She was busy with preparations for her departure, trying to
see as much of Kitty Palliser as possible, and thinking a great deal
of that adorable father whom she would meet on the twenty-seventh.
Lucia's room, as Mr. Rickman knew, was in the west wing, over the
south-west end of the library, and from her window she could see the
pale yellow green shaft of light that Mr. Rickman's lamp flung across
the lawn. The clock on the stable belfry struck the hours one by one,
and Lucia, fast asleep, never knew that the shaft of light lay there
until the dawn.
On the fourth night, the night of Thursday, the fifteenth, Lucia did
not sleep so well. She dreamed, but her dreams were too light and
transparent to veil the reality that lay on the waking side of them.
Three times that night she started on her journey to Cannes, three
times she missed her train, and three times she said to herself, "It's
only a dream, so of course it doesn't matter." When, after prodigious
efforts extending over interminable time, she found herself on
Harmouth platform, shuddering in her nightgown before a whole train
full of people, she was not in the least disconcerted, because of her
perception of that reality behind her dream; no, not even when Mr.
Rickman appeared just as she was saying to herself, "It doesn't
matter. This is only the fifteenth and I don't really start till the
twenty-sixth." His presence was so transparent, so insubstantial, that
it didn't seem to matter either.
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