She listened with interest, smiling, meditative.

’And a great many people come out of it —­ wishing they had done so before.’

‘True,’ said Carnaby; ’there’s the difficulty.  I had a letter from Dando this morning.  He has got somebody to believe in his new smelting process —­ somebody in the City; talks of going out to Queensland shortly.  Really —­ if I could be on the spot ——­’

He hesitated, timidly indicating his thoughts.  Sibyl mused, and slowly shook her head.

‘No; wait for reports.’

‘Yes; but it’s those who are in it first, you see.’

Sibyl seemed to forget the immediate subject, and to let her thoughts wander in pleasant directions.  She spoke as if on a happy impulse.

‘There’s one place I think I should like —­ though I dread the voyage.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Honolulu.’

‘What has put that into your head?’

’Oh, I have read about it.  The climate is absolute perfection, and the life exquisite.  How do you get there?’

’Across America, and then from San Francisco.  It’s anything but a cheap place, I believe.’

‘Still, for a time.  The thing is to get away, don’t you think?’

’No doubt of that. —­ Honolulu —­ by Jove! it’s an idea.  I should like to see those islands myself’

‘And it isn’t commonplace,’ remarked Sibyl.  ’One would go off with a certain eclat.  Very different from starting for the Continent in the humdrum way.’

The more Carnaby thought of it, the better he liked this suggestion.  That Sibyl should voluntarily propose so long a journey surprised and delighted him.  The tropics were not his favourite region, and those islands of the Pacific offered no scope for profitable energy; he did not want to climb volcanoes, still less to lounge beneath bananas and breadfruit-trees, however pleasant such an escape from civilisation might seem at the first glance.  A year of marriage, of idleness amid amusements, luxuries, extravagances, for which he had no taste, was bearing its natural result in masculine restiveness.  His robust physique and temper, essentially combative, demanded liberty under conditions of rude or violent life.  He was not likely to find a satisfying range in any mode of existence that would be shared by Sibyl.  But he clutched at any chance of extensive travel.  It might be necessary —­ it certainly would be —­ to make further incision into his capital, and so diminish the annual return upon which he could count for the future; but when his income had already become ludicrously inadequate, what did that matter?  The years of independence were past; somehow or other, he must make money.  Everybody did it nowadays, and an ‘opening’ would of course present itself, something would of course ‘turn up’.

He stretched his limbs in a sudden vast relief.

‘Bravo!  The idea is excellent.  Shall we sell all this stuff?’ waving a hand to indicate the furniture.