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 her vindication, and Miss Le Mesurier walked across the room and said good-bye to Mrs. Willoughby.  Conway rose at the same time, and the pair left the house together.

‘What a liar that man is!’ said Fielding.

‘What man?’ asked Mrs. Willoughby.

’Why, Mallinson.  He said he was doing no work because he had no incentive.  As a matter of fact, I happen to know that he is working rather hard.’

‘What did Clarice say?’

‘What you might expect.  She melted into sympathy.’

Mrs. Willoughby looked puzzled.  ’Yet she went off with Percy Conway immediately afterwards,’ she said, and then laughed at her recollections of a previous visit from that gentleman.