She sighed, and approaching her bedside, raised her hands to her neck. It was the instinctive movement of undressing. But she did not unbutton her collar. Resuming her walk, she picked up a blossom that had fallen from the fuchsia. She walked to and fro. Then she threw herself on her bed and closed her eyes.... She slept, and then the moonlight showed her face convulsed. She is the victim of a dream. Something follows her--she knows not what. She dare not look round. She falls over great leaves. She falls into the clefts of ruined tombs, and her hands, as she attempts to rise, are laid on sleeping snakes; they turn to attack her; they glide away and disappear in moss and inscriptions. Before her the trees extend in complex colonnades, silent ruins are grown through with giant roots, and about the mysterious entrances of the crypts there lingers yet the odour of ancient sacrifices. The stem of a rare column rises amid the branches, the fragment of an arch hangs over and is supported by a dismantled tree trunk. And through the torrid twilight of the approaching storm the cry of the hyena is heard. The claws of the hyena are heard upon the crumbling tombs and the suffocating girl strives with her last strength to free herself from the thrall of the great lianas. But there comes a hirsute smell; she turns with terrified eyes to plead, but meets only dull, liquorish eyes, and the breath of the obscene animal is hot on her face. She sprang from her bed. Was there any one in her room? No, only the moonlight. 'But the forest, the wild animal--was it then only a dream?' the girl thought. 'It was only a dream, a horrible dream, but after all, only a dream.' Then a voice within her said, 'But all was not a dream--there was something that was worse than the dream.' She walked to and fro, and when she lay down her eyelids strove against sleep. But sleep came again, and her dream was of a brown and yellow serpent. She saw it from afar rearing its tawny hide, scenting its prey. She takes refuge in the rosery. How will she save herself? By plucking roses and building a. wall between her and it. So she collects huge bouquets, armfuls of beautiful flowers, garlands and wreaths. The flower-wall rises, and hoping to combat the fury of the beast with purity, she goes whither snowy blossoms bloom in clustering millions. She gathers them in haste; her arms and hands stream with blood, but she pays no heed, and as the snake surmounts one barricade she builds another. But the reptile leans over the roses. The long, thin neck is upon her; she feels the horrid strength of the coils as they curl and slip about her, drawing her whole life into one knotted and loathsome embrace. Then she knows not how, but while the roses fall in a red and white rain about her she escapes from the stench of the scaly hide, from the strength of the coils.