“I believe,” said Bernardine, “that there is more thinking and feeling than one generally supposes.”

“Well, I can’t be bothered with that now,” he said.  “And you interrupted me about my dream.  That is an annoying habit you have.”

“Go on,” she said.  “I apologize!”

“I dreamed we were children together, and playmates,” he continued.  “We were not at all happy together, but still we were playmates.  There was nothing we did not quarrel about.  You were disagreeable, and I was spiteful.  Our greatest dispute was over a Christmas-tree.  And that was odd, too, for I have never seen a Christmas-tree.”

“Well?” she said, for he had paused.  “What a long time you take to tell story.”

“You were not called Bernardine,” he said.  “You were called by some ordinary sensible name.  I don’t remember what.  But you were very disagreeable.  That I remember well.  At last you disappeared, and I went about looking for you ‘If I can find something to cause a quarrel,’ I said to myself, ‘she will come back.’  So I went and smashed your doll’s head.  But you did not come back.  Then I set on fire your doll’s house.  But even that did not bring you back.  Nothing brought you back.  That was my dream.  I hope you are not offended.  Not that it makes any difference if you are.”

Bernardine laughed.

“I am sorry that I should have been such an unpleasant playmate,” she said.  “It was a good thing I did disappear.”

“Perhaps it was,” he said.  “There would have been a terrible scene about that doll’s head.  An odd thing for me to dream about Christmas-trees and dolls and playmates:  especially when I went to sleep thinking about my new camera.”

“You have a new camera?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, “and a beauty, too.  Would you like to see it?”

She expressed a wish to see it, and when they reached the Kurhaus, she went with him up to his beautiful room, where he spent his time in the company of his microscope and his chemical bottles and his photographic possessions.

“If you sit down and look at those photographs, I will make you some tea,” he said.  “There is the camera, but please not to touch it until I am ready to show it myself.”

She watched him preparing the tea; he did everything so daintily, this Disagreeable Man.  He put a handkerchief on the table, to serve for an afternoon tea-cloth, and a tiny vase of violets formed the centre-piece.  He had no cups, but he polished up two tumblers, and no housemaid could have been more particular, about their glossiness.  Then he boiled the water and made the tea.  Once she offered to help him; but he shook his head.

“Kindly not to interfere.” he said grimly.  “No one can make tea better than I can.”

After tea, they began the inspection of the new camera, and Robert Allitsen showed her all the newest improvements.  He did not seem to think much of her intelligence, for he explained everything as though he were talking to a child, until Bernardine rather lost patience.