it is," said Guido, entering the room with a large yellow-covered
pamphlet open in his hands. "Was it like this?"

As he asked the question he laid the pamphlet on the clean plate before
his friend. The pages were opened at Baldassare Peruzzi's rough
pen-and-ink sketch of the temple of Vesta; and as Lamberti looked at it,
his lids slowly contracted, and his features took an expression of
mingled curiosity and interest.

"The man who drew that had seen what I saw," he said at last. "Did he
draw it from some description?"

"He drew it on the spot," answered Guido. "The temple was standing then.
But as for your dream, it is quite possible that you may have seen this
same drawing in a shop window at Spithoever's or Loescher's, for
instance, without noticing it, and that the picture seemed quite new to
you when you dreamt it. That is a simple explanation."

"Very," said Lamberti. "But I saw the whole Forum."

"There are big engravings of imaginary reconstructions of the Forum, in
the booksellers' windows."

"With the people walking about? The two young priests standing in the
morning sun on the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux? The dirty
market woman trudging past the corner of the Vestals' house with a
basket of vegetables on her head? The door slave sweeping the threshold
of the Regia with a green broom?"

"I thought you knew nothing about the Forum," said Guido, curiously.
"How do you come to know of the Regia?"

"Did I say Regia? I daresay--the name came to my lips."

"Somebody has hypnotised you," said Guido. "You are repeating things you
have heard in your sleep."

"No. I am describing things I saw in my sleep. Am I the sort of man who
is easily hypnotised? I have let men try it once or twice. We were all
interested in hypnotism on my last ship, and the surgeon made some
curious experiments with a lad who went to sleep easily. But last night
I was at home, alone, in my own room, in bed, and I dreamt."

Guido shrugged his shoulders a little indifferently.

"There must be some explanation," he said. "What else did you dream?"

Lamberti's lids drooped as if he were concentrating his attention on the
remembered vision.

"I dreamt," he said, "that I saw a veiled woman in white come out of the
temple door straight into the sunlight, and though I could not see the
face, I knew who she was. She went down the steps and then up the others
to the house of the Vestals, and entered in without looking back. I