“I don’t know. My husband does. He has a Dream as well as a Voice.” “Oh, indeed!” said Ray; and he added: “I see. The Voice is the one he talks with in his sleep.” The flippant suggestion amused Mrs. Denton; but a shadow of pain came over Peace’s face, that made Ray wish to get away from the mystery he had touched; she might be a believer in it, or ashamed of it. “I wonder,” he added, “why we never expect our day-dreams to come true?” “Perhaps because they’re never bad ones--because we know we’re just making them,” said Mrs. Denton. “It must be that! But, do we always make them? Sometimes my day-dreams seem to make themselves, and they keep on doing it so long that they tire me to death. They’re perfect daymares.” “How awful! The only way would be to go to sleep, if you wanted to get rid of them.” “Yes; and that isn’t so easy as waking up. Anybody can wake up; a man can wake up to go to execution; but it takes a very happy man to go to sleep.” The recognition of this fact reminded Ray that he was himself a very unhappy man; he had forgotten it for the time. “He might go into society and get rid of them that way,” Mrs. Denton suggested, with an obliquity which he was too simply masculine to perceive. “I suppose you go into society a good deal, Mr. Ray?” Peace made a little movement as of remonstrance, but she did not speak, and Ray answered willingly: “_I_ go into society? I have been inside of just one house--or flat--besides this, since I came to New York.” “Why!” said Mrs. Denton. She seemed to be going to say something more, but she stopped at a look from her sister, and left Ray free to so on or not, as he chose. He told them it was Mr. Brandreth’s flat he had been in; at some little hints of curiosity from Mrs. Denton, he described it to her. “I have some letters from people in Midland, but I haven’t presented them yet,” he added at the end. “The Brandreths are all I know of society.” “They’re much more than we know. Well, it seems like fairyland,” said Mrs. Denton, in amiable self-derision. “I used to think that was the way we should live when we left the Family. I suppose there are people in New York that would think it was like fairyland to live like us, and not all in one room. Ansel is always preaching that when I grumble.” The cat sprang up into her lap, and she began to smooth its long flank, and turn her head from side to side, admiring its enjoyment. “Well,” Ray said, “whatever we do, we are pretty sure to be sorry we didn’t do something else.” He was going to lead up to his own disappointments by this commonplace, but Mrs. Denton interposed.