Constance also smiled, but very faintly.  Her eyebrows rose, ever so little.  Her lips just moved, but uttered no sound.

“You know me better than anyone else ever did or ever will,” he went on.  “It is quite possible that you know me better than I know myself.  Did you ever foresee such a possibility?”

“I can’t say that it astonished me,” was the deliberate reply, without any ironic note.

“Well, I am glad of that,” said Dyce, with a little sign of relief.  “It’s much better so.  I like to think that you read me with so clear an eye.  For years I have studied myself, and I thought I knew how I should act in any given circumstances; yet it was mere illusion.  What I regret is that I hadn’t talked more to you about such things; you would very likely have put me on my guard.  I always felt your power of reading character, it seemed to me that I concealed nothing from you.  We were always so frank with each other—­yet not frank enough, after all.”

“I’m afraid not,” assented the listener, absently.

“Well, it’s an experience; though, as I say, more like a bit of delirium than actual life.  Happily, you know all about it; I shall never have to tell you the absurd story.  But I mustn’t forget that other thing which really did surprise and vex you—­my bit of foolish plagiarism.  I have so wanted to talk to you about it.  You have read the whole book?”

“Very carefully.”

“And what do you think of it?” he asked, with an air of keen interest.

“Just what I thought of the large quotations I had heard from you.  The theory seems plausible; I should think there is a good deal of truth in it.  In any case, it helps one to direct one’s life.”

“Oh, you feel that?  Now there,” exclaimed Lashmar, his eye brightening, “is the explanation of what seemed to you very dishonourable behaviour in me.  You know me, and you will understand as soon as I hint at the psychology of the thing.  When that book fell into my hands, I was seeking eagerly for a theory of the world by which to live.  I have had many glimpses of the truth about life—­glimpses gained by my own honest thought.  This book completed the theory I had been shaping for myself; it brought me mental rest, and a sense of fixed purpose such as I had never known.  Its reconciliation of the aristocratic principle with a true socialism was exactly what I had been striving for; it put me at harmony with myself, for you know that I am at the same time Aristocrat and Socialist.  Well now, I spoke of the book to my father, and begged him to read it.  It was when we met at Alverholme, in the spring, you remember?  How long ago does that seem to you?  To me, several years.  Yes, I had the volume with me, and showed it to my father; sufficient proof that I had no intention of using it dishonestly.  But—­follow me, I beg—­I had so absorbed the theory, so thoroughly made it the directing principle of my mind, that I very soon ceased to think of it as somebody