Although she hated and despised herself for it, her heart went out to him as her ear caught the ring of deep feeling in his voice.
"I don't know what you mean!" she faltered, lamely.
"I mean that such an acquaintance as ours would seem short and slight as mere facts go. And yet the thought of you has never once left my mind since I parted from you, and the moment I close my eyes in sleep you dominate my dreams. You come to me, and in just the voice you speak in now, only less hard and cold, you tell me that something stands between us and prevents you from liking me; and just as I am urging you to tell me what the barrier is, I awake, with my question unanswered."
"I am really not responsible for your dreams, Mr. Armstrong."
"Yet it is your influence which suggests them. Do you never dream yourself?"
"Yes; but I attach no importance to such disconnected nonsense as dreams always are!" she said, hastily, realising, to her intense discomfiture, that she was suddenly growing crimson.
"But tell me," he said, earnestly, "just for curiosity, as I know that you are interested in all psychic studies, whether you ever dream of strangers whom you dislike—of me, for instance?"
"It is beginning to snow," said Laline, staring up in the sky and ignoring his question, "and I have no umbrella."
"But I have. You must let me hold it over you."