"Why not?" he demanded, in surprise. "Why should I not kiss you?"
She let her head drop again to his shoulder. "True," she said; "why should you not? It is only that I forget that I am not the woman I dreamed I was; and for her—it was wrong to kiss you."
"Weir, tell me your dream at once. It is for your good as well as mine that I insist. You will be miserable and terrified until you take someone into your confidence. I believe I can explain your dream, as well as give you the comfort of talking it over with you."
She slipped suddenly out of his arms and walked quickly to the end of the room and back, pausing within a few feet of him. The room was growing dark, and he could distinguish little of her beyond the tall outline of her form and the unnatural brilliancy of her eyes, but he respected her wish and remained where he was.
"Very well," she said, rapidly. "I will tell you. I went to sleep without much terror, for I had told my maid to sleep in my dressing-room. But I suppose the storm and the story I had told you had unsettled my nerves, for I soon began to dream a horrid dream. I thought I was dead once more. I could feel the horrible chill and pain, the close-packed ice about me. I was dead, but yet there was a spirit within me. I could feel it whispering to itself, although it had not as yet spread its fire through me and awakened me into life. It whispered that it was tired, and disheartened, and disappointed, and wanted rest; that it had been on a long, fruitless journey, and was so weary that it would not take up the burden of life again just yet. But its rest could not be long; there was someone it must find, and before he had gone again to that boundless land, whose haunting spirits were impalpable as flecks of mist. And then it moaned and wept, and seemed to live over its past, and I went back with it, or I was one with it—I cannot define. It recalled many scenes, but only one made an impression on my memory; I can recall no other." She paused abruptly, but Dartmouth made no comment; he stood motionless in breathless expectancy. She put her hand to her head, and after a moment continued haltingly:
"I—oh—I hardly know how to tell it. I seemed to be standing with you in a room more familiar to me than any room in this castle; a room full of tapestries and skins and cushions and couches; a room which if I had seen it in a picture I should have recognized as Oriental, although I have never seen an Oriental room. I have always had an indescribable longing to see Constantinople, and it seemed to me in that dream as if I had but to walk to the window and look down upon it—as if I had looked down upon it many times and loved its beauty. But although I was with you, and your arms were about me, we were not as we are now—as we were before the dream: we had suffered all that a man and a woman can suffer who love and are held apart. And you looked as you do now, yet utterly different. You looked years older, and you were dressed so strangely. I do not know how I looked, but I know how I felt. I felt that I had made up my mind to commit a deadly sin, and that I gloried in it. I had suffered because to love you was a sin; but I only loved you the more for that reason. Then you slowly drew me further into the room and pressed me more closely in your arms and kissed me again, and then—I—oh—I do not know—it is all so vague I don't know what it meant—but it seemed as if the very foundations of my life were being swept away. And yet—oh, I cannot explain! I do not know, myself." And she would have thrown herself headlong on the sofa had not Dartmouth sprang forward and caught her.
"There, never mind," he said, quickly. "Let that go. It is of no consequence. A dream like that must necessarily end in a climax of incoherence and excitement."
He drew her down on the sofa, and for a moment said nothing further.
He had to acknowledge that she had deepened the mystery, and given no
key. A silence fell, and neither moved. Suddenly she raised her head.
"What was your dream?" she demanded.
"The same. I don't pretend to explain it. And I shall not insult your understanding by inventing weak excuses. If it means anything we will give the problem no rest until we have solved it. If we cannot solve it, then we are justified in coming to the conclusion that there is nothing in it. But I believe we shall get to the bottom of it yet."
"Perhaps," she said, wearily; "I do not know. I only feel that I shall never be myself again, but must go through life with that woman's burden of sin and suffering weighing me down." She paused a moment, and then continued: "In that dream I wore a dress like this, and that is the reason I put it on to-night. I was getting some things in Paris before I left, and I bought it thinking you would like it; I had heard you say that yellow was your favorite color. When my maid opened the door of my wardrobe to-night to take out a dress, and I saw this hanging there, it gave me such a shock that I caught at a chair to keep from falling. And then I felt irresistibly impelled to put it on. I felt as if it were a shroud, vivid in color as it is; but it had an uncanny fascination for me, and I experienced a morbid delight in feeling both spirit and flesh revolt, and yet compelling them to do my will. I never knew that it was in me to feel so, but I suppose I am utterly demoralized by so realistically living over again that awful experience of my childhood. If it happened again I should either be carried back to the vault for good and all, or end my days in the topmost tower of the castle, with a keeper, and the storms and sea-gulls for sole companions."