“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.”

He began to sketch the future extension of Britannic lordship and influence.  Kingdoms were overthrown with a joke, continents were annexed in a boyish phrase; Armageddon transacted itself in sheer lightness of heart.  Laughing, he waded through the blood of nations, and in the end seated himself with crossed legs upon the throne of the universe.

“Do you know what it makes me wish?” said Irene, looking wicked.

“That you may live to see it?”

“No.  That someone would give us a good licking, for the benefit of our souls.”

Having spoken it, she was ashamed, and her lip quivered a little.  But the train had slackened speed; they entered a station.

“Rugby!” she exclaimed, with relief.  “Have you any views about treatment of the phylloxera?”

“Odd that you should mention that.  Why?”

“Only because my father has been thinking about it:  we have a friend from Avignon staying with us—­all but ruined in his vineyards.”

Jacks had again taken out his letter-case.  He selected a folded sheet of paper, and showed what looked like a dry blade of grass.  The wheat, he said, on certain farms in his Company’s territory had begun to suffer from a strange disease; here was an example of the parasite-eaten growth; no one yet had recognised the disease or discovered a cheek for it.

“Let my father have it,” said Irene.  “He is interested in all that kind of thing.”

“Really?  Seriously?”

“Quite seriously.  He would much like to see it.”

“Then I will either call on him, or write to him, when I get back.”

Miss Derwent had not yet spoken of her destination.  She mentioned, now, that she was going to spend a week or two with relations at a country place in Cheshire.  She must change trains at Crewe.  This gave a lighter turn to the conversation.  Arnold Jacks launched into frank gaiety, and Irene met him with spirit.  Not a little remarkable was the absence of the note of sex from their merry gossip in the narrow seclusion of a little railway compartment.  Irene was as safe with this world-conquering young man as with her own brother; would have been so, probably, on a desert island.  They were not man and woman, but English gentleman and lady, and, from one point of view, very brilliant specimens of their kind.