'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 Valréas 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 Valréas.'
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 Valréas at all events.'