For a moment it seemed to Melville that he had been addressed by something quite other than the pleasant lady in the bath chair before him. "But how--?" he began and stopped. He remained silent with a perplexed face. She leaned back and glanced away from him, and when at last she turned and spoke again, specific realities closed in on him once more. "Why shouldn't I," she asked, "if I want to?" "Shouldn't what?" "If I fancy Chatteris." "One might think of obstacles," he reflected. "He's not hers," she said. "In a way, he's trying to be," said Melville. "Trying to be! He has to be what he is. Nothing can make him hers. If you weren't dreaming you would see that." My cousin was silent. "She's not _real_," she went on. "She's a mass of fancies and vanities. She gets everything out of books. She gets herself out of a book. You can see her doing it here.... What is she seeking? What is she trying to do? All this work, all this political stuff of hers? She talks of the condition of the poor! What is the condition of the poor? A dreary tossing on the bed of existence, a perpetual fear of consequences that perpetually distresses them. Lives of anxiety they lead, because they do not know what a dream the whole thing is. Suppose they were not anxious and afraid.... And what does she care for the condition of the poor, after all? It is only a point of departure in her dream. In her heart she does not want their dreams to be happier, in her heart she has no passion for them, only her dream is that she should be prominently doing good, asserting herself, controlling their affairs amidst thanks and praise and blessings. _Her_ dream! Of serious things!--a rout of phantoms pursuing a phantom ignis fatuus--the afterglow of a mirage. Vanity of vanities----" "It's real enough to her." "As real as she can make it, you know. But she isn't real herself. She begins badly." "And he, you know----" "He doesn't believe in it." "I'm not so sure." "I am--now." "He's a complicated being." "He will ravel out," said the Sea Lady. "I think you misjudge him about that work of his, anyhow," said Melville. "He's a man rather divided against himself." He added abruptly, "We all are." He recovered himself from the generality. "It's vague, I admit, a sort of vague wish to do something decent, you know, that he has----" "A sort of vague wish," she conceded; "but----" "He means well," said Melville, clinging to his proposition. "He means nothing. Only very dimly he suspects----" "Yes?" "What you too are beginning to suspect.... That other things may be conceivable even if they are not possible. That this life of yours is not everything. That it is not to be taken too seriously. Because ... there are better dreams!"