was not quite like being frightened. There was a long pause, and then the beetle said, ‘Ah, if you only knew now, Marjorie! And if I had only known then!’ “Just then out of the grey darkness came a thread of light, like a little snake, moving very quickly and curling about as if it were glad; it hurried towards the great River of Light, and melted into it and was gone. I was eager about it, and asked the beetle what it was. ‘I may tell you that,’ he replied. ‘It was a soul going home!’ I stopped crying then; I felt something the way I feel at an evening service in a church in summer time, when they are singing one of the hymns I like best. It was a sort of quiet happiness; I can’t explain it properly, but I never felt so happy as I did then. ‘Beetle,’ I said, ‘you must tell me the rest now.’ “‘I will tell you one thing,’” he said. “What was it?” asked Maurice quickly. For a few seconds Marjorie did not answer. There was a queer dreamy look in her eyes. At last she said,-- “Maurice, I’m afraid you’ll think now that I have been making all this up, but I haven’t. I can’t tell you what the beetle said, because I _don’t know_. It was about you, and it was very important. I don’t even know whether it was good or bad. It has gone straight out of my memory, and I _can’t_ get it back again. I’d give anything to be able to remember it. I’ve been thinking about it all the morning.” “I believe you entirely,” said Maurice thoughtfully. “I have had much the same kind of thing happen to me in a dream.” He did not add that much the same thing had happened to him on the same night. “How did the dream end?” he went on. “I awoke directly after the beetle told me that thing that I have forgotten. It was broad daylight. But when I got up, the beetle was not on the table where I had put it. I could not find it anywhere.” “You probably moved it in your sleep. Did you ever walk in your sleep?” “Once, when I was quite little--almost a baby. I had got out into the garden, and my nurse found me there.” Maurice rose, and the two went down the hill together. “I wouldn’t trouble about all that if I were you,” said Maurice. “These things can generally be explained in the simplest way when one goes through them carefully. Coffee, the action of the heart, the position of the body in bed, the sounds that one hears while asleep, all help to explain a good deal, you know.” He did not tell her his own dream. He thought, perhaps rightly, that a young girl, unacquainted with the study of mathematics, might be unduly impressed by coincidences which were unusual but did not require a supernatural explanation. He did not want to frighten her, or let her grow superstitious. Yet during the day he thought a good deal about the two dreams.