e are by our acts."

Esme Amarinth looked at her with surprised compassion.

"Forgive me," he said. "That is a curious old fallacy that lingers among
us like an old faith, unable to get away from people's minds because it
has literally not a leg to stand upon, or to walk with. We reveal what
we are not by our acts."

"How can that be? By our words. Surely that is what you mean?"

"No, we lie indeed perpetually. That is what makes life so curious, and
sometimes so interesting. We lie to the world in open deeds, to
ourselves in secret deeds. We have a beautiful passion for all that is
theatrical, and we have two kinds of plays in which we indulge our
desire of mumming, the plays that we act for others, and the plays that
we act for ourselves. Both are interesting, but the latter are
engrossing. Our secret virtues, our secret vices, are the plays that we
act for our own benefit. Both are equally selfish, and bizarre, and full
of imagination. We make vices of our virtues, and virtues of our vices.
The former we consider the duty that we owe to others, the latter the
duty that we owe to ourselves. If we practise the latter with the
greatest earnestness, are stricter about the rehearsals, in fact, it is
not wonderful."

"But then, if you explain everything away like that, there is no
residuum left. Where is the reality? Where is the real man?"

Mr. Amarinth smiled with a wide sweetness.

"The real man is a Mrs. Harris," he replied. "There is, believe me, 'no
sich a person.'"

"But really that is absurd," Lady Locke said. "There must be an ego
somewhere."

"If there were, should we not learn a permanent means of satisfying it?
We are always sending out actions to knock upon its door, and the answer
is always--not at home. Then we send out other actions of a different
kind. We knock in all sorts of various ways. Yet 'not at home' is always
the answer."

Lady Locke looked at him with a distaste that she could scarcely
conceal.

"You are very amusing," she said bluntly. "But you are not very
satisfactory. I wonder if you have a philosophy of life?"

"I have," he said, "a beautiful one."

"What is it?"

"Take everything--and nothing seriously. And in your career of deception
always, if possible, include yourself among those whom you deceive."

"Esme! Esme!" cried Lord Reggie's petulant boyish voice. "Where are you?
We have finished the practice, and Mrs. Windsor wants us to come in to
supper. Oh! here you are.