"With the people walking about? The two young priests standing in the morning sun on the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux? The dirty market woman trudging past the corner of the Vestals' house with a basket of vegetables on her head? The door slave sweeping the threshold of the Regia with a green broom?"
"I thought you knew nothing about the Forum," said Guido, curiously. "How do you come to know of the Regia?"
"Did I say Regia? I daresay—the name came to my lips."
"Somebody has hypnotised you," said Guido. "You are repeating things you have heard in your sleep."
"No. I am describing things I saw in my sleep. Am I the sort of man who is easily hypnotised? I have let men try it once or twice. We were all interested in hypnotism on my last ship, and the surgeon made some curious experiments with a lad who went to sleep easily. But last night I was at home, alone, in my own room, in bed, and I dreamt."
Guido shrugged his shoulders a little indifferently.
"There must be some explanation," he said. "What else did you dream?"
Lamberti's lids drooped as if he were concentrating his attention on the remembered vision.
"I dreamt," he said, "that I saw a veiled woman in white come out of the temple door straight into the sunlight, and though I could not see the face, I knew who she was. She went down the steps and then up the others to the house of the Vestals, and entered in without looking back. I followed her. The door was open, and there was no one to stop me."
"That is very improbable," observed Guido. "There must have always been a slave at the door."