"
"Lard, Mister Jan! I never heard tell of sich a coorious thing as that."
"And the pretty dream-Joan can talk almost as well as you can! Why, last
night, while I was half awake and half asleep, she put her hand upon my
shoulder and said kind things, but I dared not move or kiss her hand at
first for fear she would vanish if I did."
Joan laughed.
"That is a funny story, sure 'nough," she said. "I 'specs 'twas awnly
another fairy body, arter all."
"No, it wasn't. She had your voice and your spirit in her; and that picture
which my brain painted for me was so much better than the thing my hand has
painted that, in the morning, I was almost tempted to destroy this
altogether. But I didn't."
"An' what did this here misty sort o' maid say to 'e?"
"Strange things, strange things. Things I would give a great deal to hear
you say. It seemed that you had come, Joan, it seemed that you had
purposely come from your little cottage on the cliff through the darkness
before dawn. Why? To share my loneliness, to brighten my poor shadowy life.
Dreams are funny things, are they not? What d'you think you said?"
"Sure I dunnaw."
"Why, you said that you were not going to leave me any more; that you
believed in me and that you had come to me because it was bad for a man to
live all alone in the world. You said that you felt alone too--without me.
And it made me feel happy to hear you say that, though I knew, all the
time, that it was not the real beautiful Joan who spoke to me.
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