‘Oh, yes, I do, Emily.’

‘Not so much as I do.’  And raising herself—­she was sitting on Julia’s knees—­Emily looked at Julia.

‘Perhaps not,’ Julia replied, smiling; ’but then I never hated him as much as you did.’

A cloud came over Emily’s face.  ’I did hate him, didn’t I?  You remember that first evening?  You remember when you came up-stairs and found me trembling in the passage—­I was afraid to go to bed. ...  I begged you to allow me to sleep with you.  You remember how we listened for his footstep in the passage, as he went up to bed, and how I clung to you?  Then the dreams of that night.  I never told you what my dreams were, but you remember how I woke up with a cry, and you asked me what was the matter?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

’I dreamt I was with him in a garden, and was trying to get away; but he held me by a single hair, and the hair would not break.  How absurd dreams are!  And the garden was full of flowers, but every time I tried to gather them, he pulled me back by that single hair.  I don’t remember any more, only something about running wildly away from him, and losing myself in a dark forest, and there the ground was soft like a bog, and it seemed as if I were going to be swallowed up every moment.  It was a terrible sensation.  All of a sudden I woke with a cry.  The room was grey with dawn, and you said:  “Emily dear, what have you been dreaming, to cry out like that?” I was too tired and frightened to tell you much about my dream, and next morning I had forgotten it.  I did not remember it for a long time after, but all the same some of it came true.  Don’t you remember how I met Hubert next morning on the lawn?  We went into the garden and spent the best part of the morning walking about the lake....  I don’t know if I told you—­I ran away when I heard him coming, and should have got away had it not been for this tiresome dog.  He called after me, using my Christian name.  I was so angry I think I hated him then more than ever.  We walked a little way, and the next thing I remember was thinking how nice he was.  I don’t know how it all happened.  Now I think of it, it seems like magic.  It was the day that my old donkey ran away with the mowing machine and broke the flower-vase, the dear old thing; we had a long talk about “Jack.”  And then I took Hubert into the garden and showed him the flowers.  I don’t think he cares much about flowers; he pretended, but I could see it was only to please me.  Then I knew that he liked me, for when I told him I was going to feed the swans, he said he loved swans and begged to be allowed to come too.  I don’t think a man would say that if he didn’t like you, do you?’

Emily’s mind seemed to contain nothing but memories of Hubert.  What he had said on this occasion, how he had looked at her on another.  The conversation paused and Emily sunned herself in the enchantment of recollection, until at last breaking forth again, she said—­