But you know, of course, that I regard it as a mere curiosity." "Oh, yes! Why not?
So do I the theory of Evolution." By a leading question or two, Miss Derwent set her companion talking at large of Trafford Romaine, his views and policies.

The greatest man in the Empire! he declared.

The only man, in fact, who held the true Imperial conception, and had genius to inspire multitudes with his own zeal.

Arnold's fervour of admiration betrayed him into no excessive vivacity, no exuberance in phrase or unusual gesture such as could conflict with "good form"; he talked like the typical public schoolboy, with a veneering of wisdom current in circles of higher officialdom.
Enthusiasm was never the term for his state of mind; instinctively he shrank from that, as a thing Gallic, "foreign." But the spirit of practical determination could go no further.

He followed Trafford Romaine as at school he had given allegiance to his cricket captain; impossible to detect a hint that he felt the life of peoples in any way more serious than the sports of his boyhood, yet equally impossible to perceive how he could have been more profoundly in earnest.