smile--

Varick got into bed again, in a somewhat dazed condition, with a
tremor running through it. Very slowly he straightened himself out,
very slowly he pulled up the bedclothes. Then he swore solemnly into
the obscurity of the room.

"Well, of--all--the--dreams!" he commented, helplessly.

As the months passed, after Varick got back to town and into the whirl
of city life, he recalled his dream, frequently at first, then more
rarely, and finally not at all. It was almost a year later when, one
night, lying half awake, he saw again the fine, transparent, screen-
like veil enshroud the objects in his bedroom. It was winter, and a
great log was burning in the large fireplace. He had tried to choke
the flames with ashes before he went to bed, but the wood had blazed
up again and he had lain quiet, awaiting slumber and blinking
indifferently at the light. His bedroom overlooked Fifth Avenue. There
was a large club-house just opposite his house, and cabs and carriages
still came and went. Varick heard the slam of carriage doors, the
click of horses' hoofs on the wet asphalt, and congratulated himself
on the common-sense which had inspired him to go to bed at eleven
instead of joining the festive throng across the street. He had
dutifully spent the morning in his father's offices, and then, with a
warming sense of virtue, had run out of town for a late luncheon and a
trial of hunters. To-night he was pleasantly tired, but not drowsy.
When the curtain fell before his surroundings, and he saw them melting
imperceptibly into others quite foreign to them, he at once recalled
the similar experience of the year before. With a little quickening of
his steady heart-beats, he awaited developments.