thing to make love to you?" I wanted to take up my position before she
could have a chance to make me ridiculous. I wanted to make a long
speech--about duty to the name of Granger. But the next word hung, and,
before it came, she had answered:

"He?--Oh, I'm making use of him."

"To inherit the earth?" I asked ironically, and she answered gravely:

"To inherit the earth."

She was leaning against the window, playing with the strings of the
blinds, and silhouetted against the leaden light. She seemed to be,
physically, a little tired; and the lines of her figure to interlace
almost tenderly--to "compose" well, after the ideas of a certain school.
I knew so little of her--only just enough to be in love with her--that
this struck me as the herald of a new phase, not so much in her attitude
to me as in mine to her; she had even then a sort of gravity, the
gravity of a person on whom things were beginning to weigh.

"But," I said, irresolutely. I could not speak to her; to this new
conception of her, in the way I had planned; in the way one would talk
to a brilliant, limpid--oh, to a woman of sorts. But I had to take
something of my old line. "How would flirting with that man help you?"

"It's quite simple," she answered, "he's to show Callan all Greenland,
and Callan is to write ... Callan has immense influence over a great
class, and he will have some of the prestige of--of a Commissioner."

"Oh, I know about Callan," I said.