“I have forgotten the Dream,” said Allan.
As he made that answer, Midwinter took his hand, and led him round the last turn in the path.
“Do you remember it now?” he asked, and pointed to the Mere.
The sun was sinking in the cloudless westward heaven. The waters of the Mere lay beneath, tinged red by the dying light. The open country stretched away, darkening drearily already on the right hand and the left. And on the near margin of the pool, where all had been solitude before, there now stood, fronting the sunset, the figure of a woman.
The two Armadales stood together in silence, and looked at the lonely figure and the dreary view.
Midwinter was the first to speak.
“Your own eyes have seen it,” he said. “Now look at our own words.”
He opened the narrative of the Dream, and held it under Allan’s eyes. His finger pointed to the lines which recorded the first Vision; his voice, sinking lower and lower, repeated the words:
“The sense came to me of being left alone in the darkness.
“I waited.