The Argosy — page 254: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Fabric of a Vision. 237 sheet. Then it broke into yellow foam and hurried on. It looked deep. There was a wood behind me ; just before me was a footpath. I saw everything in the clear moonlight. Along the footpath came presently two figures, and one of them was a figure [ knew. It was Edward ; looking strange, in some indefinable way—but still Edward. unmistakably. Walking about a yard from him was a girl, dressed in a muslin gown. Her head was bare, and in her hand she held a white sun bonnet. At the end of the bridge they stood still and faced each other, and the girl’s face was turned towards me. It was a pale face, with red lips and a high nose. A high-bred uncommon- looking face. The head was set well on the shoulders, and the rounded figure was thrown back in an attitude of defiance. “Never,” she said, and her big eyes flashed in the moonlight ; “you've deceived me too often. Il never see you again. Why did you not marry me when you had the chance?” ‘“T wish I had. Oh, Winifred, come to me; it is not too late yet. You see I couldn’t keep away from here,” and he held out his hands to her. Then their voices sank till I could only hear a vague murmur. Then her voice rang out again, clear and sharp: “No, Mr. Norreys; I tell you, 70 / ‘There are other men in the world—ay, and in Calverley too—who have better and higher notions of keeping faith than you have.” ‘Do you mean that you'll marry one of them?” he said. “Yes, and you will soon know how sincerely I mean it.” “Then, by heaven, he shall marry a ghost!” Edward cried, and caught her in his arms. There was a sudden splash—a choked cry— and something white went over the shelving wall down those seven feet into the smooth brown water. Then came the crowning horror of the dream. He turned round with a look on his face of such fear and agony as I’ have never seen before. I knew that the girl was drowned. And I seemed to tear my way through wood and bramble back into consciousness, and in- to that still bedroom at the Calverley Arms. Why did I not tell my husband what I had dreamed? Well, in those first moments of waking, so vivid, so utterly real and life-like had been that vision that I felt that to tell him the dream would be like charging him with the deed. I wished he had remained with me last evening. And why had he wanted so much to stay at Calverley, and why had he seemed so strange when he came in? I stopped these questions resolutely. Why should I try to connect Fdward’s actions with that idiotic nightmare? And then I fell to thinking of all I had ever heard of dreams that had come true, and wondering whether other prophetic dreams were half as real-seeming as this one of mine, to which no importance was to be attached. And the east quickened, and the birds woke. I turned and looked at my hus- band by the chill light. He was asleep—looking very tired and COMICOOOKS (CO