“Well, David, you are a nice brother—never to have come and seen me. Busy? Yes, of course you’ve been busy, but you might have squeezed in a visit to me, amongst all the visits to sick old ladies and naughty little boys. Oh, _do_ you know, Katie Ellerton has gone away? She took Ronnie to Brighton for a change, and then wrote and said she wasn’t coming back. I believe she is going to live with a brother who is a solicitor down there. And she’s selling her furniture, so if you _want_ extra things you might get them cheap.” “That’s Elizabeth’s department,” said David, laughing. “Well, this is for you both. When will you come to dinner? On Tuesday? Yes, do. Talk about being busy. Edward’s busy, if you like. I never see him, and he’s quite worried. Liz, you remember Jack Webster? Well, you know he’s on the West Coast, and he’s sent Edward a whole case of things—frightfully exciting specimens, two centipedes he’s wanted for ever so long, and a spider that Jack says is new. And Edward has never even had time to open the case. That shows you! It’s accounts, I believe. Edward does hate accounts.” When she had gone David sat silent for a long time. It was the old Mary, and prettier than ever. He had never seen her looking prettier, but his feeling for her was gone. He could look at her quite dispassionately, and wonder over the old unreasoning thrill. And what a chatterbox she was. Thank Heaven, she had had the sense to marry Edward, who was really not such a bad sort. Poor Edward. He laughed aloud suddenly, and Elizabeth looked up and asked: “What is it?” “Edward and the case he can’t open, and the centipedes he can’t play with,” he said, still laughing. “Poor old Edward! What it is to have a conscience. I wonder he doesn’t have a midnight orgy with the centipedes, but I suppose Mary sees to that.” It was that night that David dreamed his dream again. All these months it had never come to him. Amongst the many dreams that had haunted his sick brain, there had been no hint of this one. He had wondered about it sometimes. And now it returned. In the first deep sleep that comes to a healthy man he dreamed it. He heard the wind blowing—that was the beginning of it. It came from the far distances of space, and it passed on again to the far distances beyond. David heard it blow, but his eyes were darkened. Then suddenly he saw. His feet were on the shining sand, the sand that shone because a golden moon looked down upon it from a clear sky, and the tide had left it wet. David stood upon the shining sand, and saw the Woman of the Dream stand where the moon-track ceased at the sea’s rim. The moon was behind her head, and the wind blew out her hair. He stood as he had stood a hundred times, and as he had longed a hundred times to see the Woman’s face, so he longed now. He moved to go to her, and the wind blew about him in his dream.