"All dragons are made so that where one head comes off there are seven in its place; and you must remember if somebody didn't go about slaying them, I couldn't be at all." This as she said it had a deep meaning for Peter that afterward escaped him. "And you can hold the dream. It takes a lot of dreaming to bring one like me to pass." "I'm sick of dreams," said Peter. "A man dies after a little who is fed on nothing else." "They die quicker if they stop dreaming; on those that have the gift for it the business of dreaming falls. Listen! How many that you know have found me?" "A great many think they have; it comes to the same thing." "The same for them; but you must see that I can never really _be_ until I am for those outside the dream. The trouble with you is that you'd wake up after a while and you would _know_." "Yes," Peter admitted, "I should know." "Well, then," she was oh, so gentle about it, "yours is the better part. If you can't have me, at least you're not stopping me by leaving off for something else. In the dream I can live and grow, and you can grow to me. Do you remember what happened to Ada Harvey? I've saved you from that at any rate." "No," said Peter, "it was the dragon saved me. I thought you were she. It's saved me from lots of things, now that I think of it." "Ah, that's what we have to do between us, Peter, we have to save you. You're worth saving." "Save me for what?" Peter cried out to her and so strongly in his loneliness that he found himself starting up from his bed with it. He could see the dragon spitting flames as before, and the pale light from the swinging street lamp gilding the frame of the picture. Though he did not understand all that had happened to him, as he lay down again he was more comforted than he had been at any time since he had made up his mind that he was to be a bachelor. PART FOUR IN WHICH THE LOVELY LADY MAKES A FINAL APPEARANCE PART FOUR IN WHICH THE LOVELY LADY MAKES A FINAL APPEARANCE I