the victim of a particularly terrific nightmare was able to share its
horrors--or rather unable _not_ to share them--with a whole sleeping-car
full of people whose brains helplessly took up the same theme, and
dreamed it, as we may say, to the same conclusions. I said proof, but of
course we can't accept a single instance as establishing a scientific
certainty. I don't question the veracity of Mr.--"

"Newton," the stranger suggested.

"Newton's experience," Wanhope continued, "but we must wait for a good
many cases of the kind before we can accept what I may call
metaphantasmia as being equally established with thought-transference.
If we could it would throw light upon a whole series of most curious
phenomena, as, for instance, the privity of a person dreamed about to
the incident created by the dreamer."

"That would be rather dreadful, wouldn't it?" I ventured. "We do dream
such scandalous, such compromising things about people."

"All that," Wanhope gently insisted, "could have nothing to do with the
fact. That alone is to be considered in an inquiry of the kind. One is
never obliged to tell one's dreams. I wonder"--he turned to the
stranger, who sat absently staring into the fire--"if you happened to
speak to your friend about his nightmare in the morning, and whether he
was by any chance aware of the participation of the others in it?"

"I certainly spoke to him pretty plainly when we got into New York."

"And what did he say?"