that I couldn't bring him here.'

'Why?'

'Well, he's changed.'

'In what way?'

'He has grown so hopelessly bourgeois.'

The epithet was a light to Clarice. She knew it for the superlative in
Mallinson's grammar of abuse. Bourgeois! The term was the palm of a hand
squashed upon a lighted candle; it snuffed you out. Convicted of
bourgeoisie, you ought to tinkle a bell for the rest of your life, or at
the easiest be confined east of Temple Bar. Applied to Drake the word
connoted animosity pure and simple, animosity suddenly conceived too, for
it was not a week since Mallinson had been boasting of his friendship
with the man. What was the reason of that animosity? Clarice lowered her
eyelashes demurely and smiled.

'I fancied he was your friend,' she said with inquiring innocence.

'I believe I remarked that he was changed.' Mallinson looked up at a
corner of the ceiling as he spoke, and the exasperation was more than
ever pronounced in his voice.

'Mr. Drake,' she went on, and she laid the slightest possible emphasis on
the prefix, 'Mr. Drake has travelled among the natives a good deal, I
think you told me?'