initial commit of ebook 13546HEADmain

2 files changed, 10912 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/13546.txt b/old/13546.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e23adf1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13546.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10912 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dark House, by I. A. R. Wylie
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dark House
+
+Author: I. A. R. Wylie
+
+Release Date: September 27, 2004  [eBook #13546]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK HOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE DARK HOUSE
+
+by
+
+I. A. R. WYLIE
+
+Author of "The Daughter of Brahma," "The Shining Heights," etc.
+
+1922
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+1
+
+The cigar was a large one and Robert Stonehouse was small.  At the
+precise moment, in fact, when he leant out of the upstairs bedroom
+window, instinctively seeking fresh air, he became eight years old.  He
+did not know this, though he did know that it was his birthday and that
+a birthday was a great and presumably auspicious occasion.  His
+conception of what a birthday ought to be was based primarily on one
+particular event when he had danced on his mother's bed, shouting, "I'm
+five--I'm five!" in unreasonable triumph.  His mother had greeted him
+gravely, one might say respectfully, and his father, who when he did
+anything at all did it in style, had given him a toy fort fully
+garrisoned with resplendent Highland soldiers.  And there had been a
+party of children whom, as a single child, he disliked and despised and
+whom he had ordered about unreproved.  From start to finish the day had
+been his very own.
+
+Soon afterwards his mother disappeared.  They said she was dead.  He
+knew that people died, but death conveyed nothing to him, and when his
+father and Christine went down to Kensal Green to choose the grave, he
+picked flowers from the other graves and sent them to his mother with
+Robert's love.  Christine had turned away her face, crying, and James
+Stonehouse, whose sense of drama never quite failed him, had smiled
+tragically; but Robert never even missed her.  His only manifestation
+of feeling was a savage hatred of Christine, who tried to take her
+place.  For a time indeed his mother went completely out of his
+consciousness.  But after a little she came back to him by a secret
+path.  In the interval she had ceased to be connected with his evening
+prayer and his morning bath and all the other tiresome realities and
+become a creature of dreams.  She grew tall and beautiful.  He liked to
+be alone--best of all at night when Christine had put the light out--so
+that he could make up stories about her and himself and their new
+mystical intimacy.  He knew that she was dead but he did not believe
+it.  It was just one of those mysterious tricks which grown-up people
+played on children to pretend that death was so enormously conclusive.
+Though he had buried the black kitten with his own hands in the back
+garden, and had felt the stiffness of its pitiful body and the dank
+chill of its once glossy fur, he was calmly sure that somewhere or
+other, out of sight, it still pursued its own tail with all the
+solemnity of kittenhood.
+
+One of these nights the door would open and his mother would be there.
+In this dream of her she appeared to him much as she had done once in
+Kensington High Street when he had wilfully strayed from her side and
+lost himself, and, being overwhelmed with the sense of his smallness
+and forlornness, had burst into a howl of grief.  Then suddenly she had
+stood out from the midst of the sympathetic crowd--remote, stern and
+wonderful--and he had flung himself on her, knowing that whatever she
+might do to him, she loved him and that they belonged to one another,
+inextricably and for all time.
+
+So she stood on the threshold of his darkened room, and at that vision
+his adoration became an agony and he lay with his face hidden in his
+arms, waiting for the touch of her hand that never came, until he slept.
+
+Christine became his mother.  Every morning at nine o'clock she turned
+the key of the pretentious mansion where James Stonehouse had set up
+practice for the twentieth time in his career, and called out, "Hallo,
+Robert!" in her clear, cool voice, and Robert, standing at the top of
+the stairs in his night-shirt, called back, "Hallo, Christine!" very
+joyously because he knew it annoyed Edith, his father's new wife,
+listening jealously from behind her bedroom door.
+
+And then Christine scrubbed his ears, and sometimes, when there were no
+servants, a circumstance which coincided exactly with a periodical
+financial crisis, she scrubbed the floors.  Robert's first hatred had
+changed rapidly to the love he would have given his mother had she
+lived.  There was no romance about it.  Christine was not omnipotent as
+his mother had become.  He knew that she, too, was often terribly
+unhappy, and their helplessness in the face of a common danger gave
+them a sort of equality.  But she was good to him, and her faithfulness
+was the one sure thing in his convulsed and rocking world.  He clung to
+her as a drowning man clings to a floating spar, and his father's, "I
+wish to God, Christine, you'd get out and leave us alone," or, "I won't
+have you in my house.  You're poisoning my son's mind against me,"
+reiterated regularly at the climax of one of the hideous rows which
+devastated the household, was like a blow in the pit of the stomach,
+turning him sick and faint with fear.
+
+But Christine never went.  Or if she went she came back again.  As
+James Stonehouse said in a burst of savage humour, "Kick Christine out
+of the front door and she'll come in at the back."  Every morning, no
+matter what had happened the night before, there was the quiet,
+resolute scratch of her latch-key in the lock, and when James
+Stonehouse, sullen and menacing, brushed rudely against her in the
+hall, she went on steadily up the stairs to where Robert waited for
+her, and they fell into each other's arms like two sorrowful comrades.
+Ever afterwards he could conjure her up at will as he saw her then.
+She was like a porcelain marquise over whom an intangible permanent
+shadow had been thrown.
+
+He knew dimly that she had "people" who disapproved of her devotion,
+and that over and over again, by some new mysterious sacrifice, she had
+staved off disaster.  He knew that she had been his father's friend all
+her life and that his mother and she had loved one another.  There was
+some bond between these three that could not be broken, and he, too,
+was involved--fastened on as an afterthought, as it were, but so firmly
+that there could be no escape.  Because of it Christine loved him.  He
+knew that he was not always a very lovable little boy.  Even with her
+he could be obstinate and cruel--cruel because she was so much less
+than his mother had become--and there were times when, with a queer
+unchildish power of self-visualization, he saw himself as a small
+fair-haired monster growing black and blacker with the dark and evil
+spirit that was in him.  But Christine never seemed to see him like
+that.  There was some borrowed halo about his head that blinded her.
+It did not matter how bad he was, she had always love and excuses ready
+for him.  And she was literally all he had in the world.
+
+But even she had not been able to make his birthday a success.  Indeed,
+ever since that one outstanding day all the celebrations had been
+failures, though he had never ceased to look forward to them.  For days
+before his last birthday he had suspected everyone of secret delicious
+plottings on his behalf.  He had come down to breakfast shaking with
+anticipation.  All through the morning he had waited for the surprise
+that was to be sprung on him, hanging at everyone's heel in turn, and
+it was only towards dusk that he knew with bitter certainty that he had
+been forgotten.  A crisis had wiped him and his birthday out
+altogether.  And then he had cried, and James Stonehouse, moved to
+generous remorse, had rushed out and bought a ridiculously expensive
+toy having first borrowed money from Christine and scolded her at the
+top of his booming voice for her heartless neglect of his son's
+happiness.
+
+Christine had argued with him in her quiet obstinate way.
+
+"But, Jim dear, you can't afford it----"
+
+There had been one of those awful rows.
+
+And Robert had crept that night, unwashed, into bed, crying more
+bitterly than ever.
+
+But this time he had really had no hope at all.  Yesterday had seen a
+crisis and a super-crisis.  In the afternoon the butcher had stood at
+the back door and shouted and threatened, and he had been followed
+almost immediately by a stout shabby man with a bald head and
+good-natured face, who announced that he had come to put a distraint on
+the furniture which, incidentally, had never been paid for.  Edith
+Stonehouse, with an air of outraged dignity, had lodged him in the
+library and regaled him on a bottle of stout and the remnants of a cold
+joint, and it was understood that there he would remain until such time
+as Christine raised 40 pounds from somewhere.
+
+These were mere incidents--entirely commonplace--but at six o'clock
+James Stonehouse himself had driven up in a taxi, to the driver of
+which he had appeared to hand the contents of all his pockets, and a
+moment later stormed into the house in a mood which was, if anything,
+more devastating than his ungovernable rages.  He had been
+exuberant--exultant--his good-humour white-hot and dangerous.  Looking
+into his brilliant blue eyes with their two sharp points of light, it
+would have been hard to tell whether he was laughing or mad with anger.
+His moods were like that--too close to be distinguished from one
+another with any safety.  Christine, who had just come from
+interviewing the bailiff, had looked grave and disapproving.  She knew
+probably, that her disapproval was useless and even disastrous, but
+there was an obstinate rectitude in her character that made it
+impossible for her to humour him.  But Edith Stonehouse and Robert had
+played up out of sheer terror.
+
+"You do seem jolly, Jim," Edith had said in her hard, common voice.
+"It's a nice change, you bad-tempered fellow----"
+
+She had never really recovered from the illusion that she had captured
+him by her charms rather than by her poor little fortune, and when she
+dared she was arch with an undertone of grievance.  Robert had capered
+about him and held his hand and made faces at Christine so that she
+should pretend too.  Otherwise there would be another row.  But
+Christine held her ground.
+
+"The butcher came this afternoon," she said.  "He says he is going to
+get out a summons.  And the bailiff is in again.  It's about the
+furniture.  You said it was paid for.  I can't think how you could be
+so mad.  I rang up Melton's about it, and they say the firm wants to
+prosecute.  If they do, it might mean two years'----"
+
+Robert had stopped capering.  His knees had shaken under him with a
+new, inexplicable fear.  But James Stonehouse had taken no notice.  He
+had gone on spreading and warming himself before the fire.  He had
+looked handsome and extraordinarily, almost aggressively, prosperous.
+
+"I shall write a sharp note to Melton's.  Damned impertinence.  An old
+customer like myself.  Get the fellow down into the kitchen.  The whole
+thing will be settled tomorrow.  I've had an amazing piece of luck.
+Amazing.  Met Griffiths--you remember my telling you about Alec
+Griffiths, don't you, Christine?  Student with me at the University.
+Got sent down together.  Wonderful fellow--wonderful.  Now he's in
+business in South Africa.  Made his pile in diamonds.  Simply rolling.
+He's going to let me in.  Remarkable chap.  Asked him to dinner.  Oh,
+I've arranged all that on my way up.  Gunther's are sending round a
+cook and a couple of waiters and all that's necessary.  For God's sake,
+Christine, try and look as though you were pleased.  Get into a pretty
+dress and join us.  Must do him well, you know.  Never do for a man
+like that to get a wrong impression.  And I want him to see Robert.  He
+knew Constance before we were married.  Put him into his best
+clothes----"
+
+"He hasn't got any," Christine had interrupted bitterly.
+
+For a moment it had seemed as though the fatal boundary line would be
+crossed.  Stonehouse had stared at his son, his eyes brightening to an
+electric glare as they picked out the patches of the shabby sailor-suit
+and the frantic, mollifying smile on Robert's face had grown stiff as
+he had turned himself obediently about.
+
+"Disgraceful.  I wonder you women are not ashamed, the way you neglect
+the child--I shall take him to Shoolbred's first thing to-morrow and
+have him fitted out from top to toe----"  The gathering storm receded
+miraculously.  "However, he can't appear like that.  For God's sake,
+get the house tidy, at any rate----"
+
+So Robert had been bustled up stairs and the bailiff lured into the
+kitchen, where fortunately he had become so drunk that he had had no
+opportunity to explain to the French chef and the two waiters the real
+reason for his presence and his whole-hearted participation in the
+feast.
+
+From the top of the stairs Robert had watched Christine go into dinner
+on his father's arm, and Edith Stonehouse follow with a black-coated
+stranger who had known his mother.  He had listened to the talk and his
+father's laughter--jovial and threatening--and once he had dived
+downstairs and, peering through the banisters like a small blond
+monkey, had snatched a cream meringue from a passing tray.  Then for a
+moment he had almost believed that they were all going to be happy
+together.
+
+That had been last night.  Now there was nothing left but the bailiff,
+still slightly befuddled, an incredible pile of unwashed dishes and an
+atmosphere of stale tobacco.  James Stonehouse had gone off early in a
+black and awful temper.  It seemed that at the last moment the
+multi-millionaire had explained that owing to a hitch in his affairs he
+was short of ready cash and would be glad of a small loan.  Only
+temporary, of course.  Wouldn't have dreamed of asking, but meeting
+such an old friend in such affluent circumstances----
+
+So the eighth birthday had been forgotten.  Robert himself could not
+have explained why grief should have driven him to his father's
+cigars-box.  Perhaps it was just a _beau geste_ of defiance, or a
+reminder that one day he too would be grown up and free.  At any rate,
+it was still a very large cigar.  Though he puffed at it painstakingly,
+blowing the smoke far out of the window so as to escape detection, the
+result was not encouraging.  The exquisite mauve-grey ash was indeed
+less than a quarter of an inch long when his sense of wrong and
+injustice deepened to an overwhelming despair.  It was not only that
+even Christine had failed him--everything was failing him.  The shabby
+plot of rising ground opposite, which justified Dr. Stonehouse's
+contention that he looked out over open country, had become immersed in
+a loathsome mist, greenish in hue, in which it heaved and rolled and
+undulated like an uneasy reptile.  The house likewise heaved, and
+Robert had to lean hard against the lintel of the window to prevent
+himself from falling out.  A strange sensation of uncertainty--of
+internal disintegration--obsessed him, and there was a cold moisture
+gathering on his face.  He felt that at any moment anything might
+happen.  He didn't care.  He wanted to die, anyhow.  They had forgotten
+him, but when he was dead they would be sorry.  His father would give
+him a beautiful funeral, and Christine would say, "We can't afford it,
+Jim," and there would be another awful scene.
+
+In the next room Edith and Christine were talking as they rolled up the
+Axminster carpet which, since the bailiff had no claim on it, was to go
+to the pawnbroker's to appease the butcher.  The door stood open, and
+he could hear Edith's bitter, resentful voice raised in denunciation.
+
+"I don't know why I stand it.  If my poor dear father, Sir Godfrey,
+knew what I was enduring, he would rise from the grave.  Never did I
+think I should have to go through such humiliation.  My sisters say I
+ought to leave him--that I am wanting in right feeling, but I can't
+help it.  I am faithful by nature.  I remember my promises at the
+altar--even if Jim forgets his----"
+
+"He didn't promise to keep his temper or out of debt," Christine said.
+
+Edith sniffed loudly.
+
+"Or away from other women.  Oh, it's no good, Christine, I know what I
+know.  There's always some other woman in the background.  Only
+yesterday I found a letter from Mrs. Saxburn--that red-haired vixen he
+brought home to tea when there wasn't money in the house to buy bread.
+I tell you he doesn't know what faithfulness means."
+
+Robert, rising for a moment above his own personal anguish, clenched
+his fist.  It was all very well--he might hate his father, Christine
+might hate him, though he knew she didn't, but Edith had no right.  She
+was an outsider--a bounder----
+
+"He is faithful to his ideal," Christine answered.  "He is always
+looking for it and thinking he has found it.  And except for Constance
+he has always been mistaken."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of you," Christine explained.  "There have been so
+many of them--and all so terribly expensive--never cheap or
+common----"
+
+They were dragging the carpet out into the landing.  Their voices
+sounded louder and more distinct.
+
+"I could bear almost everything but his temper," Edith persisted
+breathlessly.  "He's like a madman----"
+
+"He's ill--sometimes I think he's very ill----"
+
+"Oh, you've always got an excuse for him, Christine.  You never see him
+as he really is.  I can't think why you didn't marry him yourself.  I'm
+sure he asked you.  Jim couldn't be alone with a woman ten minutes
+without proposing.  And everyone knows how fond you are of him and of
+that tiresome child----"
+
+Robert Stonehouse gasped.  The earth reeled under his feet.  The stump
+of the cigar rolled off the windowsill, and he himself tumbled from his
+chair and was sick--convulsively, hideously sick.  For a moment he
+remained huddled on the floor, half unconscious, and then very slowly
+the green, soul-destroying mist receded and he found Christine bending
+over him, wiping his face, with her pocket-Handkerchief.
+
+"Robert, darling, why didn't you call out?"
+
+"He's been smoking," Edith's voice declared viciously from somewhere in
+the background.  "I can smell it.  The horrid little boy----"
+
+"I didn't--I didn't----"  He kept his feet with an enormous effort,
+scowling at her.  He lied shamelessly, as a matter of course and
+without the faintest sense of guilt.  Everyone lied.  They had to.
+Christine knew that as well as anyone.  Not that lying was of the
+slightest use.  His father's temper fed on itself and was independent
+alike of fact or fiction.  But you could no more help lying to him than
+you could help flinching from a red-hot poker.  "I didn't," he repeated
+stubbornly, and all the while repeating to himself, "It's my
+birthday--and they've forgotten.  They don't care."  But he would
+rather have died then and there than have reminded them.  He would not
+even let them see how miserable he was, and to stop himself from crying
+he kept his eyes fixed on Edith Stonehouse, who in turn measured him
+with that exaggerated and artificial horror which she considered
+appropriate to naughty children.
+
+"Oh, how can you, Robert?  Don't you know what happens to wicked little
+boys who tell lies?"
+
+He hated her.  He hated the red, coarse-skinned face, the tight mouth
+and opaque brown eyes and the low, stupid forehead with its
+old-fashioned narrow fringe of dingy hair.  He knew that in spite of
+Sir Godfrey and the family estate of which she was always talking, she
+was common to the heart--not a lady like Christine and his mother--and
+her occasionally adopted pose of authority convulsed him with a blind,
+ungovernable fury.  He was too young to understand that she meant
+well--was indeed good-natured and kindly enough in her natural
+environment--and as she advanced upon him now, in reality to smooth his
+disordered hair, he drew back, an absurd miniature replica of James
+Stonehouse in his worst rages, his fists clenched, his teeth set on a
+horrible recurring nausea.
+
+"If you touch me, Edith--I'll--I'll bite you----"
+
+"Hush, darling--you mustn't speak like that----"
+
+"Oh, don't mind me, Christine.  I'm not accustomed to respect in this
+house.  I don't expect it.  'Edith,' indeed!  Did you ever hear such a
+thing!  I can't think what Jim was thinking about to allow it.  He
+ought to call me 'Mother'----"
+
+Robert tore himself free from Christine's soothing embrace.  He had a
+moment's blinding, heart-breaking vision of his real mother.  She stood
+close to him, looking at him with her grave eyes, demanding of him that
+he should avenge this insult.  And in a moment he would be sick again.
+
+"I wouldn't--wouldn't call you mother--not if you killed me.  I
+wouldn't if you put me in the fire----"
+
+"Robert, dear."
+
+"You see, Christine--but of course you won't see.  You're blind where
+he's concerned.  What a wicked temper.  Deceitful, too.  I'm sure I'm
+glad he's not my child.  He's going to be like his father."
+
+"I want to be like my father.  I wouldn't be like you for anything."
+
+"Robert, be quiet at once or I shall punish you."
+
+She was angry now.  She had been greatly tried during the last
+twenty-four hours, and to her he was just an alien, hateful little boy
+who made her feel like an interloper in her own house, bought with her
+own money.  She seized him by the arm, shaking him viciously, and he
+flew at her, biting and kicking with all his strength.
+
+It was an ugly, wretched scene.  It ended abruptly on the landing,
+where she let go her hold with a cry of pain and Robert Stonehouse
+rolled down the stairs, bumping his head and catching his arm cruelly
+in the banisters.  He was on his feet instantly.  He heard Christine
+coming and he ran on, down into the hall, where he caught up his little
+boots, which she had been cleaning for him, and after a desperate
+struggle with the latch, out into the road--sobbing and blood-stained,
+heart-broken with shame and loneliness and despair.
+
+
+
+2
+
+His relationship with the Brothers Banditti across the hill was
+peculiar.  It was one of Dr. Stonehouse's many theories of life that
+children should be independent, untrammelled alike by parental
+restrictions and education, and except on the very frequent occasions
+when this particular theory collided with his comfort and his
+conviction that his son was being disgracefully neglected, Robert lived
+the life of a lonely and illiterate guttersnipe.  He did not know he
+was lonely.  He did not want to play with the other children in the
+Terrace.  But he did know that for some mysterious reason or other they
+did not want to play with him.  The trim nursemaids drew their starched
+and shining darlings to one side when he passed, and he in turn scowled
+at them with a fierce contempt to which, all unknown, was added two
+drops of shame and bitterness.  But even among the real guttersnipes of
+the neighbourhood he was an outcast.  He did not know how to play with
+other children.  He was ignorant alike of their ways and their games,
+and, stiff with an agonizing shyness, he bore himself before them
+arrogantly.  It was natural that they in turn hated him.  Like young
+wolves they flaired a member of a strange and alien pack--a creature
+who broke their unwritten laws--and at first they had hunted him
+pitilessly, throwing mud and stones at him, pushing him from the
+pavement, jeering at him.  But they had not reckoned with the
+Stonehouse rages.  He had flung himself on them.  He had fought them
+singly, by twos and threes--the whole pack.  In single combat he had
+thrashed the grocer's boy who was several inches taller and two years
+older than himself.  But even against a dozen his white-hot fury, which
+ignored alike pain and discretion, made him dangerous and utterly
+unbeatable.  From all encounters he had come out battered,
+blood-stained, literally in shreds, but clothed in lonely victory.
+
+Now they only jeered at him from a safe distance.  They made cruel and
+biting references to the Stonehouse _menage_, flying with mock shrieks
+of terror when he was unwise enough to attempt pursuit.  Usually he
+went his way, his head up, swallowing his tears.
+
+But the Brothers Banditti belonged to him.
+
+On the other side of the hill was a large waste plot of ground.  A
+builder with more enterprise than capital had begun the erection of
+up-to-date villas but had gone bankrupt in the process, and now nothing
+remained of his ambition but a heap of somewhat squalid ruins.  Here,
+after school hours, the Brothers met and played and plotted.
+
+They had not always been Banditti.  Before Robert's advent they had
+been the nice children of the nicest people of the neighbourhood.
+Their games had been harmless, if apathetic, and they had always gone
+home punctually and clean.  The parents considered the waste land as a
+great blessing.  Robert had come upon them in the course of his lonely
+prowlings, and from a distance had watched them play hide and seek.  He
+had despised them and their silly game, but, on the other hand, they
+did not know who he was and would not make fun of him and taunt him
+with unpaid bills, and it had been rather nice to listen to their
+cheerful voices.  The ruins, too, had fired his imagination.  He had
+viewed them much as a general views the scene of a prospective battle.
+And then--strangest attraction of all--there had been Frances Wilmot.
+She was different from any other little girl he had ever seen.  She was
+clean and had worn a neat green serge dress with neat brown shoes and
+stockings which toned with her short curly brown hair, but she did not
+shine or look superior or disdainful.  Nor had she been playing with
+her companions, though they ran back to her from time to time as though
+in some secret way she had led their game.  When Robert had come upon
+her she was sitting on the foundations of what was to have been a
+magnificent portico, her arms clasped about her knees, and a curious
+intent look on her pointed delicate face.  That intent look, as he was
+to discover, was very constant with her.  It was as though she were
+always watching something of absorbing interest which no one else could
+see.  Sometimes it amused her, and and then a flicker of laughter ran
+up from her mouth to her grey eyes and danced there.  At other times
+she was sorry.  Her face was like still water, ruffled by invisible
+winds and mirroring distant clouds and sunshine.
+
+Robert had watched her, motionless and unobserved, for several minutes.
+It had been a very unhappy day.  Christine had gone off in a great
+hurry on some dark errand in the city connected with "raising money" on
+a reversion and had forgotten to wash him, and though he did not like
+being washed, the process did at least make him feel that someone cared
+about him.  Now at sight of this strange little girl an almost
+overpowering desire to cry had come over him--to fling himself into
+someone's arms and cry his heart out.
+
+She had not sat there for long.  She had got up and moved
+about--flitted rather--so that Robert, who had never heard of a
+metaphor, thought of a brown leaf dancing in little gusts of wind.  And
+then suddenly she had seen him and stood still.  His heart had begun to
+pound against his ribs.  For it was just like that that in his dreams
+his mother stood, looking at him.  She, too, had grey eyes, serene and
+grave, penetrating into one's very heart.
+
+And after a moment she had smiled.
+
+"Hallo!"
+
+Robert's voice, half choked with tears had croaked back "Hallo!" and
+she had come a little nearer to him.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Robert--Robert Stonehouse."
+
+"Where do you come from?"
+
+He had jerked his head vaguely in the direction of the hill, for he did
+not want her to know.
+
+"Over there."
+
+"Why are you crying?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"Would you like to play with us?"
+
+"Yes--I--I think I would."
+
+She had called the other children and they had come at once and stood
+round her, gazing wide-eyed at him, not critically or unkindly, but
+like puppies considering a new companion.  The girl in the green serge
+frock had taken him by the hand.
+
+"This is a friend of mine, Robert Stonehouse.  He's going to play with
+us.  Tag--Robert!"
+
+And she had tapped him on the arm and was off like a young deer.
+
+All his awkwardness and shyness had dropped from him like a disguise.
+No one knew that he was a strange little boy or that his father owed
+money to all the tradespeople.  He was just like anyone else.  And he
+had run faster than the fastest of them.  He had wanted to show her
+that he was not just a cry baby.  And whenever he had come near her he
+had been all warm with happiness.
+
+In three days the nice children had become the Brothers Banditti with
+Robert Stonehouse as their chief.  Having admitted the stranger into
+their midst he had gone straight to their heads like wine.  He was a
+rebel and an outlaw who had suddenly come into power.  At heart he was
+older than any of them.  He knew things about reversions and bailiffs
+and life generally that none of them had ever heard of in their
+well-ordered homes.  He was strong and knew how to fight.  The nice
+children had never fought but they found they liked it.  Once, like an
+avenging Attila, he had led them across the hill and fallen upon his
+ancient enemies with such awful effect that they never raised their
+heads again.  And the Banditti had returned home whooping and drunk
+with victory and the newly discovered joy of battle.  His hand was
+naturally against all authority.  He led them in dark plottings against
+their governesses and nursemaids, and even against the Law itself as
+personified by an elderly, somewhat pompous policeman whose beat
+included their territory.  On foggy afternoons they pealed the
+doorbells of such as had complaint against them, and from concealment
+gloated over the indignant maids who had been lured down several
+flights of stairs to answer their summons.  And no longer were they
+nice children who returned home clean and punctual to the bosom of
+their families.
+
+Very rarely had the Banditti showed signs of revolt against Robert's
+despotism, and each time he had won them back with ease which sowed the
+first seeds of cynicism in his mind.  It happened to be another of the
+elder Stonehouse's theories--which he had been known to expound
+eloquently to his creditors--that children should be taught the use of
+money, and at such times as the Stonehouse family prospered Robert's
+pocket bulged with sums that staggered the very imagination of his
+followers.  He appeared among them like a prince--lavish, reckless,
+distributing chocolates of superior lineage with a haughty magnificence
+that brought the disaffected cringing to his feet.
+
+But even with them he was not really happy.  At heart he was still a
+strange little boy, different from the rest.  There was a shadow over
+him.  He knew that apart from him they were nice, ordinary children,
+and that he was a man full of sorrows and mystery and bitter
+experience.  He despised them.  They could be bought and bribed and
+bullied.  But if he could have been ordinary as they were, with quiet,
+ordinary homes and people who loved one another and paid their bills,
+he would have cried with joy.
+
+When he did anything particularly bold and reckless he looked out of
+the corners of his eyes at Frances Wilmot to see if at last he had
+impressed her.  For she eluded him.  She never defied his authority,
+and very rarely took part in his escapades.  But she was always there,
+sometimes in the midst, sometimes just on the fringe, like a bird,
+intent on business of its own, coming and going in the heart of human
+affairs.  Sometimes she seemed hardly to be aware of him, and sometimes
+she treated him as though there were an unspoken intimacy between them
+which made him glow with pride for days afterwards.  She would put her
+arm about him and walk with him in the long happy silence of
+comradeship.  And once, quite unexpectedly, she had seemed gravely
+troubled.  "Are you a good little boy, Robert?" she had asked, as
+though she really expected him to know, and relieve her mind about it.
+
+And afterwards he had cried to himself, for he was sure that he was not
+a good little boy at all.  He was sure that if she knew about his
+father and the bailiffs she would turn away in sorrow and disgust.
+
+He knew that she too was different from the others, but with a greater
+difference than his own.  He knew that the Banditti looked up to her
+for the something in her that he lacked, that if she lifted a finger
+against him, his authority would be gone.  And the knowledge darkened
+everything.  It was not that he cried about his leadership.  He would
+have thrown it at her feet gladly.  But he longed to prove to her that
+if he was not a good little boy he was, at any rate, a terribly fine
+fellow.  He had to make her look up to him and admire him like the rest
+of the Banditti, otherwise he would never hold her fast.  And
+everything served to that end.  Before her he swaggered monstrously.
