“They don’t know,” he added.

I looked a little more attentively at his face.

“There are dreams,” he said, “and dreams.”

That sort of proposition I never dispute.

“I suppose—­” he hesitated.  “Do you ever dream?  I mean vividly.”

“I dream very little,” I answered.  “I doubt if I have three vivid dreams in a year.”

“Ah!” he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts.

“Your dreams don’t mix with your memories?” he asked abruptly.  “You don’t find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did it not?”

“Hardly ever.  Except just for a momentary hesitation now and then.  I suppose few people do.”

“Does he say—?” He indicated the book.

“Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity of impression and the like to account for its not happening as a rule.  I suppose you know something of these theories—­”

“Very little—­except that they are wrong.”

His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time.  I prepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate his next remark.  He leant forward almost as though he would touch me.

“Isn’t there something called consecutive dreaming—­that goes on night after night?”

“I believe there is.  There are cases given in most books on mental trouble.”

“Mental trouble!  Yes.  I daresay there are.  It’s the right place for them.  But what I mean—­” He looked at his bony knuckles.  “Is that sort of thing always dreaming?  Is it dreaming?  Or is it something else?  Mightn’t it be something else?”

I should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face.  I remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained—­perhaps you know that look.

“I’m not just arguing about a matter of opinion,” he said.  “The thing’s killing me.”

“Dreams?”

“If you call them dreams.  Night after night.  Vivid!—­so vivid . . . . this—­” (he indicated the landscape that went streaming by the window) “seems unreal in comparison!  I can scarcely remember who I am, what business I am on . . . .”

He paused.  “Even now—­”

“The dream is always the same—­do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s over.”

“You mean?”

“I died.”

“Died?”

“Smashed and killed, and now, so much of me as that dream was, is dead.  Dead forever.  I dreamt I was another man, you know, living in a different part of the world and in a different time.  I dreamt that night after night.  Night after night I woke into that other life.  Fresh scenes and fresh happenings—­until I came upon the last—­”

“When you died?”

“When I died.”

“And since then—­”

“No,” he said.  “Thank God!  That was the end of the dream . . .”

It was clear I was in for this dream.  And after all, I had an hour before me, the light was fading fast, and Fortnum Roscoe has a dreary way with him.  “Living in a different time,” I said:  “do you mean in some different age?”