"If you really mean that, I am very grateful. I wanted to tell you everything, and talk it over, and see what you thought best to be done. But of course I shouldn't dream of forcing my confidence upon you. It's a delicate matter and only because we were such intimate friends."-- "If you will have done with all this preamble," Constance interrupted, with forced calm, "and tell me what there is to be told, I am quite willing to listen." "Well, I will do so. It's this. I am in love with May Tomalin, and I want to marry her." Their eyes met, Dyce was smiling, an uneasy, abashed smile. Constance wore an expression of cold curiosity, and spoke in a corresponding voice. "Have you asked her to do so?" "Not yet," Lashmar replied. For a moment, Constance gazed at him; then she said, quietly: "I don't believe you." "That's rather emphatic," cried Dyce, affecting a laugh. "It conveys my meaning. I don't believe you, for several reasons. One of them is--" She broke off, and rose from her chair. "Please wait; I will be back in a moment." Lashmar sat looking about the room. He began to be aware that he had not breakfasted,--a physical uneasiness added to the various forms of disquiet from which his mind was suffering. When Constance re-entered, he saw she had a book in her hand, a book which by its outward appearance he at once recognised. "Do you know this?" she asked, holding the volume to him. "I received it yesterday, and have already gone through most of it. I find it very interesting." "Ah, I know it quite well," Dyce answered, fingering the pages. "A most suggestive book. But--what has it to do with our present conversation?" Constance viewed him wonderingly. If he felt at all disconcerted, nothing of the kind appeared in his face, which wore, indeed, a look of genuine puzzlement. "Have you so poor an opinion of my intelligence?" she asked, with subdued anger. "Do you suppose me incapable of perceiving that all the political and social views you have been living upon were taken directly from this book? I admire your audacity. Few educated men, nowadays, would have ventured on so bold a--we call it plagiarism." Dyce stared at her. "You are very severe," he exclaimed, on the note of deprecation. "Views I have been 'living upon?' It's quite possible that now and then something I had read there chanced to come into my talk; but who gives chapter and verse for every conversational allusion? You astound me. I see that, so far from wishing me well, you have somehow come to regard me with positive ill-feeling. How has it come about, Constance?"