‘I mean,’ he went on, answering the glance, ’Of course he held the rank over there.  But a captain in Matanga!’ He shrugged his shoulders.  ’There are more honourable titles.’

‘Still I asked you to bring him.  You got my note, I suppose?’ Her manner signified a cold request for an explanation.

‘I couldn’t,’ he replied shortly.

’You 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 when the lights were turned up at its close only one box was empty.  It was upon the first tier next to the stage.  A few minutes after the second act had begun Conway nudged Drake and nodded towards the box.