The ringing of the telephone pierced her dream. The ringing cut her off from the pleasure she was having; and was reliving, with a sharpened appetite; and it came, the ringing that is, at the first tense sign of the orgasm she was entering; and the ringing lasted longer than the first trembling tenseness that gripped her body, making her grit her teeth, and squeeze her eyes closed, to induce the orgasm; and then it was finished. Aborted. Cut into pieces by the sharp ringing of the telephone. Killing the climb to the climax that her body had been assured, and that was now relaxed in; and that she had got accustomed to; these "wet-dreams" which came on upon her, frequently, through wish and through loneliness for her husband who had gone to America, to Brooklyn, to find a job; but the ringing went on, and on; and it made her angry. And she lost her concentration. And she lost her orgasm. And she lost her temper. The sound of the telephone was like an explosion, like the discharge of a gun, in the darkness that had been surrounding her, in her dream. She was dreaming about her husband; making love in the sea with him.

The ringing of the telephone that had entered her dream, and brought her out from the beach where she and her husband and the unknown man, also inhabiting her dream, were in the warm waves; and one man, her husband, had placed her wet from the waves, on the top of her bed, still dressed in her work clothes, frustrated; but, at the same time, relieved. She had not enjoyed making love, in the dream: it was more like having sex. "Having sex" is what her friend, Gertz, always called it. And at times, in the dream, the man whose legs and arms were wrapped like an octopus, around her wet belly and legs, was her husband; and at another time, in the same dream, he was the other strange man, whose face she could not see clearly in the dream, just his body up to his neck; and whose name the dream did not disclose.

So, the telephone ringing had released her from the tight grip of the man; from his right hand that was squeezing the nipple of her left breast; "the breast more nearer your heart, when I touch it, going make you come quicker!" her husband would tell her; and as she endured the pain, and was far from being excited, she thought that her husband’s callused fingers were going to pierce the tender skin of her breast, and make her bleed, and turn the warm, blue sea water, into a gushing pool of blood. The pain from her breast was making her faint; and, at the same time, it was making her feel excited; and she became wet all over; and then the man who was her husband up until the time that he was pinching her breast, suddenly turned into the man whose face and name the dream did not disclose; and he it was, who was pulling her into the basement of a house, in a ravine, surrounded by snow, and white trees.

When she was fully awake, and was sitting up in bed, she became very confused; and worried. She worked as a housekeeper of a large house, a mansion that was in a ravine. And when she last left her employment in the evening on Friday, at about eight o’clock, after checking the time, just before she turned the light switch off, in the three-room suite in the basement, her private quarters, where she could change, and relax, and entertain her friends, Gertz and others; and stay overnight, when the snow was too heavy; and as this was the suite reproduced in her dream, she became worried about the dream taking on that detail from her life, when it could have touched so many other imagined and wished-for aspects: the warmth of the sand on the beach; the colour of the water, aquamarine; the colour of the blue sky that was like a canopy over their love-making; the colour of the men and women bathing in the sea with her, with them; with the man; and with the husband-man.

So, why did this dream have to come out from things wished-for, and from fantasy, and dwell upon the hard, known facts from her life? And illustrate the geography and the architecture of the house in which she worked?

Why this white house, in a ravine, in winter?

She did not want the dream to end like that: not before she reclaimed the excitement, and reached orgasm...