Chapter 13 - Page 2

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. You know what a
little man like Callan will feel ... he will be made ill. He would faint
at the sight of a drop of blood, you know, and he will see--oh, the very
worst, worse than what Radet saw. And he will write