<blockquote>It might have happened like that. Except that the dream of it all drove Cecelia Tarleton to wakefulness as fast as a rifle shot and none of it faded once she was there. At three o'clock in the morning, she sits up, gets up, fumbles in the darkness for a lucifer and a candle, and then returns to the bed to shake her husband awake with no gentleness at all.</blockquote>
