"'Pain'--you call it. No, I certainly don't like the Pain. Do you have much of this Pain in the Land of Dreams?" "A very fair share," said the Vicar. "Is it new to you?" "Quite," said the Angel. "I don't like it." "How curious!" said the Vicar, and bit at the end of a strip of linen to tie a knot. "I think this bandaging must serve for the present," he said. "I've studied ambulance work before, but never the bandaging up of wing wounds. Is your Pain any better?" "It glows now instead of flashing," said the Angel. "I am afraid you will find it glow for some time," said the Vicar, still intent on the wound. The Angel gave a shrug of the wing and turned round to look at the Vicar again. He had been trying to keep an eye on the Vicar over his shoulder during all their interview. He looked at him from top to toe with raised eyebrows and a growing smile on his beautiful soft-featured face. "It seems so odd," he said with a sweet little laugh, "to be talking to a Man!" "Do you know," said the Vicar, "now that I come to think of it, it is equally odd to me that I should be talking to an Angel. I am a somewhat matter-of-fact person. A Vicar has to be. Angels I have always regarded as--artistic conceptions----" "Exactly what we think of men." "But surely you have seen so many men----" "Never before to-day. In pictures and books, times enough of course. But I have seen several since the sunrise, solid real men, besides a horse or so--those Unicorn things you know, without horns--and quite a number of those grotesque knobby things called 'cows.' I was naturally a little frightened at so many mythical monsters, and came to hide here until it was dark. I suppose it will be dark again presently like it was at first. _Phew!_ This Pain of yours is poor fun. I hope I shall wake up directly." "I don't understand quite," said the Vicar, knitting his brows and tapping his forehead with his flat hand. "Mythical monster!" The worst thing he had been called for years hitherto was a 'mediaeval anachronism' (by an advocate of Disestablishment). "Do I understand that you consider me as--as something in a dream?" "Of course," said the Angel smiling. "And this world about me, these rugged trees and spreading fronds----" "Is all so _very_ dream like," said the Angel. "Just exactly what one dreams of--or artists imagine." "You have artists then among the Angels?" "All kinds of artists, Angels with wonderful imaginations, who invent men and cows and eagles and a thousand impossible creatures." "Impossible creatures!" said the Vicar. "Impossible creatures," said the Angel. "Myths." "But I'm real!" said the Vicar. "I assure you I'm real." The Angel shrugged his wings and winced and smiled. "I can always tell when I am dreaming," he said. "_You_--dreaming," said the Vicar. He looked round him. "_You_ dreaming!" he repeated. His mind worked diffusely.