'Still I asked you to bring him. You got my note, I suppose?' Her manner signified a cold request for an explanation.
'I couldn't,' he replied shortly.
'You mean you did not think it worth while to take enough trouble to find him.'
'No; that's not the reason. In fact I dined with him to-night, but I saw that I couldn't bring him here.'
'Why?'
'Well, he's changed.'
'In what way?'
'He has grown so hopelessly bourgeois.'
The epithet was a light to Clarice. She knew it for the superlative in Mallinson's grammar of abuse. Bourgeois! The term was the palm of a hand squashed upon a lighted candle; it snuffed you out. Convicted of bourgeoisie, you ought to tinkle a bell for the rest of your life, or at the easiest be confined east of Temple Bar. Applied to Drake the word connoted animosity pure and simple, animosity suddenly conceived too, for it was not a week since Mallinson had been boasting of his friendship with the man. What was the reason of that animosity? Clarice lowered her eyelashes demurely and smiled.
'I fancied he was your friend,' she said with inquiring innocence.