“Perhaps,” he thought, “my body is growing stronger.”

It was growing stronger but—­because of the rare peaceful hours when his thoughts were changed—­his soul was slowly growing stronger, too.  He began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.  Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed again and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it slept and the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes.  He shrank from it.

One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.  The stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not go into the villa he lived in.  He walked down to a little bowered terrace at the water’s edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the heavenly scents of the night.  He felt the strange calmness stealing over him and it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep.

He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream; his dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming.  He remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought he was.  He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent of the late roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet he heard a voice calling.  It was sweet and clear and happy and far away.  It seemed very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at his very side.

“Archie!  Archie!  Archie!” it said, and then again, sweeter and clearer than before, “Archie!  Archie!”

He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled.  It was such a real voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.

“Lilias!  Lilias!” he answered.  “Lilias! where are you?”

“In the garden,” it came back like a sound from a golden flute.  “In the garden!”

And then the dream ended.  But he did not awaken.  He slept soundly and sweetly all through the lovely night.  When he did awake at last it was brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring at him.  He was an Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the servants of the villa were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign master might do.  No one ever knew when he would go out or come in or where he would choose to sleep or if he would roam about the garden or lie in the boat on the lake all night.  The man held a salver with some letters on it and he waited quietly until Mr. Craven took them.  When he had gone away Mr. Craven sat a few moments holding them in his hand and looking at the lake.  His strange calm was still upon him and something more—­a lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done had not happened as he thought—­as if something had changed.  He was remembering the dream—­the real—­real dream.

“In the garden!” he said, wondering at himself.  “In the garden!  But the door is locked and the key is buried deep.”