"The Prince Umhlangana wore it--in the dream of Chaka--O Dingaan, shoot of a royal stock!" I answered slowly, taking snuff as I spoke, and watching the two of them over the edge of my snuff-spoon.
"The Prince Dingaan held it--in the dream of Chaka--O Umhlangana, sprung from the root of kings!--and it dripped blood."
"I gave it to both of you, O twin stars of the morning, princes of the Zulu--in the dream of Chaka I gave it to both of you."
All life had I renounced, so I
dreamed. Night-watchman and grave-guardian had I become, aloft, in the lone mountain-fortress of Death.
The soul of his love had gone from the room and from the picture and from his dreams. When he tried to think of the Alice he loved he saw, not the shadowy spirit occupant of the west gable, but the young girl who had stood under the pine, beautiful with the beauty of moonlight, of starshine on still water, of white, wind-swayed flowers growing in silent, shadowy places.
Like other girls she had her dreams of a possible Prince Charming, young and handsome and debonair.
In common justice toward Miss Dunross I ought surely not to accept the conviction of her deformity on no better evidence than the evidence of a dream? Reasonable as it undoubtedly was, this view left certain doubts still lingering in my mind.
"Am I right," I began, "in supposing that you dreamed of me in Shetland, as you once before dreamed of me while I was at my house in Perthshire?"
This, as you have already discerned, violates the first law of dreaming, namely, that in one's dreams one sees only what he has seen in his waking life, or combinations of the things he has seen in his waking life.
Early in my childhood I learned that nuts came from the grocer, berries from the fruit man; but before ever that knowledge was mine, in my dreams I picked nuts from trees, or gathered them and ate them from the ground underneath trees, and in the same way I ate berries from vines and bushes.
"I think," said Anne softly, "that `the land where dreams come true' is in the blue haze yonder, over that little valley."
"Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?" asked Gilbert.