His mind began fumbling then, puzzled and weary, around that question which always had such a curious interest for him, as to the inner nature of each person’s secret life-illusion⁠—that peculiar consciousness people build up as to their dominant “entelechy” or ultimate life-flowering. Thus it seemed to him now, that while his own life-illusion was his “mythology,” Christie’s must be those “Platonic essences” about which she was always pondering, Weevil’s the mystic beauty of girls’ legs, and Urquhart’s the idea of his shameless book. He could not help chuckling a little to himself when his exhausted thoughts, like weary gnats that sink down upon water, began hovering round the question as to what Jason’s life-illusion was. “He has none! He has none!” he cried aloud; and he found himself so excited by this explanation of Jason’s peculiarities that, not thinking what he did, he debouched into a field-path quite different from the one that had led him into this lane.