At night she passed into another world. There was no war in that life--never had been war. From dream to dream she lived through a continuous existence--the wife of Ronald. It was all vividly real. It was the life they would have led--it played itself out now in what to her daytime consciousness was a realm of shadows. Not always did she dream, or rather not always did her consciousness register the events through which she passed. But later dreams had dream-memories in them and the record had no gaps. Time passed in that dream-world without relation to the terrestrial days. In one night she frequently lived through long periods. He was always kind to her, always loving. She, too, loved him passionately, with all her soul. But in the daytime her being shrank from that shadow-life. She was afraid--mysteriously, primitively afraid. She could not mourn as she would have liked to mourn. Sometimes she asked herself whether she was not ceasing to love her dead affianced. She tried to evoke his image--and often, to her distress, succeeded not. The strongly masculine features of Number Ten, Captain Lavering, rose before her mental vision, would not be banished. Then she despised herself bitterly. In remorse she willed herself forward to the night, bade herself not shrink, and when the hour came gave herself to the darkness tremulously, like a slave of the harem who goes into the chamber of her lord. The portal passed she was happy, completely happy--as happy as she would have been the wife of Ronald in the dainty little home that never could be other than the home of her dreams. With strange, almost terrifying, completeness the shadow-life evolved. The house she lived in she knew in all its details, had its rooms that she preferred, views from its windows that she loved or veiled. The presence of her husband was a reality that filled it. She knew his footsteps, heard his voice. (It rang often in her ears when her eyes unclosed in the little matchboarded cubicle suddenly unfamiliar.) They had long, long conversations together--wonderful little interludes where their always underlying love blossomed into delicate flower. She saw his face clearly, saw that it was changing slightly, growing more set, less boyish. There were difficulties--the difficulties of real life--to be encountered. An anguished struggle with bills and finances that would not meet wrung her soul all one night. She pledged herself to such brave economies! But the difficulties were overcome, the memory of them lost in the embrace of her lover. Rarely, rarely was she unhappy until she woke.