‘You don’t suppose I should be offended?’

‘Certainly you would.’

‘Then you know less of me than I thought.’

Her eyes wandered about the room, their smile betokening an uneasy self-consciousness.

‘Christian tells me,’ she continued, ’that you are going to take your holiday in Cornwall.’

’I thought of it.  But perhaps I shan’t leave town at all.  It wouldn’t be worth while, if I go abroad at the end of the year.’

‘Abroad?’ Marcella glanced at him.  ‘What scheme is that?’

’Haven’t I mentioned it?  I want to go to South America and the Pacific islands.  Earwaker has a friend, who has just come back from travel in the tropics; the talk about it has half decided me to leave England.  I have been saving money for years to that end.’

’You never spoke of it—­to me, Marcella replied, turning a bracelet on her wrist.  ‘Should you go alone?’

’Of course.  I couldn’t travel in company.  You know how impossible it would be for me to put up with the moods and idiosyncrasies of other men.’

There was a quiet arrogance in his tone.  The listener still smiled, but her fingers worked nervously.

‘You are not so unsocial as you pretend,’ she remarked, without looking at him.

‘Pretend!  I make no pretences of any kind,’ was his scornful answer.

‘You are ungracious this evening.’

‘Yes—­and can’t hide it.’

‘Don’t try to, I beg.  But at least tell me what troubles you.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Peak replied, drily.

‘Then friendship goes for nothing,’ said Marcella, with a little forced laugh.

’Yes—­in all but a very few human concerns.  How often could you tell me what it is that prevents your taking life cheerfully?’

He glanced at her, and Marcella’s eyes fell; a moment after, there was a suspicion of colour in her cheek.

‘What are you reading?’ Peak asked abruptly, but in a voice of more conventional note.

‘Still Hafiz.’

‘I envy your power of abstraction.’

’Yet I hear that you are deeply concerned about the locomotive powers of the diatomaceaoe?’

Their eyes met, and they laughed—­not very mirthfully.

‘It preserves me from worse follies,’ said Peak.  ’After all, there are ways more or less dignified of consuming time’—­

As he spoke, his ear caught a familiar name, uttered by Christian Moxey, and he turned to listen.  Moxey and Earwaker were again talking of the Rev. Bruno Chilvers.  Straightway disregarding Marcella, Peak gave attention to the men’s dialogue, and his forehead wrinkled into scornful amusement.

‘It’s very interesting,’ he exclaimed, at a moment when there was silence throughout the company, ’to hear that Chilvers is really coming to the front.  At Whitelaw it used to be prophesied that he would be a bishop, and now I suppose he’s fairly on the way to that.  Shall we write letters of congratulation to him, Earwaker?’