"If that's so, I must be careful. But let me begin at the beginning. That fatal day at Hertford House, when you followed us about, your face made a queer impression upon me. I don't mean that I liked it--I didn't, so you need not begin to plume yourself. It was simply that I could not forget it. You had done something to me, though we barely spoke. All the rest of the day, and even when I was at the theatre that evening, the memory of your face, and specially of your eyes, kept swimming into my fancy. When I went to bed I dreamed of you. The shocking part is now to come. Perhaps you won't believe it. _I dreamed exactly what has just happened._ I thought we were standing just beside this statue, only, of course, in my dream we were in the Gallery; and at the time I wondered how it was that I could see a garden outside, through the window, you said: 'I am quite a stranger, but may I kiss you?' I answered, 'Remember that if you do, it can never be undone.' Then you--you did." "I did?" "Yes; and, in the dream, _I liked it!_" "Virgie!" "It's true. When I awoke, of course, I just thought it was absurd and silly, as dreams are. But I could not forget it. The dream haunted me, as your face had haunted me. When mother came home from meeting you in town, and told me that you were the man in the Gallery, and that you wanted to marry me, I was such a conceited pussy-cat that after the first surprise I thought it really probable that you had fallen in love at first sight." "Is it possible?" "Oh, don't make any mistake. I would not have dreamed of saying 'Yes' if I had not been so beaten down and driven into a corner. But I do think the dream turned the scale. I said to mother that, if, when you came, you turned out to be a person whom I felt I could never like, I should refuse. Then you came. I kept thinking of the ridiculous dream all the time; and when you mentioned the statue--do you remember?--I actually thought that you must have dreamed the same thing. I felt as if you were talking a language that you and I understood: as if you knew that you could convey a secret meaning to me--a message--without words. Oh, it is so difficult to explain, but I felt that----" "Yes? For pity's sake go on!" "As if one day I might come to like you very much." "As much as this?" he whispered. "Oh, I never thought--I never imagined, _this_." There was a little silence. "And then," he sighed at last, "into the midst of your timid, hopeful sweetness, fell the bomb-shell of my brutality." She laughed as in scorn at herself. "It _was_ unexpected," she owned. "I was so sure that you wanted to make love to me and didn't know how to begin. And I was so afraid of you, and growing more and more so every minute. Oh, Osbert, I _did_ suffer." "Not as I did, for there was no remorse in your agony of mind." "But there was. I thought I had done so wrong to marry you."