"What do you know about the Government?" he asked. "Are you taking up politics as well as the study of the higher auction?"
She sighed, and her eyes were fixed upon him very earnestly, as she declared: "You do not understand me, my friend. You never did. I am not altogether frivolous; I am not altogether an artist. I have my serious moments."
"Is this going to be one of them?"
"Don't make fun of me, please," she begged, "You are like so many Englishmen. Directly a woman tries to talk seriously, you will push her back into her place. You like to treat her as something to frivol with and make love to. Is it your amour propre which is wounded, when you feel sometimes forced to admit that she has as clear an insight into the more important things of life as you yourself?"
"Do you talk like that with Baring?" he asked.
For several seconds she was silent. Her eyes had contracted a little. She seemed to be seeking for some double meaning in his words.
"Captain Baring is an intelligent man," she said, "and he is a man, too, who understands his own particular subject. Of course it is a pleasure to talk to him about it."
"I thought navy men, as a rule," he remarked, "were not communicative."
"Do you call it communicative," she enquired, "to discuss the subject you love best with your greatest friend? But let us not talk any more of Captain Baring. It is in you just now that I am interested, you and your future. You seem to think that your friends at the Foreign Office are not going to find you another position—for some time, at any rate. You are not one of those men who think of nothing but sport and amusing themselves. What are you going to do during the next few months?"
"At present," he confessed thoughtfully, "I have only the vaguest ideas.
Perhaps you could help me."