Clara thought it a curious dream--curious because it represented what had actually occurred, and the bent of her own feelings; curious also because it was so unusually vivid, so like reality. She got out of bed quietly, not to disturb her husband, struck a wax match, and looked at the hanging watch. It was exactly three o'clock. But the dream was not yet over. She went to sleep again, taking up the thread almost at the point where she had left it. She remembered all that had passed, _both of dream and reality_; she remembered that she awoke in the certainty that she could not go beside the dreaded expedition; all _that_ was plain in this, her second sleep, but she now began making strenuous exertions to escape. She did not see her husband again, but Mary Ann and Margaret Jupp had joined Mrs. Chester, and the three seemed to be forcing her to go. Not by force of violence, but of argument, of persuasion; and she still seemed to know that they must prevail, that to withstand at the last would be beyond her power. The time appeared to change to the morning of departure: or rather, with that inconsistency peculiar to dreams, it appeared to be the morning of the departure without having changed. Still she strove against it; not saying why, not hinting that she feared evil; of that, she had only spoken with her husband; but striving, not to go, by every possible argument, and by _passive_ resistance. And--strange inconsistency!--it appeared that if she could have told them the reason of her reluctance, her dread of evil, all would have been well; but it was precisely to them she must not and dared not tell it. To any who may fancy the description of the dream unnecessarily spun out, the small details too much dwelt upon, I would say just a word. It is difficult to shorten that real dream of midnight sufficiently for it to be told within reasonable bounds. No pen can trace its particulars as they appeared; no power of language describe them as they were pictured. And now to resume it.