“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.