"'And it is one of His beloved children,' he said, 'from whom you turn aside, and her weakness and your strength are of His ordering; and you whom He has made on a different, though no higher plan, turn in pride from your sister who has been placed in the path so that your strength may support her weakness.'
"'Now,' I replied, 'you speak blasphemy, for God is not the Father of sin, and what is sinful is unpleasing in His sight.'
"Then my companion, looking fixedly at me, said--
"'There is no sin. Viewed from the eye of wisdom and holiness there is one law--Love; one path--Order; and one state--Happiness. Man is permitted to dream of freedom, which he calls life; is allowed to dip into the darkness, and, for the moment, to imagine discord exists, that when he shall awaken his joy may be exceeding joyful. It has been left to man to give names to nothing and to fight the phantoms of negation; when his sleep shall be broken the former things will have passed away. Follow me.'
"So we returned together to the path, and as we stood before the woman I said, 'If this is but a dream, wherefore should I care what happens either to the woman or myself?' Then it seemed that the man did not answer, but I heard a voice singing. And the song was of love, and told how the slumber of life could never be broken till the light of unselfish love fell upon the sleeper.
"When the voice ceased, I turned and said to my companion--'What can I do for the woman? Behold her, as she lies there. It seems impossible for me to feel more than helpless compassion for such a one.'
"'Compassion and pity,' he answered, 'are words coined by man, and are associated at best but with a gleam of love, and more often with nothing but a selfish desire to hide pain from sight because it reminds man of that which is hateful. Love will ever find a way to helpfulness.'
"'But,' I said to him, 'I cannot feel this love to one so degraded.'
"Then he bent over the woman, and touched her with his hand; and as I looked down wondering, the degraded face seemed changed into the face of the girl I loved. And in the horror of the revelation I awoke, thankful to believe that it was but a dream! How many lessons, prophecies, and warnings come to men, if they did but realize it, in certain forms called dreams!
"When I got up on the following morning my mind was in that anxious and restless condition in which it usually finds itself after being too busily occupied during the hours of slumber. I felt depressed and irritable, consequently my view of everything was one-sided. My thoughts continually expressed themselves in doggerel verse instead of moving along smoothly and quietly in prose. This, I have always noticed, is a sign that my body requires some stimulating exercise. Moreover, every picture that reached my mind had a dark and unpleasant background. For instance, when my thoughts for relief turned to Vera's face, I had scarcely begun to dwell with pleasure on the beauty of some remembered expression before I became conscious that the woman of my dream was grinning at me over the girl's shoulder.