"After I had fallen asleep, I began to dream, but not about you, Mrs. Warriner; that's the strange feature of the business. It wasn't that I had been thinking of you that evening, or indeed, that I had ever been at all in the habit of thinking--" Again Charnock was utterly confused. "I don't seem to be telling the story with the best taste in the world, do I?" he said ruefully.
"Never mind," she said in a soothing voice.
"Of course, I could have turned it into a compliment," he continued. "Only I take it you have no taste for compliments, and I lack the experience to put them tactfully."
"For a novice," said she, "you seem to be doing very well." Charnock resumed his story. "I dreamt solely of people I had seen, and incidents I had witnessed during the last week, at Tangier and at Plymouth. I dreamed particularly of a man I quarrelled with at Plymouth, and I suddenly woke up and saw your face in the mirror."
"As you fancied."
"It was no fancy. It was no dream-face that I saw--dream-faces are always elusive. It was no dream-face, it was yours."
"Or one like mine."
"There cannot be two."
"For a novice," repeated Miranda, with a smile, "you are doing very well."
Charnock had watched her carefully while he told his story, on the chance that her looks, if not her lips, might give him some clue to the comprehension of his mysterious vision. But she had expressed merely an unconcerned curiosity and some amusement.