"No," said Essie, "nothing. You see," she added tranquilly with the faintest spice of malice, "I lead a double life." I gasped, staring at her open-mouthed, horror-stricken. She ignored my crass imbecility, and went on quietly: "I don't know when it began, but I suppose when I was about five years old. I found my way to the enchanted forest, and I went there in my dreams every night." "In your dreams!" I stuttered, enormously reassured, and idiotically hoping that she had not noticed my hideous lapse. "In my dreams. I had an unhappy childhood, but I never was unhappy any more after I learned the way through the forest. Directly I fell asleep I saw the track among the tree trunks, and then after a few minutes I reached the wonderful glade and the lake, and the little islands. One of the islands had a temple on it. I fed the swans upon the lake. I twined garlands of flowers. I climbed the trees, and looked into the nests. I swung from tree to tree, and I swam from island to island. I made a little pipe out of a reed from the lake, and blew music out of it. And the rabbits peeped out of their holes to listen, and the squirrels came hand by hand along the boughs, and the great kites with their golden eyes came whirling down. Even the little moles came up out of the ground to listen." I gazed at her, astonished. "I did not wear any clothes," said Essie, "and I used to lie on the moss in the sun. It is delicious to lie on moss, warm moss in the sun. Once when I was a small child I asked my governess when those happy days would come back when we should wear no clothes, and she told me I was very naughty. I never spoke to her of the dream forest again. She did not understand any more than you did the first moment. I think the natural instinct of the British mind if it does not understand is to look about for a lurking impropriety. I saw other children sometimes, but never close at hand. They went to the temple singing, garlanded and gay, but when I tried to join them I passed through them. They never took any notice of me." "Were you a ghost?" "I think not. I imagine I am an old old soul who has often been in this world before, and by some strange accident I have torn a corner of the veil that hides our past lives from us, and in my dreams I became once more a child as I had really been once, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, perhaps in Greece or Italy." "And do you still have that dream every night?"