and it would only be a dream, past and to be forgotten. Perhaps.
But what were dreams, then? She had not been asleep, she was quite sure.
There was not even that poor excuse. The man's phantasm had come to her
awake.

And Lamberto Lamberti was nothing to her. Beyond the startling
recognition of a face long familiar, but never seen among the living, he
was to her a man she had met but once, and did not wish to meet again.
She had been aware of his presence near her at the Princess's, and when
he had gone away she had looked at him once more with a sort of wonder;
but she had felt nothing else, she had not touched his hand, the thought
that he would ever dare to seize her roughly in his arms brought burning
blushes to her cheek and outraged all her maiden senses. She had never
seen any man whom she could suffer to touch her; her whole nature
revolted at the thought. Yet, just now, there had been neither revolt
nor resistance; she felt that she had been herself, awake, alive, and
consenting to an unknown but frightfully real contamination, from which
her soul could never again be wholly clean.

The storm subsided, and sullen waves of self-contempt swelled and sank,
as if to overwhelm her drowning soul. She understood at last the
ascetic's wrath against the mortal body and his irresistible craving for
bodily pain.

CHAPTER IV

Very early in the morning Cecilia fell into a dreamless sleep at last,
and awoke, unrefreshed, after nine o'clock. She felt very tired and
listless as she opened the window a little and let in the light and air,
with the sounds of the busy thoroughfare below. The weather was suddenly
much warmer, and her head was heavy.

It had all been a dream, no doubt, and was gone where dreams go; but it
had been like a fight, out of which she had come alive by a miracle,
bruised and wounded, and offended in her whole being. Never again would
she sit alone at night and look for her image in the shadow, since such
things could come of playing with visions; and she trusted that she
might never again set eyes upon Lamberto Lamberti. She was alone, but at
the thought of meeting him she blushed and bit her lip angrily. How was
it possible that he should know what she had dreamt? For years, in that
dream of the Vestal, a being had played a part, a being too like him in
face to be another man, but who had loved her as a goddess, and whom she
had loved for his matchless bravery