Now he was Simeon Greeber the poisoner; he was pouring something into a phial, he took a tiny white tablet—fear made my dream-eyes keen—and dissolved it in the liquid. Some one was propping me up, his eyes were gleaming with hope, he lifted the glass to my lips—
"Poisoner!" I shrieked and dashed the glass away. I put my hands swiftly to my eyes, and they were open. My bed, the Château Villebecq bedroom, half-drawn blinds, a hundred impressions instantaneously reached me. I was awake again, and in this world; my chin and neck were wet with the spilled liquid, and he was there, the this-world Uncle Simeon, hastily picking up bits of glass. He was real, and I knew it; he looked up and knew that I knew.
Could I sham him into doubting it? My senses had not properly returned, and flog my brain as I would, in a frantic second of endeavour, she could not tell me how or why I was here in bed, how or why Uncle Simeon was here beside me.
I smiled, assumed my frankest stare, and shammed that I was dreaming again. (Unless it was, after all, a dream unnameably real, a dream within a dream.) Staring at him fixedly as though I did not see him—and for a half-moment I saw doubt in his eyes—"Madam," I cried, "some one has tried to poison me. Find him, find him!"
Deceived or no, he was not losing his chance. "One will find him soon, one will find him," he whispered soothingly, the while preparing another potion below the level of the bed: "Meanwhile, dearie, drink something to make you better." Swiftly he seized me, grasped my neck as in a vice, and forced the glass against my lips.
Somehow I got my mouth away, somehow I managed to shriek, to shriek till I seemed to be losing my senses again. In dream-fashion shapes crowded round me once more: Elise and Suzanne—and the Stranger. Whether real shapes or not, they were Friends. I was saved. All would be well. And I fell into a dreamless sleep.
To this day I do not know with absolute sureness whether these moments were dream or waking life. Little is the difference, for is not the one as real, or as unreal, as the other?