"Well," said Bulstrode desperately, "if I did, it's the first woman that has ever cried for me."
As the reason why Bulstrode had never married was again in Paris, he went up in the late afternoon to see her.
The train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging her doors had been turned away, but Bulstrode was admitted. The man told him, "Mrs. Falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else.
When he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as invariably did every place in which they found themselves together, into one small circle containing himself and one woman. Mrs. Falconer said at once to Bulstrode:
"Jimmy, you're in trouble—in one of your quandaries. What useless good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's tooth to you?"
Bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish look. His friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded with one of those almost imperceptible nuances that the faces of those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing.
"I'm not a victim." Bulstrode's tone was regretful. "One might say, on the contrary, this time that I was possibly overpaid."
"Yes?"
"I haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time."
"I've been automobiling in Touraine." Mrs. Falconer gave him no opportunity to be delinquent.