Lamberti stood beside her, resting his hands upon the wall.
"It is exactly what I feel," he said quietly.
"Then you dream, too?" she asked.
"Every night—of you."
"We are both dreaming now! I am sure of it. I shall wake up in the dark and hear the door shut softly, though I always lock it now."
"The door? Do you hear that, too?" asked Lamberti. "But I am wide awake when I hear it."
"So am I! Sometimes I can manage to turn up the electric light before the sound has quite stopped. Are we both mad? What is it? In the name of Heaven, what is it all?"
"I wish I knew. Whatever it is, if you and I meet often, it is quite impossible that we should talk like ordinary acquaintances. Yes, I thought I was going mad, and this morning I went to a great doctor and told him everything. He seemed to think it was all a set of coincidences. He advised me to see you and ask you why you ran away that day, and he thought that if we talked about it, I might perhaps not dream again."
"You are not mad, you are not mad!" Cecilia repeated the words in a low voice, almost mechanically.
Then there was silence, and presently she turned from the wall and began to walk back along the wide path that passed by the central fountain. The sun, long out of sight behind the hill, was sinking now, the thin violet mist had begun to rise from the Campagna far to south and east, and the mountains had taken the first tinge of evening purple. From the ilex woods above the house, the voice of a nightingale rang out in a long and delicious trill. The garden was deserted, and now and then the sound of women's laughter rippled out through the high, open door.