.
she detailed. "It was in a great field and I fled from it over the field. But it pursued me. It seemed to gain on me."
It was evident that she was not writing this dream with the facility with which she had set down the others. She paused as she came to the chase by the bull and seemed to think about what next to say. Then she wrote:
"It was very close. Then, in my dream, in fright, I ran faster over the field. I remember I hoped to gain a clump of woods. As I ran I stumbled and would have fallen. But I managed to catch myself in time. I ran on. I expected momentarily to be gored by the bull. That seemed to be the end of the dream—with me running and the bull gaining on me."
She did not pause, however, except to skip a line, but began writing again:
"Then the dream changed. I seemed to be in the midst of a crowd. In the place of the bull pursuing me there was now a serpent. It reared its head angrily and crept over the ground after me and hissed. It seemed to fascinate me. I trembled and could not run. My terror was so great that I awoke."
She was about to lay the pen down again, as though glad of the opportunity, when Kennedy asked, with no intention of stopping so soon, "Were there not faces on these animals?"
"The faces seemed to be human," she murmured, evasively, still looking at what she had written for him, and making no effort to amend or correct it.
"Human?" repeated Kennedy. "Did they bear a resemblance to any one you know?"
She looked up from the writing and met his eyes directly in a perfectly innocent stare.
"The faces seemed to be human," she repeated, "but I did not recognize them."
What did it mean? I knew she was not telling the truth. Kennedy knew it. Did she know that he knew it? If she did, it had no outward effect on her.
"It is all very hazy to me," she insisted.
I wondered what had been the reason of her hesitation and her final decision not to tell us what she had evidently told Doctor Lathrop on the first telling of the dream. Surely, I reasoned, there must be some reason back of this concealment. I was forced to be content to wait in order to question Kennedy to learn what his own impressions were. Any betrayal now, before her, might entirely upset his nicely laid plans, whatever they were.
She seemed to expect a further quizzing and to steel herself in preparation for it. Evidently Doyle's manner and methods had taught her that.
"Are those all the dreams you can remember?" Craig asked.
I fancied that there was an air of relief in her manner, though she would not, for the world, have betrayed it before us. For a moment she thought, as if glad to get away from something that had troubled her greatly. When she spoke her voice and manner were subdued.
"There is one other," she replied.
"Will you write it?" asked Kennedy, before she had time to change her mind.
"If you really care to have it."
"Very much," he urged.
Again she turned as though escaping something and wrote:
"I seemed to be walking through a forest with Vail. I don't know where we were going, but I seemed to have difficulty in getting there. Vail was helping me along. It was up-hill. Finally, when we got almost to the top of the hill, I stopped. I did not go any farther, though he did."
Here again she hesitated, then wrote slowly, "Then I seemed to meet—" and stopped.
Honora glanced up, saw Kennedy watching her, and turned hurriedly, adding, "—a woman."
She did not pause after that, but wrote: "Just then she cried that there was a fire. I turned around and looked. There was a big explosion and everybody ran out of the houses, shrieking."
"You say you saw a woman?" asked Craig, almost before she had finished writing. "Who was she?"
"I do not know who she was—a—just a woman."
By this time I, too, was narrowly watching Mrs. Wilford. She seemed to have a most remarkable composure, except for an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation now and then. In fact, the hesitation would have passed unnoticed had not one been on the lookout. I think it was now that she realized that there was something going on in Kennedy's mind and in his method of questioning her that she did not understand. It was as though in taking refuge from answering one question—about the faces on the bull and the serpent—she had run directly into another question which she was equally averse to answering frankly. I was now convinced that a large part of her frankness with us was mere pose, that she knew Kennedy had penetrated it, and that the discovery alarmed her. Kennedy also saw that she had understood. It was as though it had been a cue. Instantly he threw off the mask.
"Are you sure that it was not Vina Lathrop?" he shot out quickly.
For just a fraction of a second she was startled, almost disconcerted. But instantly she regained her control.
"Yes," she answered, positively. "I am sure it was not. It was no one I know."
Yet I was somehow more than ever convinced that she meant Vina Lathrop, after all—Vina, who was of quite a different type from herself. What it all meant was another question. I knew that we should have taken a long step toward the discovery if we could only have got her to admit it. But she was keenly on guard now. There was not a chance of a direct admission strong enough, though the indirect admission was.
"No one?" pressed Kennedy. "Think!"
"No, no one! Oh, why must I be badgered and hounded this way?" she burst forth. "What have I done? Am I not grief-stricken enough as it is?—I hate—you—all!"
It was the first time that she had let this undercurrent of her feelings leap to the surface, beyond control. She seemed to realize it, and instantly to repress it, as she stood there, her great, lustrous eyes fixed upon us—with defiance mixed with fear and doubt.
It was startling, dramatic, cruel, perhaps merciless—this dissecting of the soul of the handsome woman before us. But it had come to a point where it was absolutely necessary to get at the truth. At least Kennedy seemed convinced that locked in her heart was the key to the mystery.
Honora, hitherto almost pallid, was now flushed and indignant. For the first time we saw a flash of real feeling and I knew that underneath her conventional exterior a woman existed—very real, capable of the heights of feeling and passion when once aroused. It made me more than ever sympathetic toward her. I longed to help her, yet there seemed no way to do so. Only Honora might work out Honora's salvation.
It was then and later that I realized that the very manner of her indignation showed the truth of the new psychology of dreams, for, as I later learned, people often become indignant when the analyst strikes what is called by the new psychologists the "main complex" of ideas.
Kennedy evidently concluded that his examination had gone far enough, that to pursue it would be only to antagonize her unnecessarily. That would never do so early in the case.
Accordingly he apologized as gracefully as an inquisitor could, and we excused ourselves, though Honora's gaze followed him defiantly to the door.
"Well—we're in bad with her now," I whispered, as we gained the outside, in the private hallway.
"That's most unfortunate," he agreed, though it did not seem to worry him much. "But you know by this time, Walter, that man-hunting is not a popular occupation—and woman-hunting is even less so."
He stopped a moment, looked back, sighed, and added, "It is the penalty I must pay."
In the hall, Craig stopped a moment to speak to Doyle's man, McCabe, a thick-necked fellow, square-jawed and square-toed, of the "flatty" type.
"Mr. Doyle isn't here, I suppose?"
"No, sir. Gone down to Mr. Wilford's office. Telephone call that there's something new there."
"I see. Is the maid, Celeste, here?"
"Yes,