Just before morning, however, in the cold before the dawning, Edgar had a real dream, a dream of sleep, and not of waking, so vivid that it came into his mind often afterwards with a thrill of wonder. He dreamt that he saw standing by him the figure of her who had touched his heart in his earlier years, of Gussy, who might have been his wife had all gone well, and of whom he had thought more warmly and constantly, perhaps, since she became impossible to him, than when she was within his reach. She seemed to come to him out of a cloud, out of a mist, stooping over him with a smile; but when he tried to spring up, to take the hand which she held out, some icy restraint came upon him--he could not move, chains of ice seemed to bind his hands and arrest even his voice in his throat. While he struggled to rise, the beautiful figure glided away, saying, “After, after--but not yet!” and--strange caprice of fancy--dropped over her face the heavy veil of the young sister who had excited his curiosity, and who was seated in the other corner of this same hard wooden bench, just as Edgar, struggling up, half awake, found that his railway wrapper had dropped from his knees, and that he was indeed almost motionless with cold. The grey dawn was breaking, coldest and most miserable hour of the twenty-four, and the other figures round him were nodding in their sleep, or swayed about with the jarring movement of the carriage. Strange, Edgar thought to himself, how fancy can pick up an external circumstance, and weave it into the fantastic web of dreams! How naturally his dream visitor had taken the aspect of the last figure his musing eyes had closed upon! and how naturally, too, the physical chill of the moment had shaped itself into a mental impossibility--a chain of fate. He smiled at the combination as he wrapped himself shivering in his rug. The slight little figure in the other corner was, he thought, awake too, she was so perfectly still. The people on the other side dozed and nodded, changing their positions with the jerking movement of restless sleep, but she was still, moving only with the swaying of the carriage. Her veil was still down, but one little white hand came forth out of the opening of her black cloak. What a pity that so pretty a hand should not be given to some man to help him along the road of life, Edgar thought to himself with true English sentiment, and then paused to remember that English sisterhoods could take no irrevocable vows, at least, in law. He toyed with this idea, he could not tell why, giving far more attention to the veiled figure than half-a-dozen unveiled women would have procured from him. Foolish and short-sighted mortal! He dreamed and wondered at his dream, and made his ingenious little theory and amused explanation to himself of the mutual reaction of imagination and sensation. How little he knew what eyes were watching him from behind the safe shelter of that heavy black veil! CHAPTER IX. Alone.