She knew he would abide by that.  He was a monster.  She hated him.  She loathed him (so she said to herself).

That night, in the agony of her distress, she had dreamed a dream.  She dreamed that a stranger came to the house.  The details were vague, but the stranger had travelled many miles over water.  She could not see him distinctly, but she knew that he was quite bald.  In spite of his baldness he inspired her with sympathy.  He understood her, praised her costumes, and treated a woman as a woman ought to be treated.  Then, somehow or other, he was making love to her, the monster Stephen being absent.  She was shocked by his making love to her, and she moved a little farther off him on the sofa (he had sat down by her on a vague sort of sofa in a vague sort of room); but still she was thrilled, and she could not feel as wicked as she felt she ought to feel.  Then the dream became hazy; it became hazy at the interesting point of her answer to the love-making.  A later stage was very clear.  Something was afoot between the monster Stephen and the stranger in the dining-room, and she was locked out of the dining-room.  It was Christmas night.  She knocked frantically at the door, and at last forced it open, and Stephen was lying in the middle of the floor; the table had been pushed into a corner.  ‘I killed him quite by accident,’ said the stranger affably.  And then he seized her by the hand and ruthlessly dragged her away, away, away; and they travelled in trains and ships and trains, and they came to a very noisy, clanging sort of city—­and Vera woke up.  It had been a highly realistic dream, and it made a deep impression on Vera.

Can one wonder that Vera’s heart, being a superstitious little heart, like all our hearts, should leap when the very next day Stephen turned up with a completely unexpected stranger from New York?  Of course, dreams are nonsense!  Of course!  Still—­

She did not know whether to rejoice or mourn over the fact that Mr Bittenger was not bald.  He was decidedly unbald; he had a glorious shock of chestnut hair.  That hair of his naturally destroyed any possible connection with the dream.  None the less the coincidence was bizarre.

II

That evening, before dinner, Vera, busy in her chamber beautifying her charms for the ravishment of men from New York, waited with secret anxiety for the arrival of Stephen in his dressing-room.  And whereas she usually closed the door between the bedroom and the dressing-room, on this occasion she carefully left it wide open.  Stephen came at last.  And she waited, listening to his movements in the dressing-room.  Not a word!  She made brusque movements in the bedroom to attract his attention; she even dropped a brush on the floor.  Not a word!  After a few moments, she actually ventured into the dressing-room.  Stephen was wiping his face, and he glanced at her momentarily over the towel, which hid his nose and mouth.  Not a word!  And how hard was the monster’s glance!  She felt that Stephen was one of your absurd literal persons.  He had said that he would not speak to her until she had first spoken to him—­that was to say in private—­public performances did not count.  And he would stick to his text, no matter how deliciously she behaved.