of my old friend Jerome Otway."

Arnold Jacks pressed the visitor's hand and spoke a few courteous
words in a remarkably pleasant voice. In physique he was quite
unlike his father; tall, well but slenderly built, with a small
finely-shaped head, large grey-blue eyes and brown hair. The
delicacy of his complexion and the lines of his figure did not
suggest strength, yet he walked with a very firm step, and his whole
bearing betokened habits of healthy activity. In early years he had
seemed to inherit a very feeble constitution; the death of his
brother and sister, followed by that of their mother at an untimely
age, left little hope that he would reach manhood; now, in his
thirtieth year, he was rarely on troubled the score of health, and
few men relieved from the necessity of earning money found fuller
occupation for their time. Some portion of each day he spent at the
offices of a certain Company, which held rule in a British colony of
considerable importance. His interest in this colony had originated
at the time when he was gaining vigour and enlarging his experience
in world-wide travel; he enjoyed the sense of power, and his voice
did not lack weight at the Board of the Company in question. He had
all manner of talents and pursuits. Knowledge--the only kind of
knowledge he cared for, that of practical things, things alive in
the world of to-day--seemed to come to him without any effort on
his part. A new invention concealed no mysteries from him; he looked
into it; understood, calculated its scope. A strange piece of news
from any part of the world found him unsurprised, explanatory. He
liked mathematics, and was wont to say jocosely that an abstract
computation had a fine moral affect, favouring unselfishness. Music
was one of his foibles; he learnt an instrument with wonderful
facility, and, up to a certain point, played well. For poetry,