CHAPTER XXIII
ANTONY FINDS A GLOVE
Trix’s appearance at the door in the wall had fairly dumbfounded Antony. He had recognized her instantly. And the amazing thing was that she was exactly as he had seen her in his dream. Her announcement had carried the dream sense further, and it was with a queer feeling of intense disappointment that he found no one standing outside the gate. There was nothing but the silent deserted wood and the mound of leaf-mould. For a moment or so he stood listening, almost expecting to hear a footstep among the trees. Nothing but silence greeted him, however, broken only by the faint rustling of the leaves.
He turned back to the garden. It was empty. There was nothing, nothing on earth to prove that the whole thing had not been an extraordinarily vivid waking dream. And if it were a dream, surely it was calculated to dispel the relief the first dream had brought him. Yet was it a dream? Could it have been? Wasn’t he entirely awake, and in the possession of his right senses?
Demanding thus of his soul, solemn, bewildered, and reflective, he turned once more to his wheelbarrow. Ten minutes later, trundling it down a cinder path, his eye fell on an object lying beneath a gooseberry bush. He dropped the barrow, and picked up the object.
It was a long soft doe-skin glove.
“It wasn’t a dream,” said Antony triumphantly. “But where in the name of all that’s wonderful did she come from? And where did she vanish to?”
He put the glove into his pocket, and resumed his work.