For all her sympathy Mrs. Willoughby was forced to bite her lips.  Clarice, however, was not in the mood to observe the effect which her words produced on others.  She continued:  ’It’s much the best thing to do, because whatever I did it would always be the same.  I could never make him content.  Connie, if you only knew the strain of it all!  He’s always wanting to be something different.  One day a clerk, with a nice quiet routine, another a soldier, another a ——­’ she hesitated, and gave Constance an extra squeeze—­’a colonist, and fire off Maxim guns.  If you could only see him!  He sits in front of the fire, with his glasses on, and talks about the roaring world of things.’

This time Mrs. Willoughby really laughed.  She turned the laugh into a cough, and cleared her throat emphatically once or twice.  Clarice sat up and looked at her reproachfully, then she said, ’I know it’s absurd.  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry myself, b-b-but I usually cry.  And then in his books he’s—­he’s always his own hero.’  With that Clarice reached at once the climax of her distress and the supreme charge of her indictment.  The rest was but sighs and sobs and disconnected phrases.  Finally she fell asleep; later she was caressed into eating lunch, taken for a drive, and sent home subsequently greatly mollified and relieved.

Mrs. Willoughby refrained from tendering advice that afternoon.  There was nothing sufficiently tangible in the story which she had heard.  In fact the only thing really tangible was the girl’s distress in telling it, and that Mrs. Willoughby attributed to some dispute between her and Sidney that morning.  She could not know that Clarice’s outburst had been preceded by that chance meeting in the Park with Stephen Drake, for Clarice had made no allusion to it of any kind.  She felt, besides, that advice in any case would be of little use.  The couple had to work out their own salvation, and time and experience alone could help them.  Events seemed to justify Mrs. Willoughby’s reticence, for the winter blossomed into spring, the spring flowered into summer, and the Mallinson household remained to the external view unshaken.

Drake’s visits to Bentbridge increased in frequency as the prospect of the general election became more real.  A snap vote in the House of Commons on a minor question of administrative expenditure decided the matter suddenly towards the end of June.  The Government determined on a dissolution.  Fielding took Clarice Mallinson into dinner at Mr. Le Mesurier’s house on the day after the date of the dissolution was fixed.  He noticed that she looked worn.  There were shadows about her eyes, her colour had lost its freshness, and there was a melancholy droop about the corners of her mouth.  Fielding suggested the advisability of a change.

‘I’m to have one,’ said she.  ’I’m going down to stay with my uncle at Bentbridge in a week’s time.’

‘At Bentbridge?’ asked Fielding sharply.  ‘For the election.’