registered ninety
degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him
from her hard bench, had said:

"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!"

"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an
occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their
conversation. Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her
hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had
suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a
line she did not want him to see.

"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future
towards which he looks! It's only those people whose doors are all
shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way
they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want
to go--only those people are old!"

And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very
young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led
rapidly away. Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again.
Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and
all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted.
But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there
were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to
endure the _etape_ that lay between self and life. Such a little
tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he
dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer. He did not, with any degree of
anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was
waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took
existence in his mind. But he knew that he waited for his own.

It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked
like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he
had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the
old property known as The Dials. The gray house down in Glousceshire
in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its
shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant
suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the
low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces,
the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned
and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own. He wanted very
much to tell Mrs. Falco