She had only one ugly dream, of herself wandering from door to door in a strange town, asking for lodgings, but the woman who answered her weary knocks--there were many doors but it was invariably the same woman--always asked, suspiciously, "Is Tommy with you ?" and Grizel shook her head, and then the woman drove her away, perceiving that she was not respectable.

This woke her, and she feared the dream would come true, but she clenched her fists in the darkness, saying, "I can't help it, I am going, and I won't have Elspeth," and after that she slept in peace.

In the meantime Tommy the imaginative--but that night he was not Tommy, rather was he Grizel, for he saw her as we can only see ourselves.

Now she--or he, if you will--had been caught by her father and brought back, and she turned into a painted thing like her mother.
She brandished a brandy bottle and a stream of foul words ran lightly from her mouth and suddenly stopped, because she was wailing "I wanted so to be good, it is sweet to be good!" Now a man with a beard was whipping her, and Tommy felt each lash on his own body, so that he had to strike out, and he started up in bed, and the horrible thing was that he had never been asleep.

Thus it went on until early morning, when his eyes were red and his body was damp with sweat.
But now again he was Tommy, and at first even to think of leaving Elspeth was absurd.