A minute or two later Jane was sitting waiting in a large sparely furnished room with a shut stove to warm it. Most of the floor was bare, and the walls, above the waist-high wainscotting, were of greyish-white plaster, so that the whole effect was faintly austere and conventual. The tall woman’s tread died away in the passages and the room became very quiet when it had done so. Occasionally the cawing of rooks could be heard. “I’ve let myself in for it now,” thought Jane, “I shall have to tell this woman that dream and she’ll ask all sorts of questions.” She considered herself, in general, a modern person who could talk without embarrassment of anything: but it began to look quite different as she sat in that room. All sorts of secret reservations in her programme of frankness-things which, she now realised, she had set apart as never to be told-came creeping back into consciousness. It was surprising that very few of them were connected with sex.

“In dentists,” said Jane, “they at least leave illustrated papers in the waiting-room.” She got up and opened the one book that lay on the table in the middle of the room. Instantly her eyes lit on the following words: “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the.”

At that moment the door was suddenly opened. Jane turned crimson as she shut the book and looked up. The same girl who had first let her in had apparently just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway. Jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. It would be nice, Jane thought, to be like that-so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on a horse, and so divinely tall.

“Is . . . is Miss Ironwood in?” said Jane.

“Are you Mrs. Studdock?” said the girl.

“Yes,” said Jane.

“I will bring you to her at once,” said the other. “We have been expecting you. My name is Camilla-Camilla Denniston.”

Jane followed her. From the narrowness and plainness of the passages Jane judged that they were still in the back parts of the house, and that, if so, it must be a very large house indeed. They went a long way before Camilla knocked at a door and stood aside for Jane to enter, after saying in a low, clear voice (“like a servant,” Jane thought), “She has come.” And Jane went in; and there was Miss Ironwood dressed all in black and sitting with her hands folded on her knees, just as Jane had seen her when dreaming-if she were dreaming-last night in the flat.

“Sit down, young lady,” said Miss Ironwood.

The hands which were folded on her knees were very big and boney though they did not suggest coarseness; and even when seated Miss Ironwood was extremely tall. Everything about her was big-the nose, the unsmiling lips, and the grey eyes. She was perhaps nearer sixty than fifty. There was an atmosphere in the room which Jane found uncongenial.

“What is your name, young lady?” said Miss Ironwood, taking up a pencil and a note-book.

“Jane Studdock.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Does your husband know you have come to us?”

“No.”

“And your age, if you please?”

“Twenty-three.”

“And now,” said Miss Ironwood, “what have you to tell me?”

Jane took a deep breath. “I’ve been having bad dreams and-and feeling depressed lately,” she said.

“What were the dreams?” asked Miss Ironwood. Jane’s narrative-she did not do it very well-took some time. While she was speaking she kept her eyes fixed on Miss Ironwood’s large hands and her black skirt and the pencil and the note-book. And that was why she suddenly stopped. For as she proceeded she saw Miss Ironwood’s hand cease to write and the fingers wrap themselves round the pencil: immensely strong fingers they seemed. And every moment they tightened, till the knuckles grew white and the veins stood out on the backs of the hands, and at last, as if under the influence of some stifled emotion, they broke the pencil in two. It was then that Jane stopped in astonishment and looked up at Miss Ironwood’s face. The wide grey eyes were still looking at her with no change of expression.

“Pray continue, young lady,” said Miss Ironwood. Jane resumed her story. When she had finished, Miss Ironwood put a number of questions. After that she became silent for so long that Jane said:

“Is there, do you think, anything very serious wrong with me?”

“There is nothing wrong with you,” said Miss Ironwood.

“You mean it will go away?”

“I have no means of telling. I should say probably not.”

“Then-can’t anything be done about it? They were horrible dreams-horribly vivid, not like dreams at all.”

“I can quite understand that.”

“Is it something that can’t be cured?”

“The reason you cannot be cured is that you are not ill.”

“But there must be something wrong. It’s surely not natural to have dreams like that.”

There was a pause. “I think,” said Miss Ironwood, “I had better tell you the whole truth.”

“Yes, do,” said Jane in a strained voice. The other’s words had frightened her.

“And I will begin by saying this,” continued Miss Ironwood. “You are a more important person than you imagine.”

Jane said nothing, but thought inwardly, “She is humouring me. She thinks I am mad.”

“What was your maiden name?” asked Miss Ironwood.

“Tudor,” said Jane. At any other moment she would have said it rather self consciously, for she was very anxious not to be supposed vain of her ancient ancestry.

“The Warwickshire branch of the family?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever read a little book-it is only forty pages long-written by an ancestor of yours about the battle of Worcester?”

“No. Father had a copy-the only copy, I think he said. But I never read it. It was lost when the house was broken up after his death.”

“Your father was mistaken in thinking it the only copy. There are at least two others: one is in America, and the other is in this house.”

“Well?”

“Your ancestor gave a full and, on the whole, correct account of the battle, which he says he completed on the same day on which it was fought. But he was not at it. He was in York at the time.”

Jane, who had not really been following this, looked at Miss Ironwood.

“If he was speaking the truth,” said Miss Ironwood, “and we believe that he was, he dreamed it. Do you understand?”

“Dreamed about the battle?”

“Yes. But dreamed it right. He saw the real battle in his dream.”

“I don’t see the connection.”

“Vision-the power of dreaming realities-is sometimes hereditary,” said Miss Ironwood.

Something seemed to be interfering with Jane’s breathing. She felt a sense of injury-this was just the sort of thing she hated: something out of the past, something irrational and utterly uncalled for, coming up from its den and interfering with her.

“Can it be proved?” she asked. “I mean, we have only his word for it.”

“We have your dreams,” said Miss Ironwood. Her voice, always grave, had become stern. A fantastic thought crossed Jane’s mind. Could this old woman have some idea that one ought not to call even one’s remote ancestors liars?

“My dreams?” she said a little sharply.

“Yes,” said Miss Ironwood.

“What do you mean?”

“My opinion is that you have seen real things in your dreams. You have seen Alcasan as he really sat in the condemned cell: and you have seen a visitor whom he really had.”

“But-but-oh, this is ridiculous,” said Jane. “That part was a mere coincidence. The rest was just nightmare. It was all impossible. He screwed off his head, I tell you. And they . . . dug up the horrible old man. They made him come to life.”