‘Don’t be frightened,’ I would always answer. ‘Oh, don’t be frightened.’—And at that moment, the dream would slip from me and I would wake. I would wake in a kind of dread, to think that, like Nurse Bacon, I might have said the words aloud—or sighed, or quivered. And then I would lie and be filled with a terrible shame. For I hated her! I hated her!—and yet I knew that, every time, I secretly wished that the dream had gone on to its end.
