she give you ‘refreshers,’ as they call them, from time to time?  What was it like seeing her in prison?  Was she handcuffed?  Or chained?  What did she wear when she was tried?” And inconsequent remarks:  “I remember my mamma—­she died when I was only fourteen—­used to dream she was being tried for murder.  It distressed her very much because, as she said, she couldn’t have hurt a fly.  What do you dream about, Mr. Williams?  Some pretty young lady, I’ll be bound.  I dream about such funny things, but I nearly always forget what they were just as I am going to tell Michael.  But I did remember one dream just before Michael went down to Newcastle to join you ... was it about mermaids?  No.  It was about you—­wasn’t that funny?  And you seemed to be dressed as a mermaid—­no, I suppose it must have been a mer_man_—­and you were trying to follow Michael up the rocks by walking on your tail; and it seemed to hurt you awfully.  Of course I know what it all came from.  Michael had wanted me to read Hans Andersen’s fairy stories—­don’t you think they’re pretty?  I do; but sometimes they are about rather silly things, skewers and lucifer matches ... and I had spent the afternoon at the Zoo.  Michael’s a fellow, of course, and I use his ticket and always feel quite at home there ... and at the Zoo that day I had seen one of the sea-lions trying to walk on his tail....  Oh, how I laughed!  But what made me associate the sea-lion with you and mermaids, I cannot say, but then as poor papa used to say, ’Dreams are funny things’...”

David’s replies were hardly audible, and to his hostess’s pressing entreaties that he would try this dish or not pass that, he did not answer at all.  He felt, indeed, as though the muscles of his throat would not let him swallow and if he opened his mouth wide enough to utter a consecutive speech he would burst out crying.  A great desire—­almost unknown to Vivie hitherto—­seized him to get away to some lonely spot and cry and cry, give full vent to some unprecedented fit of hysteria.  He could not look at Rossiter though he knew that Michael’s eyes were resting on his face, because if he attempted to reply to the earnest gaze by a reassuring smile, the lips would tremble and the tears would fall.

At last when the dessert was reached and the servants—­do they never feel telepathically at such moments that some one person seated at the table, crumbling bread, wishes them miles away and loathes their quiet ministrations?—­the servants had withdrawn for a brief respite till they reappeared with coffee, David rose to his feet and stammered out something about not being well—­would they order the motor and let him go?  And as he spoke, and tried to speak in a level, “society” voice, his aching eyes saw the electric lamps, the glinting silver, Mrs. Rossiter’s pink, foolish face and crisp little flaxen curls, Rossiter’s bearded countenance with its honest, concerned look all waltzing round and round in a dizzying whirl.  He made the usual vain clutches at unreal supports, and fainted into Rossiter’s arms.