followed her. The door was open, and there was no one to stop me."

"That is very improbable," observed Guido. "There must have always been
a slave at the door."

"I went in," continued Lamberti without heeding the interruption, "and
she was standing beside one of the pillars, a little way from the door.
She had one hand on the column, and she was facing the sun; her veil was
thrown back and the light shone through her hair. I came nearer, very
softly. She knew that I was there and was not afraid. When I was close
to her she turned her face to mine. Then I took her in my arms and
kissed her, and she did not resist."

Guido smiled gravely.

"And she turned out to be some one you know in real life, I suppose," he
said.

"Yes," answered Lamberti. "Some one I know--slightly."

"Beautiful, of course. Fair or dark?"

"You need not try to guess," Lamberti said. "I shall not tell you. My
head went round, and I woke."

"Very well. But is it this absurd dream that has made you so nervous?"

"No. Something happened to me to-day."

Lamberti ate a few mouthfuls in silence, before he went on.

"I daresay I might have invented some explanation of the dream," he said
at last. "But it only made me want to see the place. I never cared for
those things, you know. I had never gone down into the Forum in my
life--why should I? I went there this morning."

"And you could not find anything of what you had seen, of course."

"I took one of those guides who hang about the entrance waiting for
foreigners. He showed me where the temple had been, and the house, and
the temple of Castor and Pollux. I did not believe him implicitly, but
the ruins were in the right places. Then I walked up a bridge of boards
to the house of the Vestals, and went in."

"But there was no lady."

"On the contrary," said Lamberti, and his eyes glittered oddly, "the
lady was there."

"The same one whom you had seen in your dream?"

"The same. She was standing facing the sun, for it was still early, and
one of her hands was resting against the brick pillar, just as it had
rested against the column."

"That is certainly very extraordinary," said Guido, his tone changing.
Then he seemed about to speak again, but checked himself.

Lamberti rested his elbows on the table and his chin on his folded
hands, and looked into his friend's eyes in silence. His own face had
grown perceptibly paler in the last few minutes.

"Guido," he said, after what seemed