He said, "Miss 'Arden, you've made a
miscalculation. You must start this minute if you're to be there in
time." His statement seemed to her to be founded on some solid
reality; but when she asked him what he was doing there, he spoilt it
all by saying that as private secretary he was in charge of the
expedition. By that, and by something unnatural and absurd in his
appearance, she knew that she was dreaming. Then, for more time than
she could measure, she lay watching herself dream, with a curious
sense of being able to foretell and control the fantastic procession
of events.
And now she was aware of something that moved with their movement, a
trouble or a terror that hovered out there, not on the waking border
but in the region of reality that lay on the other side. Almost
discernible behind the transparent insubstantial walls of sleep, it
waited to break through them and invade her dream. For refuge from it
she plunged deeper into her dream. She came out walking on a terrace
of grey grass set with strange clusters of swords, sharp-pointed and
double-edged. Tall grey trees shot up into a grey white sky; they
were coated with sharp scales, grey and toothed like the scales of a
shark's skin; and some bore yet more swords for branches, slender and
waving swords; and some, branchless, were topped with heads of curled
scimitars, the blades pointing downwards. All these scaly, spiky,
two-edged things stood out piercing and distinct against the grey; and
she knew that they were aloes and palm-trees, and that she had come to
the end of her journey and was walking in the garden of the Villa des
Palmes.
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