"Imagination?" "Certainly. That's _the_ element. Those elements of your chemists----" "Yes?" "Are all imagination. There isn't any other." She went on: "And all the elements of your life, the life you imagine you are living, the little things you must do, the little cares, the extraordinary little duties, the day by day, the hypnotic limitations--all these things are a fancy that has taken hold of you too strongly for you to shake off. You daren't, you mustn't, you can't. To us who watch you----" "You watch us?" "Oh, yes. We watch you, and sometimes we envy you. Not only for the dry air and the sunlight, and the shadows of trees, and the feeling of morning, and the pleasantness of many such things, but because your lives begin and end--because you look towards an end." She reverted to her former topic. "But you are so limited, so tied! The little time you have, you use so poorly. You begin and you end, and all the time between it is as if you were enchanted; you are afraid to do this that would be delightful to do, you must do that, though you know all the time it is stupid and disagreeable. Just think of the things--even the little things--you mustn't do. Up there on the Leas in this hot weather all the people are sitting in stuffy ugly clothes--ever so much too much clothes, hot tight boots, you know, when they have the most lovely pink feet, some of them--we _see_,--and they are all with little to talk about and nothing to look at, and bound not to do all sorts of natural things and bound to do all sorts of preposterous things. Why are they bound? Why are they letting life slip by them? Just as if they wouldn't all of them presently be dead! Suppose you were to go up there in a bathing dress and a white cotton hat----" "It wouldn't be proper!" cried Melville. "Why not?" "It would be outrageous!" "But any one may see you like that on the beach!" "That's different." "It isn't different. You dream it's different. And in just the same way you dream all the other things are proper or improper or good or bad to do. Because you are in a dream, a fantastic, unwholesome little dream. So small, so infinitely small! I saw you the other day dreadfully worried by a spot of ink on your sleeve--almost the whole afternoon." [Illustration: "Why not?"] My cousin looked distressed. She abandoned the ink-spot. "Your life, I tell you, is a dream--a dream, and you can't wake out of it----" "And if so, why do you tell me?" She made no answer for a space. "Why do you tell me?" he insisted. He heard the rustle of her movement as she bent towards him. She came warmly close to him. She spoke in gently confidential undertone, as one who imparts a secret that is not to be too lightly given. "Because," she said, "there are better dreams." III