The other shakes his head. "They had much rather I stayed away; they have taken me en grippe."
"Pooh! Nonsense! You fancy it."
"I think not"—speaking slowly and thoughtfully—"I am not a fanciful person, nor apt to imagine that my acquaintances bother their heads about me one way or another; but when people try their best, in the first instance, to avoid recognising you at all, and on every subsequent occasion endeavour to disappear as soon as you come in sight, it is not a very forced assumption that they are not exactly greedy for your society."
This reasoning is so close that Byng is for the moment silenced; and it is the other who shortly resumes:
"I think it is because I remind them of the past; they have evidently some unpleasant association of ideas with that past. I wonder what it is."
The latter clause is addressed more to himself than to Byng.
"Perhaps some of them have died, or come to grief, and they are afraid of your asking after them," suggests the younger man.
"On the contrary—they are all—one more flourishing than another."
"Well, I would give them one more trial, anyhow; I am sure they would come round. Give them time, and I am sure they would come round!" cries Byng sanguinely; adding, "What could have been pleasanter than Mrs. Le Marchant's manner when you presented her to Miss Wilson?"
The mention of Miss Wilson recalls to Jim the extremely unpleasant moment of that presentation, thus brought back to him—the moment when Amelia had looked so middle-aged, and Cecilia so flashy; recalls to him also the conviction that has been growing upon him since yesterday, of the more than wisdom, the absolute imperative duty on his part, of avoiding a repetition of that comparison which had forced itself upon his notice in the church of San Miniato.