To this extent she used her unerring brains, more openly than on her night of debate at The Crossways.  The next moment she was off in vapour, meditating grandly on her independence of her sex and the passions.  Love! she did not know it, she was not acquainted with either the criminal or the domestic God, and persuaded herself that she never could be.  She was a Diana of coldness, preferring friendship; she could be the friend of men.  There was another who could be the friend of women.  Her heart leapt to Redworth.  Conjuring up his clear trusty face, at their grasp of hands when parting, she thought of her visions of her future about the period of the Dublin Ball, and acknowledged, despite the erratic step to wedlock, a gain in having met and proved so true a friend.  His face, figure, character, lightest look, lightest word, all were loyal signs of a man of honour, cold as she; he was the man to whom she could have opened her heart for inspection.  Rejoicing in her independence of an emotional sex, the impulsive woman burned with a regret that at their parting she had not broken down conventional barriers and given her cheek to his lips in the antiinsular fashion with a brotherly friend.  And why not when both were cold?  Spirit to spirit, she did, delightfully refreshed by her capacity to do so without a throb.  He had held her hands and looked into her eyes half a minute, like a dear comrade; as little arousing her instincts of defensiveness as the clearing heavens; and sisterly love for it was his due, a sister’s kiss.  He needed a sister, and should have one in her.  Emma’s recollected talk of ‘Tom Redworth’ painted him from head to foot, brought the living man over the waters to the deck of the yacht.  A stout champion in the person of Tom Redworth was left on British land; but for some reason past analysis, intermixed, that is, among a swarm of sensations, Diana named her champion to herself with the formal prefix:  perhaps because she knew a man’s Christian name to be dangerous handling.  They differed besides frequently in opinion, when the habit of thinking of him as Mr. Redworth would be best.  Women are bound to such small observances, and especially the beautiful of the sisterhood, whom the world soon warns that they carry explosives and must particularly guard against the ignition of petty sparks.  She was less indiscreet in her thoughts than in her acts, as is the way with the reflective daughter of impulse; though she had fine mental distinctions:  what she could offer to do ‘spirit to spirit,’ for instance, held nothing to her mind of the intimacy of calling the gentleman plain Tom in mere contemplation of him.  Her friend and champion was a volunteer, far from a mercenary, and he deserved the reward, if she could bestow it unalarmed.  They were to meet in Egypt.  Meanwhile England loomed the home of hostile forces ready to shock, had she been a visible planet, and ready to secrete a virus of her past history, had she been making new.