here so many years I remember almost no one. Why?"

"I don't know, unless it was because I had an idea you were
thinking of him instead of me. You didn't listen to what I said."

"That was because I was thinking so intensely of you," he began
instantly. "A startlingly vivid thought of you came to me just
then. Didn't I look like a man in a trance?"

"What was the thought?"

"It was a picture: I saw you standing under a great bulging sail,
and the water flying by in moonlight; oh, a moon and a night such
as you have never seen! and a big blue headland looming up against
the moon, and crowned with lemon groves and vineyards, all
sparkling with fireflies--old watch-towers and the roofs of white
villas gleaming among olive orchards on the slopes--the sound of
mandolins----"

"Ah!" she sighed, the elderly man, his grandchild, and his apple
well-forgotten.

"Do you think it was a prophecy?" he asked.

"What do _you_ think?" she breathed. "That was really what I asked
you before."

"I think," he said slowly, "that I'm in danger of forgetting that
my `hidden treasure' is the most important thing in the world."