“You ask him to come?”

“Of course not!”

“Don’t you want him come?”

“I don’t know whether I do or not.”

Mary looked perplexed.

Clare burst out, “I can’t ask him. He’d feel obliged to come. A man—man like that anyway, would feel after what we’ve been through together that I had a claim on him. Well, I don’t want him to come out of a sense of duty. Don’t you understand?”

Mary shook her head. “If I want something I ask for it.”

“It’s not so simple as all that!”

“Maybe he think he not wanted here.”

“A man’s supposed to take that chance.”