That night I had another bad dream. Only it didn't really seem so bad as it should have been. A blind man was talking to me. Then I dreamed that a blind girl with a seeing-eye dog was looking at me. She was about fifteen, maybe younger, dressed in a plain flowered dress tied in back with a ribbon. She had a soft round face and her eyes were wide and opaque. The girl and dog seemed to come out of a mist and they whispered to me. It was frightening, but important, and I didn't remember what it was.
I woke up shivering. I seemed to smell wet hair, and the window was open. I couldn't remember whether I had shut the window before I went to sleep or not.
Mesner called me early the next morning.
He looked the same in his wrinkled suit with the food stains on the lapels, and peeling an apple.
"Fred, have you ever heard a phrase sounding like '... and the blind shall lead them?'"
I appeared to be trying to think about it, then said I had never heard anything like that.
"You're positive about that?"
"I don't remember it."
"You mean you might have, but you just can't remember it."
"I didn't say that. I doubt if I ever heard such a phrase."