"Thank you, Belinda. You may leave us. I'll call you when we're finished."

"I was just about to take her for a walk on the lawn. Perhaps you would like to do that with her."

"Yes. We'll chat first and then a walk would be just the thing. Thank you."

The attendant clearly wanted to linger nearby, but Ari adroitly pushed her out of the room and closed the door so they would have privacy.

"Mother?" Ari crept close to the old red chair. The woman sitting in it had not so much as glanced at them all the time they had stood at the door. Now she turned toward them for the first time.

Spence recognized the mother of his sweetheart; they were as alike as mother and daughter could be, as close as look-alike sisters. The woman was trim and youthful, though her hair had faded to a darker blonde and tiny lines creased the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her eyes were just as blue as Ari's but they were different: wary, furtive, somehow sly. This is what shocked him: They were the eyes of a wild and hunted creature.

"Ari! You've come! Oh, at last you've come. Did you get my letter?"

The woman reached out her hands and Ari stepped in and hugged her mother. It could have been a normal homecoming. Spence turned away and looked out the wide open French doors onto the placid lawn outside.

"I didn't get your letter, Mother. Did you write me a letter?",. "I did." She shook her head fiercely, and then looked puzzled. "At least, I think I did. Didn't I?"

"It doesn't matter; I'm here now. What did you want to tell me?"

"Tell you?"

"What did you want to tell me in your letter?" Ari spoke to the woman in calm, patient tones as if she were a child, a shy, apprehensive child. Spence began to feel that their trip had been for nothing. He could not imagine they would get any useful information.

"How nice you look, darling. How pretty you are. I'm going to make you a beautiful new dress. You'd like that?"

"Of course, I'd love it. What did you want to tell me in the letter?"

"About the Dream Thief, Ari."

At this Spence faced around at once; maybe they would discover something after all.

"What about the Dream Thief, Mother?"

Adjani, who had been hanging back, came to stand beside Spence between the woman and the French doors.

"Who are these men? Do they work for him?" She shuddered as she said the word. Clearly, she referred to the Dream Thief. "No, they're friends of mine. But they want to know about the Dream Thief. They want to know about him so they can stop him. You would like that, wouldn't you, Mother?"

"No one can stop him!" cried the woman. "It's too late! Too late! He is too powerful! He was here, you know. He came to see me." She suddenly adopted a sly, conspiratorial tone.

"He was here? Dream Thief?"

"Yes. He came to see me and he said he would come back." "What did he wish to see you about?" "To give me a present. A beautiful little present."

"Where is the present? I don't see it." Ari looked around the room.

"He will bring it when he comes back. He said he would. I must wait and do as he says."

"When was the Dream Thief here, Mrs. Zanderson?" asked Spence.

"I don't know you, young man," the woman replied as if Spence were a stranger who had accosted her on the street.

"This is Spencer Reston, Mother. My friend, remember? And this is Adjani. He's my friend, too. They've come to see you to ask you some questions."

The woman looked at them closely as if she wanted to remember them in order to describe them later. "I'm glad to know YOU, gentlemen." She offered her hand. Both men took it in turn.

"How nice to meet you, Mrs. Zanderson," said Adjani. There was not the slightest trace of condescension in his manner. "Could you tell us about the Dream Thief? I'd very much like to know."

Slowly she came to herself, as out of a daydream. "Oh," she sighed softly, "have I been carrying on again?"

"No, Mother," replied Ari. Her mother reached up and patted her hand absently.

"I hope I haven't embarassed you in front of your friends." She smiled ruefully.

"Nonsense," said Spence. "We'd like to help you if we can."

"I wish I could believe that; I'd very much like to be helped."

"Suppose you just tell us what you know about the Dream Thief." Adjani spoke normally, but he seemed to radiate a warmth and, Spence thought, a love which drew the woman out and settled her mind. He had never witnessed anything like it; Adjani's influence was magical.

"It was many years ago now." The bright blue eyes held a faraway look as memory came flooding back across the years. "I was a little girl. My father was a professor; very stern, very upright he was. There was just me and my mother. I used to play outside every day with the children. We lived way up in the mountains, maybe seventy-five miles from the city, in a tiny village called Rangpo.

"It was beautiful there. The seminary was an old monastery, I think. It had the most beautiful courtyards and gardens. My father taught there and we had a little house nearby. I can still see the little purple wildflowers that grew along the road. Passion flowers we called them; I don't know what they were. And safflowers-red and yellow, all over the hillside. It was lovely.

"There was an ancient palace nearby. We used to go sometimes to look at it. But only from a distance. You couldn't go there; it was too dangerous. The bridge was very old and decrepit. I used to wonder what kind of treasures lay inside it. There was certain to be gold and rubies-all the children said so. But they said the palace was guarded by the demons of the Dream Thief, and they watched over the treasure and whoever dared to touch it would be stricken down dead.

"One time I asked my father about the demons. He said it was just backward superstition, the kind we had come to wipe out. But none of us ever went to the castle or even near it. We were too afraid."

Spence noticed that the woman's voice had become softer, higher. She was experiencing her childhood again. Ari, in rapt attention, sat at her side with her hand clasped in her mother's. Very possibly she had never heard the story of her mother's childhood before.

"But you did go there, didn't you, Mrs. Zanderson?" Adjani said. The woman nodded.

"Yes, but I never told anyone about it. I was afraid." Her eyes showed the depths of that old fear.

"What happened?"

"It was a few days after my twelfth birthday. My mother told me that I was a young lady now and that I could start making up my own mind about things. I decided that I wanted to go look inside the castle and see the treasure. Father had said there were no demons, so I went. I was grown-up, so I didn't tell anyone.

"The castle was a long way; by the time I got there it was late afternoon. The shadows of the mountains were creeping into the valleys. I went across the bridge and it held me up. I went up to the castle and looked through the holes in the gates. There was nothing there. The courtyards were empty and full of dried leaves; the stones were all moss-covered and rotting away. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. I began to believe that there were demons-I never really stopped believing in them, despite what my father said.

"I heard something strange, like singing, only not like any singing I have ever heard before, coming from one of the buildings inside the walls. It grew louder and I waited to see if someone would come. I hid behind a bush outside the gates, but no one came.

"I could not get in the castle-the gates were locked and the walls were too high. Anyway, I don't think I really wanted to go in at all. I just wanted to look inside and see what I might see. But I waited until the music stopped and when nothing else happened I started to leave. I did not want to be out alone in the hills after dark. That was when the Dream Thief came, they said. He was an evil god and a powerful one. My father said there was only one God and he was love. But my friends said that he was only for the Christians.