Anthony laughed guiltily.
"Yes, I have," he protested. "You were saying you'd half a mind to give up having hydrangeas and—and—er—not have them at all," he concluded lamely.
Valerie uttered a little crow of triumph.
"Scandalous," she said. "Simply scandalous. It's no good pretending. I know perfectly well what you were thinking about. You were thinking of Gramarye. That old dream of yours …"
Mark, sirs, how the mighty may fall and how familiarity may breed contempt. Gramarye had lost her sting. Spoiled of her puissance, she had sunk to the level of "Boney"—fare for the ears of children, food for a jest.
"No, I wasn't," said Anthony, smiling. "At least, not directly. I was thinking of an argument the Monseigneur put up about my dream."
"What did he say?"
"Well, his contention was this. You know, if, for instance, a bell rings when you're asleep and dreaming, as likely as not the noise is introduced—not necessarily in the same form—into your dream, isn't it? Very well. That shows the senses are working. The message arrives distorted, but it arrives. Well, he said that in his opinion practically everything that came to pass in my dream was originally suggested by some outside influence. Water being poured into a basin suggests a brook. A sewing-machine becomes a train. The hiss of a burning log escaping steam. So much for the ears. Now for the eyes. A maid helps the nurse to move a sofa—I see timber being hauled. The doctor shakes his thermometer, and there's Winchester wielding an axe…. It's a pretty theory, and the more you study it, the sounder it seems." He crossed his legs and started to fill a pipe. "All the same, I must have a fertile imagination. I think I always had. As a child I was left alone a great deal, and I fancy that helped."
It was a lazy Sunday morning—the fourth in the month of May. John Forest had been gone a month, and Lady Touchstone was properly at church. Greenwich would have told you that it was ten o'clock, and the gorgeous tapestry of Summer was still wrought with the brilliant embroidery of a heavy dew. Lawns, flower-borders, and stiff box charactery sparkled and shone in the hot sunshine. The sky was cloudless: a haze kept to itself the distant promise of the park: there was no wind. The sleepy hum of insects, a rare contented melody, tilted the hat of Silence over that watchman's eyes. The wandering scent of hawthorns offered the faultless day a precious button-hole.
Sitting easily among the cushions of a teak-wood chair, Anthony let his eyes ramble luxuriously over the prospect. In a chaise longue by his side Valerie was engaged in the desultory composition of a letter to her uncle in Rome. Stretched blinking upon the warm flags, Patch watched the two vigilantly for any sign of movement.