What was this dream about being with him at Woolwich where they were firing a big gun? A curious dream! She had been there once with her father to see a gun drawn—but she had never seen one fired there,—and now in her dream she stood in a crowd of strange faces, fronting the river, and there was a long grey ironclad on the water—a turret ship—and there came a flash, and then a puff of white smoke, and the report of a gun, short and sharp, not like the roar of a cannon by any means, and yet her dream showed her the dark sullen gun on the grey deck, the biggest gun she had ever seen. She started up from her pillow, cold and trembling. That report of the gun had seemed so real and so near, that it had awakened her. She was wide awake now, and pushed back her loose hair from her eyes, and felt under her pillow for her watch, and looked at it in the dim light of the night-lamp on the table by her bed. “A quarter to one.” She had left the drawing-room a few minutes after ten. It was long for Godfrey to have sat reading alone; but he was insatiable when he had a new book that interested him. She got up and put on her slippers and dressing-gown, prepared to take him to task for his late hours. She was not alarmed by her dream, but the sound of that sharp report was still in her ears as she lighted her candle and went down into the silent house. She opened the drawing-room door, and looked across to the spot where she expected to see her husband sitting. His chair was empty. The lamp was burning just as she had left it hours ago, burning with a steady light under the green porcelain shade, but he was not there. Puzzled, and with a touch of fear, she went slowly across the room towards his chair. He had strayed out on to the terrace perhaps—he had gone out for a final smoke. She would steal after him in her long white gown, and frighten him if she could. “He ought at least to take me for a ghost,” she thought. She stopped transfixed with a sudden horror. He was lying on the carpet at her feet in a huddled heap, just as he had rolled out of his chair. His head was bent forward between his shoulders, his face was hidden. She tried to lift his head, hanging over him, calling to him in passionate entreaty; and, behold, her hands and arms were drowned in blood. His blood splashed her white peignoir. It was all over her. She seemed to be steeped in it, as she sat on the floor trying to get a look at his face—to see if his wound was mortal. For some moments she had no other thought than to sit there in her horror, repeating his name in every accent of terror and of love, beseeching him to answer her. Then gradually came the conviction of his unconsciousness, and of the need of help. He was badly hurt—dangerously hurt—but it might not be mortal. Help must be got. He must be cured somehow. She could not believe that he was to die.