He sat there alone for five minutes, with plenty to
think of; above all with his sense of having suddenly been dropped
by a charming woman overlaid now by other impressions and in fact
quite cleared and indifferent. He hadn't yet had so quiet a
surrender; he didn't in the least care if nobody spoke to him
more. He might have been, by his attitude, in for something of a
march so broad that the want of ceremony with which he had just
been used could fall into its place as but a minor incident of the
procession. Besides, there would be incidents enough, as he felt
when this term of contemplation was closed by the reappearance of
little Bilham, who stood before him a moment with a suggestive
"Well?" in which he saw himself reflected as disorganised, as
possibly floored. He replied with a "Well!" intended to show that
he wasn't floored in the least. No indeed; he gave it out, as the
young man sat down beside him, that if, at the worst, he had been
overturned at all, he had been overturned into the upper air, the
sublimer element with which he had an affinity and in which he
might be trusted a while to float. It wasn't a descent to earth to
say after an instant and in sustained response to the reference:
"You're quite sure her husband's living?"
"Oh dear, yes.
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