He greeted me dejectedly, and did not brighten when she let him know that we had a mutual friend in Callan.  The Governor, it seemed, in his capacity of Supervisor of the Systeme, was to conduct that distinguished person through the wilds of Greenland; was to smooth his way and to point out to him excellences of administration.

I wished him a good journey; he sighed and began to fumble with his hat.

“Alors, c’est entendu,” she said; giving him leave to depart.  He looked at her in an odd sort of way, took her hand and applied it to his lips.

“C’est entendu,” he said with a heavy sigh, drops of moisture spattering from beneath his white moustache, “mais ...”

He ogled again with infinitesimal eyes and went out of the room.  He had the air of wishing to wipe the perspiration from his brows and to exclaim, “Quelle femme!” But if he had any such wish he mastered it until the door hid him from sight.

“Why the ...”  I began before it had well closed, “do you allow that 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.

“And,” she went on, “this man had orders to hide things from Callan; you know what it is they have to hide.  But he won’t now; that is what I was arranging.  It’s partly by bribery and partly because he has a belief in his beaux yeux—­so Callan will be upset and will write an ... exposure; the sort of thing Callan would write if he were well upset.  And he will be, by what this man will let him see.