“Is it?”

They began again to smoke and talk.

“Nice little thing, What’s-her-name!  What’s her funny name?”

“Laurencine, do you mean?  Yes.”  Lucas spoke coldly, with a careful indifference.  George, to whom insight had not been denied, understood that Everard did not altogether care for Laurencine to be referred to as a little thing, that he had rendered Laurencine sacred by his secret approval.

“I say,” said George, sitting up slightly, and increasing the intimacy of his tone, “devilish odd, wasn’t it, that the Wheeler woman didn’t ask us up?”

Hitherto they had avoided this question in their profound gossip.  It had lain between them untouched, like a substance possibly dangerous and explosive.  Yet they could not have parted without touching it, and George, with characteristic moral courage or rashness, had touched it first.  Lucas was of a mind to reply succinctly that the Wheeler woman’s conduct was not a bit devilish odd.  But sincerity won.  The dismissal at the entrance to the Mansions had affected him somewhat deeply.  It had impaired the perfection of his most notable triumph.  The temptation to release his feelings was too strong.

“Well, if you ask me,” he answered, it was.  After a little pause he went on: 

“Especially seeing that she practically asked me to ask them to dinner.”  His nice features loosened to dissatisfaction.  “The deuce she did!”

“Yes!  Practically asked me!  Anyhow, gave me the tip What can you do?” He implied that, far from deriving unique and unhoped-for glory from the condescension of Irene Wheeler in consenting to dine with him, he had conferred a favour on her by his invitation.  He implied that brilliant women all over London competed for his invitations.  His manner was entirely serious; it probably deceived even himself.  George’s manner corresponded, instinctively, chivalrously; but George was not deceived—­at any rate in the subconscious depth of his mind.

“Exactly!” murmured George.

“Yes” said Lucas.  “She said:  ’I could bring Laurencine with me, if you can get another man.  That would make a four.’  She said she wanted to wake Laurencine up.”

“Did you tell her you should ask me?” George questioned.

“Oh!  She seemed to know all about you, my boy.”

“Well, but she couldn’t know all about me,” said George insincerely.  “Well, if you want to know then, she suggested I should ask you.”

“But she’d never seen me!”

“She’s heard of you.  Mrs. Orgreave, I expect.”

“Odd!...  Odd!” George now pretended to be academically assessing an announcement that had no intrinsic interest for him.  In reality he was greatly excited.

“Well you know what those sort of women are!” Lucas summed up wisely, as if referring to truths of knowledge common among men of their kidney.

“Oh, of course!”

The magazine slid from the knees of the sleeper.  The sleeper snorted and woke up.  The spell was broken.  Lucas rose suddenly.  “Bye-bye!” He was giving an ultimatum as to his departure.