I fell asleep it got confused so that I did not know
afterwards clearly where to separate it from my dream."

"And what was the dream?" asked Anne breathlessly.

"_Almost precisely what you saw_," he replied. "I fancied myself
here--rushing upstairs to the library in my haste to see you--to tell
you I was not dead, and to ask you if you would have cared much had it
been so. I saw all the scene--the hall, the staircase already lighted.
This room--and you coming in at the door with a half-frightened,
half-eager look in your face. Then it grew confused. I next remember
standing here beside you on the hearthrug with my hand on your
shoulder--_thus_, Anne--and gazing into your eyes, and struggling,
_struggling_ to ask you what I wanted so terribly to know. But the
words would not come, and the agony seemed to awake me. Yet with the
awaking came the answer. _Something_ had answered me; I said to myself,
'Yes, Anne does love me.'"

And Anne remembered the strange feeling of joy which had come to her
even in the first bitterness of her grief. She turned to the hand that
still lay on her shoulder and kissed it. "Oh, Kenneth," she said, "how
thankful we should be! But how strange, to think that we owe all to a
dream! _Was_ it a dream, Kenneth?"

He shook his head.

"You must ask that of wiser people than I," he said. "I suppose it was."

"But how could it have been a dream?" said Anne again. "You forget,
Kenneth--Ambrose saw you too."

"Though I did not see him, nor even think of him. Yes, that makes it
even more incomprehensible. It must have been the old fellow's devotion
to you, Anne, that made him sympathise with you, somehow."

"I am glad he saw you," said Anne. "I should prefer to think it more
than a dream. And there is always more evidence in favour of any story
of the kind if it has been witnessed by two. But there is one other
thing I want to ask you. It has struck me since that you answered me
rather abstractedly that last evening when I spoke about your address,
and asked if there was any other of the name in your regiment. Once or
twice I have drawn a faint ray of hope from remembering your not very
decided answer."

"Yes, it was stupid of me; I half remembered it afterwards. I should
have explained it, but it scarcely seemed worth while. I did know
another Major Graham might be joining us at Funchal, for that very day I
had been entrusted with letters for him. But I _was_ abstracted that
evening, Anne. I