Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hôtel de Paris bidding his friends good-night. Watching them, at least one of them, enter in under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been before. Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he said good-by and how he was himself left alone. And yet, had Mrs. Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her friend more cold and more constrained. In his correct evening dress with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments--her big feathered hat under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt. She touched his arm, saying: "Look, Jimmy." "Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked? See, she's all alone, how curious! She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose. _What_ can have happened to the man who has been with her all this time? Where is the Prince Pollona?" As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin gown over the pebbles and the grass. She disappeared in the lighted doorway of the Casino. "You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully, "quite a bear. I believe you're angry! Dear Jimmy, you may, I promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I won't even criticise or tease. I promise you next time you shall go sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!" "Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for myself----" (When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.) "What, then, what do you wish? Can't you tell me?" He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of those unusual creatures who can keep a secret." The woman's face changed. He saw the shadow that crossed it. "Come," she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..."