Now and then Bella remembered Cheviot, and when she remembered him, she spoke of him. Sometimes she spoke of him when she was thinking of him little enough. As on the night when she wasn’t well, and Hildegarde, sleeping on the sofa in her friend’s room, had waked in misery over a dream she’d had. Bella was lying wide-eyed in the dark, “A dream about—?” “Yes,” Hildegarde said hurriedly, “a snow-storm in the night, in the wind; a slipping down into blackness. I thought I saw him fall, and I knew it was the end.” “They go by contraries. Your father’s quite well and happy.” Hildegarde had not said the dream concerned her father, but she offered no correction. “Still,” Bella went on, “for the moment it makes one feel—I’ll tell you! we must have a little light to comfort us.” “No, no; it will hurt my eyes,” Hildegarde was surreptitiously crying. But Bella was already up, and before Hildegarde could forestall her, she had opened the door across the hall leading into the opposite room, and there she was striking a light. Hildegarde followed her, still a little dazed by the vivid horror of the dream, and when her eyes fell upon her own little white bed, she flung herself down there, and buried her face in the cool pillow. “You aren’t crying, are you, Hildegarde, over a silly dream? Look here, I’m lighting a joss for Mr. Mar.” A little silence. “I’ve lit another,” said Bella’s hurried voice, still over there by the table, “one for Louis.” Hildegarde, with face half-hidden, imagined rather than saw, that three slender smoke feathers were curling above the flowers, drowning the meeker fragrance of the roses. She lay there feeling the oppression of the dream fading, and a waking oppression take its place. Yes, they “went by contraries.” Galbraith hadn’t fallen and been swallowed in the gaping maw of a crevasse; but when he came back, what was going to happen? He belonged to Bella. But he had left Bella. And he had belonged first of all to Hildegarde. What would befall friendship in that coming wrench! “Go back to bed, Bella; you’ll be worse.” “You must come, too.” Hildegarde made no answer. “You can’t lie there with all these flowers in the room. I didn’t know you hadn’t set them out. The doors can’t be left open either.” “The windows can.” “I shan’t go unless you come, too.”