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* This dream was shortly followed by Mrs Kingsford's antivivisection
expedition to Switzerland, the fierce conflict of which amply
fulfilled any predictive significance it may have had.
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XIX. The Game of Cards: A Parable




I dreamed I was playing at cards with three persons, the two opposed
to me being a man and a woman with hoods pulled over their heads,
and cloaks covering their persons. I did not particularly observe
them. My partner was an old man without hood or cloak, and there
was about him this peculiarity, that he did not from one minute
to another appear to remain the same. Sometimes he looked like a
very young man, the features not appearing to change in order to
produce this effect, but an aspect of youth and even of mirth coming
into the face as though the features were lighted up from within.
Behind me stood a personage whom I could not see, for his hand and
arm only appeared, handing me a pack of cards. So far as I discerned,
it was a man's figure, habited in black. Shortly after the dream
began, my partner addressed me, saying,

"Do you play by luck or by skill?"