"And I--the moment I read your letter to Pansy, and hers to you, I knew what I had done. I wanted to tell you, but how could I? All one night I wandered about in the rain----" "It was the very night, I believe, that I had my second dream. In that, you came and spoke to me quite kindly and tenderly. You said: 'All that is happening now is the dream. Those kisses that I once gave you are the reality.' I awoke, feeling so happy and all excited inside--do you know the feeling? It was dreadful to find it just a dream. Ah, I was miserable, what with the torment of Pansy being so ill ... and if I had but known it, you were longing to comfort me!" "Oh," he muttered, "but I did feel abject! I could have crawled to your foot and begged you to set it on my head." "I am glad you did not. I like you much better as you are now--fresh from a deed of heroism which will make the whole county buzz with your name for weeks to come." "Oh, great Scott!" in sudden consternation, "I never thought of that!" "Shall you grudge me my celebrated husband?" He laughed audibly, a thing so rare that the very sound thrilled her. "You are too adorable! It can't be true! I shall awake." ... "Did you ever dream about me?" she whispered when again he released her. "Night after night. I was always just on the point of making you understand, but it never came off." "Well, I dreamed of you one more time. That makes three. It was at Worthing, just before I came back to you, and I thought I was searching for you everywhere, all about this house. I told you part of it the other day--about my dreaming of the alterations in this room. But I didn't tell you how it went on. I wandered out into the garden, and presently you came to me, out of a thick mist, and your eyes were shut. You looked just as you did yesterday----" "When I came back to you out of the mists of death!" She gave a long sigh. "How wonderful!... Of course, I did not understand the dream, or put any meaning to it. But you were speaking as you came with your eyes shut, and you said, 'She will never come back. Are you coming? No!' ... When I awoke I knew that I must go to you at once. I knew that I had lingered too long, and that there must be no more delay. But, oh, I was afraid!--I was so desperately afraid!" He told her of the dreadful day of her return, when he had ridden to sessions in the miserable conviction that he had lost her altogether; and how Ferris had told him of her adventures with young Rosenberg. "I got home that night absolutely convinced that it was all over," he said. "Ah!" She turned suddenly and clung to him of her own accord. "And yesterday I thought that all was over, too. It happened so fast; yet it seemed to take years and years. I can't tell you how many thoughts I had, while you turned round from tying up my shoe.... You knew, didn't you, that the shoe was just an excuse to coax you away from the brink of the chasm?" "I wondered."