be considerably grateful--even for a nightmare. Do you know what I should do with this? I should use it for a picture." "I thought of doing something of the kind myself." "Just a study of a woman's face. And you might call it--the title would be apposite--'A Vision of the Night!'" "A good idea. I will." And Mr. Lovell did. When he returned to his Chelsea studio, he chose a moderate-sized canvas, and he began to paint on it a woman's face--just a woman's face, and nothing more. She was looking a little downwards, as a woman might look who was about to stoop to kiss someone lying asleep in bed--say a sleeping child--and she glanced from the canvas with laughing eyes. Mr. Warren came in to look at it several times while it was progressing. When it was finished, he regarded it for some moments in silent contemplation. "I call that," he declared, sententiously, with what he supposed, perhaps erroneously, to be a Yankee twang, "a gen-u-ine work of art. I do. _The_ thing. Young man, if you forward that, with your compliments, or without 'em, to the President, Fellows, and Associates of the Royal Academy, I'll bet you five to one it's hung!"