“I believe you entirely,” said Maurice thoughtfully. “I have had much the same kind of thing happen to me in a dream.”
He did not add that much the same thing had happened to him on the same night. “How did the dream end?” he went on.
“I awoke directly after the beetle told me that thing that I have forgotten. It was broad daylight. But when I got up, the beetle was not on the table where I had put it. I could not find it anywhere.”
“You probably moved it in your sleep. Did you ever walk in your sleep?”
“Once, when I was quite little—almost a baby. I had got out into the garden, and my nurse found me there.”
Maurice rose, and the two went down the hill together. “I wouldn’t trouble about all that if I were you,” said Maurice. “These things can generally be explained in the simplest way when one goes through them carefully. Coffee, the action of the heart, the position of the body in bed, the sounds that one hears while asleep, all help to explain a good deal, you know.”
He did not tell her his own dream. He thought, perhaps rightly, that a young girl, unacquainted with the study of mathematics, might be unduly impressed by coincidences which were unusual but did not require a supernatural explanation. He did not want to frighten her, or let her grow superstitious. Yet during the day he thought a good deal about the two dreams.
He had dreamed that he was seated on the one side of the fireplace in his rooms at Cambridge, and that the beetle, with the same exaggerated dimensions with which Marjorie had seen him, was seated in a lounge chair on the other side. They were discussing Maurice’s psychological studies, and Maurice was describing to him some of the curious experiments which he had made in conjunction with Mr. Meyner. Every difficulty that Maurice propounded the beetle made clear at once. He even suggested fresh problems which had not occurred to Maurice before, and was equally ready with their solution. His last words before Maurice awoke were: “There are many things besides which you ought to know, and of which you have not realised your own ignorance. You will know them all one day.”
This was all that Maurice could remember of his dream. The difficulties propounded and the explanations given had passed completely out of his recollection. He was only conscious that during his dream he had felt an exhilarating sensation of having known for certain things which he had thought it impossible that any one, at least in this life, could know at all.
Shortly afterwards he returned to Cambridge. By this time Marjorie seemed to have recovered her normal spirits. She made no further allusion to her dream. She was unaffectedly sorry at the departure of Maurice.