“I believe so.”
Mrs. Severance's eyes waver a little—her mouth seeking for the proper kind of dream.
“It's not much but it comes quite regularly—the most punctual, old-fashioned-servant sort of a dream.
“It doesn't begin with sleep, you know—it begins with waking. At least it's just as if I were in my own bed in my own apartment and then gradually I started to wake. You know how you can feel that somebody else is in the room though you can't see them—that's the feeling. And, of course being a normal American business woman, my first idea is—burglars. And I'm very cowardly for a minute. Then the cowardice passes and I decide to get up and see what it is.
“It is somebody else—or something—but nobody I think that I ever really knew. And at first I don't want to walk toward it—and then I do because it keeps pulling me in spite of myself. So I go to it—hands out so I won't knock over things.
“And then I touch it—or him—or her—and I'm suddenly very, very happy.
“That's all.
“And now, Dr. Billett, what would you say of my case?”
Ted's eyes are glowing—in the middle of her description his heart has begun to knock to a hidden pulse, insistent and soft as the drum of gloved fingers on velvet. He picks words carefully.
“I should say—Mrs. Severance—that there was something you needed and wanted and didn't have at present. And that you would probably have it—in the end.”