Clive shrugged. Reeve was in a troublesome mood, and he left him and went home feeling vaguely irritated and even less inclined than ever to see Athalie; which state of mind perplexed and irritated him still further.
He went to one or two dances during the week—a thing he had not done lately. Then he went to several more; also to a number of débutante theatre parties and to several suppers. He rather liked being with his own sort again; the comfortable sense of home-coming, of conventionalism, of a pleasant social security, appealed to him after several months' irresponsible straying from familiar paths. And he began to go about the sheep-walks and enjoy it, slipping back rather easily into accustomed places and relations with men and women who belonged in a world never entered, never seen by Athalie Greensleeve, and of the existence of which she was aware only through the daily papers.
He wrote to her now and then. Always she answered his letter the following day.
About the end of April he wrote:
"Dear Athalie,
"About everything seems to conspire to keep me from seeing you; business—in a measure,—social duties; and, to tell the truth, a mistaken but strenuous opposition on my mother's part.
"She doesn't know you, and refuses to. But she knows me, and ought to infer everything delightful in the girl who has become my friend. Because she knows that I don't, and never did affect the other sort.
