or twice and stared vaguely into the shop-windows. One of these was
a jeweller's, and he turned sharply away from it and quickened his pace
towards the fencing-rooms. How could it be the same, he asked himself,
when the mere sparkle of an emerald ring in a jeweller's shop-window
aroused in him a feeling of distaste?

Towards the end of this week Clarice called upon Mrs. Willoughby, and
seemed for the moment put out on finding that Mallinson and Fielding were
present. Mrs. Willoughby welcomed her all the more warmly because she was
finding it difficult to keep the peace between her two visitors. She
understood Clarice's embarrassment when Percy Conway arrived close upon
her heels. Clarice, however, quietly handed him over to Mrs. Willoughby,
and seated herself beside Mallinson in one of the windows. 'I see nothing
of you now,' she said, and she looked the reproach of the hardly-used. 'I
thought we had agreed to be friends?'

Mallinson sighed wearily. 'I will come and call--some day,' he said
dejectedly.

'I have not so many friends that I can afford a loss,' she answered
pathetically; and then, 'Tell me about yourself. What are you doing?'

'Nothing.'

'No work?'

'No.' Mallinson shook his head.

'Why?'

'I have no incentive--nothing to work for.'

'That's cruel.'

They played out their farce of sham sentiment with a luxurious
earnestness for a little while longer, and then Mallinson went away.

'So he's doing no work?' said Fielding maliciously to Miss Le Mesurier.
He leaned forward as he spoke from the embrasure of the second window,
which was in a line with, and but a few feet apart from, that at which
she was sitting.

Miss Le Mesurier flushed, and asked, 'How did you hear?'

'Both windows are open. Mallinson was leaning out.'

The girl's confusion increased, and with it Fielding's enjoyment. He
repeated, 'So he's doing no work?'

'A thousand a year, don't you know?' said Conway, with a sneer. 'It would
make a man like that lazy.'

'It's not laziness,' exclaimed Clarice indignantly. She was filled with
pity for Mallinson, and experienced, too, a sort of reflex pity for
herself as the inappropriate instrument of his suffering. She was
consequently altogether tuned to tenderness for him. 'It's not laziness
at all. It's--it's--' She cast about for a laudatory explanation.

'Well, what?' Fielding pressed genially.

'It's the artistic temperament,' she exclaimed triumphantly.

Fielding laughed at