'I believe I remarked that he was changed.' Mallinson looked up at a corner of the ceiling as he spoke, and the exasperation was more than ever pronounced in his voice. 'Mr. Drake,' she went on, and she laid the slightest possible emphasis on the prefix, 'Mr. Drake has travelled among the natives a good deal, I think you told me?' 'Yes.' 'It's funny that that should make a man bourgeois.' Mallinson became flippant. 'I am not so sure,' he said. 'The natives, I should think, are essentially bourgeois. They love beads, and that's typical of the class. Evil communications, you know,' and he laughed, but awkwardly and without merriment. 'Really?' asked Clarice, looking straight at him with grave eyes. She seemed to be seriously deliberating the truth of his remark. Mallinson's laughter stopped short. 'There's my aunt beckoning to you,' she said. Later in the evening she relented towards him, salving her disappointment with the flattery of his jealousy. She did not, however, relinquish on that account her intention to make Stephen Drake's acquaintance. She merely postponed it, trusting that the tides of accident would drift them together, as indeed they did, though after a longer delay than she had anticipated. The occasion of their meeting was provided by the visit of a French actress to one of the London theatres. Drake and Conway edged into their stalls just before the curtain rose on a performance of _Frou-Frou_. During the first act the theatre gradually filled, and when the lights were turned up at its close only one box was empty. It was upon the first tier next to the stage. A few minutes after the second act had begun Conway nudged Drake and nodded towards the box. 'You asked what Miss Le Mesurier was like. There's your answer.' Drake glanced in that direction. He saw a girl in a dress of pink silk, standing in the front of the box, with her hands upon the ledge and leaning her head a little forwards beyond it. The glare striking up from the stage beneath her gave a burnish of copper to her hair and a warm light to her face. She seemed of a fragile figure and with features regular and delicate. Drake received a notion of unimpressive prettiness and turned his attention to the stage. When the lights were raised again in the auditorium, he noticed that Fielding was in the box talking to a gentleman with white hair, and that Mallinson was seated by the side of Miss Le Mesurier. The latter couple were gazing about the house and apparently discussing the audience,--at all events conversing with considerable animation. Drake commented upon their manner and drew the conventional inference. 'Oh dear, no!' answered Conway energetically. 'Of course Mallinson's aim is apparent enough, poor fellow.' A touch of scorn in the voice, which rang false, negatived the pity of the phrase. 'But I don't suppose for an instant that she has realised it. She would be the last to do so. No, she has a fad in her head about authors just for the moment.'