me a little kitten, and rolled me over on my back, and fondled me
and laughed with me. There were trees growing all about, big trees
with long grey leaves: the same sort of trees as the ones in the
photograph. But I didn't remember that at first: in my dream, and in
the first few minutes of my waking thought, I knew them at once as
the big blue-gum-trees.

I awoke in the midst of it: and the picture persisted.

Then, with a sudden burst of intuition, the truth flashed upon me
all at once. My dream was no mere dream, but a revelation in my
sleep. It was my intellect working unconsciously and spontaneously
in an automatic condition. For the very first time in my life, since
the night of the murder, I had really REMEMBERED something that
occurred before it.

This was a scene of my First State. In all probability it was my
earliest true childish recollection.

I sat up in bed, appalled. I dared not call aloud or ring for Jane
to come to me. But if I'd seen a ghost, it could hardly have
affected me more profoundly than this ghost of my own dead life thus
brought suddenly back to me. Gazing away across some illimitable
vista of dim years, I remembered this one scene as something that
once occurred, long ago, to my very self, in my own experience. Then
came a vast gulf, an unbridged abyss: and after that, with a
vividness as of yesterday, the murder.

I held my ears and crouched low, sitting up in my bed in the dark.
But the dream seemed to go on still: it remained with me distinctly.