‘Ah, madam! What it must be to you to have such a daughter! To see your own youth – but a moment passed – repeated before your eyes!’ And he bent an admiring glance on the outlines of his hostess.

Mrs Osgood appeared at dinner in a somewhat classic gown, her fine hair banded with barbaric gold; and looked with satisfaction at her daughter, who shone like a juvenile Juno in her misty blue. Ellen had her mother’s beauty and her father’s strength. Her frame was large, her muscles had power under their flowing grace of line. She carried herself like a queen, but wore the cheerful unconscious air of a healthy schoolgirl, which she was.

Her appetite was so hearty that her mother almost feared it would pain the poet, but she soon observed that he too showed full appreciation of her chef’s creations. Ellen too observed him, noting with frank disapproval that he ate freely of sweets and creams, and seemed to enjoy the coffee and liqueurs exceedingly.

‘Ellen never takes coffee,’ Mrs Osgood explained, as they sat in the luxurious drawing room, ‘she has some notion about training I believe.’

‘Mother! I am training!’ the girl protested. ‘Not officially – there’s no race on; but I like to keep in good condition. I’m stroke at college, Mr Pindexter.’

‘Pendexter, dear,’ her mother whispered.

The big man took his second demitasse, and sat near the girl.

‘I can’t tell you how much I admire it,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘You are like Nausicaa – like Atalanta – like the women of my dreams!’

She was not displeased with his open admiration – even athletic girls are not above enjoying praise – but she took it awkwardly.

‘I don’t believe in dreams,’ she said.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘No – one must not. And yet – have you never had a dream that haunts you – a dream that comes again?’

‘I’ve had bad dreams,’ she admitted, ‘horrid ones; but not the same dream twice.’

‘What do you dream of when your dreams are terrible?’

‘Beasts,’ she answered promptly. ‘Big beasts that jump at me! And I run and run – ugh!’

Mrs Osgood sipped her coffee and watched them. There was no young poet more promising than this. He represented all that her own girlhood had longed for – all that the highly prosperous mill-owner she married had utterly failed to give. If her daughter could have what she had missed!

‘They say those dreams come from our remote past,’ she suggested. ‘Do you believe that, Mr Pendexter?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘from our racial infancy. From those long buried years of fear and pain.’

‘And when we have that queer feeling of having been there before – isn’t that the same thing?’

‘We do not know,’ said he. ‘Some say it is from a moment’s delay in action of one-half of the brain. I cannot tell. To me it is more mysterious, more interesting, to think that when one has that wonderful sudden sense of previous acquaintance it means vague memories of a former life.’ And he looked at Ellen as if she had figured largely in his previous existence. ‘Have you ever had that feeling, Miss Osgood?’

The girl laughed rather shamefacedly. ‘I’ve had it about one thing,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m afraid of water.’

‘Afraid of water! You! A water goddess!’

‘O, I don’t encourage it, of course. But it’s the only thing I ever was nervous about. I’ve had it from childhood – that horrid feeling!’

She shivered a little, and asked if he wouldn’t like some music.

‘Ah! You make music too?’

She laughed gaily. ‘Only with the pianola – or the other machine. Shall I start it?’

‘A moment,’ he said. ‘In a moment. But tell me, will you not, of this dream of something terrible? I am so deeply interested.’

‘Why, it isn’t much,’ she said. ‘I don’t dream it, really – it comes when I’m awake. Only two or three times – once when I was about ten or eleven, and twice since. It’s water – black, still, smooth water – way down below me.