"Nothing—no, nothing at all," answered Timar. "I am only overtired by the journey."
"Shall I send for the doctor?"
"Pray don't. I am not ill."
Timéa wished him good-night, and went away after again feeling his forehead with her hand. But Timar was not in a condition to sleep. He heard every noise in the house; he heard them whispering and creeping on tiptoe past his door, so as not to disturb him. He was thinking where a man could best flee from himself. Into the realm of dreams? That would be good, indeed, if only one could find the way there as easily as into the kingdom of death. But one can not force one's self to dream. Opium? That is one way—the suicide of sleep. Gradually he noticed that it was growing darker in the room: the shades of night veiled closely every object, the light grew dim. At last he was surrounded by a darkness like that of a thick, motionless mist, like subterranean gloom, or the night of the blind: such an obscurity one "sees" even in sleep. Michael knew he was asleep, and the blindness lying over his eyes was that of slumber. Yes, he now had full consciousness of his position. He was lying in his own bed in his Komorn house—a table beside him with an antique bronze lamp-stand, and a painted lamp-shade with Chinese figures on it; over his head hung a large clock with a chime; the silken curtains were let down. The curious old bed had a sort of drawer below it, which could be drawn out and used as a second bed. It was beautifully made—one of those beds only found in fine old houses, in which a whole family might find room to sleep. Timar knew that he had not bolted his door; any one could come in who chose. How if some one came to murder him? And what difference would there be between sleep and death? This puzzled him in his dreams.
Once he dreamed that the door opened softly and some one entered: a woman's steps. The curtain rustled, and something leaned over him: a woman's face. "Is it you, Noémi?" Michael thought in his dream, and started. "How came you here? If some one saw you?" It was dark, he could see nothing; but he heard the person sit down by his bed and listen to his breathing. Thus had Noémi done many a night in the little hut. "Oh, Noémi, will you watch again all through the night? When will you sleep?"
The female figure, as if in answer, knelt down and drew out the shelf below the bed. Michael felt a mixture of fear and rapture in his breast. "You will lie down beside me; oh, how I love you, but I tremble for you!" and then the figure prepared a bed on the shelf and lay down. The dreamer in the bed longed to bend over her, to embrace and kiss her, and would have called again to her, "Go, hasten away from here, you will be seen;" but he could move neither limbs nor tongue, they were heavy as lead; and then the woman slept too. Michael sunk deeper into dreamland. His fancy flew through past and future, soared into the region of the impossible, and returned to the sleeping woman. He dreamed that he was awake, and yet the phantom was beside him.
At last it began to dawn, and the sun shone through the window with more wonderful radiance than ever before. "Awake, awake!" whispered Michael in his dream. "Go home—the daylight must not find you here. Leave me now!" He struggled with the dream. "But you are not really here—it is only a delusion!"
He forced himself to sever the bonds in which sleep held him, and awoke completely. It was really morning, the sunlight streamed through the curtains, and on the shelf below the bed lay a sleeping woman with her head on her arm.
"Noémi!" cried Michael. The slumbering form awoke at the call and looked up. It was Timéa—
"Do you want anything?" asked the woman, rising hastily from her couch. She had heard the tone but not the name. Her husband was still under the influence of his dream. "Timéa!" he stammered sleepily, astonished at the metamorphosis of Noémi into Timéa.