+He did things which turned him sick with fear.  Once he had climbed to
+the top of a dizzy wall in the ruins, and had postured on the narrow
+edge, the bricks crumbling under him, the dust rising in clouds, so
+that he looked like a small devil dancing in mid-air.  And when he had
+reached ground again he had found her reading a book.  Then, the
+plaudits of the awestruck Banditti sounded like jeers.  Nothing had
+ever hurt so much.
+
+About the time that the Banditti first came into his life the vision of
+his mother began to grow not less wonderful, but less distinct.  She
+seemed to stand a little farther off, as though very gradually she were
+drawing away into the other world, where she belonged.  And often it
+was Frances who played with him in his secret stories.
+
+
+
+3
+
+He threw his indoor shoes into the area.  In the next street, beyond
+pursuit, he sat down on a doorstep and, put on his boots, lacing them
+with difficulty, for he was half blind with tears and anger.  He could
+not make up his mind how to kill Edith.  Nothing seemed quite bad
+enough.  He thought of boiling her in oil or rolling her down hill in a
+cask full of spikes, after the manner of some fairy story that
+Christine had told him.  It was not the pain, though his arm felt as
+though it had been wrenched out of its socket, and the blood trickled
+in a steady stream from his bumped forehead.  It was the indignity, the
+outrage, the physical humiliation that had to be paid back.  It made
+him tremble with fury and a kind of helpless terror to realize that,
+because he was little, any common woman could shake and beat him and
+treat him as though he belonged to her.  He would tell his father.
+Even his father, who had so far forgotten himself as to marry such a
+creature, would see that there were things one couldn't endure.  Or he
+would call up the Banditti and plot a devastating retaliation.
+
+In the meantime he was glad he had bitten her.
+
+He walked on unsteadily.  The earth still undulated and threatened
+every now and then to rise up like a wave in front of him and cast him
+down.   He was growing cold and stiff, too, in the reaction.  He had
+stopped crying, but his teeth chattered and his sobs had degenerated
+into monotonous, soul-shattering hiccoughs.  Passers-by looked at him
+disapprovingly.  Evidently that nasty little boy from No. 10 had been
+fighting again.
+
+He had counted on the Banditti, but the Banditti were not on their
+usual hunting-ground.  An ominous silence answered the accustomed
+war-cry, uttered in an unsteady falsetto, and the ruins had a more than
+usually dejected look, as though they had suddenly lost all hope of
+themselves.  He called again, and this time, like an earth-sprite,
+Frances Wilmot rose up from a sheltered corner and waved to him.  She
+had a book in her hand, and she rubbed her eyes and rumpled up her
+short hair as though rousing herself from a dream.
+
+"I did hear you," she said, "but I was working something out.  I'll
+tell you all about it in a minute.  But what's happened?  Why is your
+face all bleeding?"
+
+She seemed so concerned about him that he was glad of his wounds.  And
+yet she had the queer effect of making him want to cry again.  That
+wouldn't do.  She wouldn't respect him if he cried.  He thrust his
+hands deep into his pockets and knitted his fair brows into a fearful
+Stonehouse scowl.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing.  I've had a row--at home.  That's all.  My father's
+new wife h-hit me--and I b-bit her.  Jolly hard.  And then I fell
+downstairs."
+
+"Why did she hit you?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  She's just a beast----"
+
+"Of course you know.  Don't be silly."
+
+"Well, she said I'd been smoking, and I said I hadn't----"
+
+"Had you?  You look awfully green."
+
+"Yes, I had."
+
+"What's the good of telling lies?"
+
+"It's no good telling the truth," Robert answered stolidly.  "They only
+get crosser than ever.  She hadn't any right to hit me.  She's not even
+a relation."
+
+"She's your step-mother."
+
+He began to tremble again uncontrollably.
+
+"She's n-not.  Not any sort of a mother.  My mother's dead."
+
+It was the first time he had ever said it, even to himself.  It threw a
+chill over him, so that for a moment he stopped thinking of Edith and
+his coming black revenge.  He had done something that could never be
+undone.  He had closed and locked a great iron door in his mother's
+face.  "She's just a beast," he repeated stubbornly.  "I'd like to kill
+her."
+
+Frances considered him with her head a little on one side.  It was like
+her not to enter into any argument.  One couldn't tell what she was
+thinking.  And yet one knew that she was feeling things.
+
+"I'd wipe that blood off," she said.  "It's trickling on to your
+collar.  No, not with your hand.  Where's your hanky?"
+
+He tried to look contemptuous.  He did, in fact, despise handkerchiefs.
+The nice little girls in the Terrace had handkerchiefs, ostentatiously
+clean.  He had seen them, and they filled his soul with loathing.   Now
+he was ashamed.  It seemed that even Frances expected him to have a
+handkerchief.
+
+"I haven't got one," he said.
+
+"How do you blow your nose, then?"
+
+"I don't," he explained truculently.
+
+She executed one of her queer little dances, very solemnly and intently
+and disconcertingly.  It seemed to be her way of withdrawing into
+herself at critical moments.  When she stopped he was sure she had been
+laughing.  Laughter still twinkled at the corners of her mouth and in
+her eyes.
+
+"Well, I'm going to tidy you up, anyhow.  Come sit down here."
+
+He obeyed at once.  It comforted him just to be near her.  It was like
+sitting by a fire on a cold day when you were half frozen.  Something
+in you melted and came to life and stretched itself, something that was
+itself gentle and compassionate.  It was difficult to remember that he
+meant to kill Edith frightfully, though his mind was quite made up on
+the subject.  Meantime Frances had produced her own handkerchief--a
+large clean one--and methodically rubbed away the blood and some of the
+tear stains, and as much of the dirt as could be managed without soap
+and water.  This done, she refolded the handkerchief with its soiled
+side innermost, and tied it neatly round the wounded head, leaving two
+long ends which stood up like rabbit's ears.  A gust of April wind
+wagged them comically, and made mock of the sorrowful, grubby face
+underneath.  Even Frances, who was only nine herself, must have seen
+that the sorrow was not the ordinary childish thing that came and went,
+leaving no trace.  In a way it was always there.  When he was not
+laughing and shouting you saw it--a careworn, anxious look, as though
+he were always afraid something might pounce out on him.  It ought to
+have been pathetic, but somehow or other it was not.  For one thing, he
+was not an angel-child, bearing oppression meekly.  He was much more
+like a yellow-haired imp waiting sullenly for a chance to pounce back,
+and the whole effect of him was at once furtive and obstinate.  Indeed,
+anyone who knew nothing of the Stonehouse temper and duns and forgotten
+birthdays would have dismissed him as an ugly, disagreeable little boy.
+
+But Frances Wilmot, who knew nothing of these things either, crouched
+down beside him, her arm about his shoulder.
+
+"Poor Robert!"
+
+He began to hiccough again.  He had to clench his teeth and his fists
+not to betray the fact that the hiccoughs were really convulsively
+swallowed sobs asserting themselves.  He wanted to confide in her, but
+if she knew the truth about his home and his people she wouldn't play
+with him any more.  She would know then that he wasn't nice.  And
+besides, he had some dim notion of protecting her from the things he
+knew.
+
+"You t-t-tied me up jolly well," he said.  "It's comfy now.  It was
+aching hard."
+
+"I like tying up things," she explained easily, "You see, I'm going to
+be a doctor."
+
+The rabbit's ears stopped waving for a minute in sheer astonishment.
+
+"Girls aren't doctors."
+
+"Yes, they are.  Heaps of them.  I'm reading up already, in that book.
+It's all about first-aid.  There's the bandage I did for you.  You can
+read how it's done."
+
+He couldn't.  And he was ashamed again.  In his shame he began to
+swagger.
+
+"My father's a doctor--awfully clever----"
+
+"Is he?  How jolly!  Why didn't you tell me?  Has he lots of patients?"
+
+"Lots.  All over the world.  But he doesn't think much of other
+doctors.  L-licensed h-humbugs, he calls them."
+
+She drew away a little, her face between her hands, and he felt that
+somehow he had failed again--that she had slipped through his fingers.
+If only for a moment she had looked up to him and believed in him the
+evil spirit that was climbing up on to his shoulders would have fled
+away.  There was a stout piece of stick lying amidst the rubble at his
+feet, and he took it up and felt it as a swordsman tests his blade.
+
+"I'm going to be a doctor too," he said truculently.  "A big doctor.  I
+shall make piles of money, and have three ass-assistants.  P'r'aps, if
+you're any good you shall be one of them."
+
+She did not answer.  The intent, observing look had come into her eyes.
+The cool wind lifted the brown hair so that it was like a live thing
+floating about her head.  She seemed as lovely to him as his mother.
+He wanted terribly to say to her, "It's my birthday, Francey, and they
+haven't even wished me many happy returns;" but that would have shown
+her how little he was, and how unhappy.  Instead, he began to lunge and
+parry with an invisible opponent, talking in a loud, fierce voice.
+
+"I wish the others would come.  I've got a topping plan.  Edith goes
+shopping 'bout six o'clock when it's almost dark.  We'll wait at the
+corner of John Street and jump out at her and shriek like Red Indians.
+And then she'll drop dead with fright.  She's such a silly beast----"
+
+Then to his amazement he saw that Francey had grown quite white.  Her
+mouth quivered.  It was as though she were going to cry.  And he had
+never seen her cry.
+
+"They--they aren't coming, Robert."
+
+"N-not coming?  W-why not?"
+
+"There's been a row.  Someone complained.  Their people won't let them
+come any more.  Not to play with you.  They say--they say----"
+
+He went on fighting, swinging his sword, over his head, faster and
+faster.  Someone was pressing his heart so that he could hardly
+breathe.  It was all over.  They knew.  Everything was going.  Finished.
+
+"What do they say?"
+
+"They say you're not a nice little boy----"
+
+There were some tall weeds growing out of the tumbled bricks.  He
+slashed at them through the mist that was blinding him.  He would cut
+their heads off, one after another--just to show her.
+
+"I don't care--I don't care----"
+
+"That's why I waited this afternoon.  I wanted to tell you.  And that
+I'd come--if you liked--sometimes--as often as I could----"
+
+"I don't care--I don't care," he chanted.
+
+One weed had fallen, cut in two as by a razor.  Now another.  You had
+to be jolly strong to break them clean off like that.  He wasn't
+missing once.
+
+"Don't!"
+
+"I shall.  Why shouldn't I?  You couldn't do it like that."
+
+Another.  No one to play with any more.  Never to be able to pretend
+again that one was just like everyone else.  People drawing away and
+saying to each other, "He's not a nice little boy!"
+
+"Please--please, don't, Robert!"
+
+"Why not?  They're only weeds--beastly, ugly things."
+
+"They've not done you any harm.  It's a shame to hurt them.  I like
+them."
+
+"They're no good.  It's practice.  I'm a soldier.  I'm cutting the
+enemy to pieces."
+
+A red rage was mounting in him.  He hardly knew that she had stood up
+until he saw her face gleaming at him through the mist.  She was whiter
+than ever, and her eyes had lost their distant look and blazed with an
+anger profounder, more deadly, than his own.
+
+"You shan't!"
+
+"Shan't I?"
+
+She caught the descending stick.  He tried to tear it from her, and
+they fought each other almost in silence, except for the sound of their
+quick, painful breath.  He grew frantic, twisting and writhing.  He
+began to curse her as his father cursed Christine.  But her slim brown
+wrists were like steel.  And suddenly, looking into her eyes he saw
+that she wasn't angry now.  She knew that she was stronger than he.
+She was just sorry for him, for everything.
+
+He dropped the stick.  He turned on his heel, gulping hard.
+
+"I don't fight with girls," he said.
+
+He walked away steadily with his head up.  He did not once look back at
+her.  But as he climbed the hill he seemed to himself to grow smaller
+and smaller, more and more tired and lonely.  He had lost her.  He
+would never play with her again.  The Brothers Banditti had gone each
+to his home.  They sat by the fireside with their people, and were nice
+children.  To-morrow they would play just as though nothing had
+happened.  And Francey would be there, dancing in and out----
+
+He stumbled a little.  The hiccoughs were definitely sobs, hard-drawn,
+shaking him from head to foot.  It was his birthday.  And at the bottom
+of the hill, hidden in evening mist, the big dark house waited for him.
+
+
+
+4
+
+There was light showing in the dining-room window, so that he knew his
+father had come home.  At that all his sorrow and sense of a grievous
+wrong done to him was swallowed up in abject physical terror.  Even
+later in life, when things had shrunk into reasonable proportions, it
+was difficult for him to see his father as others had seen him, as an
+unhappy not unlovable man, gifted with an erratic genius which had been
+perverted into an amazing facility for living on other people's money,
+and cursed with the temper of a maniac.  To Robert Stonehouse his
+father was from first to last the personification of nightmare.
+
+He stood now in the deep shadow of the porch, trying to make up his
+mind to ring the bell.  His legs and arms had become ice-cold and
+refused to move.  There did not seem to be anything alive in him except
+his heart, which was beating all over him, in his throat and head and
+body, with a hundred terrible little hammers.  He thought of the Prince
+in the story which Christine had read aloud to him.  The Prince, who
+was a fine and dashing fellow, had gone straight to the black enchanted
+cave where the dragon lived, and had thumped on the door with the hilt
+of his gold sword and shouted: "Open, Sesame!"  And when the door
+opened, he had gone straight in, without turning a hair, and slain the
+dragon and rescued the Princess.
+
+Somehow the story did not make him braver.  He had no sword, and his
+clothes were not of the finest silk threaded with gold.  He was a small
+boy in a patched sailor-suit, with a bandage round his head and a dirty
+face--cold, hungry and buffeted by a day of storms.  He wished he could
+stay there in the shadow until he died, and never have to fight anyone
+again, or screw himself to face his father, or live through any more
+rows.  But it seemed you didn't die just because you wanted to.  All
+that happened was that you grew colder and more miserable, knowing that
+the row would be a great deal worse when it came.  Goaded by this
+reasoning, he crept down the area steps to the back door which, by a
+merciful chance, had been left unlocked, and made his way on tiptoe
+along the dark stone passage to the kitchen.
+
+It was a servantless period.  But there was a light in the servants'
+living-room, and the red comforting glow of a fire.  The bailiff lived
+there.  Robert could hear him shuffling his feet in the fender, and
+sniffing and clearing his throat as though the silence bothered him,
+and he were trying to make himself at home.  For a moment Robert longed
+to go in and sit beside him, not saying anything, but just basking in
+the quiet warmth, protected by the presence of the Law which seemed so
+astonishingly tolerant in the matter of the Stonehouse shortcomings.
+For the bailiff was a good-natured man.  He had endeavoured to make it
+clear to Robert from the beginning, by means of sundry winks and
+smiles, that he understood the whole situation, which was one in which
+any gentleman might find himself, and that he meant to act like a
+friend.  But Robert had only scowled at him.  And even now, frightened
+as he was, he disdained all parley.  The bailiff was an enemy, and when
+it came to a fight the Stonehouse family stood shoulder to shoulder.
+So he crept past the cheerful light like a hunted mouse, and up the
+stairs to the green-baize door, which shut off the kitchen from the
+library and dining-room.
+
+It was an important door.  Dr. Stonehouse had had it made specially to
+muffle sounds from the servants' quarters whilst he was working.  He
+had never worked, and there had been very rarely any servants to
+disturb him, but the door remained invested with a kind of solemnity.
+Among other virtues it opened at a touch, itself noiseless.
+
+To Robert it was the veritable entrance to the dragon's cave.  On one
+side of it everything was dim and quiet.  And then it swung back, and
+you fell through into the dragon's clutches.  You heard the awful roar,
+and your heart fainted within you,
+
+He fell over the top step.  He felt he was going to be sick again.  It
+was the old, familiar sound.  He had heard it so often, it was so much
+part of his daily life that it ought not to have frightened him.  But
+it was always new, always more terrifying.  Each time it had new notes
+of incalculable menace.  It was like a brutal hammer, crashing down on
+bruised flesh and shrinking, quivering nerves, never quite killing you,
+but with each blow leaving you less capable of endurance.
+
+His father, Christine and Edith were in the dining-room.  Robert knew
+they were all there, though he could not see them.  The dining-room
+door at the end of the unlit passage stood half open, showing the
+handsome mahogany sideboard and the two Chippendale chairs on either
+side guarding it like lions.  They had a curious tense, still look, as
+though what they saw in the hidden side of the room struck them stiff
+with astonishment and horror.
+
+Dr. Stonehouse was speaking.  His voice was so low-pitched that Robert
+could not hear what he said.  It was like the murderous, meaningless
+growling of a mad dog; every now and then it seemed to break free--to
+explode into a shattering roar--and then with a frightful effort to be
+dragged back, held down, in order that it might leap out again with a
+redoubled violence.  It was punctuated by the sharp, spiteful smack of
+a fist brought down into the open hand.
+
+Edith whined and once Christine spoke, her clear still voice patient
+and resolute.
+
+Robert crouched where he had fallen.  The baize door swung back, and
+touched him very softly like a hand out of the dark.  It comforted him.
+It reminded him that he had only to choose, and it would stand between
+him and this threatening terror--that it would give him time to rush
+back down the stone stairs--out into the street--further and further
+till they would never find him again.  But he could not move.  He
+couldn't leave Christine like that.  His heart was sick with pity for
+her.  Why did his father speak to her like that?  Didn't he see how
+good and faithful she was?  Didn't he know that he, Robert, his son,
+had no one else in the whole world?
+
+His father was speaking more clearly--shouting each word by itself.
+
+"You understand what I say, Christine.  Either you do what I tell you,
+or you get out of here; and, by God, this time you shan't come back.
+You'll never set eyes on him again."
+
+"I shall always take care of Robert.  I promised Constance when she was
+dying.  She begged of me----"
+
+"It's a lie--a damned lie!  You're not fit to have control over my son.
+You can't be trusted.  You're a bad friend----"
+
+"I have done all I can.  I have told you there is only one thing
+left--to sell this house---start afresh."
+
+"Very well, then.  That's your last word--and mine."
+
+Suddenly it was still.  The stillness was more terrible than anything
+Robert had ever heard.  He gulped and turned like a small,
+panic-stricken animal.  At the bottom of the stairs against the light
+from the kitchen he could see the bailiff's bulky, honest shadow.
+
+"Look 'ere, little mister, what's wrong up there?  Anything I can
+do----"
+
+The silence was gone.  It was broken by the overturning of a chair, by
+a quiet, sinister scuffling--Edith's voice whining, terrified, thrilled
+by a silly triumph.
+
+"Don't--don't, Jim.  Remember yourself----"
+
+The door was dashed open, and something fell across the light, and
+there was Christine huddled beneath the sideboard, her head resting
+against its cruel corner.  Her face was towards Robert.  He was not to
+forget it so long as he lived.  It was so white and still, so angerless.
+
+His paralysing terror was gone.  He leapt to his feet.  He raced down
+the passage, flinging himself on his father, beating him with his
+fists, shrieking:
+
+"You devil--you devil!"
+
+After that ho did not know what happened.  He seemed to be enveloped in
+a cloud of struggling figures.  He heard the bailiff's voice booming,
+"Come now, sir, this won't do; I am surprised at a gentleman like you!"
+and his father's answer, incoherent, shaken with rage and shame.  Then
+he must have found his way upstairs.  He never remembered how he got
+there, but he was lying in his bed, in all his clothes, his head hidden
+beneath the blankets, twitching from head to foot as though his body
+had gone mad.
+
+Downstairs the lock of the front door clicked.  There was something
+steadfast and reassuring in the sound, as though it were trying to send
+a message.  "Don't worry, I shall come back."  But Robert could not
+feel or care any more.  He was struggling with his body as a helpless
+rider struggles with a frantic runaway horse.  He found out for the
+first time that his body wasn't himself at all.  It was something else.
+It did what it wanted to.  He could only cling on to it for dear life.
+But gradually it seemed to weaken, to yield to his exhausted efforts at
+control, and at last lay stretched out, relaxed, drenched with an icy
+sweat.  The real himself sank into seas of darkness from which
+convulsive, tearing shudders, less and less frequent, dragged him, with
+throbbing heart and starting eyes, back to the surface.
+
+His bandage had slipped off.  He held it tight between his hands.  He
+was too numb and stupefied even to think of Francey, but there was
+magic in that dirty, blood-stained handkerchief.  It might have been a
+saint's relic, or a Red Indian's totem, preserving him from evil.  He
+knew nothing about saints or totems, but he knew that Francey was good
+and stronger than any of them.
+
+Downstairs the silence remained unbroken.  It was an aghast silence,
+heavy with remorse and shame and self-loathing.  It was like the thick
+dregs lying at the bottom of the cup.  But to Robert it was just
+silence.  He sank into it, deeper and deeper, until he slept.
+
+He began to dream.  The dreams walked about inside his brain, and were
+red-coloured as though they were lit up by the glow of a hidden
+furnace.  All the people who took part in them came and went in great
+haste.  Or they made up hurried tableaux--Francey holding the stick and
+looking at him in white anger, Christine huddled on the floor, his
+father black and monstrous towering over her.  Finally, they all
+disappeared together, and Robert knew that it was because the Dragon
+had woken up and was coming to devour them.  He was climbing up from
+the dining-room.  Robert heard his tread on the stairs--heavy,
+stumbling footsteps such as one would expect from a dragon on a narrow,
+twisting staircase.  They came nearer and nearer, and with every thud
+Robert seemed to be lifted with a jerk from the depths in which he was
+lying, and to be aware of his body stiffening in terror.
+
+Then at the last step the Dragon fell, and Robert was awake.  He sat
+bolt upright.  There had been no mistaking that dull thump.  It
+lingered in his ears like the echo of a thunder-clap.  The Dragon had
+fallen and killed himself, for he did not move.  It was pitch dark in
+the room, but very slowly and quietly, under the pressure of an
+invisible hand, the door opposite his bed began to open.  The light
+outside made a widening slit in the darkness.  It was like sitting in a
+theatre watching the curtain go up on a nightmare.  He could see the
+banisters, the glow from the hall beneath, and something black with a
+white smudge at the end of it lying stretched out from the head of the
+stairs.  His body crawled out of bed.  He himself wanted to hide under
+the clothes, but his body would not let him.  It carried him on against
+his will.  When he was near enough he saw that the long black thing was
+a man's arm and the white smudge a hand, clenched and inert, on the red
+carpet.  His body tottered out on the landing.  It was his father lying
+stretched on the stairs, face downwards.
+
+He tried to scream, but his throat and tongue were dry and swollen.
+Nor could he touch that still thing, in its passivity more terrible
+than in its violence.  He was afraid that every moment it would lift
+its face, and show him some new unthinkable horror.  He skirted it as
+though it might leap upon him and devour him, and rushed downstairs,
+faster and faster, with a thousand devils hunting at his heels.
+
+And then he seemed again to be dreaming.  The bailiff ran up from the
+kitchen in his shirt-sleeves, and he and Edith went up the stairs
+together, leaving him alone in the library.  The fire had gone out, but
+he cowered up against the grate, hiding his face in his arms.
+
+They were moving the Dragon.  Bump--bump--bump--bump.  He thought he
+heard Edith cry out, "Oh, God!" and then silence again.  Presently
+Edith stood in the doorway, looking at him.  Her eyes were red-rimmed,
+and yet there was an air of importance, of solemn triumph about her.
+
+"Your father is--is very ill.  The man downstairs has gone for the
+doctor, and I am going to ask Christine to come round.  You must be a
+good boy, Robert.  You must do as I tell you and go to bed."
+
+So they meant to leave him alone in the house with that dreadful still
+thing lying somewhere upstairs.  Or perhaps it wasn't really still.  It
+might have strange powers now.  You might come upon it anywhere.  You
+couldn't be sure.  It might even be in your bed.  He did not want to
+disobey Edith.  Just then he could have clung to her.  But he could not
+go up those stairs.  He could not pass those open doors, gaping with
+unspeakable things.  He felt that if he kept very still, hiding his
+face, They would not touch him.  There seemed to be a thin--frightfully
+thin--partition between him and the world in which they lived, and that
+by a sudden movement he might break through.  He had to hold fast to
+his body.  It was beginning to run away again, to start into long
+agonized shudderings.
+
+At last a key turned in the latch.  Invisible people went up the stairs
+in silence.  But he knew that Christine was among them.  He knew
+because of the sense of sweet security and rest that came over him.  He
+tumbled on to the hearthrug and fell asleep.
+
+He was cold and stiff when the opening of the library door wakened him.
+He did not know who had opened the door.  All he saw was Christine
+coming down the stairs.  Her face was old and almost silver grey.  She
+was not crying like Edith, whose sniffs came assertively and at regular
+intervals from somewhere in the hall.  There was a still, withdrawn
+look about her, as though she were contemplating something unbreakable
+that had at last been broken, as though a light had gone out in her for
+ever.  So that Robert could not run to her as he had meant to do.
+
+It was Edith speaking.
+
+"You won't leave me, will you, Christine?  Poor Jim!  And then that
+man--I should die of fright.  Besides, it wouldn't be right--not
+proper--to-morrow one of my sisters----"
+
+"Very well.  I will spend the night here.  But Robert must go to my
+people.  They won't mind now.  I shall be back in half an hour."
+
+She helped him into his reefer coat, which she had brought down with
+her.  And still he could not speak to her.  She was a long way off from
+him.  As they went into the hall he hid his face against her arm for
+fear of the things that he might see.  But once they were outside, and
+the good night wind rushed against his face, a great intoxicating joy
+came over him.  He wanted to dance and shout.  The Dragon was dead.  No
+one could frighten them again.
+
+"Aren't we ever coming back, Christine?"
+
+"No, dear, I don't think so."
+
+He looked back at the grim, high house.  For a moment a sorrow as deep
+as joy rushed over him.  It was as though he knew that something
+besides the Dragon had died up there in that dimly lit room--as though
+he were saying good-bye to something he would never find, though he
+hunted the world over.
+
+He had been a little boy.  He would never be quite a little boy again.
+
+Or perhaps the Dragon wasn't dead at all--perhaps Dragons never died,
+but lived on and on, hiding in secret places, waiting to pounce out on
+you and drag you back.
+
+He seized Christine's hand.
+
+"Let's run," he whispered.  "Let's run fast."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+He discovered that there were people in the world who could make scenes
+without noise.  They were like the crocodiles he had met on his visit
+to the Zoo, lying malignantly inert in their oily water.  But one
+twitch of the tail, one blink of a lightless eye, was more terrifying
+than the roar of a lion.
+
+No one made a noise in Christine's home.  The two sisters looked at
+Robert as though he were a small but disagreeable smell that they tried
+politely to ignore.  They asked him if he wanted a second helping in
+voices of glacial courtesy.  They said things to each other and at
+Christine which were quiet and deadly as the rustle of a snake in the
+grass.  Robert had never fled from his father as he fled from their
+restrained disgust.  He had never been more aware of storm than in the
+smother of the heavily carpeted, decorously silent rooms.  It broke,
+three days later, not with thunder and lightning, but with the brief
+malicious rattle of a machine-gun.
+
+"You ought not to have brought him here.  You have no pride.  But,
+then, you never had.  At least some consideration for our feelings
+might have been expected.  We have suffered enough.  If you knew what
+people said----  Mrs. Stonehouse has been talking.  She offered to
+take the child.  As his natural guardian she had the right.  An
+unpardonable, undignified interference----"
+
+Christine hardly answered.  Her fragile face wore the look of quiet
+obstinacy which had braved James Stonehouse and the worst disasters.
+Robert had seen it too often not to understand.  But now his father was
+dead, and instead; inexplicably, he had become the source of trouble.
+He disgraced Christine.  Her people hated her because she was good to
+him.  He felt the shame of it all over him like a horrible kind of
+uncleanliness, and beneath the shame a burning sense of wrong.  He hid
+in dark places.  He refused to answer even when Christine called him.
+He skulked miserably past Christine's sisters when he met them in the
+passage.  He scowled at them, his head down, like a hobbled, angry
+little bull.  And Christine's sisters drew in their nostrils in a last
+genteel effort at self-control.
+
+Christine packed his trunk with ragged odds and ends of clothing, and
+they made a long journey to No. 14, Acacia Grove, where Christine had
+taken two furnished rooms and a scullery, which served also as kitchen
+and bath-room.  Acacia Grove was the deformed extremity of a
+misbegotten suburb.  There were five acacia trees planted on either
+side of the unfinished roadway, but they had been blighted in their
+youth, and their branches were spinsterish and threadbare.  Behind the
+houses were a few dingy fields, and then a biscuit factory, an obscene,
+congested-looking building with belching chimneys.
