“Nay, I know not. It was the strangest fancy. I thought that you pursued me along the river—that my foot slipped and I fell among the bushes, where you caught me, and it was just when you were strangling me that I wakened.”
“Your dream was occasioned by the affair of the afternoon. Was nobody present but ourselves?”
“Yes—there was a man at a little distance beyond us, and he seemed to be running from you also.”
“A man! who was he?”
“I don't know exactly—his back was turned, but it seemed as if it was Mr. Edgerton.”
“Ha! Mr. Edgerton!”
A deep silence followed. She had spoken her reply firmly, but so slowly as to convince me of the mental reluctance which she felt in uttering this part of the dream. When the imagination is excited, how small are the events that confirm its ascendency, and stimulate its progress. This dream seemed to me as significant as any of the signs that informed the ancient augurs. It bore me irresistibly forward in the direction of my previous thoughts. I began to see the path—dark, dismal—perhaps bloody—which lay before me. I began to feel the deed, already in my soul, which destiny was about to require me to perform. A crime, half meditated, is already half committed. This is the danger of brooding upon the precipice of evil thoughts. A moment's dizziness—a single plunge—and all is over!
I doubt whether Julia slept much the remainder of the night. I know that I did not. She had her consciousness as well as mine. THAT I now know. The question—“was her consciousness a guilty one?” That was the only question which remained for me!
The next morning I saw Edgerton. He looked quite as well as on the previous night, but professed to feel otherwise—declined coming forth to breakfast and begged me to send the physician to him on my way to the office. I immediately conjectured that this was mere practice, for he had not taken the medicine which had been prescribed.
“He must keep sick to keep HERE,” said my demon. “He can have no pretext, otherwise, to stay!”