Clarice spent the week in defining the relationship in which she and Drake were henceforth to stand towards each other.  They were to be animated by a stern spirit of duty,—­by the same spirit, in fact, which had compelled Drake to court-martial Gorley in Africa, and subsequently to detail the episode to her.  Duty was to keep them apart.  She came to think of duty as a row of footlights across which they could from time to time look into each other’s eyes.

Clarice felt that there was something very reassuring and protective in this notion of duty.  It justified her in buying a copy of Frou-Frou, which lay upon the bookstall at Bentbridge railway station, and in studying it continuously all the way from Bentbridge to London.  She was impelled to purchase it by a recollection that Drake had first been introduced to her at a performance of that play, and his criticisms returned to her thoughts as she read the dialogue.  The play had seemed true to him, the disaster inevitable—­given the particular characters, and she bore the qualification particularly in mind.  There was a difference between Frou-Frou and a woman animated by a sense of duty; a difference of kind, rather than of degree.  Sidney Mallinson remarked the book which she was reading, but he made no comment whatsoever.

The next morning he paid a long call upon the editor of the Meteor.

Meanwhile, Drake was devoting himself to the business of the Matanga Company, with an assiduity unusual even for him.  Fielding discovered that he seldom left the city before ten at night, and felt it incumbent to expostulate with him.  ’You can’t go on like this for much longer, you know.  You had better take a rest.  There’s no need for all this work.’

‘There is,’ replied Drake.  ’I want to clear off arrears, because I am not sure that I oughtn’t to go out again to Matanga.  You see I can do it quite easily.  Parliament meets in a fortnight to vote supplies.  It will adjourn, it’s thought, three weeks later.  I could leave England in September, and get back easily in time for the regular sessions.’

‘But why should you go at all?’ asked Fielding.  ’You haven’t been back a year as it is.’

‘I know,’ said Drake slowly.  ’But it seems to me that it would inspire confidence, and that sort of thing, if one of us were out there as much as possible.  You see, thanks to you and Burl, I can leave everything here quite safely,’ and he returned to his desk as though the discussion was ended.

A week later he received an invitation to dinner from Mr. Le Mesurier, and the invitation was so worded that he could find no becoming excuse to decline it.  The dinner was given, the note stated, in order to celebrate his victory at Bentbridge.  Fielding and he went together, and when they arrived, they found Mallinson taking off his coat in the hall.

‘Where have you been all this time?’ asked Fielding.  ’I haven’t seen you about.’