+
+Every morning at nine o'clock Robert walked with Christine to the
+corner of the road, and a jolly, red-faced 'bus, rollicking through the
+neighbourhood like a slightly intoxicated reveller who has landed by
+mistake in a gathering of Decayed Gentlefolk, carried her off
+citywards, and at dusk returned her again, grey and worn, with wisps of
+tired brown hair hanging about her face and bundles of solemn letters
+and folded parchment documents bulging from her dispatch-case.  Then
+she and Robert shopped together at the Stores, and afterwards she
+cooked over a gas-jet in the scullery, and they had supper together,
+almost in the dark, but very peacefully.
+
+It was too peaceful.  One couldn't believe in it.  When supper was over
+Robert washed up and Christine uncovered the decrepit, second-hand
+typewriter which she had bought, and began to copy from the letters,
+bending lower and lower over the crabbed writing and sighing deeply and
+impatiently as her fingers blundered at the keys.  On odd nights, when
+there was no copying to be done, she tried to teach Robert his letters
+and words of one syllable, but they were both too tired, and he yawned
+and kicked the table and was cross and stupid with sleepiness.  At nine
+o'clock he washed himself cautiously and crept into the little bed
+beside her big one and lay curled up, listening to the reassuring
+click-click of the typewriter, until suddenly it was broad daylight
+again, and there was Christine getting breakfast.
+
+In the day-time Robert played ball in the quiet street or sat with his
+elbows on the window-sill and watched the people go in and out of the
+houses opposite.  The people were grey and furtive-looking, as though
+they were afraid of attracting the notice of some dangerous monster and
+had tried to take on the colour of their surroundings in
+self-protection.  They seemed to ask nothing more for themselves than
+that they should be forgotten.  Robert knew how they felt.  He felt
+like that himself.  He was never sure that he was really safe.  He
+dared not ask questions lest he should find out that his father wasn't
+dead after all, or that they were on the brink of some new convulsion.
+He did not even ask where Christine went in the day-time, or what had
+become of Edith, or where their money came from.  He clung desperately
+to an ignorance which allowed him to believe that he and Christine
+would always live like this, quietly and happily.  When the landlady's
+shadow came heavy-footed up the stairs, he hid himself and stuffed his
+fingers in his ears lest he should hear her threaten them with instant
+expulsion.  (It was incredible that she and Christine should be talking
+amicably about the weather.)  Or when they went to the butcher's, he
+hung behind in dread anticipation of the red-faced man's insolent "And
+what about that there little account of ours, Ma'am?"  But the
+red-faced man smiled ingratiatingly and patted him on the back and
+called him a fine young fellow.  Christine counted out her money at the
+desk.  It made Robert dizzy with joy and pride to see her pay her bill,
+and tears came into his throat and nearly choked him.  On the way home
+he behaved abominably, chased cats or threw stones with a reckless
+disregard for their neighbours' windows, and Christine, looking into
+his flushed, excited face, had a movement that was like the shadow of
+his own secret fear.
+
+"Robert, Robert, don't be so wild.  You might hurt yourself--or someone
+else.  It frightens me."
+
+And then at once he walked quietly beside her, chilled and dispirited.
+At any moment the new-found commonplaces might drop from him, and
+everyone would find out--the neighbours who nodded kindly and the
+tradespeople who bowed them out of their shops--just as Francey and the
+Banditti had found out--and turn away from him, ashamed and sorry.
+
+He did not think of Francey very often.  For when he did it was almost
+always in those last moments together that he remembered her--the
+Francey who was too strong for him, the Francey who knew that he was a
+nasty little boy who couldn't even beat a girl--who told lies--the
+Francey who despised him.  And then it was as though his body had been
+bruised afresh from head to foot.  But he still had her handkerchief.
+He even kept it hidden from Christine lest she should insist on washing
+it.  For by now it was incredibly dirty.
+
+In the day-time he never thought of his father at all.  But in his
+sleep one nightmare returned repeatedly.  It never varied; it was
+definite and horrible.  In it his father, grown to demonic proportions,
+towered over Christine's huddled body, his eyes terrible, his fists
+clenched and raised to strike.  Then in that moment, at the very height
+of his awful fear and helpless hatred, the wonderful truth burst upon
+Robert, and he danced gleefully, full of cruel triumph, about the
+black, suddenly impotent figure, shouting:
+
+"You can't--you're dead--you're dead--you can't----"
+
+And then he would wake up with a hideous start, sweating, his eyes hot
+with unshed tears, and Christine's hand would come to him out of the
+darkness and clasp his in reassuring firmness.
+
+There was another dream.  Or, rather, it was half a dream and half one
+of these stories that he told himself just before he fell asleep.  It
+came to him at dusk when he stood at the gate and waited for Christine
+to come home.  In the long day of silent games he had lost touch,
+little by little, with reality.  Hunger had made him faint and drowsy.
+Things changed, became unfamiliar, fantastic.  Between the stunted
+trees he could see the afterglow of the sunset like the reflection of a
+blazing city.  The road then was full of silence and shadow.  The drab
+outlines grew faint and the mean houses were merged into the vaster
+shapes of night.  Robert waited, motionless, breathless.  He was sure
+that something was coming to him down the path of fading light.  He did
+not know what it was.  Once, indeed, it had been Francey, with her
+queer dancing step, her hair flying about her head like a flock of
+little red-brown birds.  She had hovered before him, on tiptoe, as
+though the next gust of wind would blow her on her way down the street,
+and looked at him.  They had not spoken, but he had seen in her eyes
+how sorry she was that she had not understood.  And a warm content had
+flowed over him.  All the sore, aching places were healed and comforted.
+
+But that had been only once.  And then he wasn't sure that he hadn't
+made it up.  At all other times the thing was outside himself too
+strange to have been imagined.  It shook him from head to foot with
+dread and longing.  He wanted to run to meet it, to plunge into it,
+reckless and shouting, as into a warm, dancing, summer sea.  And yet it
+menaced him.  It was of fire and colour, of the rumble and thud of
+armies, of laughter and singing and distant broken music.  It was all
+just round the comer.  If he hurried he would see it, lose himself in
+it, march to the tune he could never quite catch.  But he was afraid,
+and whilst he tried to make up his mind the light faded.  The sounds
+died.  After all, it was only Christine, trudging wearily through the
+dusk.
+
+
+
+2
+
+The six forms were marshalled in squares down the centre of the
+drill-hall, Form I, with Robert Stonehouse at the bottom, holding the
+place of dishonour under the shadow of the Headmaster's rostrum.
+Robert did not know that he was at the bottom of Form I, or that such a
+thing as Form I existed.  He did not know that he was older than the
+eldest of his class-mates, but he was aware of being unusually and
+uncomfortably large.  Under the curious stare that had greeted him on
+his first appearance and which now pressed on him from the rear and
+sides, he felt himself shoot up, inch by inch, into a horrible
+conspicuousness, whilst his feet grew flat and leaden, and his hands
+were too swollen to squeeze into his trousers pockets.
+
+". . . we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and
+we have done those things which we ought not to have done . . ."
+
+He wondered what they were saying.  It sounded rather like one of those
+tongue-twisters which his father had taught him in a playful
+moment--"round the rugged rock the ragged robber ran"--but it was
+evidently no joking matter.  And it was something which everyone knew
+except himself.  The urchin on his left piped it out in an assured,
+self-satisfied treble.   The clergyman kneeling behind the raised desk
+came in with a bang at the beginning of each sentence, and then
+subsided into an indistinguishable murmur.  Evidently he knew what he
+was saying so well that he did not need even to think about it, for his
+eyes wandered over his folded hands as though in methodical search for
+somebody.  They reached Form I, and Robert, who saw them coming, broke
+instinctively into a panic-stricken gabble.  Of all the poems which
+Christine had read aloud to him, Casablanca was the only one he could
+remember, and he had got as far as "whence all but he had fled" before
+he saw that it was of no good.  The subterfuge had been recognized.
+The clergyman had stopped praying and was gazing at him earnestly.
+Robert gazed back, fascinated and open-mouthed.
+
+". . . and there is no health in us . . ."
+
+But the strain of that encounter was too much for him.  He tried to
+escape, first to the ceiling and finally to his boots.  The stare
+pursued him, pointed at him.  In a moment the whole school would be on
+his track.  His eyes, rolling desperately to their corners, encountered
+a little dark man who had led in Form I and now stood sideways on, so
+as to keep his charge under constant survey.  Even in that moment of
+acute despair he arrested Robert's attention.  There was something odd
+about him--something distressful and indignant.  Whilst he prayed he
+made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his
+gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like
+a large angry blackbird, trapped and tied by the foot.
+
+"But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us . . ."
+
+And then, suddenly, an amazing conviction broke upon Robert.  The
+little man wasn't praying at all.  His lips moved, but the movement was
+all wrong.  He was repeating two words, over and over again, at great
+speed and with a suppressed violence.  They looked familiar--painfully,
+elusively familiar.  Robert felt that in another moment he would
+recognize them:
+
+". . . spare Thou them that are penitent . . ."
+
+Now Robert knew for certain.  It was his father's favourite answer to
+all expostulations.  Of course that was it.  "Damned rot--damned
+rot--damned rot."  The little man was swearing passionately to himself.
+It was incredible, but there was no mistake possible.  And in the full
+blast of the discovery his dark eyes, hunted and angry-looking behind
+their round glasses, met Robert's, widened, passed on, and came back
+again.  It was an extraordinary moment.  Robert could not have looked
+away to save his life.  He knew that he had betrayed himself.  The
+little man knew that he knew.  He grew very red, coughed, and blew his
+nose violently, his eyes meantime returning repeatedly to Robert's
+flushed and frightened face with an expression utterly unfathomable.
+It was almost as though he were trying to signal----
+
+"Amen!" declared the whole school with infinite relief and satisfaction.
+
+The clergyman sighed deeply and raised himself painfully from his knees.
+
+"Hymn number 503."
+
+A boy came out from the class next to Robert's and walked to the piano,
+and Robert forgot everything else, even his own imminent disgrace.  He
+had never seen such red hair before--deep red with a touch of purple,
+like the leaves of a beech tree in autumn--or such a freckled face.
+The freckles lay thick on the small unimportant nose and clashed
+painfully against the roots of the amazing hair.  They crowded out the
+flaxen eyebrows altogether.  And yet he was pretty in a wistful,
+whimsical sort of way.  He made Robert want to laugh.  Someone close to
+Robert did titter, and muttered, "Go it, Carrots!" and Robert saw that
+the boy had heard and was horribly frightened.  He winced and faltered,
+and Robert poked out viciously with his elbow.
+
+"Shut up!" he whispered,
+
+His victim was too astonished even to retaliate.
+
+The red-haired boy had reached the piano.  And at once a change came
+over him.  He wasn't frightened any more.  He played the first verse
+over without a stumble, calmly, confidently, as though he knew that now
+no one had the right to laugh.  The light from an upper window made a
+halo of his blazing head and lit up his small round face, faintly and
+absurdly grave, but with something elfish and eager lurking behind the
+gravity.  Robert stared at him as an Ancient Briton might have stared
+at the first lordly Roman who crossed his ken.  He felt uncouth and
+cumbersome and stupid.  And yet he could have knocked the red-headed
+boy down easily with one hand.
+
+The clergyman led the singing.  The urchin on Robert's right had
+produced a hymn-book from his pocket and opened it and found his place
+with the same air of smug efficiency.  Robert had no book.  He longed
+for one.  He knew that the clergyman was watching him again.  His
+companion nudged him, and by a stab of a stumpy, inky forefinger
+indicated the verse which he himself was singing in an aggressive
+treble.  But Robert only stared helplessly.  At another time he might
+have recognized "God--love--dove--" and other words of one syllable,
+and he liked the tune.  But now he could see nothing but the clergyman
+and think of nothing but the little dark man.  He wondered madly what
+the latter was singing now and whether he had managed to fit in "damned
+rot--damned rot" to the music.  But he did not dare to look.
+
+A second prod roused him with a ghastly self-betraying start.
+
+"You gotter sing," the small boy whispered fiercely; "gotter sing,
+idjit."
+
+"Wh-a-a-t?"
+
+Robert made a loud, unexpected noise in his throat.  His companion
+choked, spluttered and buried his impertinent face in a grubby
+handkerchief.  The dark man left his post hastily and stationed himself
+immediately at Robert's side in anticipation of a further outbreak.
+Someone in the rear giggled hysterically.  Robert dropped his head and
+riveted his swimming eyes on the clergyman's boots.  He made no further
+attempt to save himself.  He was caught by his mysterious, relentless
+destiny.  He had been found out.
+
+
+
+3
+
+Mr. Morton, the headmaster, believed in Hygiene and the Educational
+Value of Beauty.  The classroom smelt vividly of carbolic.  There was a
+large lithograph of "Love and Life" on the pure white wall and a pot of
+flowers on the high window-sill.  Maps, blackboards and all other
+paraphernalia of learning were kept in merciful concealment.
+
+Robert took possession of the desk nearest him and was at once ejected.
+Its rightful owner scowled darkly at him.  At the next desk he tried to
+anchor himself, and there was a scuffle and a smothered exchange of
+blows, from which he escaped with a scraped shin and a strange,
+unfamiliar sense of being afraid.  There was no fight in him.  He
+didn't want to fight.  He wanted to belong--to be one of the herd--and
+he knew dimly that he would first have to learn its laws and submit to
+its tortures.  He tried to grin back when the titter, which seemed
+endemic, broke out afresh as he stumbled on his ignominious pilgrimage,
+but the unasked-for partition in their amusement seemed to exasperate
+them.  They whispered things to one another.  They commented on his
+clothes.  He realized suddenly how poorly dressed he was.  There was a
+patch on the knee of his trousers and a mended tear on his shiny
+jacket.  His finger-nails weren't very clean.  Christine had gone off
+too early to be sure that he had done them, and he had never thought
+much of that sort of thing.  Now he was paralysed with shame.  He could
+feel the tears strangling him.
+
+Fortunately the desk in the far corner belonged to nobody.  It was old
+and battered and covered with the undecipherable carvings of his
+predecessors, but at once he loved it.  It was his.  Its retired
+position seemed to offer him protection.  He hid behind it, drawing a
+long, shuddering sigh of thankfulness.
+
+The little dark man stood on the raised platform and surveyed them all.
+His expression was nearly a grimace; as though he had just swallowed a
+disagreeable medicine.  He pursed his lips and held tight to the lapels
+of his coat, his piercing yet distressful eyes blinking rapidly behind
+their glasses with a kind of nervous malice.
+
+"Well, my delightful and learned young friends----"
+
+The class wilted in anticipation.  But before he spoke again the door
+opened and they rose thankfully with a shuffle of feet and
+surreptitious clatter of desks.  The clergyman waved to them.  If the
+little dark man was like a blackbird, captive and resentful, the
+newcomer was like a meagre and somewhat fluttered hen.  His hands and
+wrists were long and yellow and sinewy.  He wore no cuffs, but one
+could see the beginnings of his Jaeger undervest under the black
+sleeve.   He rubbed his chin or smoothed the back of his small head
+almost ceaselessly.
+
+"You can sit down, boys.  One moment, Mr. Ricardo, one moment
+only----"
+
+He spoke in an undertone.  Robert knew it was about him.  They both
+looked in his direction.  The little man jerked his head.
+
+"Robert Stonehouse."
+
+He sat motionless, trying to hide from them.  But it was of no good.
+The clergyman made an elevating gesture, and he rose automatically as
+though he were tied to that gentleman's hand by an invisible string.
+The desk was much too small for him and he had to wiggle to get free
+from it.  The lid banged.   Instantly every boy had turned in his seat
+to gaze at him, and he saw that this was the worst place that could
+have fallen to his lot.  In his corner he was trapped, a sea of
+mocking, curious faces between him and his tormentors.
+
+The clergyman smiled palely at him.
+
+"I understand that you are a new boy, Stonehouse, and I don't wish to
+be too severe with you.  At the same time we must begin as we are to go
+on.  And you were not behaving very well at prayers this morning, were
+you?"
+
+Robert moved his lips soundlessly.  But no answer was expected of him.
+The question was rhetorical.  "You weren't," the enemy said,
+"attending.  You were trying to make your companions laugh----"
+This, at least, was unbearably unjust.
+
+"I wasn't," Robert interrupted loudly.
+
+Someone moved to compassion hissed, "Say 'sir'--say sir,'" but he was
+beyond help.  From that moment on he was beyond fear.  He dug himself
+in, dogged and defiant.
+
+"Come now, Stonehouse, I saw you myself.  You were only pretending to
+join in, now weren't you?  How was it?  Didn't you know the prayer?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Don't be so abrupt, my boy.  Say 'sir' when you answer me.  How is it
+that you don't know it?  You go to church, don't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Say 'sir.'"
+
+"Sir."
+
+"Well, chapel, then.  You go to chapel, no doubt?"
+
+Robert stared blankly.
+
+"You don't?  But surely your mother takes you----"
+
+"I haven't got a mother."  His voice sounded in his own ears like a
+shout.  He scowled down at the faces nearest him.  He was ready to
+fight them now.  If they were going to say anything about his mother,
+good or bad, he would fly at them, just as he had flown at his old
+aggressors in the Terrace, regardless of size and numbers.
+
+"Your father, then?"
+
+"I haven't got a father."
+
+His questioner smiled faintly, not without asperity.
+
+"Come, come, you are not yet a gentleman in independent circumstances.
+Who takes care of you?"
+
+"Christine."
+
+"And who, pray, is Christine?"
+
+Who was Christine?  It was as though suddenly the corner of a curtain
+had been raised for a moment, letting him look through into a strange
+new country.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+The clergyman waved his hand, damping down the titters that spluttered
+up nervously, threatening to explode outright.  He himself had an air
+of slight dishevelment, as though his ideas had been blown about by a
+rude wind.
+
+"I remember--Mr. Morton spoke to me--your guardian, of course.  You
+should answer properly.  But still, surely you have been taught--some
+religious instruction.  You say your prayers, don't you?"
+
+"No."  He added after a moment of sudden, vivid recollection: "Not now."
+
+It was nothing short of a debacle.  He had pulled out the keystone of
+an invisible edifice which had come tumbling about their ears, leaving
+him in safety.  Without knowing how or why, he knew he had got the
+better of them all.  The grins died out of the upturned faces.  They
+looked at him with amazement, with horror, yes--with respect.
+
+"But you have been taught your catechism--to--to believe in God?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But the hymn--at least you could have sung the hymn, my poor boy.  You
+can read, can't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+The awe passed before a storm of unchecked laughter.  For one
+spectacular moment he had held them all helpless, every one of them, by
+the sheer audacity of his admissions.  Now with one word he had
+fallen--an ignominious, comic outcast.  The clergyman turned away,
+shaken but satisfied.
+
+"You have a great deal to learn.  I doubt if Mr. Morton quite
+realized----  A heavy task in front of you, too, Mr. Ricardo.  One
+word, please----"
+
+They spoke in undertones.  Robert slid back into his seat.  He could
+feel exultant glances sting and pierce him on every side.  And yet when
+the door closed he had to look up.  He was driven by a relentless
+curiosity to meet the worst.  Mr. Ricardo had resumed his place.  He
+did not so much as glance at Robert.  He clung on to the lapels of his
+coat and blinked up at the window as though nothing had happened.  But
+there was something impish twitching at the corners of his nervous
+mouth.
+
+"My delightful young friends," he said, "you will be kind enough to
+leave Stonehouse in peace both now and hereafter.  I know your amiable
+propensities, and my own conviction is that he is probably worth the
+pack of you.  Get out your history books----"
+
+So he was a friend.  A powerful friend.  But not powerful enough.  No
+one looked at Robert again.  And yet he knew, with all the certainty of
+inherited instinct, that they were waiting for him.
+
+
+
+4
+
+He went out into the school-yard like an early Christian into the
+arena.  He knew exactly what to expect.  It was just the Terrace over
+again.  He would have to fight them all until they learnt to leave him
+alone.  Somehow he knew for certain that to be left alone was the best
+he could expect.  They would never really forgive him for being
+different from themselves.  It was very mysterious.  It couldn't be his
+father or the unpaid bills any more.  It seemed that if you were born
+different you remained different, however hard you tried.  He had
+wanted so much to go to school, to run with a band again, to play games
+with them and have them call out, "Hallo, Stonehouse!" as he heard
+other boys call to each other across the street.  He had meant to be
+exactly like them at all costs.  It had seemed so easy, since his
+father was dead and Christine paid the butcher.  But at once he had
+been found out, a marked man.  He hadn't got a father and mother like
+ordinary people, he didn't go to church, he didn't say his prayers, he
+couldn't read, and he didn't know who God was--or even Christine----
+
+There was a moment of suspense before the attack opened.  Like an old,
+experienced general he made his way with apparent indifference towards
+the wall.  But he was not quite quick enough.  Someone prodded him
+sharply in the back.  Someone hissed in mocking imitation:
+
+"I don't know--I don't know!"
+
+He was too cunning to retaliate.  He waited till he had reached his
+chosen ground, then he turned with his fists clenched.  The storm had
+already gathered.  It was only a little school, and the story of the
+new boy's "break" with old Jaegers had reached even the big louts who
+lingered on in Form VI.  They made a rough half-circle round their
+intended victim, only partially malevolent in their intentions.  The
+fact that he had bearded a contemptible old beast like Jaegers was
+rather in his favour than otherwise, but his assertion that he did not
+say his prayers and knew nothing about God smacked of superiority.  He
+had to be taken down.  And, anyhow, a new boy was an object of
+curiosity and his preliminary persecution a time-honoured custom.  A
+fight was not in their calculations--the very idea of a new boy
+venturing to fight beyond their imaginations.  And Robert did not want
+to fight.  He felt oddly weary and disinclined.  But to him there was
+no other outcome possible.  It was his only tradition.  It blinded him
+to what was kindly or only mischievous in the faces round him.  He had
+a momentary glimpse of the red-headed boy who stood just outside the
+circle, munching an apple and staring at him with astonished blue eyes,
+and then his attention fixed itself on his enemy-in-chief.  There was
+no mistaking him.  He was a big, lumpy fellow, fifteen years of age,
+with an untidy mouth, the spots of a premature adolescence and an air
+of heavy self-importance.  When he spoke, the rest fell into awed
+attention.
+
+"Hallo, new kid, what's your name?"
+
+"Robert Stonehouse."
+
+"Don't be so abrupt, my boy,"--a delighted titter from the small
+fry--"say 'sir' when you answer me."
+
+"I shan't."
+
+The little colourless eyes widened in sheer incredulity.  For a moment
+the role of humorist was forgotten.
+
+"Look here--no cheek, or I'll smack your head."
+
+"He hasn't been properly brought up," one of the spotty youth's
+companions remarked, not ill-naturedly.  "Can't expect him to have
+manners.  He never had a father or a mother, poor darling----"
+
+"Then where did he come from?"
+
+"God made him."
+
+"He told old Jaegers he'd never even heard of God."
+
+"Dear, dear, what a naughty boy.  He doesn't even say his prayers."
+
+"But he lives with a lady called Christine----"
+
+"How nice for him.  Is she a pretty lady, Stonehouse?"  Up till now
+nothing had stirred in him.  He hadn't cared.  He had indeed felt
+something of the superiority which they suspected in him.  If that was
+all they could do----  Now, suddenly, the blood rushed to the roots of
+his fair hair.
+
+"Shut up.  You leave Christine alone."
+
+The big boy was too delighted to be angry.
+
+"Hoity-toity.  She must be a high-stepper.  No trespassers allowed--eh,
+what? young cockalorum.  Come on, what's she like?  Who is she?
+
+"He doesn't know."
+
+"She isn't his mother."
+
+"He says she isn't."
+
+"P'r'aps he doesn't know that either.  P'r'aps that's what she
+says----"
+
+The full extent of the innuendo, like the majority of the audience, he
+did not understand, but he saw the wink which passed between the two
+elder boys.  Ever since that day when he had gathered flowers for his
+mother in Kensal Green Cemetery he had known of dark things, just
+beyond his understanding.  He had wandered in the midst of them too
+long not to be aware of them on the instant.  And it was against
+Christine--who had suffered from them so terribly--they dared----  A
+great sigh tore itself free from him.  He put his head down.  He flew
+at the spotty youth like a stone from a catapult, and they went down
+together in a cloud of dust.
+
+After that, as in most of his uneven, desperate encounters, he hardly
+knew what happened.  He felt nothing.  In reality it was an absurd
+spectacle.  The spotty youth, bounding up from his momentary
+discomfiture, caught Robert by the collar and smacked him shamefully,
+severely, as the outrage merited.  And when justice had been satisfied,
+he released the culprit, and Robert, without pause, returned, fighting
+with fists and feet and teeth, as he had learnt to do from dire
+necessity.  It was unprecedented.  The spotty youth gasped.  His
+companions offered intervention.
+
+"I'll hold the beggar."
+
+But honour was at stake.  The small fry, startled out of caution, were
+tittering in hysterical excitement.
+
+"Th-thanks--you keep out of it--I'll manage him."'
+
+The second beating was more drastic.  The third was ineffectual.  The
+spotty youth, besides being exhausted, was demoralized with sheer
+bewilderment.  He was not clever, and when events ran out of their ruts
+he lost his head.  He had made the same discovery that the Terrace boys
+had made long since, namely that short of killing Robert Stonehouse
+there was no way of beating him, and he drew back, panting,
+dishevelled, his manly collar limp and his eyes wild.
+
+"There--that'll teach you----"
+
+Robert laughed.  He put his tongue out.  He knew it was vulgar but it
+was the only retaliation he had breath for.  His clothes were dusty and
+torn, his nose bloody.  He was a frightful object.  But he knew that he
+had won.
+
+The spotty youth wiped his hands on his handkerchief with exaggerated
+disgust.
+
+"Dirty little beast.  I wouldn't touch him again--not with the end of a
+barge pole."
+
+He never did.  Nobody did.  Though he did not know it, it was Robert's
+last fight.  But he had won immunity at a high cost.  The small fry
+skirted him as they went out through the school gates.  It was more
+than fear.  They distrusted him.  He was not one of them.  He did not
+keep their laws.  His wickedness was not their wickedness, his courage
+not their courage.  He ought not to have fought a boy in the sixth
+form.  He ought to have taken his beating quietly.  Even if he had
+"blubbed" they might afterwards have taken him to their bosoms in
+understanding and inarticulate sympathy.  As it was, he was a devil--a
+foreign devil, outside the caste for ever.
+
+Only the small red-haired boy, waiting cautiously till everyone else
+was out of sight, came after him as he trailed forlornly down the
+street.  He was still chewing meditatively at the core of his apple,
+and his eyes, vividly blue amidst the freckles, considered Robert out
+of their corners with solemn astonishment.
+
+"I say, Stonehouse, you can fight."
+
+Robert nodded.  He was still breathless.
+
+"I--I'm used to it."
+
+"I'm glad you kicked that beast Saunders.  You hurt him, too.  I saw
+him make a face.  I wish I could fight like that.  But I'm no good at
+it.  I'm not 'fraid--not really--but I just hate it.  You like it,
+don't you?"
+
+Robert swaggered a little.
+
+"Rather."
+
+There was a moment's silence,
+
+"I say--if you like it--would you mind licking Dickson Minor for me?
+He's always ragging me--you see, I've a rotten time--because of my
+hair, and about playing the piano.  Dickson's the worst.  I'd be
+awfully glad, if you wouldn't mind, of course."
+
+Robert surreptitiously wiped the blood from his nose on to his sleeve.
+As usual he had no handkerchief.  A warm, delicious solace flowed over
+his battered spirit.  His heart swelled till it hurt him.  It opened
+wide to the little red-haired boy.  If only Francey could see him
+now--the defender of the oppressed.  But he did not dare to think of
+that.  After all, he might cry.
+
+He nodded negligently.
+
+"All right.  I don't mind."
+
+"P'r'aps, when he knows you're standing up for me, he'll leave me
+alone."
+
+"He'd better."
+
+"My name's Rufus--Rufus Cosgrave.  You see, I was born like this, and
+my father thought it would be a good joke.  I call it beastly."
+
+"Mine's Robert."
+
+The red-haired boy meditated a little longer.  He rubbed his arm
+against Robert's softly like a young pony.
+
+"I say, let's be friends--shall we?"
+
+Robert gulped and turned his head away.
+
+"All right.  I don't mind."
+
+They parted shyly at the corner of Cosgrave's road--a neat double file
+of vastly superior villas, as Robert realized with a faint sinking of
+the heart; but Robert did not go home.  He made his way out to the
+dingy fields behind the biscuit factory, and watched the local rag and
+bobtail play football, lying hidden in the long grass under the wall so
+that they should not see him and fall upon him.  Even when it grew dusk
+and he knew that Christine must be almost home, he still wandered about
+the streets.  He was hungry and footsore, his head and body ached, but
+he put off the moment when he would have to face her to the very last.
