“Oh, yes, I want you to. I want you to know everything about me—everything. That's why I am here. Captain Herrick says you are a great specialist in nervous troubles, and I have a feeling that unless you can help me nobody can.”
“Well, I have helped some people who felt pretty blue about life—perhaps I can help you. Now, then, what is the immediate trouble? Any aches or pains? I must say you seem to be in splendid health,” he smiled at her with cheery admiration.
“It isn't my body. I have no physical suffering. I eat well enough, I sleep well, except—my dreams. I have horrible, torturing dreams, doctor. I'm afraid to go to sleep. I have the same dreams over and over again, especially two dreams that haunt me.”
“How long have you had these dreams?”
“Ever since I went out that dreadful day from Montidier—when the Germans almost broke through. They told me Captain Herrick was lying there helpless, out beyond our lines. So I went to him. I don't know how I got there, but—I found him. He was wounded in the thigh and a German beast was standing over him when I came up. He was going to run him through with a bayonet. And somehow, I—I don't know how I did it, but I caught up a pistol from a dead soldier and I shot the German.”
“Good Lord! You don't say! They didn't have that in the papers! What a woman! No wonder you've had bad dreams!”
Penelope passed a slender hand over her eyes as if to brush away evil memories, then she said wearily: “It isn't that, they are not ordinary dreams.”
“Well, what kind of dreams are they? You say there are two dreams?”
“There are two that I have had over and over again, but there are others, all part of a sequence with the same person in them.”
The doctor looked at her sharply. “The same person? A person that you recognize?”