That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis Page A

interfering with Jane's breathing. She felt a sense of injury-this was just the sort of thing she hated.
         "Can it be proved?" she asked. "I mean; we have only his word for it."
         "We have your dreams."
         "What do you mean?"
         "My opinion is that you have seen real things in your dreams. You have seen Alcasan as he really sat in the condemned cell: and you have seen a visitor whom he really had."
         "But-but-oh, this is ridiculous," said Jane. "That part was a mere coincidence. The rest was just nightmare. It was all impossible. He screwed off his head, I tell you. And they . . . dug up the horrible old man. They made him come to life."
         "There are some confusions there, no doubt. But in my opinion there are realities behind even those episodes."
         "I am afraid I don't believe in that sort of thing," said Jane coldly.
         "Your upbringing makes it natural that you should not," replied Miss Ironwood.
         "Can you, then, do nothing for me? I mean, can you not stop it-cure it?"
         "Vision is not a disease."
         "But I don't want it," said Jane passionately.
         "If you go to a psychotherapist," said Miss Ironwood, "he will proceed on the assumption that the dreams reflect your own subconscious. He would try to treat you. It would certainly not remove the dreams."
         "But what is this all about?" said Jane. "I want to lead an ordinary life. I want to do my own work. Why should I be selected for this horrible thing?"
         There was a short silence. Jane made a vague movement and said, rather sulkily, "Well perhaps I'd better be going . . ." Then suddenly, "But how can you know all this?"
         "We know your dreams to be partly true because they fit in with information we already possess. It was because he saw their importance that Dr. Dimble sent you to us."
         "Do you mean he sent me here not to be cured but to give information?" said Jane.
         "Exactly."
         "I wish I had known that a little earlier," said Jane coldly, getting up to go. "I had imagined Dr. Dimble was trying to help me."
         "He was. But he was also trying to do something more important at the same time."
         "I suppose I should be grateful for being considered at all," said Jane dryly.
         "Young lady," said Miss Ironwood. "You do not at all realise the seriousness of this matter. The things you have seen concern something compared with which the happiness, or even the life, of you and me is of no importance. You cannot get rid of your gift. You can try to suppress it, but you will fail, and you will be badly frightened. On the other hand, you can put it at our disposal. If you do, you will be less frightened in the long run and you will be helping to save the human race from a very great disaster. Or thirdly, you may tell someone else about it. If you do that, you will almost certainly fall into the hands of other people who are at least as anxious as we to make use of your faculty and who will care no more about your life and happiness than about those of a fly. The people you have seen in your dreams are real people. It is not at all unlikely that they know you have, involuntarily, been spying on them. I would advise you, even for your own sake, to join our side."
         "You keep on talking of we and us. Are you some kind of company?"
         "Yes. You may call it a company." Jane had been standing for the last few minutes: and she had almost been believing what she heard. Then suddenly all her repugnance came over her again-all her wounded vanity, and her general dislike of the mysterious and the unfamiliar. "She's made me worse already," thought Jane, still regarding herself as a patient. Aloud, she said: "I must go. I don't know what you are talking about. I don't want to have anything to do with it."
         Mark discovered in the end that he was expected to stay, at least for the night, and when he went up to