+He loved her, and he was not really afraid, though he knew that the
+sight of his torn, blood-stained clothes would rouse her to a queer
+unreasonable despair; but he had talked so much, so proudly and so
+confidently of going to school.  And now, how should he tell the tale
+of his disgrace, how make clear to her the misery which the
+unfathomable gulf between himself and his companions caused in him, or
+that because a red-haired, freckled small boy had asked him to fight
+Dickson Minor he had lain in the grass with his face hidden in his arms
+and wept tears of sacred happiness?  There were things you could never
+tell, least of all to people whom you loved.  They were locked up in
+you, and the key had been lost long since.
+
+The street lamps came to life one by one.  He strolled down Acacia
+Grove, whistling and swinging his legs with an exaggerated
+carelessness.  He could see their light in the upper window of No. 14.
+He was sure that Christine would watch for him, and when the hall door
+opened suddenly, he stopped short, shrinking from their encounter.  But
+it was a man who came out of the gate towards him.  For one moment an
+awful, reasonless terror made him half turn to run, to run headlong,
+never to come back; the next, he recognized the slight, jerky limp
+which made his form master so comically bird-like, and stood still,
+knowing that now Christine had heard everything, the very worst.
+Probably Mr. Ricardo had come to tell her that she must take him away,
+that he was too bad and too stupid to be with other boys, and a lump
+gathered in his throat because he would never see Rufus Cosgrave again:
+never fight for him.
+
+Mr. Ricardo halted, peering through the dusk.
+
+"That you, Stonehouse?"
+
+"Yes"--he added painfully, because the little man had been kind to
+him--"sir."
+
+"Your--Miss Forsyth is getting anxious about you.  Why are you so late?"
+
+Robert muttered "Football," knowing it was a lie, and that somehow or
+other his companion knew it too.  He heard Mr. Ricardo sigh deeply and
+wearily.
+
+"Well, I'm very late myself.  I don't know this neighbourhood.  Is
+there a station or a 'bus near here?"
+
+"There's a 'bus." Robert pointed eagerly.  "I'll show you if you like."
+
+"Thanks--if it doesn't take you too long."
+
+They walked side by side in silence, Mr. Ricardo's stick tapping
+smartly on the pavement, he himself apparently deep in thought.  It
+seemed to Robert that he had escaped, until suddenly a thin hand took
+him by the shoulder and shook him with a friendly impatience.
+
+"Football.  Nonsense.  A boy like you doesn't play football.  He hasn't
+had the chance.  Besides, it's not his line.  He plays a lone game.
+No.  You've been moping round--crying possibly.  Well, I do that myself
+sometimes.  It's a crying business, unless you've got nerves and guts.
+But you've got that all right.  I saw you fight that stupid bully
+Saunders from my window, and you beat him, too.  I was fighting with
+you, though you didn't know it.  It was I who kicked him that time you
+caught him on the shin."
+
+Robert would have laughed had he been less miserable, and had he not
+caught beneath Mr. Ricardo's brief amusement a real and angry
+satisfaction.  In the dark, too, he had an uneasy feeling that after
+all he was going to be found out.
+
+"And then after you'd stood up to and beaten a fellow twice your size
+you went away by yourself and howled.  Shall I tell you why?  You'll be
+astonished.  Probably you won't understand in the least.  You cried
+because you're a young idiot.  You find yourself in a herd of
+half-baked living creatures, and you see that they are wearing chains
+round their ankles and rings through their noses so that they can't
+move or breathe properly, and you think to yourself that that's the
+proper thing, and you come crying home for someone to tie you up like
+the rest.  It's natural.  It's the race instinct and has had its uses.
+But it's dangerous.  It kills most of us.  We start out with brains to
+use and eyes to see with and hands to make with and we end up by
+thinking nothing and seeing nothing and making nothing that hasn't been
+thought and seen and made for the last two thousand years.  Most of us,
+even when we know what is happening to us, are cowed and blackmailed
+into surrender.  We have to compromise--there are circumstances--always
+circumstances--unless we are very strong--we give in--beaten out of
+shape----"
+
+His sentences, that had become painful and disjointed, broke off, and
+there was another silence.  Robert could say nothing.  He was dazed
+with the many words, half of which, it was true, he had not understood
+at all.  And yet they excited him.  They seemed to pierce through and
+touch some sleeping thing in himself which stirred and answered: "Yes,
+yes, that's true--that's true."
+
+The pressure on his shoulders increased a little.
+
+"But you're not afraid of anything, are you, Stonehouse?"
+
+"No--no, sir.  I don't think so--not really----"
+
+"I don't think you are, either.  I liked the way you stood up to that
+poor faggot of hereditary superstitions and prejudices who was trying
+to frighten you into being as big a humbug as himself.  He'll never get
+over it.  I daresay he'll make things very unpleasant for you in his
+charming Christian way.  How old are you, Stonehouse?"
+
+"Ten--nearly, sir."
+
+"You're big and precocious for your age.  You'll get the better of him.
+But if you'd been brought up with other children you'd have whined and
+cringed--'Yes, sir,' 'No, sir'--and been a beastly canting hypocrite
+all your life.  You're wonderfully lucky if you only knew it,
+Stonehouse.  You're nearly ten, and you can't read and you don't say
+your prayers and your catechism and you know nothing about God
+Almighty.  You've a sporting chance of becoming a man----"
+
+Robert stumbled over his own feet.  A deeper, almost overpowering,
+tiredness had come over him.  And yet he was fascinated.  He had to try
+to understand.
+
+"Isn't there--I mean--isn't there anyone like God?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo stopped short.  He made a strange, wild gesture.  Standing
+there in the half-darkness he was more than ever like some poor hobbled
+bird trying desperately, furiously to beat its way back to freedom.
+
+"Superstition--superstition, Stonehouse--the most crushing, damnable
+chain of all, the symbol of cowardice, of greed and vanity, the enemy
+of truth and knowledge, the hot-bed on which we breed the miserable
+half-men who cumber this earth, a pitiable myth----"
+
+He had almost shouted.  It was as though he had been addressing a vast
+audience.  His voice dropped now, and he walked on, peering about him
+anxiously.
+
+"Well--well, you are too young.  There are things you can't understand.
+But I shall teach you.  No, there is no God, Stonehouse."
+
+Robert was vaguely sorry.  It was true that he had no clear idea of
+God, and yet in some way He had been mixed up with the bands and music
+and marching crowds that were always just round the corner.  In his
+expansive, genial moments, so rare towards the end.  Dr. Stonehouse had
+been known to say, "God bless you, Christine," and that had always
+meant a few hours' peace.  It seemed very sad.
+
+"What are you going to be, Stonehouse?"
+
+"A doctor, sir."
+
+"Why?"
+
+It was impossible to tell the whole truth--namely, that because Francey
+had said she was to be a doctor he had said he would be one too, and a
+better one at that.  He gave half-measure.
+
+"I want to be."
+
+"Well, that's a good reason.  It might be a great profession, but it
+has its liars and tricksters like the rest.  It is eaten up by little
+men who wrap themselves in priestly garments and hide their ignorance
+behind oracular silences.  They play up to the superstitious weakness
+of the mob, and replace one religion by another.  They don't care what
+beastly misery and evil they keep alive so long as they can pull off
+their particular little stunts.  You mustn't be like that, Stonehouse.
+To be free--to be free--and strong enough to go one's way and trample
+down the people who try to turn you aside; that is the only thing worth
+while.  Don't let them catch you, Stonehouse.  You don't know how
+cunning they can be--cunning and cruel."
+
+He sighed again, and Robert did not try to answer.  He had given up all
+hope of understanding, and his tiredness was now such that he had to
+set his teeth to keep the tears back.  At the corner they waited in
+silence watching the jolly, yellow-eyed 'bus rumble towards them down
+the High Street.
+
+"Your guardian will tell you what we have arranged," Mr. Ricardo said
+abruptly and with a complete change of tone.  "In a month you will read
+better than any of them.  As to the rest, you will have to compromise.
+So long as you know what you are doing and don't humbug yourself,
+there's no harm done.  With the necessity you will shake yourself free.
+You can say, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty' with your lips and
+in your heart, as I do, damned rot--damned rot.'"
+
+He laughed, and in the lamplight Robert saw his face, puckered with an
+impish, malicious merriment.  Robert laughed too.  So he had guessed
+right.  He felt proud and pleased.
+
+"Good night, Stonehouse."
+
+"Good night, sir."
+
+Robert took off his battered cap politely as did other boys.  Mr.
+Ricardo scrambled into the 'bus with an unexpected agility, and from
+the bright interior in which he sat a huddled, faceless shadow, he
+waved.  Robert waved back.  A fresh rush of elation had lifted him out
+of his sorrowful weariness.  His disgrace had been miraculously turned
+to a kind of secret triumph.  He was different; but then, how
+different!  He didn't wear chains or a ring through his nose.  He was
+going to know things that no one else knew.  And one day he would be
+big and free.
+
+
+
+5
+
+It did not last.  By the time he had dragged himself up to the top of
+their stairs there was nothing left but hunger, the consciousness of
+tattered, blood-stained clothes, and a sore, tired body.  After all, he
+was only a small boy who had wanted to play with other boys, and had
+been cast out.  Even Mr. Ricardo could never make them play with him.
+
+It was dark in the sitting-room.  Against the grey, ghostly light of
+the window he could see Christine bowed over her typewriter.  She was
+so still that she frightened him.  All the terrors of night which lay
+in wait for him ever since his fathers dead hand had touched his door
+and opened it, rushed down upon him with a sweep of black, smothering
+wings.  He called out "Christine!  Christine!" in a choked voice, and
+she moved at once, and he saw her profile, sharp-drawn and unfamiliar.
+
+"Is that you, Robert?  What is it, dear?"
+
+So she had not been worrying about him at all.  She did not know that
+it was long past their usual supper-time.  She had been thinking of
+something else.  It made her seem a terrifyingly long way off, and he
+shuffled across the room to her, and touched her to make sure of her.
+And it was strange that her hand glided over him anxiously,
+questioningly, as though in the darkness she too had been afraid and
+uncertain.
+
+"Your form-master, Mr. Ricardo, has been here.  We've been talking
+about you.  Is your coat very, very torn?"
+
+"Not--not very."
+
+"Never mind.  I'll mend it afterwards--when you've gone to bed."
+
+Because he was so tired himself the unutterable weariness in her voice
+smote him on the heart unbearably.  He had never heard it before.  It
+made him think of her, for the first time, not just as Christine, who
+looked after him and loved him, but as someone apart whom, perhaps, he
+did not know at all.  Hadn't they asked him, "Who is Christine?"  And
+he hadn't answered.  He hadn't known.
+
+"Mr. Ricardo says you will need a lot of help to pick up with the other
+boys.  Poor little Robert!  But he takes an interest in you, and you
+are to go to his house in the afternoon to be coached, and in a few
+weeks you will know as much as any of them."
+
+He did not know what "coaching" meant, but all of a sudden he had
+become afraid of Mr. Ricardo.  He did not want to go to him.  He knew
+that Mr. Ricardo would not like him to play with other boys, even if he
+got a chance.  He would want him to be alone and different always.
+
+"He doesn't believe in God," Robert asserted accusingly.  "He said he
+didn't."
+
+"Perhaps not, dear."
+
+"Doesn't that matter?"
+
+"I don't suppose God minds--if He exists."
+
+"Don't you believe in Him, Christine?"
+
+"I don't know.  People say they believe too easily.  I expect I believe
+as much as the others.  With most of us it's just--just a hope."
+
+They had never talked together in that way before.  It made her more
+than ever someone apart from him, who had her own thoughts, and perhaps
+her own secret way of being unhappy.  He was frightened again, not of
+the darkness now, but of something nearer--something so real and deadly
+that the old spectres became almost comic, like ghosts made up of
+dust-sheets and broom-handles.  Supposing Christine went still further
+from him--supposing she left him altogether alone?  She wouldn't do it
+of her free will, but there were things people couldn't help.  People
+died.  The thought was a cruel hand twining itself into the strings of
+his heart.  He tried to see her face.  Was she young?  He didn't know.
+He had never thought about it.  She had been grown-up.  That covered
+everything.  Now in the pale, unreal light her face and hair were a
+strange dead gray, and she was old--old.
+
+"Christine, how--how long do people live?"
+
+"It depends.  Sometimes to a hundred--sometimes just a minute.
+
+"But if one is careful, Christine--I mean, really careful?"
+
+"It doesn't always help, Robert.  And even if it did, the people who
+need to live most have to take risks----"  She broke off, following
+her thought further till it was far beyond his reach.  "In fifteen
+years you will be grown up.  You will be able to take care of yourself.
+What will you be then?"
+
+"A doctor," he said firmly; "and I'll look after you, Christine, and
+you'll live for ever and ever."
+
+"A doctor--a doctor!"  She seemed startled, almost frightened.  "Yes,
+of course.  Your father would want it.  He was always proud of his
+profession, though he made fun.  But it will mean more--waiting a
+little longer."
+
+She brooded, her hand covering her eyes, and he crept nearer to her,
+pressing himself against her arm, trying to draw her back.
+
+"Christine, who--who are you?"
+
+"I don't know, Robert, I don't know----"
+
+"I mean--why do you look after me? You're not my mother."
+
+"Why, I love you."
+
+"But you didn't at the beginning.  You couldn't have done."
+
+"Your father and I were friends.  Yes, always--always--right through
+everything--to the very end.  When your mother came into our lives, I
+loved her almost more.  That will seem very strange to you one of these
+days, but it was true.  When she was dying she asked me to take care of
+you both."  She drew herself up, and pushed the untidy wisps of hair
+out of her face, and with that gesture she seemed suddenly to grow
+vigorous and young.  "Why, Robert, it's better than if you were my own
+son; it's as though in you I had a little of those two always with me."
+
+"Christine, you won't ever leave me, will you?"
+
+For now his fear had him by the throat.  She didn't--she never had
+belonged to him.  It was his father and his mother, who were dead.
+
+"Of course not--not so long as you need me.  You mustn't worry.  It's
+because we're both tired and hungry.  We'll get supper."
+
+Her voice was its old self.  But whilst she laid the cloth he stood
+pressed against the window and looked out with blind eyes into the
+darkness, so that she should not see his slow, hot tears.  He was aware
+of great and bitter loss.  But he loved Christine more than he had ever
+done.  His love had ceased to be instinctive.  It had become conscious
+of itself and of her separateness.  And it would never be quite free
+again from pain.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1
+
+Long before he could read words of three syllables, Robert had learnt the
+Origin of Man, and had made a vivid, somewhat fanciful picture of that
+personage's pathetic beginnings as a miasm floating on the earth's
+surface, and of his accidental, no less pathetic progression as a Survival
+of the Fittest.  He gathered that even more than old Jaegers, Mr. Ricardo
+hated God Almighty and Jesus Christ, the latter of whom was intimately
+connected with something called a Sun Myth--chiefly, Robert supposed,
+because He was the Son of God.  Mr. Ricardo could not leave these two
+alone.  He hunted them down, he badgered and worried them, he covered them
+with gibes and insults.  It seemed to Robert sometimes that even the
+multiplication table was really a disguised missile hurled in their
+unsuspecting and non-existent faces.
+
+Mr. Ricardo appeared to have no friends.  As far as Robert could make out,
+when he was not at school he sat at his desk in the untidy, stuffy attic
+in the still more untidy, stuffy boarding-house where he lived, and wrote
+feverishly.  What he wrote Robert did not know.  There was an air of
+mystery about the whole business, as though he were concocting a deadly
+explosive which might go off at any moment.  Sometimes he seemed dated,
+sometimes cast down by the results, but always doggedly resolved.
+
+"It is a long, hard struggle, Stonehouse," he would say.  "There are more
+fools in this world than you could conceive possible.  Thank your stars
+your friend isn't one of them.  A fine, intelligent woman--a unique woman."
+
+He talked a good deal about Christine and women in general.
+
+"When once we can get them on our side," was one of his dark sayings, "the
+last trench will be in our hands."
+
+Then, one evening, to Robert's astonished displeasure, he walked home with
+him, and somehow drifted up their dark stairs to the little sitting-room
+where Christine was laying supper.  It appeared that he had come to give
+an account of his pupil's progress, but he was oddly excited, and when
+Christine invited him to share their meal--surely he could have seen there
+wasn't enough to go round, Robert thought--he accepted with a transparent,
+childlike eagerness that made Robert stare at him as at a stranger.  And
+after supper, with the self-conscious air of a man who has waited for this
+moment, be produced from his coat pocket a crumpled newspaper with the
+title _Unshackled_ printed in aggressive letters on its pale-green cover.
+
+"In my leisure time I write a good deal on a subject very dear to me, Miss
+Forsyth," he said and screwed up his sharp nose in a kind of nervous
+anguish.  "I have here an article published last week--you are a
+broad-minded, intelligent woman--I thought perhaps it might interest
+you--if you would care to glance over it."
+
+Christine lay back in her chair, her face in shadow.  But the lamplight
+fell on her two hands.  Red and misshapen as they were now, they were
+still noble hands, and their repose had dignity and beauty.
+
+"Won't you read it to us, Mr. Ricardo?  My eyes are tired at night."
+
+He cleared his throat.
+
+"It is an answer to Bishop Crawford's recent letter to _The Times_, which
+you may have seen.  I have called it 'Unmasking the Oracle.'"
+
+Robert leant out of the window and watched the sun sink into mist and
+smoke.  He wished Mr. Ricardo hadn't come; and that he would go away soon.
+In a few minutes the light would begin to die, and the sharp black lines
+of the roofs and spires, which on the ruins of their dull selves seemed to
+be built anew into a witchlike fantastic city, would be lost to him for
+another night.  Robert did not want to hear about God and the origin of
+man now.  He kicked impatiently.  Christine would sit up later than ever.
+And, besides with Mr. Ricardo's voice rising and falling, growing shriller
+and more passionate, one could not listen to that low, mysterious hum that
+was so like a far-off music.
+
+Mr. Ricardo made a sweeping, crushing gesture.  "That, surely, settles the
+controversy.  He will hardly be able to answer that, I think."
+
+Christine stirred, and opened her eyes, and smiled a little.
+
+"I could not answer it, at any rate.  It sounds very clever."  She took
+the paper from him and held it to the light, and Robert turned, hoping
+that now he would really go.  "But--but I didn't quite understand--have I
+lost the place?--this is by E. T. Richards."
+
+Then Robert saw an astonishing thing.  Suddenly Mr. Ricardo seemed to
+shrivel--to cower back into himself.  His fierce, triumphant energy had
+gone as at a blasting touch of magic.  He looked ashamed and broken.
+
+"A _nom de plume_--_a nom de guerre_, rather, Miss Forsyth--you
+understand--in my opinion--the scholastic profession--the stronghold of
+the worst bigotry and prejudice--for myself I should not care--I have
+always wanted to come out into the open--but I have a sister--poor
+girl!--a long, sad illness--for her sake--I can't afford----"
+
+Christine folded the paper gently as though she were afraid of hurting it.
+
+"Of course.  It would be unwise--unnecessary.  Why should one sacrifice
+oneself to fight something that doesn't exist?"
+
+He clenched his fists.
+
+"One must fight error, Miss Forsyth."
+
+"At any rate it's brave of you to try--to do what you think is right." And
+now it seemed she was trying to find something that would comfort
+him--just as she had once given Robert peppermint balls when he had hurt
+himself.  "If ever you feel inclined, won't you come again--and read to
+us?"
+
+He looked at her with dark, tragic eyes.
+
+"Thank you, thank you."
+
+Robert went with him to the door, and for a moment he wavered on the
+steps, blinking, and squeezing his soft hat between his bony hands.
+
+"A great woman--a kind woman--you must be worth her while, Stonehouse."
+
+And then, without so much as a "good night," he limped down the steps and
+along the street, flitting in and out of the lamplight like a hunted bat.
+
+It was the first of many tiresome evening visits.  But the next day he was
+always himself again, and the class wilted under his merciless,
+contemptuous sarcasms.  Only Robert was not afraid.  He knew that the lash
+would never come his way, and he could feel the little man's unspoken
+pride, when he showed himself quicker than his companions, like a secret
+Masonic pressure of the hand.  And there was something else.  It was a
+discovery that made him at first almost dizzy with astonishment.  He
+wasn't stupid.  Just as he was stronger, so he was cleverer than boys
+older than himself.  He could do things at once over which they botched
+and bungled.  He outstripped them when he chose.  Even his ignorance did
+not handicap him for long.  For Mr. Ricardo had kept his promise.  He
+taught well, and in those long afternoons in the hot boarding-house attic
+Robert had raced over the lost ground.  He did not always want to work.
+He gazed out of the window, half his mind busy planning what he and Rufus
+Cosgrave would do when they met at the corner of the street, but he could
+not help understanding what was so obvious, and there were moments when
+sheer interest swept him off his feet, and even Rufus was forgotten.  He
+took an audacious pleasure, too, in leaping suddenly over the heads of the
+whole class to the first place.  He did not always bother.  He liked to
+wait for some really teasing question, and then, when silence had become
+hopeless, hold up his hand.  Mr. Ricardo would look towards him,
+apparently incredulous and satirical, but Robert could read the message
+which the narrowed eyes twinkled at him.
+
+"Of course you understand, Stonehouse."
+
+And then he would answer and sweep the sullen class with a cool,
+exasperating indifference as he sat down.  For he did not want them any
+more.  He returned instinctive enmity with the scorn of a growing
+confidence.  It was rather fine to stand by yourself, especially when you
+had one friend who thought you splendid whatever you did, who clung to
+you, and whom you had to protect.  When he walked arm in arm with Rufus
+Cosgrave in the playground he trailed his coat insolently, and the
+challenge was not once accepted.  From the biggest boys to Dickson Minor,
+no one cared to risk the limitless possibilities of an encounter, and the
+word "carrots" was not so much as whispered in his hearing.
+
+Then in the late afternoon the real day seemed to begin.  Then the
+hardness and distrust with which he had unconsciously armed himself fell
+away, and he and Rufus Cosgrave sat side by side in the sooty grass behind
+the biscuit factory, and with arms clasped about their scarred and grubby
+knees planned out the vague but glorious time that waited for them.  Rufus
+was to be a Civil Servant.  He did not seem to care much for the prospect
+or even to be very clear as to what would be expected of him.  He felt,
+with Robert, that a Civil Servant sounded servile and romanceless, but
+unfortunately the profession, whatever it was, ran in the family.
+
+"My father's one, you know.  So I've got to.  I'd rather play the piano.
+But, of course, I wouldn't say so to anyone but you.  It sounds too
+beastly silly----"
+
+"I'd say whatever I wanted to," Robert retorted grandly, "I'll always say
+what I want to and do what I jolly well like when I'm grown up anyhow.
+You can if you're strong enough."
+
+"But then people hate you," Rufus said sadly.
+
+"That doesn't matter a bit."
+
+"Don't you mind people not liking you?"
+
+"Rather not."
+
+Rufus fumbled anxiously.
+
+"Wouldn't you be pleased if--if you were asked to play in the eleven--and
+the chaps cheered you like they do Christopher when he kicks a goal?"
+
+"I shouldn't care--not a button."  But he knew even then that it was not
+true.  His heart had leapt at the very thought.  He drew his fair brows
+together in the portentous Stonehouse scowl.  "It's silly to mind what
+silly people think.  And kicking goals is no good.  I'm going to be a
+doctor--not just the ordinary sort--a big doctor--and I'll discover
+things--and people like Christopher'll come and beg me to keep them alive."
+
+Rufus sighed deeply.
+
+"I wish I was like that.  I mind awfully--being ragged, and all that.  I
+was awfully miserable until you came.  If you went away--or didn't care
+any more--I don't know what I'd do.  But if I went away you wouldn't
+mind----"
+
+"Yes, I would."
+
+"But you're so much stronger."
+
+"I like being strongest."
+
+And then and there he expounded the doctrine of the Survival, and Rufus
+began to shiver all over like a frightened pony.
+
+"I think it's perfectly beastly.  What'll happen to me?  Anyone can lick
+me.  I wouldn't have a chance."
+
+The tears came into his round, blue eyes and trickled down his freckled
+cheeks, and a sudden choking tenderness, a dim perception of all that this
+one friend meant to him, made Robert fling his arms about him and hug him
+close.
+
+"Yes--you would.  Because I'll look after you--always--honest injun."
+
+
+
+2
+
+There was one secret that he never told to anyone--not even to Cosgrave.
+He was ashamed of it.  He knew it was silly--sillier than in believing in
+God--and he had almost succeeded in forgetting it when it came true.  It
+happened.  Just when he was least expecting it it came round the corner.
+First the music, a long way off, but growing louder and fiercer so that it
+seemed as though his fancy had suddenly jumped out of his brain and was
+running about by itself, doing just what it liked; then lights, torches
+with streaming flags of fire that put out the street lamps altogether, and
+the shadows of people marching--running--leaping--capering.
+
+Robert ran too.  He did not stop to think what it was.  He was wild with
+excitement, and as he ran he bounded into the air and waved his arms in a
+pent-up joy of living and moving.  He never had much chance to run.  You
+couldn't run by yourself for nothing.  People stared or were annoyed when
+you bumped against them.  But now there was something to run for.  There
+was no one to see or hear him in the deserted Grove, and with each bound
+he let out an unearthly, exultant whoop.
+
+At the corner where Acacia Grove met the High Street Rufus Cosgrave
+squirmed out of the pushing, jostling crowd and caught hold of him.  He
+was capless, panting.  His red hair stood on end.  In the flickering torch
+light he looked like a small, delirious Loga.
+
+"I say--Stonehouse--I was coming for you--it's a circus--they're going all
+the way down to the Green--they've got their tent there--if we could only
+climb up somewhere--I can't see a thing--not even the elephant's legs."
+
+"If we cut round by Griffith's Road we'll get there first," Robert
+shouted.  "Only we've got to run like mad."
+
+He seized Rufus by the hand and they shot free of the procession, up and
+down dim and decorous streets, swerving round corners and past astonished
+policemen whose "Now then, you young devils" was lost in the clatter of
+their feet.  Cosgrave gasped, but Robert's hold was relentless,
+compelling.  He could have run faster by himself, but somehow he could not
+let Cosgrave go.  "You've got to stick it," he hissed fiercely.  "It's
+only a minute."
+
+Cosgrave had no choice but to "stick it."  It did not even occur to him to
+resist though his eyes seemed to be bulging out of his head and his lungs
+on the point of bursting.  But the reward was near at hand.  There, at the
+bottom of Griffith's Road, they could see it--the Green, unfamiliar with
+its garish lights and the ghostly, gleaming tents.
+
+"We've done it!" Robert shouted.  "Hurrah--hurrah!"
+
+They had, in fact, time to spare.  The procession was still only half-way
+down the High Street, a dull red glow, like the mouth of a fiery cave,
+widening with every minute as though to swallow them.  There was, indeed,
+a disconcerting crowd gathered round the chief entrance, but Robert was
+like a general, cool and vigorous, strung up to the finest pitch of
+cunning.  He wormed his way under the ropes, he edged and insinuated
+himself between the idle and good-natured onlookers, with Cosgrave, tossed
+and buffeted, but still in tow, struggling in the backwash.  At last they
+were through, next to the entrance, and in the very front row of all.
+
+"Now you'll see the elephant," Robert laughed triumphantly, "every bit of
+him,"
+
+"Oh, my word!" Cosgrave gasped.  "Oh, my word!"
+
+It was coming.  It made itself felt even before it came into sight by the
+sudden tensity of the crowd, the anxious pressure from behind, the
+determined pushing back by the righteously indignant in front, the craning
+of necks, and indistinguishable, thrilling murmur.  A small boy, whom
+Robert recognized as the butcher's son, evidently torn between the dignity
+and excitement of his new post, stalked ahead and thrust printed notices
+into the outstretched hands.  Robert seized hold of one, but he was too
+excited to read.  He felt Rufus poke him insistently.
+
+"What's it say--what's it say?"
+
+"Shut up--I don't know--look for yourself."
+
+There they were.  The six torch-bearers were dressed like mediaeval pages,
+or near enough.  Their tight-fitting cotton hose, sagging a little at the
+knees, were sky-blue, and their tunics green and slashed with yellow.
