"You are very good, and you have a potentiality of being very bad. If you had been very bad, with a potentiality of being very good, you would also have fascinated me. I like potentiality in others, for there is none in myself. I shall never be any better and I could not be any worse, and I don't care two straws either way. Let's talk about something more interesting than myself. What? Oh! the box at the Frivolity. Very well, shall we go, my child, or would you like to change your mind and go to something else?"
It was quite late that night when he put her carefully into his brougham, shook hands with her, refused to hear a word of thanks, and gave the coachman the address in Fulham to which he was to take her.
Five years had done a good deal. They had nearly, but not quite, killed Lord Alcester. This winter night, bent, wizened, wrapped in furs, and leaning heavily on his stick, he crawled slowly along Piccadilly on his way from one club to another.
An ungloved hand touched his arm, and a hoarse woman's voice said, "Half a moment, my lord."
He gave her one quick glance from under his heavy eyebrows. Those eyes were not dead yet.
"It won't do," said Lord Alcester.
The girl laughed bitterly. "I thought you might like to look at your work," she said. "You were the ruin of me five years ago."
"My good woman," said Lord Alcester. "If I stopped in Piccadilly to talk to all the women who think I have been the ruin of them, it would stop the traffic. Let me go, please."
She still clung to his arm. "Just half a moment," she said. "The work-girl whom you gave a pretty dress to, and a string of pearls, and a fan that once belonged to a princess. You remember?"