“I wonder whether we are both thinking of the same thing,” she said, curiously.

“Perhaps,” replied her father.  “All your life you have dreamed of running water.”

And Sylvia nodded her head.

“Yes, yes,” she said, with a peculiar intentness.

“The dream is part of you, part of your life.  For all you know, it may have modified your character.”

“Yes,” said Sylvia.

“It is a part of you of which you could not rid yourself if you tried.  When you are asleep, this dream comes to you.  It is as much a part of you as a limb.”

And again Sylvia answered:  “Yes.”

“Well, you are not responsible for it,” and Sylvia leaned forward.

“Ah!” she said.  She had been wondering whether it was to this point that he was coming.

“You know now why you hear it, why it’s part of you.  You were born to the sound of running water in that old house in Dorsetshire.  Before you were born, in the daytime and in the stillness of the night your mother heard it week after week.  Perhaps even when she was asleep the sound rippled through her dreams.  Thus you came by it.  It was born in you.”

“Yes,” she answered, following his argument step by step very carefully, but without a sign of the perplexity which was evident in Hilary Chayne.  Chayne stood a little aloof, looking from Sylvia’s face to the face of her father, in doubt whither the talk was leading.  Sylvia, on the other hand, recognized each sentence which her father spoke as the embodiment of a thought with which she was herself familiar.

“Well, then, here’s a definite thing, an influence most likely, a characteristic most certainly, and not of your making!  One out of how many influences, characteristics which are part of you but not of your making!  But we can lay our finger on it.  Well, it is a pleasant and a pretty quality—­this dream of yours, Sylvia—­yes, a very pleasant one to be born with.  But suppose that instead of that dream you had been born with a vice, an instinct of crime, of sin, would you have been any the more responsible for it?  If you are not responsible for the good thing, are you responsible for the bad?  An awkward question, Sylvia—­awkward enough to teach you to go warily in your judgments.”

“Yes,” said Sylvia.  “I was amongst the fortunate.  I don’t deny it.”

“But that’s not all,” and as Chayne moved restively, Garratt Skinner waved an indulgent hand.

“I don’t expect you, Captain Chayne, to take an interest in these problems.  For a military man, discipline and the penal code are the obvious unalterable solutions.  But it is possible that I may never see my daughter again and—­I am speaking to her”; and he went back to the old vexed question.