+They wore jaunty velvet caps and fascinating daggers, ready to hand.  As
+they reached the entrance to the tent they halted, and with some uneasy
+shuffling formed up on either side, making a splendid passage of fire for
+the ten Moorish horsemen who rode next, fierce fellows these, armed to the
+teeth, with black, shining faces and rolling eyes.  A band struck up
+inside the tent to welcome them, and they rode through, scarcely bending
+their proud heads--much to the relief of the more timorous members of the
+crowd who had eyed the rear end of their noble steeds with a natural
+anxiety.  Unfortunately the torches smoked a good deal, and there was some
+grumbling.
+
+"'Ere, take the stinking thing out of me eyes, can't yer?"
+
+"Right down dangerous, I calls it.  If one of them there sparks gets into
+me 'at I'll be all ablaze in half a jiffy.  And oo'll pay for the
+feathers, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Oh, shut up--shut up!" Robert whispered bitterly.  "Why can't everyone
+shut up?"
+
+"The Biggest and Best Show in Europe," Rufus was reading aloud in a
+squeaky treble; "un-pre-ce-dented spectacles--performing sea-lions--great
+chariot-race--the Legless Wonder from Iceland--Warogha, the Missing
+Link--the greatest living Lady Equestrian, Madame Gloria Marotti,
+Mad-rad--oh, I can't read that--Gyp Labelle, the darling of the Folies
+Bergeres--what's Folies Bergeres, Robert----?  Oh, my word--my word!"
+
+It was the Shetland ponies that had saved Robert the trouble of replying
+that he didn't know.  After the ferocious magnificence of the Moorish
+gentlemen, they came as a sort of comic relief.  Everyone laughed, and
+even the lady with the feather hat recovered her good temper.
+
+"Why, you could keep one of them in the back yard--not an inch bigger than
+our collie, is he, 'Enry?  And Jim's not full grown--not by 'alf."
+
+"As though anyone cared about her beastly collie!" Robert thought.
+
+The elephants, a small one and a big one together to show their absurd
+proportions, came next.  The earth shook under them.  They waved their
+trunks hopefully from side to side, and their little brown eyes, which
+seemed to have no relation to their bodies, peered out like prisoners out
+of the peep-holes of a monstrous moving prison.  When the man next to
+Robert offered the smallest of them an empty paper-bag it curled its trunk
+over his head and opened its pointed mouth and let out a piercing squeal
+of protest which alarmed its tormentor, and caused his neighbours to
+regard him with nervous disapproval.  But the big elephant seemed to
+exercise a soothing influence over its companion.  It waved its trunk
+negligently as though in contemptuous dismissal of a commonplace incident.
+
+"My dear," it said, "that's all you can expect of such people."
+
+There were men seated on the big elephants' necks, their legs tucked
+comfortably behind the enormous flapping ears.  They looked mysterious and
+proud in their position.  They wore turbans and carried sticks with
+pointed iron spikes at the head, and when they came to the low entrance of
+the tent they prodded their huge beasts, which went down on their knees,
+painfully yet with a kind of sorrowful pride, and blundered through amidst
+the admiring murmur of the crowd.
+
+"The way they manage them big brutes!" declared the lady with the
+feathered hat disconsolately.  "And there's our George, a proper 'uman
+being, and can't be got to do a thing--nohow."
+
+The band inside had stopped, beaten in the hard-fought contest with its
+rival at the far end of the procession, which thereupon broke out into
+throaty triumphant trumpet blasts and exultant roll of drums.  Rufus
+clutched wildly at Robert's sleeve.
+
+"Oh, my word, just look at her!  Oh, my word!"
+
+Robert craned forward, peering round the embonpoint of the man next him.
+The procession now scarcely moved, and there was a space between the last
+elephant and the great coal-black horse that followed--a wide, solemn
+space, that invited you to realize that this was the finest sight you had
+ever seen in your life.  He was indeed a splendid, terrifying creature.
+As Rufus Cosgrave said loudly, he was not like a human horse at all.  One
+could imagine him having just burst out of hell, still breathing fire and
+smoke and rolling his eyes in the anguish of his bridled wickedness.  In
+the glare from the tent-door he gleamed darkly, a wild thing of black
+flames, and those in the front row of the crowd trod nervously on the toes
+of those behind, edging out of reach of his restless, dancing hoofs.  For
+it seemed impossible that the woman in the saddle should be really his
+master.  And yet she sat upright and unconcerned.  In its black,
+close-fitting habit, her supple body looked a living, vital part of the
+splendid beast.  She was his brain, stronger than his savage instinct, and
+every threatening move of his great limbs was dictated to him without a
+sound, almost without a gesture.  A touch of a slender, patent-leather
+boot set him prancing, an imperceptible twist of the wrist and he stood
+stock still, foam-necked and helpless.  It was a proud--an awe-inspiring
+spectacle.  And it was not only her fearless strength.  She was fair and
+beautiful.  So Robert saw her.  He saw nothing else.  He gazed and gazed,
+heart-stricken.  He did not hear Rufus speak to him, or the band which was
+blaring out a Viennese waltz, an old thing, whistled and danced half to
+death long since, but which, having perhaps a spark of immortal youth left
+among the embers, had not lost its power to make the pulses quicken.
+Indeed it even played a humble part in this great moment in Robert's life.
+Though he did not hear it, it poured emotion into the heated, dusty air.
+It painted the tawdry show with richer colours.  It was the rider's
+invisible retinue.  At a touch from her heel the horse danced to it, in
+perfect time, arching his great neck, and rolling his wild eyes.
+
+She was proud, too.  Robert saw how she disdained the gaping multitude.
+She rode with haughtily lifted head and only once her glance, under the
+white, arrogant lids, dropped for an instant.  Was it chance, was it the
+agonized intensity of his own gaze which drew it to the small boy almost
+under her horse's hoofs?  (For he had held his ground.  He was not afraid.
+Unlike the rest, his trust in her was limitless and unquestioning.  And if
+she chose to ride him down, he would not care, no more than a fanatic
+worshipper beneath the wheels of a Juggernaut.)  Now under her eyes his
+heart stood still, his knees shook.  She did not smile; she did not
+recognize his naked, shameless adoration.  And that too was well.  A smile
+would have lowered her, brought her down from her superb distance.  His
+happiness choked him.  She was the embodiment of everything that he had
+heard pass in the distance from the silent dusks of Acacia
+Grove--splendour and power, laughter and music, the beat of a secret pulse
+answering the tread of invisible processions.  She came riding out of the
+mists of his fancy into light, a living reality that he could take hold
+of, and set up in his empty temple.  She was not his mother, nor Francey,
+nor God, but she was everything that in their vague and different ways
+these three had been to him before he lost them.  She was something to be
+worshipped, to be died for, if necessary, with joy and pride.
+
+But in a moment it was over.  She looked away from him and rode forward,
+like a monarch into a grandly illuminated castle, amidst the whispered
+plaudits of her people.
+
+A little girl on a Shetland pony rode at her heels, Robert saw her without
+wanting to see her.  She obtruded herself vulgarly.  She was dressed as a
+page, her painfully thin legs looking like sticks of peppermint in their
+parti-coloured tights, and either was, or pretended to be, terrified of
+her minute and tubbily good-natured mount.  At its first move forward she
+fell upon its neck with shrill screams and clung on grotesquely, righting
+herself at last to make mock faces at the grinning crowd.
+
+"Oh, la, la--la-la!"
+
+She was a plain child with a large nose, slightly Jewish in line, a wide
+mouth, and a mass of crinkly fair hair that stood out in a pert halo about
+her head.  Robert hated her for the brief moment in which she invaded his
+consciousness.  It was quite evident that she was trying to draw attention
+from the splendid creature who had preceded her to her own puny and
+outrageous self, and that by some means or other she succeeded.  She
+gesticulated, she drew herself up in horrible imitation of a proud and
+noble bearing, she pretended that the rotund pony was prancing to the
+music, and, finally, burst into fits of laughter.  The crowd laughed with
+her, helplessly as though at a huge joke which she shared with each one of
+them in secret.
+
+"Oh, la la, la la."
+
+The man at Robert's side wiped his eyes.
+
+"Well, did you see that?  Upon my word----"
+
+"A baggage--that's what I call 'er," the feathered lady retorted severely.
+"Mark my words--a baggage."
+
+Rufus jogged Robert in the side.
+
+"Wasn't she a joke?  Didn't she make you scream?"
+
+Robert hated them all.  Beastly, despicable people who liked beastly,
+despicable things.
+
+More horsemen, camels, clowns on foot and clowns on donkeys.  Finally the
+band, slightly winded by this time, and playing raggedly.  The
+torch-bearers formed up, and a large gentleman in riding boots stood for a
+moment in the light.
+
+"To-morrow evening at eight o'clock--the first performance of the Greatest
+Show in Europe--a unique opportunity--better book your seats early, ladies
+and gentlemen----"
+
+Then the flaps of the tent fell and all the lights and sounds seemed to go
+out at once.  The crowd melted away, and only Robert and his companion
+remained gazing spellbound at the closed and silent cave which had
+swallowed all the enchantment.
+
+Rufus put his hands into his hair and tugged it desperately.
+
+"Oh, if only I could go--if only I could----  Don't you want to go,
+Robert?"
+
+Robert woke partially from his dream.
+
+"I'm going."  He turned, and with his hands thrust into his pockets began
+to walk homewards.  Rufus trotted feverishly at his side.
+
+"I say, are you really?  But then you've got no people; jolly for you.  I
+wish I hadn't.  My pater's so beastly strict; I'm scared of him.  I say,
+when will you go?"
+
+"To-morrow night, of course."
+
+"Have you got the money?"
+
+"No, but I'll get it."
+
+"Oh, I say, I wish I could.  P'r'aps I could too.  I've got money--yes, I
+have, even if it is in a beastly tin box.  What's the good of saving till
+you're grown up?  I shan't want it then like I do now.  It's silly.  All
+grown-up people are silly.  When I'm grown up I'll be different.  I say,
+Robert, I can come with you, can't I?"
+
+"Oh, yes--if you want to."  He was indifferent.  It puzzled him slightly
+that Rufus should be so eager.  What did he know of the true inwardness of
+what he had seen?  What had it got to do with him, anyway?
+
+Rufus brooded, his freckled face puckered with anxious contriving.
+
+"I say, I've got an idea!  I'll tell the pater you've asked me to come
+over and spend the evening with you at your place.  It'll be sort of true,
+won't it?  And then he'll never think about the money.  You won't mind,
+will you?  It'll never come out--and if it does, I'll say I made it up."
+
+"I don't care.  All right."
+
+Rufus drew a great sigh of relief.
+
+"Isn't it ripping?  Oh, I say, I wish it was to-morrow night.  I hope I
+don't die first.  What did you like best, Robert?  Who are you keenest on?"
+
+Robert did not answer.  It would have been sacrilege to talk her over--to
+drag her down into a silly controversy.  He longed for the moment when
+Rufus would have to leave him.  He wanted to be alone and silent.  Even
+the thought of Christine and of her inevitable questions hurt him like the
+touch of a rough, unfeeling hand.
+
+"I liked that kid best--that girl on the funny pony.  She must have been
+at the Folies Bergeres, don't you think?  Folies Bergeres sounds French,
+and she was making sort of French noises.  She made me laugh."  Something
+wistful and hungry came into his shrill voice.  He pressed close to
+Robert's side.  "I like people who make me laugh.  I like them better than
+anything in the world, don't you?  It's jolly to be able to laugh like
+that--right from one's inside----"
+
+But Robert only smiled scornfully, hugging his secret closer to himself.
+
+
+
+3
+
+She came on for the last time in the Final, when the whole circus,
+including the Legless Wonder, paraded round the ring to the competitive
+efforts of both bands.  Robert's eyes followed her with anguish.  It
+wasn't happiness any more.  He might have been a condemned man counting
+the last minutes of his life.  He was almost glad when it was over and her
+upright figure had vanished under the arch.  People began to fidget and
+reach for their hats and coats.  A grubby youth with a hot, red face and a
+tray slung round his neck pushed his way between the benches shouting:
+"Signed photographs of the c'lebrities, twopence each!" in a raucous
+indifferent voice.  Robert waved to him, and he took no notice.
+
+"Hi--hi!" Robert called faintly.
+
+The youth stopped.  He was terribly bored at first, but his boredom became
+a cynical amusement.  There were twenty different photographs of Madame
+Gloria Moretti:
+
+Madame Moretti full face, side face, three-quarter face, on her famous
+horse Arabesque, with her beautiful foot on Arabesque's prostrate form, in
+evening dress, stepping into her car--a car, at any rate--and so on, with
+"Gloria Moretti" scrawled nobly across every one of them.  Robert bought
+them all.  He stuffed them into his coat pockets, into his trouser
+pockets.  He dropped them.  He dropped the pennies and sixpences which he
+tried to count into the tray with shaking fingers.  He was drunk and
+reckless with his despairing love.   The sales-boy winked at everyone in
+general.
+
+"Takin' it 'ard, ain't 'e, the young dawg?"
+
+People smiled tolerantly.  Their smiles said as plainly as possible: "We
+remember being just as silly as that," and Robert hated them.  It wasn't
+true.  They didn't remember.  They had forgotten.  Or, if they remembered
+at all, it was only the things they had done, not what they had felt--the
+frightful pain that was an undreamed-of happiness, and the joy that tore
+the heart out of you, and the wonder of a new discovery.  You lost
+yourself, You gave everything that you were and had.  You asked nothing,
+hoped for nothing.  And suddenly you became strong so that you were not
+afraid any more of anything in the world--not of punishment nor disgrace,
+nor even laughter.
+
+But they pretended to understand.  Their pretence made you despise and
+pity them.  It was a horrid thing, as though a skeleton came to life and
+jiggled its bones and mouthed at you, "You see, I used to do that too."
+That was why you told lies to them--even to Christine.
+
+He had forgotten his cap.  The sales-boy ran after him with it and stuck
+it on his thick fair hair back to front.
+
+"There--you'll be losing your 'ead next!"
+
+It was dusk outside.  The evening performance began at once, and already a
+thick black stream of people was pouring up the roped gangways and
+frothing and seething at the box offices.  As they came out of the
+darkness they had a mystical air of suddenly returned life.  They were
+pilgrims' souls surging at the entrance of Paradise.  In a little while
+they would see her.  Not that they would know what they saw.  They would
+not be able to understand how great, how brave and splendid she was.  In
+their blindness of heart they would prefer the ugly little French girl
+with her shrill voice and absurd caperings; their clapping would be
+half-hearted, polite, and there would be no passionate, insistent pair of
+hands to beat up their flagging enthusiasm and bring her back once more
+into the arena, bowing in regal scorn of them.
+
+For he, Robert, had brought her back twice, just because he wouldn't
+stop--had beaten his hands till even now they were hot and swollen.  She
+had not known, and he would not have had her know for the whole world.
+That was part of the mystery.  You yourself were as nothing.
+
+But it did hurt intolerably to think that perhaps because he was not there
+she would not be called back so often.  It was as though he betrayed
+her--broke his allegiance.  That afternoon, when it had seemed that the
+evening could never really come, he had told himself that this was the
+last time; but now, standing on the dim outskirts of the crowd, the
+photographs that he hadn't been able to fit into his pockets held fast in
+his burning hands, he saw how impossible, how even wrong and faithless
+that decision had been.  So long as a shilling remained to him he had to
+go, he had to take his place among her loyal people.  It meant being
+"found out" hopelessly and violently.   They--the mysterious "they" of
+authority--might destroy him utterly.  That would be the most splendid
+thing of all.  He would have done all that he could do.  He would have
+laid his last tribute at her unconscious feet and gone out in fire and
+thunder.
+
+He had actually joined the box-office queue when Rufus Cosgrave found him.
+Rufus had been running hard and he was out of breath, and his blue eyes
+had a queer, strained look, as though they had wanted to cry and had not
+had the time.  And on his dead-white face the freckles stood out,
+ludicrously vivid.
+
+"Oh, I say, Robert, where have you been?  I waited and waited for you.
+And then I went round to your place--and Miss Forsyth said she didn't know
+and she seemed awfully worried--and--and--oh, I say--you're not going
+again, are you?"
+
+Robert nodded calmly.  But his heart had begun to beat thickly with the
+premonition of disaster.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"You might have told me--oh, I say, do listen--do come out a minute--I'm
+in an awful hole--there's going to be an awful row--I'm--I'm so beastly
+scared----"
+
+He was shivering.  He did not seem to know that people were looking at
+him.  His voice was squeaky and broken.  He tugged at Robert's sleeve.
+"Oh, I say--do come----"
+
+Robert looked ahead of him.  It meant losing his place.  Instead of being
+so close to her that he could smell the warm, sweet scent of her as she
+passed, he would have to peer between peopled heads, and she would be a
+far-off vision to him.  And yet, oddly enough, it did not occur to him to
+refuse.  He stood out, and they walked together towards the dark, huddled
+army of caravans beyond the tents.
+
+"What is it?  What's the row?"
+
+"It's Father--he's got wind of something--Mother told me--he's going to
+open my money-box when he comes home to-night.  I didn't know he'd kept
+count--just the sort of beastly thing he would do--and oh, Robert, when he
+finds out I've been cramming him he'll kill me--he will, really----"
+
+At another time Robert might have consoled him with the assurance that
+even the beastliest sort of father might hesitate to risk his neck on such
+slight provocation, but he himself was overwrought with three days of
+peril, of desperate subterfuge and feverish alternations between joy and
+anguish.  Now, in the mysterious twilight, the most terrible, as the most
+wonderful things seemed not merely possible but likely.  It made it all
+the more terrible that Rufus should have to endure so much because he had
+taken a fancy to a silly kid who laughed like a hyena till you laughed
+yourself, however much you hated her.
+
+He held Cosgrave's sticky hand tight, and at that loyal understanding
+pressure Cosgrave began to cry, shaking from head to foot, jerking out his
+words between his chattering teeth.
+
+"It's s-stupid to cry--I do w-wish I w-wasn't always c-crying about
+everything--after all--he c-can't kill me more than once, can he?  But
+he's such a beast.  He h-hates anyone else to h-have a good time and tell
+lies.  He's always so j-jolly glad to let into me or mother--and when he
+finds out we've been stuffing him he--he goes mad--and preaches for days
+and days.  Mother's a brick.  She gave me a shilling to put back--but
+he--he keeps her short, and she has to tell about every penny.  She says
+she'll have to pretend she lost it.  And it's not enough, anyway.
+Oh--Robert, you don't know what a row there'll be."
+
+But Robert knew.  He felt the cruel familiar ruffling of the nerves.  He
+heard the thud of his father's step, the horrible boom of his father's
+voice, "You're a born liar, Christine--you're making my son into a liar."
+It was as though Dr. Stonehouse had pushed off the earth that covered him
+and stood up.
+
+It was awful that Rufus should be frightened too.  It wasn't fair.  He
+wasn't strong enough.
+
+"I say--we'll have to do something.  How much did you take out?"
+
+"'Bout three shillings--there was an extra penny or two--p'r'aps he
+wouldn't notice that, though--I thought p'r'aps--oh, I don't know what I
+thought--but I had to come to tell you--I hadn't anyone else----"
+
+Robert nodded.  He stopped and looked back towards the big central tent.
+It had grown at once larger and vaguer.  The lighted entrance had a sort
+of halo round it like the moon before it is going to rain.  There was an
+empty, sinking feeling in his stomach, and he too had begun to tremble, in
+little, uncontrollable gusts.  He let go his hold on Rufus's hand so that
+he should not know.
+
+"I've got two bob--somewhere," he heard himself saying casually and rather
+grandly.
+
+He knew now that he would never see her again.  There was no struggle in
+his mind, because there did not seem to be any choice.  It wasn't that
+little Cosgrave counted more--he hardly counted at all in that moment.
+But she, if she knew he existed, would expect him to do the right, the
+fine thing.  Francey would have expected it.  And she was only a mere
+girl.  How much more this noble, wonderful woman?  It was better than
+clapping.  Somewhere at the back of his mind was the idea that he offered
+her a more gallant tribute, and that one day she would know that he had
+stuck up for Cosgrave for her sake, and, remote and godlike though she
+was, be just a little pleased.  The comfort of it was a faint warm light
+showing through his darkness.  It was all he had.  As he dug those last,
+most precious shillings out of the chaos of his pockets he felt himself go
+sick and faint, just as he had done when, in a desperate fight, a boy
+bigger than himself had kicked his shin.
+
+"There--you can put them back, can't you?  He'll never know----"
+
+Rufus stopped crying instantly, after the miraculous fashion of his years.
+He cut an elfish caper.  He rubbed himself against his saviour like some
+small grateful animal.
+
+"I say, you are a brick.  I knew you'd help somehow.  Won't he be sold,
+though?  I'll just love to see his beastly face!  What luck--not having a
+father, like you.  I say, though, is that all you've got?  You won't be
+able to go to the show now--and you're so keen, aren't you?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," Robert answered carelessly.  "I don't mind much--not
+really."
+
+He began to walk on, Rufus tagging valiantly at his heels.
+
+"And--and if anyone asks--you'll say I was at your place--doing
+prep.--won't you?"
+
+"Oh, rather----"
+
+"It's awfully decent of you.  You don't mind telling fibs, do you, Robert?"
+
+"One has to," Robert answered austerely.  "Everyone has to."
+
+Now that it was all over and he turned his back on her for ever, the
+splendid glow of renunciation began to fade.  Life stretched before him, a
+black limitless emptiness.  He wished agonizedly that Arabesque had gone
+mad and bolted and that he had stopped him and saved his rider's life,
+dying gloriously and at once, instead of miserably and by inches, like
+this.  He felt that in a moment the pain in his throat would get the
+better of him and he would begin to cry.
+
+They stopped at the far end of the Green where it was dark and they could
+hardly see each other.  He heard Cosgrave breathing heavily through his
+nose, almost snorting, and then a timid, shamefaced whisper:
+
+"You are decent to me.  I say--I do love you so, Robert."
+
+It was an awful thing to have said.  They both knew it.  If anyone had
+overheard them the shame would have haunted them to their death.  And yet
+it was wonderful too.  Never to be forgotten.
+
+"You oughtn't to say rotten, stupid things like that--like silly girls."
+And then, as though it had been torn from him.  "I love you too, Rufus."
+
+After that he ran madly so that Rufus could not overtake him--above all so
+that he could not hear the band which had begun to play the opening march.
+
+
+
+4
+
+But before he had stopped running he had begun to plot again.  Even though
+he had made the great renunciation he could not help hoping.  It was the
+kind of hope that, when one is very young, follows on the heels of
+absolute despair, and is based on magical impossibilities.  It was like
+his birthday hopes, which had been known to rise triumphant above the most
+obvious and discouraging facts.  After all there was to-morrow.  He would
+tell Christine everything--open his heart to her as to a good and
+understanding friend--and she would give him six-pence so that he could
+stand in the cheap places, or perhaps a shilling so that he could go
+twice.  He would tell her how he had saved Cosgrave from a fearful row,
+and she would approve of him and sympathize with Cosgrave, who had such
+beastly, understanding people.
+
+He would hug her and say;
+
+"It's jolly to have someone like you, Christine!"
+
+And she would be enormously pleased, and in the dusk they would sit close
+together and he would tell her of his superb being who changed the course
+of his life, who was like his mother and Francey and God rolled into one,
+and for whose sake he had emptied the housekeeping purse.
+
+Perhaps it would all have happened just as he planned it, could it have
+happened then and there.  But the front door was closed and he had to wait
+a long time for the landlady's heavy answering tread.  When she came at
+last it was from upstairs--he could tell by her breathing and a familiar
+creak--and a cold dead hand laid itself on his heart and squeezed the hope
+out of it.  They had been talking about him--those two grown-up people.
+He knew the kind of things they had said: "It's very tiresome of him to be
+out so late, Mrs. Withers," and, "Boys is worritting, outrageous critters,
+M'am," and the cruel impossibility of reaching their far-off impervious
+understanding lamed him before the door had opened.
+
+Mrs. Withers' lumpy figure loomed up grotesquely against the yellow murk.
+
+"Is that you, Master Robert?  You'd better run up quick.  Your aunt is
+going to give you a jacketing, I can tell you."
+
+"Aunt" was the term with which Mrs. Withers covered up what she considered
+privately to be an ambiguous relationship.
+
+Robert slunk past her.  He crawled upstairs with an aggressive
+deliberation.  He would show how much he cared.  He was not afraid of
+Christine.  He had seen her unhappy too often.  In a way he knew that he
+was stronger than she was.  For she was old and had no one to love but
+himself.
+
+All the same he was afraid.  With every step he took he seemed to climb
+farther and farther into the midst of fear.  It was all around him--in the
+close, airless dark and in the deathly quiet light that came from the open
+doorway overhead.  What was waiting for him there?  His father, risen
+unimaginably loathsome from the grave?  For he could never be in the dark
+without thinking of his father.  Or something else?  At least he knew that
+the never-really-believed-in time of peace was over and that the monster
+which had lain hidden and quiescent so long was crouched somewhere close
+to him, ready to leap out.
+
+Christine sat by the table under the light.  There was a drawer beside her
+which she had evidently torn out of its place in panic-stricken haste, for
+the floor about her was littered with its contents--gloves and
+handkerchiefs and ribbons.  She held a shabby, empty purse in her limp
+hand, and it was as though she had sat down because she had no longer the
+strength to stand.  He had not known before how grey her hair was.  Her
+face was grey, too, and withered like a dead leaf.
+
+He stood hesitating in the doorway and they looked at one another.  There
+was no question of punishment or reproof between them.  It was the old
+days over again when they had clung together in the face of a common
+peril--helpless and horribly afraid.  She tried to smile and push the
+empty purse out of sight as though it were of no account at all.  And all
+at once he was ashamed and miserable with pity.
+
+"I was beginning to get quite worried about you." He could hardly hear
+her.  "Where have you been, Robert?"
+
+He answered heavily, not moving from the doorway where he hung like a
+sullen shadow.
+
+"At the Circus."
+
+"Is there a Circus?  Why didn't Mrs. Withers tell me?  If I had known that
+I shouldn't have worried.  I expect you were there yesterday too--and the
+day before, weren't you, dear?"
+
+He nodded, and she began to bundle everything back into the drawer, as
+though at last a tiresome question had been satisfactorily settled.
+
+"I knew it was all right.  Mr. Ricardo was here this afternoon.  He
+thought I was ill--he thought you had told him you couldn't come because I
+was ill.  I said I had had to stay at home--it was easier--I knew there
+had been a mistake."
+
+The old life again.  They were confederates and she had lied to shield him
+even from herself.  She was looking past him as though she saw someone
+standing behind him in the dark passage.  He was so sure of it that he
+wanted to turn round.  But he did not dare.
+
+"I wish I'd known.  We--we might have gone together.  I used to be very
+fond of a good circus.  Did they have elephants?  Robert--Robert, dear,
+why didn't you tell me about it?"
+
+He shook his head.  He knew now that he could never have told her or made
+her understand.  She would have thought him silly--or disloyal.  She would
+never see that this new love had nothing to do with the Robert who would
+die if Christine left him.  It had to do with another boy who longed for
+bands and processions and worshipped happy, splendid people who did not
+have to tell lies and who were so strong and fearless that even fierce
+animals had to obey them.  They were different.  They did not live in the
+same life.  You could love them without pain or pity.
+
+It was a secret thing, inside himself.  If he tried to drag it out and
+show it her, no one could tell what would happen to it.
+
+She sighed deeply.
+
+"It's this being away all day.  If I had been at home you would have asked
+me for the money, wouldn't you?  And then you forgot to tell me.  But I've
+been a little worried.  You didn't take it all, did you, dear?"
+
+"Yes, I did.  I spent it at the Circus.  And then I gave some to Cosgrave."
+
+He saw the blood rush up wildly into her white face.  The next minute she
+had laughed--a gay, unfamiliar laugh--and he winced and shivered as though
+she had struck him.
+
+"Why, that's so like your father--that's just what your father would have
+done.  He loved doing kind, generous things--giving money away."
+
+And now he knew for certain who it was who stood behind him in the dark
+passage.  He could not bear it.  He slammed the door to, closing his eyes
+tight so that he should not see.  He ran to her, pressing himself against
+her, stammering passionately.
+
+"I'm not like my father--I'm not--I'm not.  I won't be."
+
+She petted him tenderly.  She was grave now and sure of herself.
+
+"You mustn't say that, Robert.  Your father was a wonderful man, in many
+ways.  People didn't understand him--only your mother and I.  If your
+mother had lived it would all have been quite different.  He was
+unfortunate and often very unhappy.  The world thinks so much of money.
