He gave her the letter, and watched her amusedly as she gazed at the
first page. On receiving it back again, he took his penknife,
carefully cut out the great man's signature, and offered it for
Irene's acceptance.

"Thank you. But you know, of course, that I regard it as a mere
curiosity."

"Oh, yes! Why not? So do I the theory of Evolution."

By a leading question or two, Miss Derwent set her companion talking
at large of Trafford Romaine, his views and policies. The greatest
man in the Empire! he declared. The only man, in fact, who held the
true Imperial conception, and had genius to inspire multitudes with
his own zeal. Arnold's fervour of admiration betrayed him into no
excessive vivacity, no exuberance in phrase or unusual gesture such
as could conflict with "good form"; he talked like the typical
public schoolboy, with a veneering of wisdom current in circles of
higher officialdom. Enthusiasm was never the term for his state of
mind; instinctively he shrank from that, as a thing Gallic,
"foreign." But the spirit of practical determination could go no
further. He followed Trafford Romaine as at school he had given
allegiance to his cricket captain; impossible to detect a hint that
he felt the life of peoples in any way more serious than the sports
of his boyhood, yet equally impossible to perceive how he could have
been more profoundly in earnest. This made the attractiveness of the
man; he compelled confidence; it was felt that he never exaggerated
in the suggestion of force concealed beneath his careless, mirthful
manner. Irene, in spite of her humorous observation, hung upon his