I stopped in irrepressible astonishment. We had walked by this time nearly as far on the way back to the city as the old Palace of Holyrood. My companion, after a glance at me, turned and looked at the rugged old building, mellowed into quiet beauty by the lovely moonlight.
“This is my favorite walk,” she said, simply, “since I have been in Edinburgh. I don’t mind the loneliness. I like the perfect tranquillity here at night.” She glanced at me again. “What is the matter?” she asked. “You say nothing; you only look at me.”
“I want to hear more of your dream,” I said. “How did you come to be sleeping in the daytime?”
“It is not easy to say what I was doing,” she replied, as we walked on again. “I was miserably anxious and ill. I felt my helpless condition keenly on that day. It was dinner-time, I remember, and I had no appetite. I went upstairs (at the inn where I am staying), and lay down, quite worn out, on my bed. I don’t know whether I fainted or whether I slept; I lost all consciousness of what was going on about me, and I got some other consciousness in its place. If this was dreaming, I can only say it was the most vivid dream I ever had in my life.”
“Did it begin by your seeing me?” I inquired.
“It began by my seeing your drawing-book—lying open on a table in a summer-house.”
“Can you describe the summer-house as you saw it?”
She described not only the summer-house, but the view of the waterfall from the door. She knew the size, she knew the binding, of my sketch-book—locked up in my desk, at that moment, at home in Perthshire!
“And you wrote in the book,” I went on. “Do you remember what you wrote?”
She looked away from me confusedly, as if she were ashamed to recall this part of her dream.