They were on excellent terms once more.  Irene felt a singular pleasure in his having apologised; it was one of the very rare occasions of his yielding to her on any point whatever.  Never had she felt so kindly disposed to him.

Arnold was going to Paris, and on business; he hinted at something pending between his Company and a French Syndicate.

“You are a sort of informal diplomatist,” said Irene, her interest keen.

“Now and then, yes.  And”—­he added with the frankness which was one of his more amiable points—­“I rather like it.”

“One sees that you do.  Better, I suppose, than the thought of going into Parliament.”

“That may come some day,” he answered, glancing at a gull that hovered above the ship.  “Not whilst my father sits there.”

“You would be on different sides, I suppose.”

Arnold smiled, and went on to say that he was uneasy about his father’s health.  John Jacks had fallen of late into a habit of worry about things great and small, as though age were suddenly telling upon him.  He fretted over public affairs; he suffered from the death of old friends, especially that of John Bright, whom he had held in affectionate regard for a lifetime.  Irene was glad to hear this expression of anxiety.  For it sometimes seemed to her that Arnold Jacks had little, if any, domestic feeling.

She wished they could have travelled further together.  Their talks were always broken off too soon, just when she began to get a glimpse of characteristics still unknown to her.  On the journey she thought constantly of him; not with any sort of tender emotion, but with much curiosity.  It would have gratified her to know what degree of truth there was in that rumour of his engagement a month ago; some, undoubtedly, for she had noticed a peculiar smile on the faces of persons who alluded to it.  His apparent coldness towards women in general might be natural, or might conceal mysteries.  So difficult a man to know!  And so impossible to decide whether he was really worth knowing!

Among intimates of her own sex Irene had a reputation for a certain chaste severity becoming at moments all but prudery.  It did not altogether harmonise with the tone of highly taught young women who rather prided themselves on freedom of thought, and to some extent of utterance.  Singular in one so far from cold-blooded, so abounding in vitality.  Towards men, her attitude seemed purely intellectual; no one had ever so much as suspected a warmer interest.  A hint of things forbidden with regard to any male acquaintance caused her to turn away, silent, austere.  That such things not seldom came to her hearing was a motive of troubled reflection, common enough in all intelligent girls who live in touch with the wider world.  Men puzzled her, and Irene did not like to be puzzled.  As free from unwholesome inquisitiveness as a girl can possibly be, she often wished to know, once for all, whatever was to be learnt about the