"It was more sad. You had a brokenhearted look in your eyes. What I saw in my dream was more like your face in your sleep, when I met you afterwards." "What made you dream of me?" "I cannot tell." "Had you ever seen me?" "Never." "Nor heard me described?" "No." "How quickly the swallows fly!" she exclaimed, pointing in the air. "What would you give to be able to live all day long in that pure blue? This is a beautiful rose you have given me. How can the thick, ugly, common earth yield such lovely things?" "You were questioning me, Mrs. Fraser. Do continue your examination." "Questioning you? What about?" she asked, looking at me with a little bewildered air. "About my dream. I have often wanted to discuss it with you, that I may understand it. You who inspired it should know what it means." "I cannot tell you, indeed. I did not inspire it. I had never seen you nor heard of you." "In the olden times it was the custom to examine dreams, in the belief that they were prophecies. I would like to revive the custom, to see what my dream forebodes." "What should it forebode? Sadness, perhaps, since my eyes were so sad." "Dreams go by contraries, they say." "Then they are useless as prophecies." "But I am by no means disposed to let my dream slip by so easily. I choose to think it significant in some sense which I wish explained." "It was a prophecy, perhaps, that you should meet me: and you did." "It was a prophecy perhaps, that our lives were to mingle, and they may." "Nothing is impossible," she answered quietly. She did not say this consciously. It was an answer obviously made without the slightest reference to its implication. "How beautiful these grounds of yours look under the blue sky," she continued gaily. "I wish you had not made me see them. They will spoil me for my narrow garden." "Why will you not use them as your own? Those gates were made for communication. You can always be alone by naming the hours it may suit you to come. I can dismiss the gardeners for that time, and hide myself in my study." "Your offer is very polite, but I will not accept it. I shouldn't care to wander about a place that doesn't belong to me; for there is little real satisfaction in admiring the possessions of others. Besides, my fingers would itch to be at the flowers. I should be picking the choicest. That is my way." "You would be welcome to pick them all." "Yet were I to come I would not wish you to hide yourself. Your company does me good. I have felt more cheerful since I knew you." "You give me great pleasure in saying this, Mrs. Fraser." "I mean it. I find you frank and easy and kind. You are not in the least tiresome. When you first spoke to me I saw your face set out with compliments and _mots_, like any other man's might have been. But I swept this sugary French repast away and made you substitute hearty nourishing solids. This makes you agreeable."