It was just this aspect and this noise of restless activity which had always appealed to Drake, and had satisfied him with an assurance that he was on the road to the fulfilment of his aims.  He had achieved something of his desires, however small.  He was in London working at certain schemes of which he did not doubt the ultimate success.  They were built upon a foundation of knowledge arduously gained and tested.  The rising in Matanga, if it took place, might delay success, but success would surely come.  He might then look forward with confidence to a seat in that Parliament on which the light was burning, to a share perhaps finally in its executive.

But to-night he found that there was something wanting in the contemplation of these aims, something wanting in the very outlook from his window.  He needed Clarice here in his balcony by his side, and he pictured the shine of her eyes bent towards him in the dark.  And the perception of that need held him in check, gave him a hint of warning that the thought of her might become as a wedge driven into the framework of his purposes and splitting them.

He could still draw back, he assured himself.  But if he went on and won!  He felt the blood surging through his veins.  He might win; there was just a chance.  The Gorley incident had made no real difference in Clarice’s friendliness.  When once, indeed, she had grown used to it, she had seemed almost to express some queer sort of sympathy with him.

Drake closed the window and sat down to calculate the time at which he would be sufficiently established to make known his suit.  He fixed that time definitely in July.  July!  The name sounded pleasantly with its ripple of liquid syllables.  Drake found himself repeating it when he should have been at work.  It began to rise to his lips the moment a date was asked of him, as the only date at all worth mentioning.  Fielding came down to Drake’s office in Old Broad Street, in order to apply for shares in ‘Matanga Concessions.’

‘You had better wait,’ said Drake.  ’I will let you know before they are offered to the public.’

‘That will be soon?’

’Not for the moment.  There’s the possibility of this rising.  Let the country quiet down first!’

‘But when do you propose?’

‘July.’

‘July?  That’s a long time to come.’

Drake coloured to the roots of his hair.  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said with evident embarrassment; ’much sooner than that of course.  I was thinking of some one else.’  He made matters worse by a hurried correction of ‘some one’ to ‘something.’

Fielding noticed the embarrassment and the correction, and drew conclusions.  They were conclusions, he thought, of which Mrs. Willoughby should be advised, and he drove to her house accordingly.  He had ceased to feel displeasure at Mrs. Willoughby’s conduct, for since he had studiously refrained from betraying the slightest irritation at Mallinson’s visits, those visits had amazingly diminished.