+But he despised it.  It was nothing to him.  You're like that too.  You
+didn't realize, did you?  It didn't seem a great deal.  It was just a
+beginning.  But I have had to do without food.  I've been hungry
+sometimes--I think I ought to tell you this, so that you may
+understand--I've looked into shop-windows at lunch-time.  You see, it was
+to pay for the time when you are preparing to be a doctor.  It means
+hundreds of pounds, Robert.  But I calculated that if I saved a little
+every week--I'd manage it--if I didn't die or lose my work."
+
+"Don't, Christine--please don't!  Oh, Christine!"
+
+"If I lost my work--Mr. Percy is very kind.  He is an old friend and knows
+the position.  But he has his business to consider.  I'm not quick--my
+eyes aren't strong.  There are younger, cleverer people.  We've got to
+look things in the face, Robert.  If I lost my work there would be nothing
+between us and the workhouse--nothing--nothing--nothing."
+
+He was shivering as if with bitter cold.  His teeth chattered in his head.
+He caught a ghost-like glimpse of a boy in the glass opposite--a strange,
+unfamiliar figure with a white, tear-stained face and haggard eyes and
+fair hair all on end.
+
+"Oh, Christine--I'm frightened!"
+
+"You think money must come from somewhere.  Something will turn up.  That
+was what your father used to say.  He was so hopeful.  It wasn't possible
+that it shouldn't turn up.  But I was younger and stronger then--I can't
+begin again.--I can't--I can't.  If you're not good, Robert, I can't go
+on."
+
+"I will be good.  I won't tell lies.  I won't spend money ever again.  I
+won't love anyone but you.  I won't be a doctor; I'll be something
+cheap--now."
+
+He had forgotten the photographs.  He still held them in one
+tight-clenched hand.  But she had seen them.  And all at once she braced
+herself although to meet an implacable enemy.  She was not tender any
+more.  She was the Christine who had faced bailiffs and his father's
+strange, gay friends--ice-cold and bitter and relentless.  She took the
+pictures from him.  With a terrible ironic calm she sorted them from his
+pockets, and spread them out on the table like a pack of cards.  He dared
+not look at her.  He was afraid to see what she was seeing.  She had torn
+open the door of his secret chamber, and there in that blasting light was
+his treasure, naked, defenceless.  He could have cried out in his dread,
+"Only don't say anything--don't say anything!"
+
+"So that's what you liked so much, Robert--that's what you spent the money
+on.  It's the old story--beginning again--only worse."  She added, almost
+to herself:
+
+"A vulgar, common woman."
+
+She put her face between her hands.  He could hear her quiet crying.  It
+was awful.  His love for her was a torture.  Because she was not wonderful
+at all but human and pitiful like himself, he felt her grief like a knife
+turning and turning in his own heart.  But he could not comfort her.  He
+could only stare aghast at that row of faces--grinning, smirking,
+arrogant, insolent faces.
+
+It was true.  The jolly lights had been turned out.  The band had stopped
+playing.
+
+A vulgar, common woman!
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+He stood with his back to the Circus entrance where he could smell the
+sawdust and hear the hum of the audience crowding into their seats.  The
+invisible band gave funny noises like a man clearing his throat.  There
+was still a number of people coming in--some strolling idly, others pulled
+along by their excited charges.  It was queer, Robert thought, that they
+should be excited.  The smell of the sawdust made him feel rather sick.
+
+He gave out his last handbill.  Nobody noticed him.  They took the slip of
+paper which he thrust into their hands without looking at him.  He went
+and stood at the box-office where the big man in riding boots was counting
+out his money.  It was a high box-office, so that Robert had to stand on
+tip-toe to be seen.
+
+"I've finished," he said.
+
+The man glanced at him and then remembered.
+
+"Oh, yes, you're the young feller.  Given 'em all out, eh?  Not thrown 'em
+on the rubbish heap?  Well, what is it?"
+
+"I want my sixpence."
+
+"Oh, sixpence I promised you, did I?  Well, here's a shilling seat.
+That'll do better, eh, what?  You can go in now."
+
+"I want my sixpence."
+
+"You don't want--don't want to go to the Circus?"
+
+"I don't like Circuses."
+
+The big man stared down at the white set face gazing stolidly back at him
+over the wooded ledge.  He tossed the coin indignantly across.
+
+"Well, of all the unnatural, ungrateful young jackanapes----"
+
+But he was so astonished that he had to lean out of his box and watch the
+blasphemer--a quaint figure, bowed as though under a heavy burden, its
+hands thrust hard into its trousers pockets--stalk away from the great
+tent and without so much as a backward glance lose itself among the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+I
+
+1
+
+They came to an idle halt near Cleopatra's needle, and leaning against
+the Embankment wall, looked across the river to the warehouses opposite,
+which, in the evening mist, had the look of stark cliffs guarded by a
+solitary watchful lion.  The smaller of the two young men took off his
+soft hat and set it beside him so that he could let the wind brush
+through his thick red hair.  He held himself very straight, his slender
+body taut with solemn exultation.
+
+"If only one could do something with it," he said; "eat it--hug it--get
+inside of it somehow--belong to it.  It hurts--this gaping like an
+outsider.  Look now--one shade of purple upon another.  Isn't it
+unendurably beautiful? But if one could write a sonnet--or a sonata--or
+paint a picture----  That's where the real artist has the pull over us
+poor devils who can only feel things.  He wouldn't just stand here.  He'd
+get out his fountain pen or his paint-box and make it all his for ever
+and ever.  Think of Whistler now--what he would do with it."
+
+"I can't," Stonehouse said.  "Who's Whistler?"
+
+Cosgrave laughed in anticipation of his little joke.  "Nobody, old
+fellow.  At least, he never discovered any bugs."
+
+The wind snatched up his forgotten hat and it sailed off up river into
+the darkness like a large unwieldy bird.  He looked after it ruefully.
+
+"That was a new hat.  I'll have to go home without one, and the Pater
+will think I've been in a drunken brawl, and there'll be a beastly row."
+
+"That's the one thing he'll never believe.  Well, I don't care.  It'll be
+over soon.  If I've passed that exam.  I'll get away and he won't be able
+to nag me any more.  And you, do think I've passed, don't you,
+Stonehouse?"
+
+"If you didn't imagine your answers afterwards."
+
+"Honour bright, I didn't.  I believe I did a lot better, really.  You
+know, I'm so awfully happy to-night I'd believe anything.  It's queer how
+this old river fits in with one's moods, isn't it?  Last time we were
+here I wanted to drown myself, and there it was ready to hand, as it
+were--offering eternal oblivion--and all that.  I thought of all the
+other fellows who had drowned themselves, and felt no end cheered up.
+And now it makes me think of escape--of getting away from
+everything--sailing to strange, new countries----"
+
+"The last time you were here," Stonehouse said, "you'd just come out of
+the exam.  If you really answered as you say you did, there was no reason
+for your wanting to drown yourself."
+
+"But I did.  You're such a distrustful beggar.  You think I just imagine
+things.  No, I'll tell you what it was--I didn't care.  There I was--I'd
+swotted and swotted.  I'd thought that if only I could squeeze through
+I'd be the happiest man on earth.  And then, when it was all over I began
+to think: 'What's it all for, what's it all about?  What's the good?'
+Suppose I have passed, I'll get some beastly little job in some stuffy
+Government office, 200 pounds a year, if I'm lucky.  And then if I'm good
+and not too bright they'll raise me to 250 pounds in a couple of years'
+time, and so it'll go on--nothing but fug, and dinge, and skimping, and
+planning--with a fortnight at the seaside once a year or a run over to
+Paris.  I suppose it was good enough for our grandfathers,
+Stonehouse--this just keeping alive?  But it didn't seem good enough to
+me.  Don't you feel like that sometimes--when you think of the time when
+you'll be able to stick M.D., or whatever it is, after your name--as
+though, after all, it didn't matter a brace of shakes?"
+
+Robert Stonehouse roused himself from his lounging attitude and thrust
+his hands deep into his trousers pockets.  There was a nip in the wind,
+and he had no overcoat.
+
+"No.  When I've got through this next year I shall feel that I've climbed
+out of a black pit and that the world's before me--to do what I like
+with."
+
+"Well--you're different."  Cosgrave sighed, but not unhappily.  "You're
+going to do what you want to do, and I expect you'll be great guns at it.
+I dare say if I were to play the piano all day long--decently, you know,
+as I do sometimes, inside me at any rate--and get money for it, I'd think
+it worth while----  But it takes a lot to make one feel that way about
+a Government office."
+
+His voice was quenched by a sudden rush of traffic--a tram that jangled
+and swayed, a purring limousine full of vague, glittering figures, and a
+great belated lorry lumbering in pursuit like an uncouth participant in
+some fantastic race.  They roared past and vanished, and into the empty
+space of quiet there flowed back the undertones of the river, solitary
+footfalls, the voice of the drowsing city.  The loneliness became
+something magical.  It changed the colour of Cosgrave's thoughts.  He
+pressed closer to his companion, and, with his elbows on the balustrade
+and his hands clenched in his hair, spoke in an awed whisper.
+
+"It does seem worth while now.  That's what's so extraordinary.  I feel I
+can stick anything--even being a Government clerk all my life.  I don't
+even seem to mind home like I did.  I'm in love.  That's what it is.
+You've never been in love, have you, Stonehouse?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You're such a cast-iron fellow.  I don't know how I have the nerve to
+tell you things.  Sometimes I think you don't care a snap for anything in
+the world, except just getting on."
+
+Robert Stonehouse hunched his shoulders against the wind.  There was more
+than physical discomfort in the movement--a kind of secret distress and
+resentment.
+
+"You do talk a lot of sentimental rubbish," he said.  "It seems to me
+it's only a hindrance--this caring so much for people.  It gets in a
+man's way.  Not that it matters to you just now.  You've got a slack
+time.  You can afford to fool around."
+
+"You think I'm a milksop," Cosgrave said patiently, "I don't mind.  I
+dare say it's true.  There's not much fight in me.  I don't seem able to
+do without people like you can.  I think, sometimes, if I hadn't had you
+to back me up I'd never have been able to stick things.  Of course, I'm
+not clever, either.  But you're wrong about being in love.  It doesn't
+get in one's way.  It helps.  Everything seems different."
+
+Stonehouse was silent, his fair, straight brows contracted.  When he
+spoke at last it was dispassionately and impersonally, as one giving a
+considered judgment.  But his voice was rather absurdly young.
+
+"You may be right.  I hadn't thought about it before.  It didn't seem
+important enough.  There was a woman I knew when I was a kid--a common
+creature--who was fond of saying that 'it was love that made the world go
+round.'  (My father married her for her money, which didn't go round at
+all.)  Still, in her way, she was stating a kind of biological fact.  If
+people without much hold on life didn't fall in love they'd become
+extinct.  They wouldn't have the guts to push on or the cheek to
+perpetuate themselves.  But they do fall in love, and I suppose, as you
+say, things seem different.  _They_ seem different--worth while.  So they
+marry and have children, which seems worth while too--different from
+other people's children, at any rate, or they wouldn't be able to bear
+the sight of them.  What you call love is just a sort of trick played on
+you.  If crowds are of any use I suppose it's justified.  It's a big
+'if,' though."
+
+Cosgrave smiled into the dark.
+
+"It sounds perfectly beastly.  Not a bit encouraging.  But I don't care,
+somehow.  Do you mind if I tell you about her?  I've got to talk to
+somebody."
+
+"I don't mind.  But I don't want to stand here any longer.  It's cold,
+and, besides, I've got to be up west by six."
+
+They turned and strolled on toward Westminster.  Robert Stonehouse still
+kept his hands thrust into his pockets, and the position, gave his
+heavy-shouldered figure a hunched fighting look, as though he had set
+himself to stride out against a tearing storm.  He took no notice of
+Cosgrave, who talked on rapidly, stammering a little and scrambling for
+his words.  The wind blew his hair on end, and he walked with his small
+wistful nose lifted to the invisible stars.
+
+"You see, I can't tell anyone at home about her.  It's not as though she
+were even what people call a lady.  (Oh, I'm perfectly sane--I don't
+humbug myself.)  Mother'd have a fit, and the Pater only looks at that
+kind of thing in one way--his own particularly disgusting way.  She drops
+her aitches sometimes.  But she's good, and she's pretty as a flower.  I
+met her at a dance club.  I'd never been to such a place before.  And
+then one evening it suddenly came over me that I wanted to be among a lot
+of people who were having a good time.  So I plunged.  You pay sixpence,
+you know, and everybody dances with everybody.  Of course I can't dance.
+She saw me hanging round and looking glum, I suppose, and she was nice to
+me.  She taught me a few steps, and I told her about the exam, and how
+worried I was about it, and we became friends.  I've never had a
+girl-friend before.  It's amazing.  And she's different, anyway----
+She's on the stage--in the chorus to begin with--but you'd think they'd
+given her a lead, she's so happy about it.  That's what I love about her.
+Everything seems jolly to her.  She enjoys things like a kid--a 'bus
+ride, a cinema, our little suppers together.  She loves just being alive,
+you know.  It's extraordinary--I say, are you listening, Stonehouse?"
+
+"I didn't know you wanted me to listen.  I thought you wanted to talk.  I
+was thinking of an operation I saw once--you wouldn't understand--it was
+a ticklish job, and the man lost his head.  He tried to hide it, but I
+knew, and he saw I knew.  A man like that oughtn't to operate."
+
+"And did the other fellow die?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  But he would have died anyway, probably.  It wasn't that that
+mattered.  It was losing his nerve like that."
+
+"If I saw an operation," Cosgrave said humbly, "I should be sick."
+
+Stonehouse had not heard.  They reached the bridge in silence, and under
+a street lamp stopped to take leave of one another.  It was their
+customary walk and the customary ending, and each wondered in his
+different way how it was that they should always want to meet and to talk
+to one another of things that only one of them could understand.
+
+"Why does he bother with me?" Cosgrave thought.
+
+But he was sorry for Robert, partly because he guessed that he was hungry
+and partly because he knew that he was not in love.
+
+"I wish you'd come along too," he said a little breathlessly; "I want you
+to meet her, you know--for us all to be friends together--just a quiet
+supper--and my treat, of course."
+
+It was very transparent.  He tried to look up at his companion boldly and
+innocently.  But the light from the street lamp fell into his strange
+blue eyes, with their look of young and anxious hopefulness, and made
+them blink.  Robert Stonehouse laughed.  He knew what was in Cosgrave's
+mind, and it seemed to him half comic and half pathetic and rather
+irritating.
+
+"I don't suppose you have enough to pay for supper, anyway," he said
+roughly, "or you'll go without your lunch to-morrow.  Don't be an idiot.
+Look after yourself and I'll look after myself.  Besides, if you think
+I'm not going to have a square meal to-night you're enormously mistaken.
+I'm going to dine well--where you'll never Set your foot, not until
+you're earning more than 250 pounds a year, at any rate."
+
+"Word of honour?"
+
+"Oh, word of honour, of course."
+
+A shy relief came into the pinched and freckled face.
+
+"Oh, well then--but I do want you to meet all the same; you see, she'd
+like it--she knows all about you.  I'm always bragging about you.
+Perhaps I could bring her round--if Miss Forsyth wouldn't mind--if she's
+well enough."
+
+Robert Stonehouse half turned away, as though shrinking from an
+unwelcome, painful touch.
+
+"She's all right."
+
+"Then may we come?  I'm not afraid of Miss Forsyth.  She's an
+understanding person.  She won't think people common because of their
+aitches.  Give her my love, won't you, Robert.  And good night."
+
+"Oh, good night!"  He added quickly, sullenly: "You look blue with cold.
+Why don't you wear a decent coat?  It's idiotic!"
+
+"Because my coat isn't decent.  I don't want her to see me shabby.  And I
+like to pretend I'm rather a strong, dashing fellow who doesn't mind
+things.  Besides, look at yourself!"
+
+"I'm different."
+
+"You needn't rub it in."  He was gay now with an expectation that bubbled
+up in him like a fountain.  He made as though to salute Robert solemnly
+and then remembered and clutched at his wind-blown hair instead.  "Oh, my
+hat!  Well, it will make Connie laugh like anything!" he said.
+
+
+
+2
+
+To be a habitue of Brown's was to prove yourself a person of some means
+and solid discrimination.  At Brown's you could get cuts from the joint,
+a porter-house steak, apple tart, and a good boiled pudding as nowhere
+else in the world.  You went in through the swinging doors an ordinary
+and fallible human being, and you came out feeling you had been fed on
+the very stuff which made the Empire.  You were slightly stupefied, but
+you were also superbly, magnificently unbeatable.
+
+Mr. Brown was an Englishman.  But he did not glory in the fact.  It was,
+as he had explained to Robert one night, his kindly, serious face glowing
+in the reflection from the grill, a tragedy.
+
+"To be born an Englishman and a cook--it's like being born a bird without
+wings.  You can't soar--not however hard you try--not above roasts and
+boils.  Take vegetables.  An Englishman natur'lly boils.  And it's no
+good going against nature.  You're a doctor--or going to be--and you know
+that.  You've got to do the best you can, but you can't do more.  That's
+my motto.  But if I'd been born a Frenchman----  Well it's no use
+dreaming.  If them potatoes are ready, Jim, so'm I."
+
+Mr. Brown had taken a fancy to Robert Stonehouse from the moment that the
+latter had challenged him on the very threshold of his kitchen and
+explained, coolly and simply, his needs and his intentions.  Mr. Brown
+was frankly a Romantic, and Robert made up to him for the souffles and
+other culinary adventures which Fate had denied him.  He liked to dream
+himself into Robert's future.
+
+"One of these days I'll be pointing you out to my special
+customers--'Yes, sir, that's Sir Robert himself.  Comes here every
+Saturday night for old times' sake.  Used to work here with me--waited
+with his own hands, sir--for two square meals and ten per cent. of his
+tips.  You don't get young men like that these days--no, sir."
+
+Robert accepted his prophetic vision gravely.  It was what he meant to
+happen, and it did not seem to him to be amusing.
+
+Brown's was tucked away in a quiet West End side street, and there was
+only one entrance.  At six o'clock the tables were still empty, and
+Robert walked through into the employees' dressing-room.  He put on his
+white jacket, slightly stained with iodoform, and a black apron which
+concealed his unprofessional grey trousers, and went to work in the
+pantry, laying out plates and dishes in proper order, after the manner of
+a general marshalling his troops for action.  He was deft handed, and
+responsible for fewer breakages than any of the old-timers--foreigners
+for the most--who flitted up and down the passages with the look of bats
+startled from their belfries and only half awake.  Through an open, glass
+window he could see into the huge kitchen, where Mr. Brown brooded over
+his oven, and catch rich, sensuous odours that went to his head like so
+many etherealized cocktails.  He had not eaten since the morning, and
+though he was too strong to faint, it grew increasingly difficult to fix
+his mind on the examination question which he had set himself.  He found
+himself wondering instead, what would happen if old Brown lost his
+_flair_ for the psychological moment in roasts, and why it was that a man
+who had performed an operation successfully a hundred times should
+suddenly go to pieces over it?  What made him lose faith in himself?
+Nerves?  A matter of the liver?  We were only at the beginning of our
+investigations.  And then poor little Cosgrave, who as suddenly began to
+believe in himself and in life generally because he had fallen in love
+with a chorus girl!
+
+The head waiter looked round the pantry door.  He was a passionate
+Socialist who, in his spare time, preached the extermination of all such
+as did not work for their daily bread.  But he disliked Robert bitterly,
+as a species of bourgeois blackleg.
+
+"You're wanted.  There's a party of ten just come in.  Hurry up, can't
+yer?"
+
+Robert put down his plates and went into the dining-room with the wine
+list.  His table-napkin he carried neatly folded over one arm.
+
+And there was Francey Wilmot.
+
+She had other people with her, but he saw her first.  He could not have
+mistaken her.  Of course, she had changed.  She was taller, for one
+thing, and wore evening dress instead of the plain brown frock that he
+remembered.  But her thick hair had always been short, and now it was
+done up it did not seem much shorter.  And it still had that quaint air
+of being brushed up from her head by a secret, rushing wind--of wanting
+to fly away with her.  She was burnt, too, with an alien sun and wind.
+Her face and neck were a golden brown, and in reckless contrast with her
+white shoulders.  One saw how little she cared.  She sat with her elbows
+on the table, and the sight of the supple hands and strong, slender
+wrists stopped Robert Stonehouse short, as though a deep, old wound which
+had not troubled him for years had suddenly begun to hurt again.  And yet
+how happy he had been, as a little boy, when she had just touched him.
+
+It was evidently a celebration in her honour.  A tall young man with side
+whiskers who came in late presented her with a bunch of roses in the name
+of the whole company and with a gay, exaggerated homage.  They were a
+jolly crowd.  They had in common their youth and an appearance of
+good-natured disregard for the things that ordinary people cared about.
+Otherwise they were of all sorts and conditions, like their clothes.  Two
+or three were in evening dress, and one girl who sat at the end of the
+table and smoked incessantly wore a shabby coat and skirt and a raffish
+billycock hat.  Chelsea or the University Schools was stamped on all of
+them.  There wasn't much that they didn't know, and there was very little
+that they believed in--not even themselves.  For they were of the very
+newest type, and would have scorned to admit to a Purpose or a Faith.
+But they could not help being young and rather liking one another, and
+the good food and the promise of a riotous evening.
+
+Robert knew their kind.  He even knew by sight the side-whiskered young
+man who now clapped his hands like an Eastern potentate.  He had been of
+Robert's year at the University, and had been ploughed twice.
+
+"Wine-ho!  Fellow creatures, what is it to be?  In honour of the occasion
+and to show our contempt of circumstances, shall we say a magnum of
+Heidsieck?  All in favour wave their paws----"
+
+The girl in the billycock hat blew a great puff of smoke towards him.
+
+"Oh, death and damnation, Howard!  Haven't I been explaining to you all
+the afternoon that I owe rent for a fortnight to a devil in female form,
+and that unless someone buys 'A Sunset over the Surrey Cliffs seen Upside
+Down,' Gerty will be on the streets?  Make it beer with a dash o'
+bitters."
+
+Finally it was Francey who decided.  She beckoned, not looking at him,
+and Robert with a little obsequious bow, handed her the wine card and
+waited at her elbow.  He was not afraid of Howard's recognition.  They
+had never spoken to one another, and in any case Howard would not believe
+his eyes.
+
+It was strange to stand near to her again and to recognize the little
+things about her that had fascinated small Robert Stonehouse--the line of
+her neck, the brown mole at the corner of her eye which people were
+always trying to rub off, the way her hair curled up from her temples in
+two unmistakable horns.  He had teased her about them in his shy, clumsy
+way.  A very subtle and sweet warmth emanated from her like a breath.  It
+took him back to the day when he had huddled close to her, hiccoughing
+with grief and anger, and yet deeply, deliriously happy because she was
+sorry for him.  It made him giddy with a sense of unreality, as though
+the present and the intervening years were only part of one of his night
+stories, which, after their tiresome, undeviating custom, had got tangled
+up in a monstrous, impossible dream.  And then a new fancy took
+possession of him.  He wanted to bend closer to her and say, very
+quietly, as though he were suggesting an order, "What about your
+handkerchief?  Do you want it back, Francey?"
+
+Amidst his austerely disciplined thoughts the impulse was like a mad,
+freakish intruder, and it frightened him, so that he drew back sharply.
+
+"Cider-cup," she said.  "It's my feast--and I like seeing the fruit and
+pretending I can taste it.  And then Howard won't get drunk and recite
+poetry.  Three orders, waiter."
+
+He took the wine card, but she held it a moment longer, as though
+something had suddenly attracted her attention.  Their hands had almost
+touched.
+
+"Yes--three orders will be enough."
+
+The company groaned, but submitted.  In reality they were too stimulated
+already by an invisible, exuberant spirit among them to care much.  From
+where he waited for Francey's order on the threshold of the pantry Robert
+could see and hear them.  It was really the old days over again.
+Fundamentally things outside himself did not change much.  The Brothers
+Banditti had grown up.  They were not nice children any more.  The
+innocent building-ground and nefarious plottings against unpopular
+authority had given place to restaurants and more subtle wickednesses.
+But still Francey played her queer, elusive role among them.  She was of
+them--and yet she stood a little apart, a little on one side.  Probably
+Howard thought himself their real leader.  They did not talk to her
+directly very much, nor she to them.  But all the time they were playing
+up to her, trying to draw her attention to themselves and make her laugh
+with them.  She did laugh.  It did not seem to matter to her at all that
+they were often crude and blatant and sometimes common in their
+self-expression.  She laughed from her heart.  But her laughter was a
+little different.  It sat by itself, an elfish thing, with a touch of
+seriousness about it, its arms hugging its knees, and looked beyond them
+all and saw how much bigger and finer the joke was than they thought it.
+She was the spirit of their good humour.  They could not have done
+without her.
+
+And he, Robert Stonehouse, stood outside the circle, as in reality he had
+always done.  But now he did not want to belong.  He knew now how it
+hindered men to run with the herd--even to have friends.  It wasted time
+and strength.  And these people were no good anyhow.  Howard was one of
+these dissipated duffers who later on would settle down as a miraculously
+respectable and incapable G.P.  The rest were vague, rattle-brained
+eccentrics who would fizzle out, no one would know how or care.
+
+Only Francey----  But even in the old days it was only because of
+Francey that the Banditti had meant anything to him.
+
+The head waiter pushed across the counter a jug of yellowish liquid in
+which floated orange peel and a few tinned, dubious-looking cherries.
+
+"Take it, for God's sake!  People who want muck like that ought to keep
+to Soho."
+
+Robert poured out with an eye trained to accurate measurements in the
+laboratory.  It was his practice to do well everything that he had to do.
+Otherwise you lost tone--you weakened your own fibre so that when the big
+thing came along you slumped.  But he could not forget Francey Wilmot's
+nearness.  It did not surprise him any more.  But it charged him with
+unrest, and he and his unrest frightened him.  He knew how to master
+ordinary emotion.  Even when he carried off the Franklin Scholarship in
+the teeth of a brilliant opposition he had not allowed himself a moment's
+triumph.  It was all in the day's work--a single step on the road which
+he had mapped out deliberately.  But this was outside his experience.  It
+had pounced on him from nowhere, shaking him.
+
+He had to look up at her again.  And then he saw that she was looking at
+him too, steadily, with a deep, inquiring kindness.
+
+It was as though she had said aloud:
+
+"Are you really a good little boy, Robert?"
+
+The cider poured over the edge of the glass and over the table-cloth and
+in a dismal stream on to the lap of the girl with the raffish billycock
+hat.
+
+"Well, that settles that," she said good-humouredly.  "My only skirt,
+friends.  She can't turn me out in my petticoat, can she?  Oh, leave it
+alone, garcong; it doesn't matter a tinker's curse----"
+
+He could not help it.  In the midst of his angry confusion he still had
+to seek out her verdict on him--just as Robert Stonehouse had always done
+when he had been peculiarly heroic or unfortunate.  And there it was,
+dancing beneath her gravity, her unforgotten, magic laughter.
+
+At half-past ten Brown's cleared its last table.  Robert Stonehouse
+rolled down his sleeves, picked up the parcel which had been placed ready
+for him on the pantry counter, said good-night to the head waiter, who
+did not answer, and with his coat-collar turned up about his ears went
+out in the street.  It was quiet as a country lane and empty except for
+the girl who waited beyond the lamp light.  He knew her instantly, and in
+turn two sensations that were equally foreign and unfamiliar seized him.
+The first was sheer panic, and the second was a sense of inevitability.
+The second was the oddest of the two, because he did not believe in Fate,
+but he did believe in his own will.
+
+It was his own will, therefore, that made him walk steadily and
+indifferently towards her.  His head bent as though he did not see her.
+It was really the wind in her hair now.  It caught the ends of her long,
+loose coat and carried them out behind her.  Her slender feet moved
+uncertainly in the circle of lamp-light.  Any moment they might break
+into one of the quaint little dances.  Or the wind might carry her off
+altogether in a mysterious gust down the street and out of sight.  It was
+like his vision of her that evening in Acacia Grove.  It made him feel
+more and more unreal and frightened of himself.
+
+He was almost past her when he spoke.
+
+"Robert Stonehouse," she said rather authoritatively, as though she
+expected him to run away; "Robert Stonehouse----"
+
+He stopped short with his heart beating in his throat.  But he did not
+take the hand that she held out to him.  He could only stare at her,
+frowning in his distress, and she asked: "You do know who I am, don't
+you?"
+
+"Yes.  Francey--Francey Wilmot--Miss Wilmot."  He forced himself to stop
+stammering, and added stiffly: "I did not know you had recognized me."
+
+"Didn't you?  I thought----  Well, I did recognize you anyhow.  I was
+so astonished at first that I thought it was a sort of materialization.
