"What sex is London, do you suppose?" he mused.

"I hadn't ever thought," Chant said.

"It was a woman once," Estabrook went on. "One calls a city she, yes? But it doesn't seem very feminine any more.'1

"She'll be a lady again in spring," Chant replied.

"I don't think a few crocuses in Hyde Park are going to make much difference," Estabrook said. "The charm's gone out of it." He sighed. "How far now?"

"Maybe another mile."

"Are you sure your man's going to be there?"

"Of course."

"You've done this a lot, have you? Been a go-between, I mean. What did you call it... a facilitator?"

"Oh, yes," Chant said. "It's in my blood." That blood was not entirely English. Chant's skin and syntax carried traces of the immigrant. But Estabrook had grown to trust him a little, even so.

"Aren't you curious about all of this?" he asked the man.

"It's not my business, sir. You're paying for the service, and I provide it. If you wanted to tell me your reasons—"

"As it happens, I don't."

"I understand. So it would be useless for me to be curious, yes?"

That was neat enough, Estabrook thought. Not to want what couldn't be had no doubt took the sting from things. He might need to learn the trick of that before he got too much older; before he wanted time he couldn't have. Not that he demanded much in the way of satisfactions. He'd not been sexually insistent with Judith, for instance. Indeed, he'd taken as much pleasure in the simple sight of her as he'd taken in the act of love. The sight of her had pierced him, making her the enterer, had she but known it, and him the entered. Perhaps she had known, on reflection. Perhaps she'd fled from his passivity, from his ease beneath the spike of her beauty. If so, he would undo her revulsion with tonight's business. Here, in the hiring of the assassin, he would prove himself. And, dying, she would realize her error. The thought pleased him. He allowed himself a little smile, which vanished from his face when he felt the car slowing and glimpsed, through the misted window, the place the facilitator had brought him to.