She walked up to him, exotic yet familiar, with her white woman's face and shoulders above the Malay sarong, as if it were an airy disguise, but her expression was serious.
“No,” she replied. “It was distress, rather. You see, you weren't there, and I couldn't tell why you had gone away from me. A nasty dream—the first I've had, too, since—”
“You don't believe in dreams, do you?” asked Heyst.
“I once knew a woman who did. Leastwise, she used to tell people what dreams mean, for a shilling.”
“Would you go now and ask her what this dream means?” inquired Heyst jocularly.
“She lived in Camberwell. She was a nasty old thing!”
Heyst laughed a little uneasily.
“Dreams are madness, my dear. It's things that happen in the waking world, while one is asleep, that one would be glad to know the meaning of.”
“You have missed something out of this drawer,” she said positively.
“This or some other. I have looked into every single one of them and come back to this again, as people do. It's difficult to believe the evidence of my own senses; but it isn't there. Now, Lena, are you sure that you didn't—”