+But you were absurdly the same.  And then when you poured the cider out
+on to poor Gerty's skirt----"
+
+"Was that one of my childish customs?" he asked.  "I'd forgotten."
+
+"I nearly stood up and shook hands."
+
+"I'm glad you didn't."
+
+"I thought you'd feel like that.  I remembered that you had been rather a
+touchy little boy----"
+
+"I was thinking of your friends.  Howard, for instance."
+
+"Why, do you know Howard?"
+
+"By sight."
+
+"If you've never even spoken to him you can't, of course, tell what he
+would have felt.  Do you mind walking home with me?  I don't live far
+from here, and we can talk better."
+
+He held his ground, obstinate and defiant.  It was unjust that anyone,
+knowing himself to be brilliantly clever, should yet be made an oaf by an
+incident so trivial.
+
+"I'm sorry.  I don't see what we can have to talk about.  I'm not keen on
+childish recollections.  I haven't time for them.  And it's fairly
+obvious we don't move in the same set and are not likely to meet again."
+He burst out rudely.  "I suppose you were just curious----"
+
+"Of course.  You'd be curious if you found me selling flowers in
+Piccadilly.  You'd come up and say: 'allo!  Francey, what have you been
+doing with yourself?'  And you'd have tried to give me a leg up, if it
+only ran to buying a gardenia for old times' sake."
+
+He suspected her of poking fun at him.  And yet there was that subtle
+underlying seriousness about her and a frank, disarming kindliness.
+
+"You think I'm down on my luck," he retorted, "and so anybody has a right
+to butt in."
+
+"Not a right.  Of course, if I'd met you in Bond Street, all sleek and
+polished, I shouldn't have dreamed of butting in.  I should have said to
+myself, 'Well, that's the end of the little Robert Stonehouse saga as far
+as I'm concerned,' and I don't suppose I should ever have thought of you
+again.  But now I shall have to go on thinking--and wondering what
+happened--and worrying."  She drew her cloak closer about her like a bird
+folding its wings, and added prosaically: "I say, don't you find it
+rather cold standing about here?"
+
+He turned with her and walked on sullenly, his head down to the wind.  He
+thought: "I shall tell her nothing at all."  But to his astonishment she
+was silent, and finally he had to speak himself.
+
+"I'm afraid this silly business has broken up your party.  Or was it
+getting too lively for you?  Howard's beanos used to have a considerable
+reputation."
+
+"He often seems drunk when he isn't," she returned tranquilly.  "I think
+it's because he enjoys things more than most people are able to.  It
+wasn't that.  I wanted to see you so much, and I knew Brown's would be
+closing about now.  So I sent them to a theatre.  It seemed the safest
+place."
+
+"And they went like lambs.  But, then, the Banditti always did."
+
+"Oh, the Banditti!"  He guessed that she was smiling to herself.  "The
+Banditti wouldn't have grown up like that.  They were much too
+nice--never quite really wicked, were they?  Just carried off their feet.
+Still, they were never quite the same after you left.  I think they
+always hankered a little after the good old days when they rang
+door-hells and chivied their governesses.  Probably they will never be so
+happy again."
+
+"They had you.  It was you they really cared about.  Everybody did what
+you liked."
+
+"You didn't."
+
+"I did--in the end."
+
+It was odd that they should be both thinking of that last encounter and
+that they should speak of it so guardedly, as though it were still a
+delicate matter.
+
+"I didn't know you were never coming again.  I waited for you in the
+afternoon--for weeks and weeks."
+
+"Did you?"  He looked at her quickly, taken off his guard, and then away
+again with a scornful laugh.  "Oh, I don't believe it.  You knew I wasn't
+nice--not your sort.  You're just making it up."
+
+"I wonder why you say that?" she asked dispassionately.  "It's cheap and
+stupid.  You're not really stupid and you weren't cheap, even if you
+weren't nice.  And you know that I don't tell lies."
+
+For a moment he was too startled and too ashamed to answer.  Cheap.  That
+was just the word for it.  The sort of thing that common young men said
+to their common young women.  And, of course, he did know.  Her integrity
+was a thing you felt.  But he could never bring himself to tell her that
+he had been afraid to believe too easily, or that he did not want to have
+to remember her afterwards, waiting there day by day, in their deserted
+playground.  It troubled him already, like a vague, indefinite pain.
+
+He did not even apologize.
+
+"I suppose I should have come back sooner or later.  But I didn't have
+the chance.  My father died that night--unexpectedly."  He brushed aside
+her low interjection.
+
+"Oh, I was jolly glad.  But after that we had to clear out.  There was no
+money at all."
+
+"But you lived in a big house.  Your father was a great doctor."
+
+"I was a great liar," he retorted impatiently.  "I suppose I wanted to
+impress you.  Perhaps he was a great doctor.  Anyhow, he never did any
+work.  There was a bailiff in the house when he died and a pile of bills.
+And not much else."
+
+"What happened, then?  Did you go with your stepmother?  I remember how
+you hated her!  You wouldn't admit that she was a mother of any sort."
+
+"No.  I don't know what became of her.  I never saw her again after that
+night.  I think she went to live with her own people.  Christine took
+care of me."
+
+"I don't remember Christine.  I don't think you ever told me about her."
+
+"I wouldn't have known how to explain.  I don't know now.  She was a sort
+of friend--my father's and mother's friend.  There was an understanding
+between her and my mother--a promise--I don't know what.  So she took me
+away with her.  Not that she had any money, either.  We went to live in
+two rooms in the suburbs, and she worked for us both.  She had never
+worked before--not for money--and she wasn't young.  But she did it."
+
+"A great sort of friend.   And she came through too----?"
+
+He did not answer at once, and he felt her look at him quickly,
+anxiously, as though she had felt him shrink back into himself.  She
+heard something in his silence that he did not want her to hear.  He put
+his head down to the wind again, hiding a white, hard face.
+
+"Oh, yes, and we still live in two rooms--over a garage in Drayton Mews.
+My room 'folds up' in the day-time, and she sits there and knits woollen
+things for the shops.  She has to take life easily now.  She had an
+illness, and her eyes trouble her.  But she's better--much better.  And
+next year everything will be different."
+
+The street had run out into the still shadows of a great dim square.  For
+a moment they hesitated like travellers on the verge of unknown country;
+then Francey crossed over to the iron-palinged garden and they walked on
+side by side under the trees that rattled their grimy, fleshless limbs in
+an eerie dance.  There was no one else stirring.  The eyes of the stately
+Georgian houses were already closed in the weariness of their sad old age.
+
+But she asked no questions.  She seemed to have drifted away from him on
+a secret journey of her own.  He had to draw her back--make her
+realize----
+
+"I shall be a doctor then," he said challengingly.
+
+"You said you would be a doctor.  We quarrelled about it."
+
+"How you remember things----"
+
+"You were such a strange little boy.  Besides, you remember them too."
+
+"That's different.  I've never had anyone else----"  He caught himself
+up.  "I suppose you think I'm still bragging?"
+
+"You never bragged.  You always did what you said you were going to
+do--even stupid things, like climbing that old wall."
+
+So she had seen him, after all.  She had watched--perhaps a little
+frightened for him, a little impressed by his reckless daring.
+
+"Oh, well, I admit it didn't seem likely.  People think you have to have
+a lot of money.  We've often laughed about it.  For we hadn't anything
+except what we saved from week to week.  And yet we've done it.  You can
+do anything so long as you don't mind what you do.  It depends on the
+stuff you're made of."
+
+He threw his head up and walked freely, with open shoulders.  After all,
+he was proud of those years, and had a right to be.  They had tested
+every inch of him, and it would have been stupid to pretend that he did
+not know his own mettle.  He heard his footsteps ring out through the
+fitful whimpering of the wind and they seemed to mark the rhythm of his
+life--a steady, resolute progression.  The lighter fall of Francey
+Wilmot's feet beside him was like an echo.  But yet it had its own
+quality.  Not less resolute.
+
+He heard her say quickly, almost to herself:
+
+"It must have been hard going--but awfully worth while.  An adventure.  I
+can't be sorry for anyone who suffers on an adventure--any sort of
+adventure--even if it's only in oneself."
+
+She was more moved than he could understand.  But the wind, dashed with
+ice-cold rain, blew them closer to one another.  He could feel the warmth
+of her arm against his.  It was difficult to seem prosaic and casual.
+
+"That's just it.  Worth while.  Why do people want 'chances' and
+'equality' and things made smooth for them?  What's the use of anything
+if there isn't a top and a bottom to it?  What's the use of having enough
+to eat if you haven't been hungry?  I'm going to be a doctor, and I might
+have slumped into the gutter.  I'm jolly glad there is a gutter to slump
+into----"  He broke off, and then went on more deliberately.
+"Christine and I mapped it out one night when I was ten years old.  After
+school hours I used to run errands and sell newspapers.  On half-holidays
+I went down into the West End and hunted taxis for people coming out of
+theatres.  I took my exams and scholarship one after the other.  We
+counted on that.  I kept on earning in one way or another all through my
+first M.B. and during the two years I've walked the Wards.  Now I've had
+to drop out for a bit to make enough to carry through my finals.
+Christine's illness was the only thing we hadn't reckoned with."
+
+Her voice had an odd, troubling huskiness.
+
+"You must be frightfully strong.  But then you always were.  You used to
+beat everyone----"
+
+"I'm like that now.  I've got a dozen lives--like a cat.  And one life
+doesn't know what the other one's doing."  He laughed.  "Before breakfast
+I wash down the car of the man who owns our garage.  The rest of the
+morning I coach fellows for the Matric.  In the afternoon I swot for
+myself.  You see how I spend my evenings.  Brown's been very decent to
+me.  I get part of my tips and two meals--one for myself and one to take
+home."  He showed her the parcel that he carried.  "Cold chicken and rice
+mould," he said carelessly.  "We couldn't afford that."
+
+He did not tell her that there had been times when, to keep their
+compact, they had gone without altogether, when Christine had fainted
+over her typewriter and he had watched her from out of a horrible,
+quivering mist--too sick with hunger to help, or even to care much.  He
+did not want Francey to be sorry for him.
+
+"And the tips?" she asked, with grave concern.  "I hope we played the
+game.  But poor old Howard is always so hard up----"
+
+"Oh, good enough.  Usually I get more than the others, and they hate me
+for it.  I'm quicker and I've got clean hands.  People like that."
+
+"I saw your hands first," Francey said, "and I knew at once that you were
+something different."
+
+It was too dark for her to see his face.  Yet he turned away hastily.  He
+spoke as though he did not care at all.
+
+"Brown's a smart fellow.  He knows what's coming, and what people are
+worth to him.  We've got an agreement that when I'm Sir Robert I'm to
+boost the old place and do his operations free.  I think he'll be rather
+sick if he doesn't need any."
+
+It was half a joke, but if she had laughed--laughed in the wrong way--the
+chances were that he would have turned on his heel and left her without
+so much as a good-night.  For he was strung up to an abnormal, cruel
+sensitiveness.  Whatever else they did, people did not laugh at him.  He
+had never given them the chance that he had given her.  He had learnt to
+be silent, and now she had made him talk and the result had been an
+uncouth failure.  He had thrown his hardships at her like a parvenu his
+riches.  If she did not see through his crudeness to what was real in
+him, she could only see that he was a rather funny young man who
+swaggered outrageously.  And that was not to be endured.
+
+But she did not laugh at all.
+
+"You're sure of yourself, Robert."
+
+"Yes--I am."
+
+"I'm sure of myself, too.  Because I'm sure of things outside myself."
+
+He did not try to understand her.  He was wrestling with the expression
+of his own experiences.  He threw out his free hand and turned it and
+closed the powerful, slender fingers, as though he were moulding some
+invisible substance.
+
+"Outside things are colourless and lifeless--sort of plastic stuff--until
+we get hold of them.  We twist them to the best shapes we can.  Nothing
+happens to us that isn't exactly like ourselves.  Even what people call
+accidents.  Even a man's diseases.  I've seen that in the Wards.  People
+die as they live, and they live as they are----"
+
+And now she did laugh, throwing back her head, and he laughed with her,
+shyly but not resentfully.  It was as though a crisis in their
+relationship had been passed.  He could trust her to understand.  And he
+knew that though what he had said was true, it had also sounded young and
+sententious.
+
+"You think I'm talking rot, don't you?"
+
+"I only think you've changed," she answered, with a quick gravity.  "Not
+outside.  Outside you're just a few feet bigger and the round lines have
+become straight.  But when you were a little boy you used to cry a good
+deal."
+
+"I don't see--how did you know?"
+
+"I did know.  There were certain smears--I don't think you liked having
+your face washed--and a red, tired, look under the eyes.  The point is
+that now I can't imagine your ever having cried at all."
+
+"I haven't."  He calculated solemnly.  "Not for more than twelve years.
+I remember, because it was after I had played truant at the circus."
+
+But he did not want to tell her about the circus.  He stopped short and
+looked at his watch in the lamplight.
+
+"Nearly twelve.  We've been prowling round this place for an hour.  I've
+got to get home and work.  I thought you said you lived near here."
+
+"I do.  Over the way.  The big house.  I've two rooms on the top floor.
+Rather jolly--and near St. Mary's----"
+
+"What--what do you want with St. Mary's?"
+
+But she had already begun to cross the road, and the wind, coming down a
+side street with a shriek, sent her scudding before it like a leaf.  She
+was half-way up the grey stone steps before he overtook her.  She turned
+on him, the short ends of her hair flying wickedly.
+
+"Of course, it's only right and natural that you should talk of nothing
+but yourself."
+
+He stammered breathlessly.
+
+"I didn't think--I'm sorry----"
+
+"Do you suppose you're the only person who does what they say they're
+going to do?"
+
+"What--not--not a doctor, Francey?"
+
+"Not yet.  I'm two years behind you.  This will be my first year in the
+Wards.  Next year you will be full-blown--perhaps on the staff--and I
+shall have to trot behind you and believe everything you say."  She
+smiled rather gravely.  "You will have got the big stick, after all."
+
+He looked up at her, holding on to the spiked railing that guarded the
+yawning area.  But he had a queer feeling that he had let go of
+everything else that he had held fast to--that he was gliding down-bill
+in a reckless abandonment to an unknown feeling.  He knew too little of
+emotion to know that he was happy.
+
+"Why--I shall be there too.  I'll be on a surgical post--dresser for old
+Rogers.  And he's going to take me on his private rounds."
+
+It was not what he had meant to say.  He had meant to say, "We shall see
+each other."  Perhaps she guessed.  Her hand rested on his, warm and
+strong and kind, as though nothing had changed at all.  Because they were
+grown up she did not hold back in a conventional reserve.  If only he
+could have cried she would have sat down on the steps beside him, and put
+her arm about him, and comforted him.
+
+"And I want to meet Christine," she said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Rather."
+
+"And it's been fine--our meeting again.  But didn't you always know it
+would happen?"
+
+"I believe I did.  Yes, I did.  I used to imagine----"
+
+And then he knew and saw that she knew too.  He saw it in the sudden
+darkening of her steady eyes, in the perplexity of her drawn brows.  He
+felt it in her hand that scarcely moved, as though even now it would not
+shrink from whatever was the truth.  It came and went like a flare of
+fire across the storm.  And when it had gone, they could not believe that
+it had ever been.  They were both shaken with astonishment.  And yet,
+hadn't they always known?
+
+"Good-night, Robert Stonehouse."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+But he could not move.  He watched the blank door open, and her slender
+shadow stand out for a moment against the yellow gas-light of the hall.
+She did not look back.  Perhaps she too was spell-bound.  The door closed
+with an odd sound as though the house had clicked its tongue in
+good-natured amusement.
+
+"Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!"
+
+At any rate, the spell was broken.  Hugging his parcel dangerously close
+he raced back to the shelter of the trees and waited.  High over head the
+house opened a bright eye at him.  He waved back at it with an absurd,
+incredible boyishness.
+
+Then he walked on deliberately, firmly.
+
+What was it he had to set his mind on?
+
+Of course.  That question of therapeutics----
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+"I don't understand it," Christine said.  "It seems to me better than
+anything you've ever read to me."
+
+She counted her stitches for the second time, and looked up at the sun
+that showed its face over the stable roof opposite, as though at a lamp
+which did not burn as well as it used to do.  In the dusty golden light
+she was like a figure in a tapestry.  Perhaps in its early days it had
+been a trifle crude, a trifle harsh in colour, but now worn and
+threadbare, trembling on decay, it had attained a rare and exquisite
+beauty.
+
+She smiled back blindly into the little room.
+
+"Don't you think so, Robert?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo also looked at Robert, eagerly, pathetically.
+
+"It was to gain your opinion--reinforce my own judgment--solely for
+that purpose--difficult to obtain, the impartial opinion of a trained
+mind----"
+
+He had grown into a habit of talking like that--in broken disjointed
+sentences, which only Robert and Christine who knew his thoughts could
+understand.  And now, in the midst of his scattered manuscript he
+waited, rubbing his shiny knees with his thin, grey, not very clean
+hands.
+
+But Robert looked at Francey.  He had sat all the time with his arms
+crossed on the oil-clothed table and looked at her, frankly and
+unconsciously as a savage or a street boy might have done.  He was too
+tired to care.  He had come straight from giving the limousine
+underneath an extra washing down for the Whitsun holidays and oil still
+lingered in his nails, and there was a faint forgotten smear of it on
+his cheek, and another near the thick upstanding hair where he had
+rubbed his hand across.  They came as almost humorous relief in a face
+in which there were things ten years too old--the harsh and bony
+structure showing where there should have been a round boyishness, and
+the full mouth set in a fierce, relentless negation of itself.  But the
+oil smears and the eyes that shone out from under the fair overhanging
+brows were again almost too young.  They made the strength pathetic.
+
+He, too, sat in the sunlight, which was not kind to his green,
+threadbare clothes.  But the sun only came into the stable yard for an
+hour or two, and as it withdrew itself slowly along the length of the
+table he shifted his position to move with it, unconsciously, like a
+tired animal.  Francey, cross-legged and smoking, on the couch which at
+night unfolded itself into a bed, saw the movement and smiled at him.
+Her eyes were as steady in their serenity as his were steady with
+hunger.  She did not change colour, so that whatever she understood
+from that long scrutiny did not trouble her.  He leant forward, as
+though he were afraid of missing some subtle half-tone in her voice.
+
+"Mr. Ricardo thinks I'm unprejudiced.  He's forgotten the times when he
+pulled my ears and smacked my head.  But you are different, Francey.
+You can say what you think."
+
+"But it wouldn't be at all helpful," she answered very solemnly.  "To
+begin with, I have the scientific mind, and I cannot accept as a basis
+of argument an entirely untested hypothesis."
+
+Connie Edwards thereupon gave vent to an artificial groan of anguish,
+followed by an explosive giggle which would have lost her her half of
+Rufus Cosgrave's chair had he not put his arm round her.  There were
+only three chairs in the room, and as two of them had been already
+occupied when she and her companion had, as she expressed it, "blown
+in" half an hour previously, they had perched together, listening with
+clasped hands and an air of insincere solemnity.  For Mr. Ricardo had
+not stopped reading.  He had gone on as though he had not heard their
+boisterous entry, and even now would have seemed unaware of their
+existence but for something bitter and antagonistic in the hunch of his
+thin shoulders.  His dark, biting eyes avoided them like those of a
+sullen child who does not want to see.  But Miss Edwards appeared to be
+not easily depressed.  She waved her hand in friendly thanks for the
+cigarette case which Francey tossed across to her, and, having selected
+her cigarette with blunt, viciously manicured fingers, poked Cosgrave
+for a match.
+
+"Gawd Almighty, and Little Connie K.O.'ed in the first round by an
+untested hypo--hypo----  What was it, Ruffles dear?  (Oh, do stop
+squeezing my hand!  This isn't the pictures, and it's a match I
+want--not love.)  An untested hypothesis.  Thank you, dearie.  I wonder
+if He's feeling as sore about it as I am?"
+
+She gurgled over her cigarette, and Cosgrave smiled at everyone in
+turn, as though he had said aloud, "Isn't she a splendid joke?"  He
+looked almost mystically happy.
+
+"Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," Mr. Ricardo muttered.  "Mark it,
+mark it, Robert--the shallow thinking, shallow jesting, shallow
+living----"
+
+Miss Edwards winked at Francey, and Francey looked back at her with her
+understanding kindliness.  It seemed to Robert that ever since Connie
+Edwards had burst into the room Francey had changed.  The change was
+subtle and difficult to lay hold of, like Francey herself.  Mentally
+she was always moving about, quietly, light-footedly, just as she had
+done among the bricks and rubble of their old playground, peering
+thoughtfully at things which nobody else saw or looking at them from
+some new point of view.  You couldn't be sure what they were or why
+they interested her.  And now--he had almost seen her do it--she had
+shifted her position, come over to Connie Edward's side, and was gazing
+over her shoulder, with her own brown head tilted a little on one ear,
+and was saying in Connie's vernacular:
+
+"Well, so that's how it looks to you?  And, I say, you're right.  It's
+a scream----"
+
+In her mysterious way she had found something she liked in Connie
+Edwards, with her awful hat and her outrageous, three-inch heels and
+her common prettiness.  Cosgrave obviously was crazy about her.  He
+seemed to cling to her because she had an insatiable hunger for the
+things he couldn't afford.  One could see that he had tried to model
+himself to her taste.  He wore a gardenia and a spotted tie.  And,
+bearing these insignia of vulgarity, he looked more than ever pathetic
+and over-delicate.
+
+Cosgrave was an idiot who had lost his balance.  But Francey was
+another matter.  The Francey who had asked "And are you a good little
+boy?" accepted Connie Edwards without question.  Because it was
+ridiculous to be hurt about it Robert grew angry with her and frowned
+away from her, and talked to Mr. Ricardo as though there were no one
+else in the room.
+
+"I can't think why they didn't take it, sir.  It's fine stuff.  A shade
+too long for a magazine article.  It may have been that, of course."
+
+But Mr. Ricardo bent down and began to gather up his manuscript.  The
+paper was of all kinds and sizes, covered with crabbed writing and
+fierce erasures.  It was oddly like himself--disordered, a little
+desperate, not very clean.  When he had all the sheets together he sat
+with them hugged against his breast and bent closer to Christine,
+speaking in a mysterious whisper.
+
+"It's not that.  Robert knows it isn't, but he doesn't care any more.
+He'll say anything.  But I know.  I've guessed it a long time.  People
+have found out.  They say to one another, when I send in my papers,
+'This man is a liar.  Every morning of his life he gives his assent to
+lies.  And now he is going to teach the very lies he pretends to
+exterminate.  We can't have anything to do with a man like that.'  And
+there's a conspiracy, Miss Christine, a conspiracy----"  His voice
+began to rise and tremble.  "They've taken me off my old classes under
+the pretext that they are too much for me.  They've set me on to
+Scripture.  Then they told me I had to remember--remember
+circumstances--to prevent myself from saying what I thought of such
+devilish cruelty.  But I saw that they wanted me to break out so that
+they could get rid of me altogether, and I held my tongue.  One of
+these days, though, I shall stand up in the open places and tell the
+truth.  I shall say what they have done to me----"
+
+He had forgotten, if he had ever fully realized, that there were
+strangers about him.  He shook his fist and shouted, whilst the slow,
+hopeless tears rolled down the sunken yellow cheeks onto the dirty
+manuscript.
+
+They stared at him in consternation, all but Francey, who uncurled
+herself negligently and slid from the sofa.
+
+"It's past my tea-time," she announced, "and I want my tea."
+
+It was as though she had neither seen nor cared.  Christine turned her
+faded, groping eyes thankfully in her direction.
+
+"Of course, my dear.  Robert--please----"
+
+"No," he said; "we don't have tea, Francey."
+
+"But, Robert, at least when we have guests----"
+
+"Or guests," he added, with a set, white face.
+
+Cosgrave laughed.  He made a comic grimace.  He seemed utterly
+irrepressible and irresponsible, like a colt let out for the first time
+in a wide field.
+
+"You don't know this fellow like I do, Miss Wilmot.  A nasty Spartan.
+But if you'll put a shilling in the gas meter we'll get cakes and a
+quarter of tea.  He doesn't need to have any if he doesn't want it, but
+he can't grudge us a corner of table and half a chair each.  Miss
+Christine's on our side, aren't you, Miss Christine?  And oh, Connie,
+there's a pastrycook's round the corner where they make jam-puffs like
+they did when I was a kid----"
+
+"I'll put the kettle on," Francey said, nodding to him.
+
+She passed close to Robert.  She even gave him a quick, friendly touch.
+He could almost hear her say, "Tag, Robert!" but he would not look at
+her.  And yet the moment after he knew that it was all make-believe.
+His anger was a sham, protecting something that was fragile and afraid
+of pain.  Now that she had gone out of the barren little room she had
+taken with her the sense of a secret, gracious intimacy which had been
+its warmth and colour.  He saw that the sunlight had shrunk to a pale
+gold finger whose tip rested lingeringly on the windowsill, and he felt
+tired and cold and work-soiled.
+
+He got up and followed her awkwardly, with a sullen face and a
+childishly beating heart.  The kettle was already on the gas, and
+Francey gazing into an open cupboard that was scarcely smaller than the
+kitchen itself.
+
+"It's like a boy's chemist shop," she said casually, as though she had
+expected him, "with the doses done up in little white paper packets.
+Is it a game, Robert?"
+
+"A sort of game.  We used to use too much of everything, and at the end
+of the week there'd be nothing left.  So we doled it out like that."
+
+"Yes, I see.  A jolly good idea.  That way you couldn't over-eat
+yourselves."
+
+"I--I suppose you think I was an awful beast about the tea, don't you?"
+
+"No, I didn't--I don't."
+
+"I was--much firmer than I would have been, but I wanted you to stay.
+So I couldn't give in."
+
+"If it had been just Cosgrave and Miss Edwards?"
+
+"It wouldn't have mattered--not so much."
+
+"I wasn't hurt.  It was tactless of me.  But I wanted the tea.  I
+forgot.  And I wanted to stay, too.  I haven't learnt to do without
+things that I want."
+
+"You think I don't want them?"
+
+She closed the cupboard door abruptly.  The kitchen was so small that
+when she turned they had to stand close to one another to avoid falling
+back into the sink or burning themselves against the gas jet.  He saw
+that the fine colour had gone out of her face.  She looked unfamiliarly
+tired.
+
+"I think you want them terribly.  I suppose I'm not heroic.  I don't
+like your saying 'No' always--always."
+
+"I shall get what I really want in the end."
+
+She sighed, reflected, and then laughed rather ruefully.
+
+"Oh, well, get the cups now, at any rate."
+
+"There are only three, Francey."
+
+"You and I will have to share, then."
+
+So she made him happy--just as she had done when they had been
+children--with a sudden comradely gesture.
+
+But in the next room Mr. Ricardo had begun to talk again.  They had to
+hear him.  He was not crying any more.  His voice sounded hard and
+embittered.
+
+"He's changed.  He doesn't care.  He pretended to listen.  He was
+looking at that girl.  She's a strange girl.  I don't trust her.  She
+believes in myths.  Oh, yes, I know.  She did not say so, but I can
+smell out an enemy.  She will try to wreck everything.  So it is in
+life.  We give everything--sacrifice everything--to pass on our
+knowledge, our experience, and in the end they break away from us--they
+go their own road."
+
+Robert could not hear Christine's answer.  He felt that Ricardo had
+thrown out his arms in one of his wild gestures.  "Not gratitude--not
+gratitude.  He was to have carried on my fight.  To have been free as I
+am not----"
+
+Miss Edwards and Rufus Cosgrave came racketing back up the steep and
+creaking stairs.  It was like the whirlwind entry of some boisterous
+comet dragging at its rear a bewildered, happy tail.  They were as
+exultant as though their paper bags contained priceless loot rescued
+from overwhelming forces.
+
+"Hurry up there, Mr. Stonehouse.  Don't keep the lady waiting.  Tea and
+puff, as ordered, ma'am.  No, ma'am, no tipping allowed in this
+establishment.  But anything left under the plate will be sent to the
+Society for the Cure of the Grouch among Superior Waiters."
+
+She jollied Christine, whose answering smile was like a little puzzled
+ghost.  She nourished a heavily scented handkerchief in the
+professional manner and grinned at Robert, whose open hostility did not
+so much as ruffle the fringe of her good humour.  In her raffish,
+rakish world poverty and wry, eccentric-tempered people abounded, and
+were just part of an enormous joke.  And Rufus Cosgrave, who gaped at
+her in wonder and admiration, saw that she was right.  Poor old Robert
+and exams, and beastly, bullying fathers and hard-upness--the latter
+more especially--were all supremely funny.
