Mr. Le Mesurier’s eyebrows went up at the mention of the day.

‘Mr. Mallinson had talked of you,’ she explained.  ’We seemed to know you already.  I saw that you had landed from an interview in the Meteor, and thought you might have liked to come with your friend.’

The words were spoken indifferently.

‘The Meteor?’ inquired Mr. Le Mesurier.  ’Isn’t that the paper which attacked you, Mr. Drake?  You let yourself be interviewed by it?  I didn’t know that.’

He glanced keenly at his daughter, and Mallinson intercepted the look.  His conviction was proved certain.  There was something concealed, something maybe worth his knowing.

‘The attack was of no importance,’ replied Drake, ’but I wanted it to be known in some quarters that I had landed without losing time.’

‘You replied to the attack?’

‘Not so much that.  I gave the itinerary of the march to Boruwimi.’

Mr. Le Mesurier perceived his daughter’s eyes quietly resting upon him, and checked a movement of impatience, less at the answer than at his own folly in provoking it.  Drake turned to Clarice and was offered a seat by her side.  He realised, now that she was near, talking to him, that his impression of her, gained from the distance between the box and the stalls, did her injustice.  She seemed now the vignette of a beautiful woman, missing the stateliness, perhaps, too, the distinction, but obtaining by very reason of what she missed a counterbalancing charm, to be appreciated only at close quarters, a charm of the quiet kind, diffused about her like a light; winsome—­that was the epithet he applied to her, and remained doubtfully content with it, for there was a gravity too.

Clarice invited him to speak of Matanga, but Drake was reticent on the subject, through sheer disinclination to talk about himself, a disinclination which the girl recognised, and gave him credit for, shooting a comparing glance at Mallinson.

Mr. Le Mesurier, it should be said, remarked this reticence as well, and it gave him an idea.  From Matanga Drake led the conversation back to London, and they fell to discussing the play.

‘You are very interested in it,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I have never seen the play before.’

‘I should hardly have thought it would have suited your taste,’ Conway observed.

’Why?  It’s French of course, but you can discount the sentiment.  There is a stratum of truth left, don’t you think?’

Mallinson raised pitying shoulders.  ‘Of the ABC order perhaps,’ he allowed.

‘I am afraid it appeals to me all the more on that account,’ Drake answered, with a genial laugh.  ’But what I meant really was truth to those people—­truth to the characters presumed.  Consistency is perhaps the better word.  I like to see a play run on simple lines to an end you can’t but foresee.  The taste’s barbarian, I don’t doubt.’