learnt to distinguish between an ash and
an oak. Do you ever hear from your father?"

"Now and then," said Lashmar, his machine wobbling a little, for he had
not yet perfect command of it, and fell into some peril if his thoughts
strayed. "They want me to run over to Alverholme presently. Perhaps I
may go next week."

Constance was silent. They wheeled on, without speaking, for some
minutes. Then Dyce asked:

"How long does Lady Ogram wish me to stay here?"

"I don't quite know. Are you in any hurry to get away?"

"Not at all. Only, if I'm soon going back to London, I should take
Alverholme on the journey. Would you probe our friend for me?"

"I'll try."

At this time, they were both reading a book of Nietzsche. That
philosopher had only just fallen into their hands, though of course
they had heard much of him. Lashmar found the matter considerably to
his taste, though he ridiculed the form. Nietzsche's individualism was,
up to a certain point, in full harmony with the tone of his mind; he
enjoyed this frank contempt of the average man, persuaded that his own
place was on the seat of the lofty, and that disdain of the humdrum, in
life or in speculation, had always been his strong point. To be sure,
he counted himself Nietzsche's superior as a moralist; as a thinker, he
imagined himself much more scientific. But, having regard to his
circumstances and his hopes, this glorification of unscrupulous
strength came opportunely. Refining away its grosser aspects, Dyce took
the philosophy to heart--much more sincerely than he had taken to
himself the humanitarian bio-sociology on which he sought to build his
reputation.

And Constance, for her part, was hardly less interested in Nietzsche.
She, too, secretly liked this insistence on the right of the strong,
for she felt herself one of them. She, too, for all her occupation with
social reform, was at core a thorough individualist, desiring far less
the general good than her own attainment of celebrity as a public
benefactress. Nietzsche spoke to her instincts, as he does to those of
a multitude of men and women, hungry for fame, avid of popular
applause. But she, like Lashmar, criticised her philosopher from a
moral height. She did not own to herself the intimacy of his appeal to
her.

"He'll do a great deal of harm in the world," she said, this same
afternoon, as Dyce and she drank tea together. "The jingo impulse, and
all sorts of forces making for animalism, will