"You were questioning me, Mrs. Fraser. Do continue your examination."
"Questioning you? What about?" she asked, looking at me with a little bewildered air.
"About my dream. I have often wanted to discuss it with you, that I may understand it. You who inspired it should know what it means."
"I cannot tell you, indeed. I did not inspire it. I had never seen you nor heard of you."
"In the olden times it was the custom to examine dreams, in the belief that they were prophecies. I would like to revive the custom, to see what my dream forebodes."
"What should it forebode? Sadness, perhaps, since my eyes were so sad."
"Dreams go by contraries, they say."
"Then they are useless as prophecies."
"But I am by no means disposed to let my dream slip by so easily. I choose to think it significant in some sense which I wish explained."