mean you did not think it worth while to take enough trouble to
find him.'

'No; that's not the reason. In fact I dined with him to-night, but I saw
that I couldn't bring him here.'

'Why?'

'Well, he's changed.'

'In what way?'

'He has grown so hopelessly bourgeois.'

The epithet was a light to Clarice. She knew it for the superlative in
Mallinson's grammar of abuse. Bourgeois! The term was the palm of a hand
squashed upon a lighted candle; it snuffed you out. Convicted of
bourgeoisie, you ought to tinkle a bell for the rest of your life, or at
the easiest be confined east of Temple Bar. Applied to Drake the word
connoted animosity pure and simple, animosity suddenly conceived too, for
it was not a week since Mallinson had been boasting of his friendship
with the man. What was the reason of that animosity? Clarice lowered her
eyelashes demurely and smiled.

'I fancied he was your friend,' she said with inquiring innocence.

'I believe I remarked that he was changed.' Mallinson looked up at a
corner of the ceiling as he spoke, and the exasperation was more than
ever pronounced in his voice.

'Mr. Drake,' she went on, and she laid the slightest possible emphasis on
the prefix, 'Mr. Drake has travelled among the natives a good deal, I
think you told me?'

'Yes.'

'It's funny that that should make a man bourgeois.'

Mallinson became flippant.

'I am not so sure,' he said. 'The natives, I should think, are
essentially bourgeois. They love beads, and that's typical of the class.
Evil communications, you know,' and he laughed, but awkwardly and without
merriment.

'Really?' asked Clarice, looking straight at him with grave eyes. She
seemed to be seriously deliberating the truth of his remark. Mallinson's
laughter stopped short. 'There's my aunt beckoning to you,' she said.

Later in the evening she relented towards him, salving her disappointment
with the flattery of his jealousy. She did not, however, relinquish on
that account her intention to make Stephen Drake's acquaintance. She
merely postponed it, trusting that the tides of accident would drift them
together, as indeed they did, though after a longer delay than she had
anticipated.

The occasion of their meeting was provided by the visit of a French
actress to one of the London theatres. Drake and Conway edged into their
stalls just before the curtain rose on a performance of _Frou-Frou_.
During the first act the theatre gradually filled, and wh