the place stood for, its
sensational elements, and you began vaguely to imagine the kind of event
for which it would form a suitable background. In his pictures the
element was a sort of dream-infusion, as though in each scene the secret
goddess, the Naiad of the spot, must have stood close to him as he
painted, and thrilled him to understanding at her impalpable touch.
Whatever the exact nature of these creative intuitions, there was
between his art and his dreams a lurking connection, out of which, as we
believed, finally grew his strange faculty for seeing beyond the scene,
an intuition for certain events associated with what we called "an
ominous locality."

This faculty began to distinguish itself from mere psychical fancy
through a curious contact of one of Auber's dreams with his actual
experience.

The dream, which came at irregular intervals during a number of years,
began with a sense of color, a glare to dazzle the eyes, till, as Auber
insisted, he awaked and saw the sunset glow over a stretch of forest. He
was on a hillside field, spotted with daisies and clumps of tall grass.
On one side a stone wall, half hidden by the grass and by a sumac hedge
in full bloom, curved over the sky-line. All this was exactly
expressible by a gesture, and when he reached the bottom of the field he
looked back for a long time, and made the gesture appreciatively. It was
at this point that he always recognized the recurring dream; but he
could never remember how it was going to end. Then he entered the wood
on a grassy path, and for a long time the tall tasselled grasses brushed
through his fingers as he walked. Suddenly it grew dark, and feeling
that "it would be folly to continue," he tried hard to remember the
point of the dream. Just as he seemed to recollect it, the sound of
running water came to him, as from a ravine, and he knew that "he could
not escape." The low sound of running water,--the little lonely gurgle
of a deep-wood brook, all but lost in the loam and brush of the silent
forest,--why should he feel an incomprehensible distaste for the place?
He tried feverishly to recollect the outcome of the dream, but all
memory of it had fled. Nor could he bring himself to continue on the
path; when he tried to take another step his leg dangled uselessly in
front, his foot beating flimsily on the ground till he brought it back
beside the other. The longer he listened to the sound of the running
water, the stronger grew