The image of the lady is associated with the idea of selfish motives.

This would tend to suggest a variety of actions, but the one which becomes a factor of the dream is that which is specially adapted to the pre-existing representations, namely, of the procession on the further side of the street, and the cholera (which last, like the image of the funeral, is, we may suppose, due to an independent central excitation).

That is to say, the request of the lady, and its interpretation, are a _resultant_ of a number of adaptative or assimilative actions, under the sway of a strong desire to connect the disconnected, and a lively activity of attention.

Once more, the feeling of oppression of the heart, and the subjective stimulation of the optic nerve, might suggest numberless images besides those of anxious flight and of red-clad men and nosegays; they suggest these, and not others, in this particular case, because of the co-operation of the impulse of consistency, which, setting out with the pre-existing mental images, selects from among many tendencies of reproduction those which happen to chime in with the scene.
_The Nature of Dream-Intelligence._ It must not be supposed that this process of welding together the chaotic materials of our dreams is ever carried out with anything like the clear rational purpose of which we are conscious when seeking, in waking life, to comprehend some bewildering spectacle.

At best it is a vague longing, and this longing, it may be added, is soon satisfied.
There is, indeed, something, almost pathetic in the facility with which the dreamer's mind can be pacified with the least appearance of a connection.