The dream occurred.
Her brown fingers trembled, came up, grasped at the air.
A moment later she sat up, startled, gasping.
She glanced about swiftly, as if expecting someone there before her.
She seemed disappointed; the space between the pillars was empty.
Her husband appeared in a triangular door.
“Did you call?” he asked irritably.
“No!” she cried.
“I thought I heard you cry out.”
“Did I?
I was almost asleep and had a dream!”
“In the daytime?
You don’t often do that.”
She sat as if struck in the face by the dream.
“How strange, how very strange,” she murmured.
“The dream.”
“Oh?”
He evidently wished to return to his book.
“I dreamed about a man.”
“A man?”
“A tall man, six feet one inch tall.”
“How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant.”
“Somehow” — she tried the words — “he looked all right.
In spite of being tall.
And he had — oh, I know you’ll think it silly — he had blue eyes!”
“Blue eyes! Gods!” cried Mr. K.
“What’ll you dream next?
I suppose he had black hair?”
“How did you guess?” She was excited.
“I picked the most unlikely color,” he replied coldly.
“Well, black it was!” she cried.
“And he had a very white skin; oh, he was most unusual!
He was dressed in a strange uniform and he came down out of the sky and spoke pleasantly to me.”
She smiled.
“Out of the sky; what nonsense!”
“He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun,” she remembered.
She closed her eyes to shape it again.
“I dreamed there was the sky and something sparkled like a coin thrown into the air, and suddenly it grew large and fell down softly to land, a long silver craft, round and alien.
And a door opened in the side of the silver object and this tall man stepped out.”
“If you worked harder you wouldn’t have these silly dreams.”
“I rather enjoyed it,” she replied, lying back.
“I never suspected myself of such an imagination.
Black hair, blue eyes, and white skin!
What a strange man, and yet — quite handsome.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“You’re unkind.
I didn’t think him up on purpose; he just came in my mind while I drowsed.
It wasn’t like a dream.
It was so unexpected and different. He looked at me and he said,
«I’ve come from the third planet in my ship.