Towards the end of the fortnight her trance wore thin. It was then that everything she saw or read seemed to press in upon one sore spot. If she went to the Mottisfonts’, there was Mary with her talk of Edward and the baby. Edward!—Elizabeth could have laughed; but the laughter went too. If there were not much of Edward, at least Mary had all that there was. And the child—did not she, too, desire children? But the child of a dream. How could she give to David the child of a dream already forgotten? If she walked, there were lovers in every lane, young lovers, who loved each other by day and in the eye of the sun. If she took up a book—once what she read was: Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. and another time, Kingsley’s _Dolcino to Margaret_. Then came a day when she opened her Bible and read: “If a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.” That day she came broad awake. The daze passed from her. Her brain was clear, and her conscience—the inner vision rose before her, showing her an image troubled and confused. What had she done? And what was she doing now? Day by day David looked at her with the eyes of a friend, and night by night he came to her, the lover of a dream. Which was the reality? Which was the real David? If the David of the dream were real, conscious in sleep of some mysterious oneness, the sense of which was lost in the glare of day—then she could wait, and bear, and hope, till the realisation was so strong that the sun might shine upon it and show to David awake what the sleeping David knew. But if the David of the dream were not the real David, then what was she? Mistress and no wife—the mistress of a dream mood that never touched Reality at all. Two scalding tears in Elizabeth’s eyes—two and no more. The others burned her heart. And the thought stayed with her. That evening after dinner Elizabeth looked up from her embroidery. The silence had grown to be too full of thoughts. She could not bear it. “What are you reading, David?” she asked. He laughed and said: “Sentimental poetry, ma’am. Would you have suspected me of it? I find it very soothing.” “Do you?” She paused, and then said with a flutter in her throat: “Do you ever write poetry now, David? You used to.” “Yes, I remember boring you with it.” He coloured a little as he spoke. “But since then?” “Oh, yes——” “Show me some——” “Not for the world.” “Why not?” “Poetry is such an awful give away. How any one ever dares to publish any, I don’t know. I suppose they get hardened. But one’s most private letters aren’t a patch on it. One puts down all one’s grumbles, one’s moonstruck fancies, the ravings of one’s inanest moments. Mine are not for circulation, thanks.” Elizabeth did not laugh. Instead she said, quite seriously, “David, I wish you would show me some of it.”