“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.”
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.