"Ah, I see, Irene, it is the boy, after all. You don't mention him often, but little things you drop now and then show which way the wind blows. Your eyes are on every child we pass in the street. Without knowing it you are a motherly woman." "Ah, if you only knew--if only I could tell you _something_--" She broke off, lowered her head to her hand, and he saw her breast rise on a billow of emotion. "Something about your child?" Buckton queried, jealously. She nodded faintly. He heard her sigh. She remained mute and still for a moment; then she said, falteringly: "I have a strange conviction that there is truth in the belief of some psychologists I've read about who claim that in sleep our souls leave the body and see and experience things far away." "I don't believe such rubbish," Buckton said, uneasily. "Do you know that people who harbor such ideas generally go insane?" "I had a strange experience night before last." Irene quite ignored his protest. "It was something too vivid to be a mere dream. You know there is a difference between a dream and a real experience. I mean that one seems able to tell the two apart." "Perhaps we had better say no more about it," Buckton suggested. "Don't you think a drive in the open air would do you good?" But Irene failed to hear what he was saying, or was treating it as of little consequence. "Listen," she persisted. "It was between midnight and dawn. I had been brooding morbidly, and sank deep, deep into sleep, so deep that the darkness seemed to close in and crush my spirit right out of my body. Then I was floating about, free to go where I liked. I felt awfully lonely and desolate. Presently I found myself on our lawn in front of the house, but unable to get in. I heard some one crying inside; it seemed to be Hilda. I couldn't tell what she was crying about, but I had the feeling that it was because something was happening to the boy. I went to the door and tried to ring, but had no hands--think of that, I had no hands! Suddenly I found myself in the hall, but unable to go up the stairs. Something seemed to clutch me and hold me back. I tried to cry out, but had no voice. I thought I heard my husband talking to the child, tenderly--oh, so tenderly! I was crying as I had never cried before. I wanted to see the boy. It was as if a new heart had been born in me or an old one resurrected. Then I heard the door of my husband's room open, and I shrank back afraid to meet him, for I thought of--of you and me being like this. Then I waked and found myself here in bed, my pillow drenched with tears. Oh, I wanted to die--I wanted to die then!" "It was a nightmare," Buckton commented, uneasily. "It has all the earmarks of one. We are always, in such dreams, trying to get somewhere or away from something horrible." "It haunted me all day yesterday," Irene sighed. "And last night I had to take one of my morphine tablets to get to sleep."