combers broke upon gleaming sand.

Then the picture seemed to become a reality and I saw Natalie herself,
strangely changeful in her aspect, strangely varying in face and figure,
strangely bright, standing in the mouth of a pass whereof the little
bordering cliffs were covered with bushes and low trees, whose green
was almost hid in lovely flowers. There in my dream she stood, smiling
mysteriously, and stretched out her arms towards me.

As I awoke I seemed to hear her voice, repeating her dying words: "Go
where you seem called to go, far away. Oh! the wonderful place in which
you will find me, not knowing that you have found me."

With some variations this dream visited me twice that night. In the
morning I woke up quite determined that I would go to the South Sea
Islands, even if I must do so alone. On that same evening Bastin and
Bickley dined with me. I said nothing to them about my dream, for Bastin
never dreamed and Bickley would have set it down to indigestion. But
when the cloth had been cleared away and we were drinking our glass
of port--both Bastin and Bickley only took one, the former because he
considered port a sinful indulgence of the flesh, the latter because he
feared it would give him gout--I remarked casually that they both looked
very run down and as though they wanted a rest. They agreed, at least
each of them said he had noticed it in the other. Indeed Bastin added
that the damp and the cold in the church, in which he held daily
services to no congregation except the old woman who cleaned it, had
given him rheumatism, which prevented him from sleeping.

"Do call things by their proper names," interrupted Bickley. "I told
you yesterday that what you are suffering from is neuritis in your right
arm, which will become chronic if you neglect it much longer. I have the
same thing myself, so I ought to know, and unless I can stop operating
for a while I believe my fingers will become useless. Also something is
affecting my sight, overstrain, I suppose, so that I am obliged to wear
stronger and stronger glasses. I think I shall have to leave Ogden" (his
partner) "in charge for a while, and get away into the sun. There is
none here before June."

"I would if I could pay a locum tenens and were quite sure it isn't
wrong," said Bastin.

"I am glad you both think like that," I remarked, "as I have a
suggestion to make to you. I want to go to the South Seas about which we
were talking yesterday, to get t