"But you are all right now, darling," Geoff said anxiously.
"Yes, dear, I never felt better. Still, it was a strange thing altogether. I was well when I went to bed, but in the night I had a curious dream. It seemed to me that I was lying half asleep with a singular pricking sensation of my lips and face. And then an angel came down and laid some white powder on my pillow, a white powder that looked like a mixture of salt and powdered glass. Almost immediately the pain ceased and I slept again. Then I awoke finally and had that fainting fit. Don't you think it was a queer thing?"
"Yes, but what had the dream and the powder to do with it, little girl?"
"I was coming to that, Geoff. After I got better I remembered my dream and looked at the pillow. You smile, thinking that only a woman would do that. Sure enough there was some trace of gritty powder there, and I collected it in a tissue paper. Directly I got it to the light half of it melted; it seemed to dissolve in light like water. And here it is."
Vera produced a tiny packet from her pocket and opened it. There were several grains of some sharp powder there which, as Geoffrey held them in his hand, dissolved to nothingness. His face was very pale.
"Darling, this is a dreadful thing," he murmured. "I fancy——"
He paused, fearful of alarming Vera. He saw the hand of fate in this; he saw the sword that was hanging over that beloved young life.
A passion of anger and despair filled him, but for Vera's sake he checked the feeling. And it seemed to him as if he had passed in a minute down a decade of years; as if in that brief space he had left his boyhood behind and become a man.
"This must be looked into," he said sternly. "Every precaution——"