"Well, I've joined a couple of clubs. One's rather a swagger sort of place—the prince got me in there; and then I belong to the Lambs, where you yourself go sometimes. I generally look in at one or the other of them during the evening."
"You see much of Miss Maurel?"
John shook his head gloomily.
"Not as much as I should like," he confessed. "She seems to think and dream of nothing but this play of yours. I am hoping that when it is once produced she will be more free."
"I gather," Graillot concluded, "that, to put it concisely and truthfully, you are the most bored man in London. There is something behind all this effort of yours, my friend, to fit yourself, the round human being, into the square place. Speak the truth, now! Treat me as a father confessor."
John swung round upon his heel. In the clear light it was obvious that he was a little thinner in the face and that some of the tan had gone from his complexion.
"I am staying up here, and going on with it," he announced doggedly, "because of a woman."
Graillot stopped eating, placed the remains of his cake in the saucer of his teacup, and laid it down. Then he leaned back in his chair and balanced his finger-tips one against the other.
"A woman!" he murmured. "How you astonish me!"
"Why?"