“‘Oh, you’ve read it? You remember the Brushwood boy saw a little girl in the theatre, and afterwards he built an image of her in his dreams. His image grew in his dreams to womanhood, and bye and bye he met her in the flesh—a spirit embodied from the dream. Two years ago, in those fleeting, hectic days of war, at a time when no dreams were being left to me, I met a little girl who somehow brought me back to interest in life and—dreams. Our relationship was of the most casual; I only saw her a few times before I was suddenly put in command of a company that was sailing. She was not the sort to mean anything in my life, and I almost forgot her as herself. But her image stayed with me, always growing in little ways. She herself was so unfinished an image—she was of a type that could not change its atmosphere and environment—yet there was that in her which made me build, until the image grew to womanhood in my dreams. Am I boring you with details of a girl you never knew? But you see—the image grew to womanhood—and then I met you in the flesh, the embodiment of that dream.’ I hadn’t stopped shaking. ‘I don’t understand, except that I remind you of someone you once knew,’ I said. ‘Nor do I understand,’ he said. ‘It’s of the realm of—dreams. It’s not to be believed. What is this that makes me sure you are the complement to my existence, the one woman with everything I want, the sum total of a man’s fatuous dream that is generally too impossible to find realization?’ ‘You’d better not spread words around so,’ I said. ‘It isn’t wise to talk freely about anything you only know by sight. If I were anyone else, I’d think you were crazy.’ He snapped me up on that. ‘If you were anyone else! I must descend to the supreme idiocy and say—But you are you—and I knew you were when you came walking down the room to-night.’ ‘You must be a Southern man,’ I said. ‘I’ve always heard that they swung this line.’ He never blinked at that. ‘Do you feel nothing?’ he said. ‘If you tell me you felt nothing when your eyes met mine—if you did not feel that we had been a long time finding each other—if you tell me that—why then,—I will start in and make you realize what I know to be true.’” She stopped, and ran to the window with a trembling laugh. “Look at old New York—that I couldn’t look at this afternoon! Joy—to think of his saying that! Asking me if I didn’t feel that we had been a long time finding each other! Joy—I was so scared I’d slip a cog and come through with some pithy talk! I spoke slow and thought twice between each word. ‘I—I really—these flashes that seem to go between two people—I never analyze them—which you seem to be doing, after all.’