No one but I myself could understand.

I feel I owe it to myself." He looked at me for a second or two and then broke into a sardonic sort of laugh.

"I suppose you think me a conceited ass," he continued.

"Why should Leonard Boyce be such a vastly important person?
It isn't that, I assure you." I lit a cigarette, having waved an invitation to join me, which with a nod he refused.
"What is it, then ?" "Has it ever struck you that often a man's most merciless creditor is himself ?" Here was a casuistical proposition thrown at my head by the last person I should have suspected of doing so.

It was immensely interesting, in view of my long puzzledom.