“You are mysterious.”
“Yes,” she said, simply. “It is all a dreadful mystery. You know, every time I have seen you, you have made me feel stronger. That is why I ask you to see me for five days, and then I tell you all! I tell you—you will be frightened when you hear what I have to say!”
There was no lightness about her voice and manner. Indeed, she spoke with reluctance, almost with pain.
“I do not think there is much which can frighten me now,” said Hugh, reassuringly. “You can tell me everything, anything you please.”
A nervous tremor shook her whole frame.
“I will tell you,” she said, almost convulsively. “I dreamed a dream once, when I was a child. I was sitting on a stone bench, such as we have in our country. But round me were dark trees, dark bushes of the sort we do not have there. It was dark. I dreamed I was in the expectation of some one to come to me. I was sitting there, waiting. Then I saw the moon, and just as I saw the moon, I saw some one who came—a man; and I knew that the man was the one I loved before everything, and as I did not love anyone else.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, encouragingly.
The words brought back some unpleasantly suggestive recollection, but indistinctly.
“I woke from that dream,” she went on, musingly; “and I knew it was not like other dreams. I knew that it meant something. I had been not fond of people like my girl friends were fond of people; but that man, oh! I loved him!”
“Did you recognise him?” asked Dr. Paull, feeling uncomfortable, he hardly knew why.