he
moment. I shall go as soon as the House rises.'

'I thought you didn't mean to leave London again.'

'One gets over ideas of that kind. After all, my interests lie in
Matanga, and one gets a kind of affection for the place which makes
your fortune.'

The recantation was uttered with sufficient awkwardness. But Clarice was
too engrossed in her own thoughts to notice his embarrassment. 'Do you
remember when I first met you?' she asked. 'It was at a performance of
_Frou-Frou_.'

'I remember quite well,' said he. 'I was rather struck with the play.'

'I have been reading it lately.'

Drake started at the significant tone in which the words were spoken.
'Really?' he said, with an uneasy laugh. 'What impressed me was that
scene at Venice, where Gilberte and De Valreas read over the list of
plays in the Paris newspapers, and realise what they have thrown away,
and for how little. It seemed to me the saddest scene I had ever
witnessed.'

'Yes,' interposed Clarice quickly. 'But because Paris and its theatres
meant so much to them. I remember what you said, that everything in the
play seemed so true just to those characters, Gilberte and De Valreas.'

She glanced at him as she uttered the last name. Drake understood that
she was drawing a distinction between him and the fashionable lounger
of the play.

'Besides,' she went on, dropping her voice, 'Gilberte left a child behind
her. Her unhappiness turned on that.'

'In a way, no doubt, but the loss of friends, station, home, counts
for something--for enough to destroy her liking for De Valreas at
all events.'

'For De Valreas!' insisted Clarice. 'He was not worth the sacrifice.' She
paused for a moment, and then continued diffidently. 'There's something
else; I hardly like to tell you it. You wouldn't notice it from seeing
the play. I didn't; but it came to me when I read the book. I think the
play's absolutely untrue, yes, even to those characters, in one respect.'

'And what's that?' asked Drake.

Clarice glanced round. Her neighbours, she perceived, were talking.
Mrs. Willoughby was too far off to hear. She dropped her voice to a yet
lower key and said, 'They make the husband kill the lover in the duel.
It's always the end in books and plays; but really the opposite of that
would happen.'

Drake leant back in his chair and stared at her. 'What do you mean?'

'Hush!' she said warningly, and turning away she spoke for a little
to the man on the other side o