“I do not exactly mean that they are nothing, that is merely an expression to be taken for what it is worth,” said he, impressed by her intensity. “But come, tell me all about these dreams; I am interested in dreams. I wish I could have met you when I was writing a little book about the brain. Your experiences might have been of great use to me. They still will be, if you will tell me all about them.”
She knitted her brow, considered for some moments, then said, with evident effort:
“Tell me, doctor, tell me truly. Do you think there could be two souls in one body, and one soul could be awake when the other was asleep?”
“Is such a wild, horrible idea allowed by your Catholic religion?” asked Hugh, somewhat brusquely. “Do you know, princess, that allowing yourself to think of such things probably causes you these bad dreams?”
She looked at him with a sad smile, and shook her head slowly.
“Ah! you do not know!” she said. He had heard that plaintive tone of voice before from patients suffering acute anguish from deadly disease. “But you are right, monsieur le docteur, I am wrong to say such a thing. It is against my holy faith.”
Her proud humility touched him.
“And I was wrong to ask you such a question,” he said. Then he coaxed her to speak freely to him.
“You dreamt these dreams as a child?” he began. “They ought to be forgotten—dead.”
Then she told him simply, in her imperfect English, what her trouble really was. As a young child, she had been much like other children, without their life and cheerfulness when awake. But no sooner did she sleep than she felt herself surrounded by terrors, vague but horrible; a sense of impending doom seemed to suffocate her, yet some interior feeling made her believe that the doom was just. She heard weeping and lamenting among the dark shadows that surrounded her; and sometimes great eyes, with an expression of frantic appeal, appeared amid the gloom, and haunted her waking thoughts.