Now, for the first time, when they were eating and drinking, it seemed to him that the conversation took on meaning, and a more consecutive meaning than is usual in dreams; when, just as that new phase of his dream had begun, one of the guests, a little to the left of the place opposite to him, a woman of middle age who had been somewhat silent, rose without apology, and without warning left her place he hardly knew how, and passed out of the room through the door that he had noticed. It shut behind her. No one mentioned or noticed her going, but in a little while another and another had risen and had gone. And still as each guest departed, some in the midst of a sentence, some during a silence in the talk, there increased upon him an appalling sense of unusual things; it was appalling to him that no one said good-bye, that none of the fellows of those who so departed turned to them or noticed their going, and that none of those who so departed returned or made any promise to return. Next he noticed with an increasing ill-ease, by some inconsequence of his dream, that when he watched the departure of a guest (as the others did not) he saw the empty chair and the gap left in the ranks; but when he looked again after speaking to some other to the right or left the gap was somehow less defined, and when he looked yet again it was no longer to be noticed or perceived; though it could not be said that the chair was filled or was removed, but in some way the absence of the man or woman who had been there ceased to be marked, and it was as though they had never been present at all. It was not often that he cared to look for more than a moment at one or another of these risings from the feast; yet in the moment’s observation he could see very different things. Some rose as though in terror; some as though in weariness; some startled, as at a sudden command which they alone could hear; some in a natural manner as though at an appointed moment. But there was no order or method in their going: only all went through that door.