“And it frightened you.”
“No—no—well, it didn’t exactly frighten me—it made me think. It was all nonsense, you know, and yet it was the realest dream I ever had in my life.”
“Stop a minute. You had some coffee in the drawing-room, and that kept you awake for a long time, you turned about from side to side, and thought about the beetle. Your bedroom seemed hot and stifling.”
“Yes, that’s all true—how did you know, Maurice?—but it has not got anything to do with it.”
“Marjorie, if you’d never had that coffee, you’d have never had that dream. Now, then, let’s hear it. I’ll try to keep awake, but walking always makes me sleepy.”
“After I had said good-night to everybody, I went up into the schoolroom and got the beetle, because I was afraid the servants might throw it away in the morning, and you said you wanted it. I took it into my own room, and put it down on a table. All the while I was undressing, I kept thinking about it and wondering if beetles and other things could really understand, or if it were only men and women who knew about things, and if all the world were just made for us alone. Before I got into bed I picked the beetle up, and said to it, ‘Beetle, you’ve got to come into my dream to-night, and tell me all about it. Don’t forget.’ Of course that was just a fancy. I didn’t really think it could understand what I said, or that it would come. I’m not a baby, though Aunt Julia treats me like one sometimes. Well, for a long time I couldn’t get to sleep, but at last I did.”
“And then the beetle came and suffocated you, or threw you over a precipice,” remarked Maurice, drowsily.
“No, that’s not a bit like it. I don’t know how long I had been asleep, but I dreamed that I woke up suddenly, and that the moonlight was streaming in at the window. Right in the middle of the moonlight was the beetle, standing up on his hind legs. He had grown ever so much bigger, and was as tall as I am. ‘Come on, now,’ he said. ‘How much longer are you going to keep me waiting? I’m late, as it is.’
“I didn’t feel the least bit afraid of him. I just asked him where we were going. He opened the window, and pointed upwards. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you must wait till I’m dressed, else I shall catch cold.’ However, he wouldn’t wait, and so I got out of bed. We climbed up on to the table in front of the window. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘you must keep hold of my fore-leg, or you’ll fall.’ We didn’t fly or walk; we floated out of the window, and then upwards, going very quickly and steadily, as if a wind were blowing us. As we were floating up, the beetle’s head changed till it became just like Aunt Julia’s. ‘Marjorie’s an unnatural child,’ it said in Aunt Julia’s voice. ‘She doesn’t care for dolls—doesn’t care for anything except music and Maurice.’”
Maurice had an unworthy and needless impression that the girl was making some of this up. He looked at her curiously, as though he were going to say something; but he refrained, and she continued her dream—