"Then," exclaimed Constance, "my lord Periander, you were only dreaming?"
"I was," he answered, "all my happiness has ever been but a dream."
"Truly," she rejoined, "I was going to ask the lady Auristella where she had concealed herself all the time before she appeared to you."
"My brother," said Auristella, "has related his dream in such a manner, that I really felt a doubt whether it was truth or not, that he was telling us."
To which Maurice added, "These things are owing to the force of imagination, which represents things sometimes in so varied a way, that they cling to the memory, and remain there till we hardly know whether they are truth or not."
Meanwhile Arnoldo kept silence; he was considering in his mind the vivacity and warmth of expression that Periander had used in relating his story, and could not help indulging some of the doubts and suspicions which had been infused into his mind by the deceased Clodio, as to whether Periander and Auristella were really brother and sister.
However, at length he said, "Go on with your story, Periander, but leave out your dreams, for weary and overworked minds often engender confused and strange fancies, and here is the peerless Sinforosa longing to have you come to the time of your first appearance in the island, when you went away crowned as conqueror in the games which take place on the anniversary of her father's election."
"The pleasure that my dream gave me," replied Periander, "made me unaware of the tiresome and fruitless nature of such digressions in a narrative, which should be concise and not amplified."
Polycarp, whose eyes were entirely occupied with looking at Auristella, and his mind in thinking about her, said nothing. It mattered very little to him whether Periander spoke or held his tongue, and he, who began to perceive that some of his hearers were tired of his long story, determined to shorten the rest, and to finish it in as few words as he could, and so he spoke as follows.