When at last she slept, she had a curious dream. She and her mother were alone on an island with palm trees. She was used to being with her mother in dreams. She had for the memory of her mother so passionate a loyalty; the figure of Maria, young, it always seemed to her, as herself, so kept abreast with her inner life that it was but a naturalness that she should be there in the dream mind, too. She was there now, on the island with the palm trees, and the two sat and looked at the sea, which was very blue. Then, right out of the lonely sea, there grew a crowded wharf, with a white steamship and people going to it and coming from it. Her father came from it, dressed in white with a white hat like a helmet, and then suddenly there was no wharf nor ship, but they were in a curious street of low, pale-coloured houses--her father and her mother and herself and the palm trees. "Now we are all going to be happy together," she said; but "No," said her mother, "wait until the procession passes." Then there was a procession, and they were all women, and at first they all had the face and eyes of Bastien LePage's Joan of Arc, but then that faded, and they were simply many women, but each of them carried a blossoming bough. She saw faces that she knew among them, and she saw women that she thought belonged to the Middle Ages, and Greek women, and Egyptians, and savages. They went by for a long time, and then, with a turn of the hand, the dream changed, and they were all in a courtyard with a well and more palm trees, and people coming and going, and they were eating and drinking, and there was a third woman with them whom her father called Anna. She had a string of jewels, and she tried them, first on Hagar and then on Maria; but Maria had a knife and suddenly she struck at her father with it. She cut him across both wrists and the blood flowed.--Hagar wakened and sat up in bed, shivering. Her father's face was still plain against her eyeballs--bearded and handsome, with red in his cheeks and the hat like a helmet. During Christmas week Ralph Coltsworth appeared. He had to spend his holidays somewhere, he said. Hawk Nest was dull and he didn't like Gilead Balm without Hagar. "Ralph, why don't you study?" "I do study. I'm a star student. Only I don't like the law. I'm going to do a little more convincing myself and the family, and then I'm going to chuck it! I've got a little money to start things with. I want to go in with a broker I know." "What do you want to do that for?"