She had forgotten why she searched for the pool; she was a little confused, doubtless the effect of yesterday's headache—nothing unpleasant, rather a delightful, dizzy jumbling of thoughts, ideas, remembrances. At any rate, here was the pool, clear and unruffled; new grass was springing on its banks, and here and there woolly brown bosses showed where ferns were sprouting. She would fetch John here one day—if he were able to walk so far. John used to like a pool when his sight was stronger; not in Anne's way; her liking was innocent and sentimental. John would bring his microscope and discover the most wonderful things in water that appeared absolutely pure. Decidedly she must manage to fetch John.
Anne leaned over and looked into the pool. She leaned farther, lower, turned her head this way and that, and then drew back in utter bewilderment. There was no reflection of her face in the water! She was overwhelmed with disappointment. This enchanting rejuvenation, then, was only a dream. She could almost have wept; not quite, for the dream still held her as in an embrace of joyousness. She wondered what her body looked like, lying on its bed while its soul was roaming the fields. She pitied it, the worn, frail, old body, as though it were a thing separate from herself. It had suffered in its fairly long life, and had endured many contrarieties, but there had been more than compensating happinesses, and no great sorrows. She hoped it slept well. John's dear, white head would be lying on the pillow beside it. "Oh," she thought, "I wish I could give my dream to John. Well, it shall be the best dream in the world if John is only to have it at second hand."
In the certainty that she was dreaming, Anne now gave her imagination a free rein. False shame is out of place in a dream. She gambolled like a prisoned kid set free, and sang—softly, lest the dream should be shattered. As the day advanced wild things came out of the wood; squirrels, and other animals so shy by nature that she had only seen them, heretofore, at a distance, stopped beside her and conversed together in their own language. She saw what no naturalist has ever beheld, God's creatures at home and unafraid. She laid her hand on the head of a doe as it drank at a pool, and ran with it feather-footed. She spurned the earth and took long, smooth flights over the undergrowth like a bird sailing on the wing.
Suddenly she became aware of a voice, clear and penetrating, that spoke the name—Anne. A face was before her, vaguely familiar, a face of her childhood.
"Marian!" she cried; "my mother's cousin, Marian."
"You remember me, dear Anne."
"You—you went to India," murmured Anne in a maze; "I thought—mother talked of you to us children—your portrait in the school-room——"
"Yes, I went to the Indies; I died there when you were a little child. You were always much in my mind, for I loved your mother, and you were her favorite. So she did not allow my name to be forgotten? She talked of me to her children, and she kept my portrait."
"Did you say—died!" repeated Anne, who had given an involuntary start at the word. "I wonder if I am really meeting your spirit in a dream? It might be. Why should it not?"
"You certainly are meeting my spirit, which is myself, but not in a dream, dear."