_who is sitting on the table and staring at his boots, does not
notice the action, and goes on as in a sincere soliloquy._

CONJURER. I don't know whether you have any notion of what it means to a
man like me to talk to a lady like you, even on false pretences. I am an
adventurer. I am a blackguard, if one can earn the title by being in all
the blackguard societies of the world. I have thought everything out by
myself, when I was a guttersnipe in Fleet Street, or, lower still, a
journalist in Fleet Street. Before I met you I never guessed that rich
people ever thought at all. Well, that is all I have to say. We had some
good conversations, didn't we? I am a liar. But I told you a great deal
of the truth.

[_He turns and resumes the arrangement of the table._

PATRICIA. [_Thinking._] Yes, you did tell me a great deal of the truth.
You told me hundreds and thousands of truths. But you never told me the
truth that one wants to know.

CONJURER. And what is that?

PATRICIA. [_Turning back into the room._] You never told me the truth
about yourself. You never told me you were only the Conjurer.

CONJURER. I did not tell you that because I do not even know it. I do
not know whether I am only the Conjurer....

PATRICIA. What do you mean?

CONJURER. Sometimes I am afraid I am something worse than the Conjurer.

PATRICIA. [_Seriously._] I cannot think of anything worse than a
conjurer who does not call himself a conjurer.

CONJURER. [_Gloomily._] There is something worse. [_Rallying himself._]
But that is not what I want to say. Do you really find that very
unpardonable? Come, let me put you a case. Never mind about whether it
is our case. A man spends his time incessantly in going about in
third-class carriages to fifth-rate lodgings. He has to make up new
tricks, new patter, new nonsense, sometimes every night of his life.
Mostly he has to do it in the beastly black cities of the Midlands and
the North, where he can't get out into the country. Now and again he
does it at some gentleman's country-house, where he can get out into the
country. Well, you know that actors and orators and all sorts of people
like to rehearse their effects in the open air if they can. [_Smiles._]
You know that story of the great statesman who was heard by his own
gardener saying, as he paced the garden, "Had I, Mr. Speaker, received
the smallest intimation that I could be called upon to speak this
evening...." [PATRICIA _co