"You haven't been asking people, I suppose?"
"We haven't asked him," said Alice calmly. She took her tea and looked at her hostess with perfect composure.
"He couldn't come just now without being invited, you know," Irene suggested.
"Perhaps not," said Alice, rather doubtfully. "I don't think he wants to come." She paused, and then added deliberately, "And I don't want him to come." Now she flushed a very little, although her face remained steady and calm. She did not seem to shrink from the discussion to which her friend opened the way. "It would be nonsense to pretend that he's what he used to be to us," she went on. "You know that as well as I do, Irene."
"I don't know anything about it," declared Irene pettishly. "I think you're hard on him; all men are foolish sometimes; it doesn't last long." Had not Lord Bowdon soon returned to grace, soon and entirely?
"Oh, it's just that you see what they are," said Alice. She set down her cup and gazed absently out of the window. Irene was irritated; her view had been that momentary weaknesses in a man were to be combated, and were not to be accepted as final indications of what the man was; she had acted on that view in regard to her husband, and, as has been stated, on the whole she thanked heaven. She thought that Alice also might, if she chose, bring herself to a position in which she could thank heaven moderately; but it was not to be done by slamming the door in the face of a prodigal possibly repentant. She cast about for a delicate method of remarking that Ora Pinsent was going to America.
"It was quite inevitable that he should drift away from us," Alice continued. "I see that now. I don't think we're any of us bitter about it."
"He needn't go on drifting away unless you like."
"It isn't very likely that I should make any efforts to call him back," said Alice, with a faint smile.
"Why not?" asked Irene crossly.