And they that have seen and heard,  
Have a gift from Fate
 
That no man taketh away.
 
For they hold in their hands the key,
 
To all that is this-side Death,
 
And they count it as dust by the way,
 
As small dust, driven before the breath
 
Of Winds that blow to the day.
 
“Do you remember my telling you about my dream?” said David, next day. He quite suddenly, looking up from a letter that he was writing.
 
“Yes, I remember,” said Elizabeth. She even smiled a little.
 
“Well, it was so odd—I really don’t know what made me think of it just now, but it happened to come into my head—do you know that I dreamt it every night for about a fortnight? That was in May. I have never done such a thing before. Then it stopped again quite suddenly, and I haven’t dreamt it since. I wonder whether speaking of it to you—” he broke off.
 
“I wonder,” said Elizabeth.
 
“You see it came again and again. And the strange part was that I used to wake in the morning feeling as if there was a lot more of it. A lot more than there used to be. Things I couldn’t remember—I don’t know why I tell you this.”
 
“It interests me,” said Elizabeth.
 
“You know how one forgets a dream, and then, quite suddenly, you just don’t remember it. It’s the queerest thing—something gets the impression, but the brain doesn’t record it. It’s most amazingly provoking. Just now, while I was writing to Fossett, bits of something came over me like a flash. And now it’s gone again. Do you ever dream?”
 
“Sometimes,” said Elizabeth.
 
This was her time to tell him. But Elizabeth did not tell him. It seemed to her that she had been told, quite definitely, to wait, and she was dimly aware of the reason. The time was not yet.
 
David finished his letter. Then he said:
 
“Don’t you want to go away this summer?”
 
“No,” said Elizabeth, a little surprised. “I don’t think I do. Why?”
 
“Most people seem to go away. Mary would like you to go with her, wouldn’t she?”
 
“Yes, but I’ve told her I don’t want to go. She won’t be alone, you know, now that Edward finds that he can get away.”
 
David laughed.
 
“Poor old Edward,” he said. “A month ago the business couldn’t get on without him. He was conscience-ridden, and snatched half-hours for Mary and his . And now it appears, that after all, the business can get on without him. I don’t know quite how Macpherson brought that fact home to Edward. He must have put it very straight, and I’m afraid that Edward’s feelings were a good deal hurt. Personally, I should say that the less Edward with Macpherson the more radiantly will bank-managers smile upon Edward. Edward is a well-meaning person. Mr. Mottisfont would have called him damn well-meaning. And you cannot damn any man deeper than that in business. No, Edward can afford to take a holiday better than most people. He will probably start a collection and be happy. Why don’t you join them for a bit?”
 
“I don’t think I want to,” said Elizabeth. “I’m going up to London for Agneta’s wedding next week. I don’t want to go anywhere else. Do you want to get rid of me?”
 
To her surprise, David coloured.
 
“I?” he said. For a moment an odd expression passed across his face. Then he laughed.
 
“I might have wanted to with Miss Dobell.”
 
Agneta Mainwaring was married at the end of July.
 
“It’s going to be the most awful show,” she wrote to Elizabeth. “Douglas and I spend all our time trying to persuade each other that it isn’t going to be awful, but we know it is. All our relations and all our friends, and all their children and all their best clothes, and an amount of fuss, worry, and botheration calculated to drive any one crazy. If I hadn’t an enormous amount of self-control I should bolt, either with or without Douglas. Probably without him. Then he’d have a really thrilling time tracking me down. It’s an awful temptation, and if you don’t want me to give way to it, you’d better come up at least three days beforehand, and clamp on to me. Do come, Lizabeth. I really want you.”
 
Elizabeth went up to London the day before the wedding, and Agneta detached herself from her own dream to say:
 
“You’re not Issachar any longer. What has happened?”
 
“I don’t quite know,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t think the burden’s gone, but I think that some one else is carrying it for me. I don’t seem to feel it any more.”
 
Agneta smiled a queer little smile of understanding. Then she laughed.
 
“Good Heavens, Lizabeth, if any one heard us talking, how perfectly mad they would think us.”
 
Elizabeth found August a very peaceful month. A large number of her friends and acquaintances were away. There were no calls to be paid and no notes to be written. She and David were more together than they had been since the time in Switzerland, and she was happy with a strange brooding happiness, which was not yet complete, but which awaited completion. She thought a great deal about the child—the child of the Dream. She came to think of it as an indication that behind the Dream was the Real.
 
Mary came back on the 15th of September. She was looking very well, and was once more in a state of extreme contentment with Edward and things in general. When she had poured a complete catalogue of all that they had done, she paused for breath, and looked suddenly and sharply at Elizabeth.
 
“Liz,” she said. “Why, Liz.”
 
To Elizabeth’s , she felt herself colouring.
 
“Liz, and you never told me. Tell me at once. Is it true? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
 
“Oh, Molly, what an Inquisitor you would have made!”
 
“Then it is true. And I suppose you told Agneta weeks ago?”
 
“I haven’t told any one,” said Elizabeth.
 
“Not Agneta? And I suppose if I hadn’t guessed you wouldn’t have told me for ages and ages and ages. Why didn’t you tell me, Liz?”
 
“Why, I thought I’d wait till you came back, Molly.”
 
Mary caught her sister’s hand.
 
 
“Liz, aren’t you glad? Aren’t you pleased? Doesn’t it make you happy? Oh, Liz, if I thought you were one of those dreadful women who don’t want to have a baby, I—I don’t know what I should do. I wanted to tell everybody. But then I was pleased. I don’t believe you’re a bit pleased. Are you?”
 
“I don’t know that pleased is exactly the word,” said Elizabeth. She looked at Mary and laughed a little.
 
“Oh, Molly, do stop being Mrs. Grundy.”
 
Mary lifted her chin.
 
“Just because I was interested,” she said. “I suppose you’d rather I didn’t care.”
 
Then she relaxed a little.
 
“Liz, I’m frightfully excited. Do be pleased and excited too. Why are you so stiff and odd? Isn’t David pleased?”
 
She had looked away, but she turned quickly at the last words, and her eyes on Elizabeth’s face. And for a moment Elizabeth had been off her guard.
 
Mary exclaimed.
 
“Isn’t he pleased? Doesn’t he know? Liz, you don’t mean to tell me——”
 
“I don’t think you give me much time to tell you anything, Molly,” said Elizabeth.
 
“He doesn’t know? Liz, what’s happened to you? Why are you so extraordinary? It’s the sort of thing you read about in an early Victorian novel. Do you mean to say that you really haven’t told David? That he doesn’t know?”
 
Elizabeth’s colour rose.
 
“Molly, my dear, do you think it is your business?” she said.
 
“Yes, I do,” said Mary. “I suppose you won’t pretend you’re not my own sister. And I think you must be quite mad, Liz. I do, indeed. You ought to tell David at once—at once. I can’t imagine what Edward would have said if he had not known at once. You ought to go straight home and tell him now. Married people ought to be one. They ought never to have secrets.”
 
Mary poured the whole thing out to Edward the same evening.
 
“I really don’t know what has happened to Elizabeth,” she said. &ld............