He looked at her. “You mean I’ve no chance?”
“You put things so baldly! Can’t you see for yourself that nobody has any chance—yet? Your Claudia is launched on a career; it mayn’t be a big one, but for concentration and determination, or any other five-syllabled things, commend me to a young woman on a career. She hasn’t a thought to fling on anything else.”
“It won’t last,” he said stubbornly.
“That’s the first gleam of intelligence you’ve shown. No, it won’t last, because there are tendencies, eternal tendencies, in us, which decline to be ignored, and one day she will have to face them. But not yet.”
“Fenwick gets on with her a lot better than I do,” remarked Harry, with apparent inconsequence.
There was a pause.
“He has more experience,” she said lightly.
“Ah, you don’t like him, you don’t do him justice. He’s an awfully clever fellow, quite different from the Johnnies she’d generally meet. It’s natural she should prefer him.” He spoke dejectedly, and she laughed.
“I’ve never set you up on a pinnacle for admiration, have I? It is quite natural, only it isn’t the case. He may be occupied with her,” she added a little bitterly, “but at present she’s taken up with herself.”
Harry fired.