“I was sure you would!  To some people, such an explanation would be useless; Mrs. Toplady, for instance.  I should be sorry to have to justify myself by psychological reasoning to Mrs. Toplady.  And, remember, Mrs. Toplady represents the world.  A wise man does not try to explain himself to the world; enough if, by exceptional good luck, there is one person to whom he can confidently talk of his struggles and his purposes.  Don’t suppose, however, that I lay claim to any great wisdom; after the last fortnight, that would be rather laughable.  But I am capable of benefiting by experience, and very few men can truly say as much.  It is on the practical side that I have hitherto been most deficient.  I see my way to correcting that fault.  Nothing could be better for me, just now, than electioneering work.  It will take me out of myself, and give a rest to the speculative side of my mind.  Don’t you agree with me?”

“Quite.”

“There’s another thing I must make clear to you,” Dyce pursued, now swimming delightedly on the flood of his own eloquence.  “For a long time I seriously doubted whether I was fit for a political career.  My ambition always tended that way, but my conscience went against it.  I used to regard politics with a good deal of contempt.  You remember our old talks, at Alverholme?”

Constance nodded.

“In one respect, I am still of the same opinion.  Most men who go in for a parliamentary career regard it either as a business by which they and their friends are to profit, or as an easy way of gratifying their personal vanity, and social ambitions.  That, of course, is why we are so far from ideal government.  I used to think that the man in earnest should hold aloof from Parliament, and work in more hopeful ways—­by literature, for instance.  But I see now that the fact of the degradation of Parliament is the very reason why a man thinking as I do should try to get into the House of Commons.  If all serious minds hold aloof, what will the government of the country sink to?  The House of Commons is becoming in the worst sense democratic; it represents, above all, newly acquired wealth, and wealth which has no sense of its responsibilities.  The representative system can only be restored to dignity and usefulness by the growth of a new Liberalism.  What I understand by that, you already know.  One of its principles—­that which for the present must be most insisted upon—­is the right use of money.  Irresponsible riches threaten to ruin our civilisation.  What we have first of all to do is to form the nucleus of a party which represents money as a civilising, instead of a corrupting, power.”

He looked into Constance’s eyes, and she, smiling as if at a distant object, met his look steadily.