Staniford drew a long, silent breath. After all, he knew everything. He mechanically dropped a little the arm on which her hand rested, that it might slip farther within. Her timid remoteness had its charm, and he fell to thinking, with amusement, how she who was so subordinate to him was, in the dimly known sphere in which he had been groping to find her, probably a person of authority and consequence. It satisfied a certain domineering quality in him to have reduced her to this humble attitude, while it increased the protecting tenderness he was beginning to have for her. His mind went off further upon this matter of one's different attitudes toward different persons; he thought of men, and women too, before whom he should instantly feel like a boy, if he could be confronted with them, even in his present lordliness of mood. In a fashion of his when he convicted himself of anything, he laughed aloud. Lydia shrank a little from him, in question. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I was laughing at something I happened to think of. Do you ever find yourself struggling very hard to be what you think people think you are?” “Oh, yes,” replied Lydia. “But I thought no one else did.” “Everybody does the thing that we think no one else does,” said Staniford, sententiously. “I don't know whether I quite like it,” said Lydia. “It seems like hypocrisy. It used to worry me. Sometimes I wondered if I had any real self. I seemed to be just what people made me, and a different person to each.” “I'm glad to hear it, Miss Blood. We are companions in hypocrisy. As we are such nonentities we shall not affect each other at all.” Lydia laughed. “Don't you think so? What are you laughing at? I told you what I was laughing at!” “But I didn't ask you.” “You wished to know.” “Yes, I did.” “Then you ought to tell me what I wish to know.” “It's nothing,” said Lydia. “I thought you were mistaken in what you said.” “Oh! Then you believe that there's enough of you to affect me?” “No.” “The other way, then?” She did not answer. “I'm delighted!” exclaimed Staniford. “I hope I don't exert an uncomfortable influence. I should be very unhappy to think so.” Lydia stooped side-wise, away from him, to get a fresh hold of her skirt, which she was carrying in her right hand, and she hung a little more heavily upon his arm. “I hope I make you think better of yourself,--very self-satisfied, very conceited even.” “No,” said Lydia. “You pique my curiosity beyond endurance. Tell me how I make you feel.” She looked quickly round at him, as if to see whether he was in earnest. “Why, it's nothing,” she said. “You made me feel as if you were laughing at everybody.” It flatters a man to be accused of sarcasm by the other sex, and Staniford was not superior to the soft pleasure of the reproach. “Do you think I make other people feel so, too?” “Mr. Dunham said--”