“The doctor won’t forget us entirely, will he, Mrs. Annister?” the host was saying to the tall and handsome woman with iron-gray hair and warm-colored cheeks who sat beside him at the supper table.
“I hope not; but you know I never vouch for him. Mildred impressed it upon him that he must be here in time for supper,” and she glanced at the young replica of herself at Brand’s other hand.
“Yes,” confirmed the girl, “he promised very faithfully that he’d come as soon as he could. But he was to see a case tonight in which he’s very much interested, and if he gets to thinking and reading about that, you know, Mr. Brand, that he is just as likely as not to forget all about us.”
“Oh, yes, that case!” said her mother. “It’s most curious and interesting—one of the sort that makes you feel creepy.”
“Do tell us about it then,” exclaimed Ardeen Andrews, farther down the table.
“It’s a man possessed by the illusion that his dreams are the real thing and his waking hours are imaginary. Just think what a topsy-turvy state that must keep his family in!”
Felix Brand looked up with sudden interest, but before he could speak a man’s voice called out from the other end of the table, “The doctor doesn’t consider faith in one’s dreams evidence of a pathological state, does he, Mrs. Annister?” It was Robert Moreton, a young author, whose name was of frequent occurrence in magazine tables of contents.
“If he does,” Mrs. Moreton broke in, “how crazy he would think you, Rob! You see, when he is writing a story,” and she glanced up and down the table, “Robert imagines it’s being acted out around him, and I have to be the heroine and the villainess and the parlor maid and the cook and answer to all their names.”
“That must give some variety to existence, Mrs. Moreton,” said Brand. “And variety is the best spice for life that I know of.”
“Do you know that story of Colonel Higginson’s,” Moreton went on, “called ‘A Monarch of Dreams,’ about a man who developed the power of controlling his dreams and became so delighted and absorbed in them that he gave himself up to the life he lived while asleep and allowed his real existence to wither away until it was of no consequence at all to him or any one else? It has always seemed to me a wonderful bit of eerie imagination. And there are such alluring suggestions for experiment in it!”