"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at her. "Heavens, poor dear!" A thousand questions came to his lips, but he asked her none. He was mastering the feelings her personality, her trouble, and the night, aroused. He also decided to go at once, while there was still time.
"It is very droll that this money should have come from you;" she repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had before remarked as strange. "Even now you don't know me, do you? Don't you know who I am?"
"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before, but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't think I know you. Should I?"
"You have seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have actually noticed me? You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something in me to like?"
"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself! Of course I've seen you and remarked you with your friend."
Here she bit her lip and put up her hand. "Oh, please," she frowned, "Oh, please!"
Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and said he was much at fault, he should remember. But here the girl smiled. "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not quite unknown. I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren Company,' I am Felicia Warren—now, haven't you seen me play!"
He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not! Oh, but he knew her name and her success; they were famous. He wished he could have assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...!
Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was so alluringly spread.
"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London." She paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes. "Don't you remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a shooting-box in Glousceshire? Don't you remember...?"