GOING ALONE

A recurrent dream of Helen Luke recorded in her autobiography:

In my dream, I sat on a stone. It was an old milestone such as still exist, or existed in my youth, along many of the roads of England. They always fascinated me: ancient, grey, rounded at the top, telling the miles to the city. The stone of my dreams was a milestone set opposite the last house in a small town or village. It was dusk, the light was grey, the street was completely empty of life, and the windows of the houses were blank. Then an upper window in the house opposite me was thrown open and a hard-faced woman spoke to me in an icily cold voice. She pointed to the desolate road which stretched to my right away from the village. 'Get out,' she said, 'go-- you are forbidden to stay here.' I looked along the road which ran on a sort of causeway and was lost in the mist, and I knew that I must walk along it alone. I woke in great fear.