‘Never,’ I said. ‘That is what you never seem to do with dreams.’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘But that is just what I did. I am a solicitor, you
must understand, in Liverpool, and I could not help wondering what the
clients and business people I found myself talking to in my office
would think if I told them suddenly I was in love with a girl who would
be born a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried about the
politics of my great-great-great-grandchildren. I was chiefly busy that
day negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease. It was a private
builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in every possible way. I
had an interview with him, and he showed a certain want of temper that
sent me to bed still irritated. That night I had no dream. Nor did I
dream the next night, at least, to remember.
‘Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. I began to
feel sure it _was_ a dream. And then it came again.
‘When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was very
different. I think it certain that four days had also elapsed in
the dream. Many things had happened in the north, and the shadow of
them was back again between us, and this time it was not so easily
dispelled. I began, I know, with moody musings. Why, in spite of all,
should I go back, go back for all the rest of my days, to toil and
stress, insults, and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds
of millions of common people, whom I did not love, whom too often I
could not do other than despise, from the stress and anguish of war and
infinite misrule? And, after all, I might fail. _They_ all sought their
own narrow ends, and why should not I--why should not I also live as a
man? And out of such thoughts her voice summoned me, and I lifted my
eyes.
‘I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above the Pleasure
City, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and looking towards the
bay. It was the late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the left
Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky, and Naples was coldly
white against the hills, and before us was Vesuvius with a tall and
slender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and the ruins of
Torre dell’ Annunziata and Castellammare glittering and near.’