Ellie Street was dreaming, her body relaxed, her left hand under her cheek, as she had slept ever since she was a child. Her dreamself walked in a garden. She didn’t know the place, it was quite strange to her. At first it was sunny and pleasant, but after a little she came to a high thorn hedge, and she knew that she couldn’t get out. The hedge was twenty feet high, and she couldn’t get out. Ronnie was on the other side, and she couldn’t get to him. She began to break the thorns with her hands. The twigs snapped like sticks on a frosty day. They tore her hands and the blood ran down, and all at once they were not thorns any more, but icicles-the whole hedge was made of ice. She stood in snow up to her knees, and the blood ran down upon the snow and froze, so that some of the icicles were white and some were red. She couldn’t get to Ronnie.

In the bed beside her Julia was dreaming too. She had on a white dress and a long white veil. She was being married to Antony. An unbearable joy filled her. He lifted her veil and bent to kiss her lips, and a great roaring wind came and carried her away into a dark place where she was quite alone.

On the other side of the swing-door Gladys Marsh was asleep, with her face well creamed and her hair in curlers. She had taken the cream out of Mrs. Latter’s bathroom together with a good many other oddments. If questions were asked-why, Mrs. Latter had given them to her, and no one could prove she hadn’t. She was having a really vivid and exciting dream in which she was wearing a diamond necklace with ever such big stones and standing up in a high thing like a pulpit to give her evidence. There was a judge in scarlet with a great grey wig, just like she’d seen him when they had the assizes at Crampton. He looked at her over his glasses, the way any man looks at a pretty girl, no matter whether he’s a judge or a juryman. The jury were on the other side. They looked at her too. Everybody looked at her…

Mrs. Maniple was also sleeping. She wore a voluminous calico nightgown which was five yards round the hem and fearful to behold with gussets and stitchery. In her young days a nightgown was an undertaking. She still undertook her own, which she made on her grandmother’s pattern. From the same source she had accepted the conviction that an open window after nightfall induced an early death. Night air wasn’t wholesome, and you shut it out except perhaps in what she called the “heighth” of summer. This being the autumnal season, her window was hermetically sealed. The room smelled strongly of camphor, furniture polish, and lavender.

In Mrs. Maniple’s dream the smell was transmuted into a mingled scent of bergamot and rosemary, of which she held a tight bunch in a small, plump hand. The hand belonged to little Lizzie Maniple who was six years old. It was hot as well as plump, and the herbs smelled lovely. Most of the children brought bunches to Sunday school and gave them to the teacher, who was old Miss Addison. She lived in a small square house on the Crampton Road, and she was young Dr. Addison’s aunt and very much respected. She was teaching the children their catechism, and they were doing the long, difficult answer to the question, “What is my duty to my neighbour?” Echoes floated through Mrs. Maniple’s mind. “Learn and labour truly to get my own living-” Melia Parsons was getting that bit. “Do my duty in that state of life-I’ve always done that. I don’t care what anyone says, I’ve always done that.” In the dream Miss Addison was looking at her with those very bright blue eyes. She said, “Now, Lizzie-” and little Lizzie Maniple piped up-“To hurt nobody by word or deed, to bear no malice or hatred in my heart.”

In the room next door Polly Pell lay flat on her back. Her thin childish body hardly raised the bedclothes. Her window stood wide to the night. A light breeze rustled the leaves of the tree outside. The sound passed into Polly’s dream and became the rustling of hundreds of newspapers. She tried to run away from them, because they all had her picture right up on the front page for everyone to see. Everyone looking at her, everyone staring. She couldn’t bear it-she really couldn’t. She tried to run away, but her feet wouldn’t carry her. They had grown into the ground. When she looked down she couldn’t see them any more, and she couldn’t move. The rustling papers came nearer, and nearer, and nearer. She gasped, and woke to hear the wind moving the leaves of the chestnut tree. The summer had dried and ripened them. They rustled in the wind with a papery sound. Her forehead and her hands were wet.

Antony did not dream at all. He lay in a profound sleep which blotted out yesterday and veiled tomorrow. Perhaps there is something in us which does not sleep-some spark of consciousness burning on amid the surrounding dark, unknown even to ourselves. If we could see by its light we should know the innermost thought and intent of the heart. Sometimes without sight this knowledge comes to us in sleep.

Minnie Mercer was dreaming-

At the first sound from the room next to hers Miss Silver threw back the bedclothes and stepped down on to the floor, sliding each foot expertly into a waiting slipper. She left the bedside lamp burning, and reached the door, which she had set ajar, as the clock in the hall struck the quarter after midnight. For a moment its vibrations drowned everything else. Then, as the air settled back into quiet, the same sound that had brought her out of her bed was heard again-the sound of bare feet on a polished floor, the sound of a hand sliding over a polished surface.

Miss Silver stood on the threshold of her room and heard Minnie Mercer’s hand go groping in the dark. It must be very dark in her dream. Her hand went feeling in this darkness for the handle of her door. Miss Silver saw it turn, slowly, slowly. Then the door opened. Miss Mercer came out, barefoot in a white nightgown, her fair hair hanging over it. Her eyes were open and set. They were so widely open that they caught the light. It made them look very blue. Now that the door was out of her way, her hands hung down. She walked slowly across the landing, stood for a moment at the top of the stairs, and then began to descend them, taking one step at a time with the right foot, and bringing the left down after it like a child who is afraid that it may fall. She did not touch the balustrade, but kept the middle of the stair, and so went slowly down.

Miss Silver followed her, but not too closely. She was, of all things in the world, most anxious not to encroach upon this dream or break it. At the foot of the stairs Miss Mercer stood quite still. Perhaps she would turn, as she had yesterday, and come back.

It was while she was waiting in some anxiety that Miss Silver heard a door open on the landing above. She turned with her finger on her lips and saw Julia Vane looking over the head of the stair. Julia nodded and began to come down. She was barefoot and made no noise. Before she could reach them, Minnie Mercer moved, walking slowly across the hall in the direction of the drawing-room. It was all dark down here, with the light from the upstairs landing dwindling and dying as they moved away from it.

Miss Silver made a swift decision. To the sleep-walker, hall and drawing-room would be light or dark according to the colour of her dream, but if she herself and Julia Vane were to see what happened they must have light to see it by. It was not difficult to out-distance those hesitating feet. She reached the drawing-room door and went in, leaving it open behind her. The first switch she tried gave too bright a light, full in the face of anyone coming into the room. The next set two pairs of shaded candles glowing, one on either side of the mirror above the mantelpiece. The light was reflected in the glass. It showed the whole room in a kind of golden twilight.

Minnie Mercer came as far as the open door and stood there. She looked into the room, her hands caught together, the fingers twisting. All at once she said in a low, distressed voice, “No, no-he doesn’t like it.” Then she lifted her head and stared at the curtained windows. In her dream there were no curtains there. It was a fine sunny evening and the glass door to the terrace stood wide. Someone was moving towards that open door. She watched the moving figure pass out on to the terrace, pass out of sight. Then she herself began to move. Past the table where Julia had set down the coffee tray. Standing beside it for a moment and then going on. Turning a little to the right and standing by Jimmy Latter’s chair. The small table beside it was the one upon which someone had placed his cup of coffee on Wednesday night. Minnie’s hand went out to it now with a groping movement. She might have been putting down a cup. She might have been taking one up. She lifted her hand, turned back, paused for a moment by the table where the tray had stood, and again put out her hand. When she had drawn it back she took a sighing breath that was almost a groan and said in a shuddering voice, “What have I done! Oh, God-what have I done!”