Mrs.St.Pierre Lawrence knew enough, at all events, Colville reflected, rather ruefully, to disillusionise a schoolgirl, much more a woman of the world, knowing good and evil.
He had not lived forty years in the world, and twenty years in that world of French culture which digs and digs into human nature, without having heard philosophers opine that, in matters of the heart, women have no illusions at all, and that it is only men who go blindfold into the tortuous ways of love.

But he was too practical a man to build up a false hope on so frail a basis as a theory applied to a woman's heart.
He bought a flower for his buttonhole then, and squared his shoulders, without any definite design.

It was a mere habit--the habit acquired by twenty years of unsuccessful enterprise, and renewed effort and deferred hope--of leaving no stone unturned.
His cab wheeled into the Rue Lafayette, and the man drove more slowly, reading the numbers on the houses.

Then he stopped altogether, and turned round in his seat.
"Citizen," he said, "there is a great crowd at the house you named.

It extends half across the street.