One of these
was my brother George and the other, Barbara, was our baby grown to a
little fair-haired child. The child perceived me first and ran to
me through the flowers. It leapt into my arms and kissed me. Then my
brother came and said--I do not mean he spoke, but his meaning was
conveyed to me:
"'You see, we are making your home ready. We hope that you will like it
when you come, but if not you can change it as you wish.'
"Then I woke up, or went to sleep--I do not know which."
Barbara made light of Anthony's dream, which seemed to her to be after
all but a reflection or an echo of earthly things tricked out with some
bizarre imagination. Was not this obvious? The house? A vague replica of
his own house. The river? Something copied from the Nile, delta and all.
The waterfalls? Niagara on a larger scale. The great trees? Doubtless
their counterparts grew in America. The brother and the babe--would he
not naturally be thinking of his brother and his babe? The thing stood
self-convicted. Echo, echo, echo, flung back in mockery of our agonised
pleadings from the cliffs of the Beyond.
And yet this dream haunted her, especially as it returned to him more
than once, always with a few added details.
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