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 speech. Involuntarily, she glanced at his
delicate complexion, at the whiteness and softness of his ungloved
hand, and felt in a subtle way this combination of the physically fine
with the morally hard, trenchant, tenacious. Close your eyes, and
Arnold Jacks was a high-bred bulldog endowed with speech; not otherwise
would a game animal of that species, advanced to a world-polity, utter
his convictions.

"You take for granted," she remarked, "that our race is the finest
fruit of civilisation."

"Certainly. Don't you?"

"It's having a pretty good conceit of ourselves. Is every foreigner who
contests it a poor deluded creature? Take the best type of Frenchman,
for instance. Is he necessarily fatuous in his criticism of us?"

"Why, of course he is. He doesn't understand us. He doesn't understand
the world. He has his place, to be sure, but that isn't in
international politics. We are the political people; we are the
ultimate rulers. Our language----"

"There's a quotation from Virgil----"

"I know. We are very like the Romans. But there are no new races to
overthrow us