The next “minute” was occupied in putting breathless questions to Diana.
“Yes!” she exclaimed at last. “You’re just as much mixed up with sevens as I am. Oh, isn’t it perfectly wonderful that I’ve actually found someone as lucky as I am? I shall have to tell Mr. Sheston.... But perhaps he knows. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he had something to do with getting us to meet each other. You see he——”
But Diana’s mystified face checked Rachel in the midst of her excited chattering.
“Of course you don’t understand anything about it yet,” she exclaimed. “How stupid I am. I shall have to tell you everything from the beginning.”
So she began the story of her first visit to the Museum, of the little old man who had spoken to her there, of the mysterious seven times bowing before the Rosetta Stone, and of all the marvels that had since happened.
And as she talked, explaining and describing, she saw Diana beginning to “understand.” Her eyes grew bright with eagerness, and, when at last Rachel paused for breath, she slipped from the table and began to dance about the room in her delight and excitement.
“I knew something like that might happen if only I could find out the way to make it,” she cried. “Because, do you know, Rachel, I often have dreams that are quite real—just as real as this room, and you, and the tables and chairs are now. In those sorts of dreams I go to places I’ve never seen in my life. Funny places where everything’s quite different. People wear different clothes, and don’t talk English—and yet I understand what they say. But I’m only there for a minute before I come back again to my own bed and my own bedroom. And then I’m most awfully disappointed because I’m always quite sure that there’s a way of making the dream last, so that I can go on, and have adventures—instead of only seeing things in a sort of flash, you know.”
“Mr. Sheston can make them last—if they are dreams!” Rachel declared. “I have to call him ‘Mr. Sheston’ here,” she added. “But he’s really Sheshà and Cleon, and I expect ever so many other people as well. And yet all the same person, you understand. In this life he just happens to be Mr. Sheston, that’s all.”
“Oh, I do wish I could see him,” sighed Diana.
She had scarcely spoken before her wish was granted, for at the last word the door opened, and Mr. Sheston came in.