"Can you tell me nothing?"
Then he shook his head very gently and everything in my dream vanished; I saw only his head shaking "no" - and with that I awoke. The day was dawning, and I lay thinking over everything and impressing it on my memory.
I felt absolutely certain that I had spoken with him.
I went to sleep again and dreamed, as frequently happens after a dream of this kind, that I related my dream, but without knowing that I was sleeping.
That morning I was extraordinarily refreshed and happy. And the whole day the sound of his voice was in my ears, with the words: "Good day, Vico mio!" And repeatedly I tried to recall the exact tones.
I had this dream some time before the first appearance of Emmy, and had asked for advice, because at the time I was still in conflict with myself whether I should take Lucia for my wife.
XVII
"How is it that they wired you so late that your little friend had died, so many months after?" Lucia asked me, some days after we had left Lucerne.
"Because I, myself, had only then wired to inquire about her."
Lucia looked at we silently and thoughtfully for a while, and then said with a kindly unsuspecting earnestness, full of delicate chastity: