"That is not surprising," she said, quietly. "For, you know, we are
not here--really."

Varick stopped for the second time and stared at her, with a
repetition of that new and annoying sinking in the region of his
heart. Her words were certainly disconcerting, but she herself was
delightfully human and most reassuringly natural. She had walked on,
and he tried to fall into her mood as he overtook her.

"Where are we, then?" he asked, with a short and not especially
mirthful laugh.

Her smooth brow wrinkled for a moment.

"I do not know," she said, frankly. "That is, I do not know this
place, where we _think_ we are, though I have been here before, and
the experience does not frighten me now. But I know where we _really_
are. You are asleep somewhere in America, and I--but oh, my dear, my
dear, you're going to wake!"

The clock that was somewhere struck three. Varick, sitting up in his
bed with eyes staring into the darkness, saw again his familiar room,
the dim light, the silver, the dressing-case, the pictures. He sprang
to the door opening into the hall, and tried it. It was bolted, as he
had left it. So was the other door leading into his sitting-room. The
darkness around him still seemed full of the refrain of the words he
had just heard--where?

_"Oh, my dear, my dear, you're going to wake!"_ And her eyes--her