Clarice paid the same tribute, but she phrased it differently, and the difference was significant.  She said, ’Isn’t it strange that he should be here—­in a frock-coat?  I half thought the room would dissolve and we should find ourselves at Boruwimi.’  Fielding started.  Coming from her lips the name sounded strange; yet she spoke it without the least hesitation.  For the moment it had plainly one association in her thoughts, and only one.  It sounded as though every recollection of Gorley had vanished from her mind.  ‘Oh, he must get in!’ she whispered, clasping her hands upon her knees.

After Drake had concluded, Mallinson moved a resolution.  He spoke fluently, Fielding remarked, and with a finished phrasing.  The very finish, however, imparted an academic effect; he was, besides, hampered by the speech which had preceded his.  The audience began to shuffle restlessly; they were capping a rich Burgundy with vin ordinaire, and found the liquor tasteless to the palate.  Fielding perceived from certain movements at his side that Clarice shared in the general restlessness.  She gave an audible sigh of relief and patted her hands with the most perfunctory applause when her husband sat down.  ’You are staying with Mr. Drake at the Three Nuns?’ she asked, turning to Fielding.

‘Only till to-morrow.  I leave by the night-train.’

‘Oh, you are going back!’

’Yes.  You see Drake and Burl are both here.  Somebody must keep the shop open, if it’s only to politely put the customers off.’  He interpreted the look of surprise upon Mrs. Mallinson’s face.  ’Yes, I have been gradually sucked into the whirlpool,’ and he laughed with a nod towards Drake.

She turned to him with her eyes shining.  ‘And you are proud of it.’

Fielding smiled indulgently.  ‘That’s a woman’s thought.’

‘But you don’t deny it’s truth.’

Clarice said nothing more until the meeting had terminated and the party was in the street.  They walked from the Town Hall to Drake’s hotel, Clarice and Fielding a few paces behind the rest.  The first words which she spoke showed to him that her thoughts had not altered their drift.  ‘Yes, you have changed,’ she said, and implied unmistakably, ‘for the better.’

‘You only mean,’ laughed Fielding, ‘that I have given up provoking you.’

‘No, no,’ she said.  ‘Besides, you evidently haven’t given that up.’

‘Then in what way?’

‘I shall offend you.’

‘I can hardly think so.’

‘Well, you were becoming a kind of—­’

‘Say it.’

‘Paul Pry.’

To a gentleman whose ambition it had been to combine the hermit’s indifference to social obligations with an indulgence in social festivities, the blow was a cruel one; and the more cruel because he realised that Clarice’s criticism contained a grain of truth.  He hit back cruelly.  ’Drake tells me he thinks of taking a place here.  I suppose he means to marry.’