Hers seemed ever the
main burden.
Now, for the first time, though she distrusted fantasy and deemed it
destructive of action, she felt something real. She listened with a
kind of believing sympathy. She noticed, moreover, with keen pleasure,
that her attitude fed him. He talked so freely, happily about it all.
Already her sympathy, crudely enough expressed, brought fuel to his
fires. Some one had put starlight into her.
'He's been hungry for this all along,' she reflected; 'I never
realised it. I've thought only of myself without knowing it.'
'Yes, I'll put you in, old Mother,' he went on, 'and Rogers and the
children too. In fact, you're in it already,' he chuckled, 'if you
want to know. Each of you plays his part all day long without knowing
it.' He changed his seat, going over to the window-sill, and staring
down upon them as he talked on eagerly. 'Don't you feel,' he said,
enthusiasm growing and streaming from him, 'how all this village life
is a kind of dream we act out against the background of the sunshine,
while our truer, deeper life is hidden somewhere far below in half
unconsciousness? Our daily doings are but the little bits that emerge,
tips of acts and speech that poke up and out, masquerading as
complete? In that vaster sea of life we lead below the surface lies my
big story, my fairy-tale--when we sleep.
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