Athalie

Clive would so far consent to degrade himself for the honour of Alma

Mater.

There was much honour done her that evening.

Toward the beginning of the end Clive said: "I can't sit up all night,

Cecil. What do you do for a living, anyway?"

"Bank a bit."

[Illustration: "It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil

Reeve one stormy midnight."] "Oh, that's just amusement. What do you work at?"

"I didn't mean that kind of bank!" said Reeve, annoyed. All sense of

humour fled him when hammerlocked with Bacchus. At such psychological

moments, too, he became indiscreet. And now he proposed to Clive an

excursion amid what he termed the "high lights of Olympus," which the

latter discouraged.

"All right then. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give a Byzantine

party! I know a little girl--"

"Oh, shut up!"

"She's a fine little girl, Clive--"

"This is no hour to send out invitations."

"Why not? Her name is Catharine--"

"Dry up!"

"Catharine Greensleeve--"

"What!"

"Certainly. She's a model at Winton's joint. She's a peach.

Appropriately crowned with roses she might have presided for

Lucullus."

Clive said: "By that you mean she's all right, don't you? You'd better

mean it anyway!"

"Is that so?"

"Yes, that's so. I know her sister. She's a charming girl. All of them

are all right. You understand, don't you?"

"I understand numerous things. One of 'em's Catharine Greensleeve. And

she's some plum, believe me!"

"That's all right, too, so stop talking about it!" retorted Clive

sharply.

"Sure it's all right. Don't worry, just because you know her sister,

will you?"

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 debutante

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.