+
+But Robert would not look at the jam-puff which she pushed across to
+him.
+
+"Thanks.  I hate the beastly stuff."
+
+And yet it was a flaky thing, oozing, as Rufus had declared, with real
+raspberry jam.  And he was very young.  But he would not give way.
+Could not.  It seemed trivial, and yet it was vital, too.  There was
+something in him which stood up straight and unbendable.  Once broken
+it could never be set up again.  And gradually a sense of loneliness
+crept over him.  He went and stood next Ricardo, who, like himself,
+would have no share in the festivity.  And the old man blinked up at
+him with a kind of triumph.
+
+"And we're going to a hill that I know of," Francey was saying.  "No
+one else knows of it.  In fact, it's only there when I am.  You go by
+train, and after that you have to walk.  I don't know the way.  It
+comes by inspiration.  When you get to the top you can see the whole of
+England, and there are always flowers.   I'm taking Howard's gang, and
+you people must come along too.  It's what you want.  A good time----"
+
+"_All_ the time," said Miss Edwards, blowing away the crumbs.
+
+"My people are going in a char-a-banc to Brighton," Rufus said.  "But
+I'll give them the slip.  There's sure to be a beastly row anyhow."
+
+"That's my brave boy!  Who cares for rows?  Take me.  Our Mr. Reilly's
+had the nerve to fix up a rehearsal for the new French dame what's
+coming to ginger up our show--and, oh, believe me, it needs it--but am
+I down-hearted?  No!  Anyway, if she's half the stuff they say she is
+they'll never notice poor little Connie's gone to bury her fifth
+grandmother.  So I'll be with you, lady, and kind regards and many
+thanks."
+
+"And you, too.  Miss Forsyth?"
+
+Christine shook her head.  She was frowning up out of the open window a
+little anxiously.
+
+"What would you do with a tired old woman?"
+
+"Ruffles will carry you.  Throw out your chest, Ruffles, and look
+fierce.  What's the use of a hefty brute like that if it isn't useful?"
+
+"And when you're on my hill," Francey said with a mysterious nod,
+"you'll understand it better than any of us."  She looked away from the
+grey, upturned face.  She added almost to herself: "How dark it is
+here!  The sun has gone down behind the roof."
+
+"Has it?  Yes, it went so suddenly.  I wondered"--she picked up her
+knitting, and began to roll it together--"if Robert could go?" she
+murmured.
+
+"Robert can go.  I knew before I asked."
+
+But he flung round on her in a burst of extraordinary resentment.
+
+"I can't.  You seem to think I can do anything and everything that
+comes into your head.  People like you never really understand.  We're
+poor.  We haven't the money or the time to--to fool round.  Nor has
+Cosgrave, but he likes to pretend--humbug himself and anyone else silly
+enough to believe in him."
+
+It was as though something long smouldering amongst them had blazed up.
+Cosgrave banged the table with his clenched fist.  His freckles were
+like small suns shining out of his dead-white face.
+
+"You--you leave me alone, Stonehouse.  I--I'm n-not a kid any more.
+And I d-don't pretend.  Connie knows I haven't a c-cent in the world
+except what poor mother sneaks out of the housekeeping.  But I'm s-sick
+of living as I've done--always grinding, always afraid of everything.
+If I c-can't have my fun out of life I d-don't want to live at all.
+I'm not going to Heaven to make up for it--Mr. Ricardo has just told us
+that--so what's the use?  You've g-got your work and that satisfies
+you.  Mine doesn't satisfy me.  So when you t-talk about me--you're
+just t-talking through your hat."
+
+Miss Edwards threw up her hands in mock horror.
+
+"Oh, my angel child, what a temper!  And to think I nearly married him!"
+
+She choked with laughter.  And underneath the thin flooring, as though
+roused by her irreverent merriment, the big car shook itself awake with
+a roar and splutter of indignation.  But the sliding doors were thrown
+open, and its rage died down at the prospect of release.  It began to
+purr complacently, greedily.
+
+It was strange how the sound quieted them.  They looked towards the
+window as though for the first time they were aware of something
+outside that came to them from beyond the low, confining roofs--a
+spring wind blowing from far-off places.
+
+"Six cylinder," Cosgrave muttered with feverish eyes.  "Do you know, if
+I had that thing living under me I'd--I'd go off with it one night, and
+I'd go on and on and never come back."
+
+Connie Edwards patted his head.  She winked at Francey, but Francey was
+looking at Robert's sullen back.
+
+"No, you wouldn't.  Not for six months or so, anyhow."
+
+He laughed shamefacedly.
+
+"Oh, well, of course I'm rotting.  I can't drive a go-cart.  Never had
+the chance.  Oh, I say, Robert, don't grouch.  I didn't mean to be
+rude.  Of course, you're right in a way.  But I get that sort of stuff
+at home, and if I get it here I don't know what I'll do."
+
+"Oh, you're right, too," Robert muttered.  "It's not my business."
+
+Cosgrave appealed sadly to Francey.
+
+"He's wild with me.  But a picnic--you'd think any human being might go
+on a picnic----"
+
+"You're going," she answered quietly, "and Robert too."
+
+He did not take up the challenge.  He was too miserable.  He had not
+meant to break out like that.  As in the old days, he hungered for her
+approval, her good smile of understanding.  But as in the old days,
+too, beneath it all, was the dim consciousness of an antagonism, of
+their two wills poised against one another.
+
+The car purred louder with exultation.  It came sliding out into the
+narrow, cobbled street.  It waited a moment, gathering itself together.
+
+"I wonder where it's going," Cosgrave dreamed.  "I hope a jolly long
+way--right to the other end of England.  I'd like to think of it going
+on and on through the whole world."
+
+Christine leaned forward, peering out dimly.
+
+"Are the trees out yet, Robert?"
+
+They looked at her in silence.  It was a strange thing to ask.  And yet
+not strange at all.  All day long she sat there and saw nothing but the
+squat, red-faced stable opposite.  Or if she went out it was to buy
+cheaply from the barrows in a mean side street.  And now she was
+remembering that there were trees somewhere, perhaps in bloom.
+
+Even Miss Edwards looked queerly dashed and distressed.
+
+"Now you're asking something, Miss Forsyth.  There are trees in this
+little old village, but they aren't real somehow, and I never notice
+'em.  Well, we'll know on Monday.  Please Heaven, it doesn't rain."
+
+"I want to get out," Cosgrave muttered; "out of here--right away----"
+
+"I've not had a picnic--not since I was a kid.  But I haven't forgotten
+it, though.  Heaps to eat--and an appetite----  Oh, my!"
+
+"And you can go on eating and eating," Francey added greedily, "and it
+doesn't seem to matter."
+
+"Egg and cress sandwiches----"
+
+"Ham pie----"
+
+"Sardines----"
+
+"Russian salad--mayonnaise----"
+
+"And something jolly in a bottle."
+
+They laughed at one another.  But after that the quiet returned again.
+Francey sat with her hands clasped behind her head and her chair
+tip-tilted against the wall.  To Robert, who watched her from out of
+the shadow, she seemed to be drifting farther and farther away on a
+dark, quiet, flowing river.
+
+It grew to dusk.  The car had long since set out on its unknown
+journey.  The narrow street with its pungent stable odour had sunk into
+one of those deep silences which lie scattered like secret pools along
+the route of London's endless processions.  And presently Mr. Ricardo,
+who had not moved or spoken, but had sat hunched together like a
+captive bird, leant forward with his finger to his lips.
+
+Christine had fallen asleep.  Her hands lay folded upon her work and
+her face was still lifted to the black ridge of roof where the sun had
+vanished.  There was enchantment about her sleep, as though in the very
+midst of them she had begun to live a new, mysterious life of her own.
+She had been the shadowy onlooker.  She became the central figure among
+them.
+
+Mr. Ricardo rose noiselessly.  He looked at no one.  He passed them
+like a ghost.  They heard him creeping down the stairs and his
+hurrying, unequal footsteps on the empty street.  Cosgrave and Connie
+Edwards nodded to one another and took hands and were gone.  Francey,
+too, slipped to her feet.  She gathered up her hat and coat, her
+silence effortless.  She did not so much as glance at Robert, but at
+the head of the steep, ladder-like stairs he overtook her.
+
+"Francey--listen----"
+
+With one foot on the lower step, her back against the wall, she waited
+for him.  It was too dark for them to see each other clearly.  They
+were shadows to one another.  They spoke in whispers, as though they
+were afraid of waking something more than the sleeper in the room
+behind them.  He could not have told how he knew that her face was wet.
+
+"I wanted to say--I don't know why I behaved like that.  I'm not
+usually--nervy--uncontrolled.  I don't think I've ever lost my temper
+before.  I've had so little to do with people.  Perhaps that's it.
+I've gone my own way alone----"
+
+"And now that our ways have crossed," she began with a sad irony.
+
+"No--not crossed--come together--run out together into the
+high-road----"  He clenched his hands till they were bloodless in the
+effort to speak.  "You see, a few weeks ago I wouldn't have lost my
+temper--and I wouldn't have said queer, silly things like this----
+I'm a sort of kaleidoscope that someone's shaken up.  I don't know
+myself; things have been hard--but awfully simple.  I've only thought
+of--wanted--the one thing.  It doesn't seem to me that I've had to
+fight until now.  You don't understand--what it has been----"
+
+"I do--I do!" she interrupted hurriedly.  "I've seen Christine--and the
+way you live--and that dreadful cupboard.  Oh, I'm not sorry for
+you--only afraid.  You're nothing but a boy----"
+
+"You needn't be afraid.  I'll pull through.  It's only another year
+now.  But I can't be like the other people you know--who can be jolly
+and easy-going--because they're not going anywhere at all.  Can't you
+be patient, Francey?"
+
+"Was I impatient?"  He felt her humour flicker up like a flame in the
+darkness.  "I suppose I was.  It was the jam-puff.  You hurt their
+feelings.  And it was such a little thing."
+
+"I hate jam-puffs," he said, but humbly, because it was not the truth,
+and he could never explain.
+
+"Come with us, Robert."
+
+"I can't."
+
+"But you want to come?"
+
+"That's just it.  I don't know why.  It would be waste of
+time--money--everything--all wrong.   What have I to do with Howard and
+that lot--with girls like Connie Edwards?"
+
+"--and me," she added, smiling to herself.
+
+"Or you with them?"
+
+"Oh, they're my friends.  As you say, they're not going anywhere--just
+dawdling along and picking up things by the wayside--queer, interesting
+things----"
+
+"I've no use for them," he said doggedly.
+
+"--And Christine wanted to go."  She added after a moment, gently, as
+though she were feeling through the dark, "--is dying to go, Robert."
+
+"You're just imagining it.  She's never cared for things like
+that--only for my getting ahead with my work--my finals."
+
+"Didn't you hear her ask about the trees?"
+
+He looked back over his shoulder like a suddenly frightened child.
+
+"Yes.  It--it didn't mean anything, though.  It was just for something
+to say."
+
+"She said a great deal more than she meant to."
+
+"We've mapped out everything--every ha'penny--every minute."
+
+"Let me help, Robert.  I've got such a lot.  I've no one else.  I could
+make it easier for you both.  I should be happier, too.  And you could
+pay me back afterwards with interest--a hundred per cent.--I don't care
+what."
+
+But now feeling through the dark she had reached the barrier.  He
+answered stonily.
+
+"Thanks.  We've never owed anything.  We shan't begin now."
+
+She slipped into her coat.  She tugged her soft hat down over her hair.
+There was more than anger in her quick, impatient movements.  She was
+going because she couldn't bear it any more.  She had given in.  She
+would never come back.  And at that fear he broke out with a desperate
+cunning.
+
+"It's too bad to be angry with me.  I--I want to go."
+
+"And I've asked you----?
+
+"Because you want me?"
+
+"Of course.  It will be the first chance we've had to really talk----"
+
+"It can't matter--just for once," he pleaded with himself.
+
+"It might matter a great deal."
+
+She went on down the stairs, very slowly, lingeringly.  He leant over
+the creaking banisters, trying to see her.
+
+"Francey--you duffer--you haven't even told me where to meet you."
+
+"Paddington--the Booking Office--10.15."
+
+He held his breath.  Her voice had sounded like that of a spirit
+laughing out of the black veil beneath.  It did not come again.  He
+could not even hear her footsteps.  She had vanished.  But he waited,
+trembling before the wonder of his own impulse.
+
+Supposing he had yielded--had taken her hands and kissed them--kissed
+that pale, beloved face, he who had never kissed anyone but Christine
+since his mother died?
+
+He had not done it.  It had been too difficult to yield.  But he stood
+there, dreaming, with his hot eyes pressed into his hands, whilst out
+of the magic quiet rose wave after wave of enchantment, engulfing him.
+
+
+
+2
+
+They agreed that Francey had not boasted about her hill.  It stood up
+boldly out of the rolling sea of field and common land and was
+tree-crowned, with primroses shining amongst the young grass.  From its
+summit they could see toy villages and church, spires and motors and
+char-a-bancs running like alarmed insects along the white, winding
+lanes.  But apparently no one saw the hill.  No one came to it.  Since
+it was everything that picnic parties demanded in the way of a hill, it
+was only reasonable to accept Francey's theory that it was not really
+there at all--or at most only there for her particular convenience.
+
+They spread their table-cloth on its slope and under the dappled
+shadows of the half-fledged trees, with Christine presiding on the high
+ground.  Her wispy grey hair fluttered out from under the wide black
+hat, and she looked pretty and pathetic, with her shabby black bag and
+her old umbrella, like a witch, as Howard said, who had been caught
+whilst absent-mindedly gathering toad-stools and carried here in
+triumph to bless their mortal festivity.
+
+"The umbrella keeps off rain," he explained mysteriously, "and besides
+that, it's a necromantic Handley-Page which might fly off with her at
+any minute.  When you see it opening, stand clear and hold on to
+yourselves."
+
+He made a limerick on this particular fancy.  It was a very bad
+limerick, as bad, probably, as his theories on pyridine and its
+relation to the alkaloids which had floored him in his last exam.; but
+the Gang applauded enthusiastically, and drank to Christine out of mugs
+of beer.  Unlicked and cynical as they were, they seemed to have a
+chivalrous tenderness for her.  And she was at home among them--silent,
+smiling wistfully down upon their commonplace eccentricities, as though
+through the mist of her coming blindness they were somehow lovable.
+
+They ate outrageously of fearsome things.  Yet over her third meringue
+Connie Edwards broke down with lamentations for the lost powers of
+youth.
+
+"I can remember eating five of 'em," she said, "and coming home to a
+tea of winkles and bloater paste.  Oh Gawd!  I'll be in my grave before
+I can turn round."
+
+She had been from the start in an unusually pensive and philosophic
+mood--a trifle wide-eyed and even awe-struck.  It seemed that the night
+before the "French dame" had appeared unexpectedly during a
+rehearsal--a peculiarly gingerless performance according to Connie's
+account--and had watched from the wings awhile, and then, unasked and
+apparently without premeditation, had broken in among them and at the
+edge of the footlights, to a gaping, empty theatre, had danced and sung
+a little song.
+
+"A French song," Connie said solemnly.  "Not a word of the blessed
+thing could we understand, and yet we were all hugging ourselves.  Not
+pretty either--a mere bone and a yank of hair--and no more voice than a
+sparrow.  But you just went along too.  Couldn't help it.  And
+afterwards we played up as though we liked it, and hadn't been plugging
+at the rottenest show in England for the last ten weeks.  And she
+laughed and clapped her hands, and our tongues hung out we were that
+pleased.  She's It, friends.  It.  Gyp Labelle from the Folies Bergeres
+and absolutely It."
+
+Rufus Cosgrave rolled over on his face and lay blinking out of the long
+grass like a sleepy, red-headed satyr.
+
+"Gyp Labelle," he said drowsily, "Gyp Labelle!"
+
+Robert knew that he was thinking of the Circus.  And he did not want to
+think about the Circus.  He pushed the memory from him.  He was glad
+when Howard said gravely:
+
+"That's genius.  That's what we poor devils pray to and pray for.  We
+know we haven't got it, but we're always hoping that if we agonize and
+sweat long enough, one day God will lean out of His cloud and touch us
+with His finger."
+
+"Michael Angelo," said Gertie Sumners, with a kind of sombre triumph.
+"The Sistine Chapel.  I've got a print of it in my room.  That's where
+you saw it."  She leaned back against a tree trunk with her knees drawn
+up to her chin, and blew out clouds of smoke, and looked more than
+usually grey and dishevelled and in need of a bath.  "In a way it's
+like that with Jeffries.  He rubs his beastly old thumb over my
+rottenest charcoal sketch, and it's a masterpiece."
+
+Robert, lying outstretched at Francey's feet, wondered at them--at
+their talk of genius in connection with a revue star and a smudgy,
+underpaid studio hack, more still at their reverence for a God in Whom
+they certainly did not believe.
+
+Miss Edwards snatched off her cartwheel hat smothered with impossible
+poppies, and sent it spinning down the hill.
+
+"What's the good?" she demanded fiercely.  "We're just nothing at all.
+We're young now.  But when we aren't young, what's going to happen to
+the bunch of us?"
+
+"This is a picnic," Howard reminded her.  "Not a funeral.  You haven't
+eaten enough.  Have a pickle."
+
+But the shadow lingered.  It was like the shadow thrown by the white
+clouds riding the light spring wind.  It put out the naming colours of
+the grass and flowers.  It was as though winter, slinking sullenly to
+its lair, showed its teeth at them in sinister reminder.  Then it was
+gone.  It was difficult to believe it could return.
+
+Robert looked up shyly into Francey's face, and she smiled down at him
+with her warm eyes.  They had scarcely spoken to one another, but
+something delicate and exquisite had been born between them in their
+silence.  He was afraid to touch it, and afraid almost to move.  He
+felt very close to her, very sure that she was living with him,
+withdrawn secretly from the rest into the strange world that he had
+discovered.  He was happy.  And happiness like this was new to him and
+terrifying.  He was like a waif from the streets, pale and gaunt and
+young, with dazzled eyes gazing for the first time into great distances.
+
+"Italy----" Gertie Sumners muttered.  She threw away her cigarette, and
+sat with her sickly face between her hands.  "I've got to get there
+before I die.  Think of all the swine that hoof about the Sistine
+Chapel yawning their fat heads off, and me who'd give my immortal soul
+for an hour----"
+
+"You'll go," Howard said, blinking kindly at her.  "I'll take you.
+We'll get out of this for good and all.  I'll bust a bank or forge a
+cheque.  You've got the divine right to go, old dear!"
+
+Robert stirred, drawing himself a little nearer to Francey, touching
+her rough tweed skirt humbly, secretly, as a Catholic might touch a
+sacred relic for comfort and protection.  They were talking a language
+that he could not understand---they were occupied with things that he
+despised, not knowing what they were; they made him ashamed of his
+ignorance and angry with his shame.  He could not free himself of his
+first conviction that they were really the Banditti--inferior children,
+who yet had something that he had not.  He was cleverer than they were.
+He would be a great man when they had wilted from their brief,
+shallow-soiled youth to a handful of dry stubble.  (This Gertie Sumners
+would not even live long.  He recognized already the thumb-marks of
+disease in her sunken cheeks.)  And yet he was an outsider, blundering
+in their wake.  Just because they accepted him, taking it for granted
+he was one of them, they deepened his isolation.  He could not talk
+their talk.  He could not play with them.  He had tried.  The old
+hunger "to belong" had driven him.  But he was stiff with strength and
+clumsy with purpose.  If he and Francey had not belonged to one
+another, he would have been overwhelmed in loneliness.
+
+He shut his ears against them.  But when she spoke he had to
+listen--jealously, fearfully.
+
+"It would be no use, Howard.  You'd come back.  You can't strip off
+your nationality like an old-fashioned coat and throw it away.  All
+this--isn't it English and different from any other country in the
+world--deeply, deeply different, just as we are different?
+England--she's a human, lovely woman, quiet and broad-bosomed, busy
+about her home, and only sometimes, in the spring and autumn, she stops
+a little to dream her mystic dreams.  In the summer and winter she
+pretends to forget.  She's anxious about many things--how she shall
+keep us warm and fed--a little stupid-seeming, with wells of all sorts
+of kindly wisdom.
+
+"And Italy--the saint, the austere spirit, close to God, preparing
+herself for God, with unspeakable visions of Him.  Where I lived"--she
+made a sudden passionate gesture of delight--"we looked over the
+Campagna, and there were three hills close to one another with towns
+perched on their crest, as far from the world and comfort as they could
+get.  And at night they were like the three kings with their golden
+crowns and dark flowing robes, waiting for God to show them the sign.
+
+"But we build our towns in the valleys and sheltered places.  We like
+our trains to be punctual, and to do things in decent order.  We
+pretend to be a practical and reasonable people.  We're of our soil.
+In Italy what do trains matter--or when they come and go--when, even to
+those who don't believe in Him at all, it's only God who matters?"  She
+laughed, shaking herself free.  "So you'll come back, Howard--because
+you're part of all this.  You'll always hate waiting for your train,
+and you'll always be a little ashamed of your dreams.  And you'll never
+be real anywhere else."
+
+Howard applauded solemnly.
+
+"I'll make a poem of that--one day, when I'm awfully drunk, and don't
+know what I'm doing."
+
+But Robert sat up sharply, frowning at her, white, almost accusing.
+
+"When did you live in Italy, Francey?"
+
+"Last year--all last year."
+
+"You mean--you chucked your work--everything--just to play round----?"
+
+Howard yawned prodigiously.
+
+"You don't get our Francey's point of view, Stonehouse.  You don't
+understand."
+
+"Just to play round," she echoed to herself.  Then she laughed and
+unclasped her hands from about her knees and stood up effortlessly,
+stretching out her arms like a sleepy child.  "And now I'm going to
+gather sticks for a fire and primroses to take home.  Coming Robert?"
+
+"No," he muttered.
+
+Howard rolled over in the grass.
+
+"Sulky young idiot--if I wasn't half asleep--or I'd been asked----"
+
+His voice died into an unintelligible murmur.
+
+So she went alone.  The rest, heavy with food and sunshine, nibbled
+jadedly at the remnants of the feast, exchanging broken, drowsy
+comments.  Perhaps Gertie Sumners was brooding over the three kings
+with their golden crowns.  But Robert knelt and watched Francey run
+down the hill-side, faster and faster, like a brown shadow.  There was
+a thick belt of beech trees at the bottom, and she ran into them and
+was lost.
+
+He rose stiffly.  He did not want the others to see--he did not want to
+know himself, that he was following her.  He strolled indolently about
+the crest of the hill, whistling to the breeze, his eyes hunting the
+wood beneath like the eyes of a young setter at heel.  But when at last
+he was out of sight he slipped his leash and was off, running
+recklessly, headlong.  The hill rose up behind him and sent him down
+its hillocky slopes as though before the horns of an avalanche.  The
+wind blew the scent of trees and flowers and young grass against his
+burning face.  It was like draughts of a cold, clear wine.  It was like
+running full-tilt down Acacia Grove leaping and whooping.
+
+It was frightening, too--a hand fumbling at the heart--this fierce
+coming to life of something dormant, this breaking free----
+
+The wood had swallowed her.  He drew up panting in the cool twilight.
+Beyond the faint breathing of the leaves overhead and the secret
+movement of hidden things, there was no sound.  He walked on quickly.
+At first it was only suspense, childish, thrilling.  Then it was more
+than that.  His heart began to beat quickly.  He tried to call her, but
+the quiet daunted him.  The wood was a still, green pool into which she
+had dropped and vanished.  It was an enchanted wood.  There was
+enchantment all about her.  They had seemed so near to one another--and
+then in a moment she had slipped away from him into a life of her own
+where he could not follow.
+
+He had to find her and hold her fast.  Nothing else mattered--neither
+his work, nor his career, nor Christine.  It was terrible how little
+they seemed now--a handful of dust--beside this mounting, imperative
+desire.  He had been so invulnerable.  In wanting nothing but what was
+in himself he had been able to defy exterior events.  Now he was
+stripped of his defence.  He could be hurt.  He could be made
+desperately happy or unhappy by things which he had thought trivial and
+purposeless--the playthings of inferior children.
+
+He came upon her suddenly.  She knelt in the long grass, idle, with a
+few scattered primroses in her lap as though in the midst of gathering
+them she had been overtaken by a dream.  He called her by name,
+angrily, because of what he suffered.  He stumbled to her and flung
+himself down beside her and held her close to him, ruthless with desire
+and his child's fear.
+
+In that sheer physical explosion his whole personality blazed up and
+seemed to melt away, flowing into new form.  He had dashed down the
+hill, a crude, exultant boy, into the whole storm and mystery of
+manhood.  And for all his fierceness his heart was small within him,
+afraid of her, and of itself, and its own hunger.
+
+At last he let her go.  He tore himself from her and dropped face down
+in the grass, trembling with grief and shame.  He heard her say:
+"Robert--dear Robert," very quietly, and her hand touched him, passing
+like a breath of cool wind over his hair and neck.  He kissed it
+humbly, pressing it to his wet, hot cheek.
+
+"I was frightened, Francey--and jealous--of everything--of the things
+you love that I don't even know of--of the places you've been to--of
+your friends--your money--your work.  I thought you'd run away to
+Italy--or somewhere else where I couldn't follow--that I'd lost
+you----"
+
+He saw her face and how deeply stirred she was.  She had blazed up in
+answer to him, but that very fire lit up something in her which was not
+new, but which now stood out full armed--a clear-eyed austerity.
+
+"I felt, too, as though I were running away--to the ends of the
+world--but not from you, Robert.  I wanted you to come too.  I asked
+you.  You're not frightened now, are you?"
+
+"Not so much."
+
+"Let's be quiet--quite quiet, Robert.  We've got to talk this out,
+haven't we?  I've got to understand.  Sit here and help me tie these
+together.  They're for Christine.  It'll make it easier for us.  You
+didn't mean this to happen.  It was the sun and wind--it goes to one's
+head like being out of prison after years and years.  You mustn't make
+a mistake.  You would never forgive yourself or me.  I'd understand if
+you said: 'It was just to-day and being happy.'  But I won't play at
+our being in love with one another, Robert."
+
+"It isn't a mistake, I'm not playing.  I don't pretend I meant to let
+you know.  I was frightened.  I wanted to hold fast to you.  But I've
+been sure ever since that night at Brown's----"
+
+"And yet you wanted to avoid me----"
+
+He nodded.  Ho knelt beside her, very white and earnest, with his hands
+clenched on his thighs.
+
+"That was because I knew.  I didn't think about it.  But I knew all
+right.  And I was afraid it would upset everything to care."
+
+"Doesn't it?"
+
+"Not caring for you.  Of course, I know all about life.  I'm young and
+I've never looked at a girl.  I've always realized that it would be
+natural to fall in love--perhaps worse than most men--and that if it
+was with a girl like Cosgrave's it would be sheer damnation.  I'd have
+to fight it down.  But loving you is different.  It'll make me
+stronger.  I'll work harder and better because I love you.  I'll do
+bigger things because of you."
+
+Her head was bowed over her primroses.  The sunlight falling between
+the trees on her wild brown hair kindled a smouldering colour in its
+disorder.  He watched her, fascinated and abashed by the knowledge that
+she was smiling to herself.  And suddenly, roughly like an ashamed boy,
+he took a grey and blood-stained rag from his inner pocket and tossed
+it into her lap.
+
+"Do you remember that?"
+
+She picked it up gingerly, amusedly.
+
+"Is it a handkerchief, Robert?"
+
+"Don't you remember it?" he repeated with triumph, as though in some
+way he had beaten her.
+
+For a moment she was silent.  And when she looked at him her eyes were
+no longer smiling.
+
+"You kept it like that----?"
+
+"I wouldn't even wash it.  I hid it.  It's got dirtier and dirtier."
+
+"It must be horribly germy, Robert.  We'll wash it together.   As
+members of the medical profession we couldn't have it on our
+conscience----"
+
+They laughed then, freely, out of the depth of their happiness.  She
+laid her hand in his and he bent his head to kiss it.
+
+"You do trust me, Francey?"
+
+"Trust you?"
+
+"You don't think it's weak of me to love you?  You know I'll pass my
+finals, don't you--that I'll be all right?  People might think I hadn't
+the right to love you till I was sure.  But, then, I am sure--dead
+sure."
+
+"I'm sure, too."  Her voice sounded brooding, a little husky.  She took
+his hand and laid it on her lap, spreading out the fingers as though to
+examine each one in turn.  "It's a clever, beautiful hand, Robert--much
+the most beautiful part of you.  It will do clever, wonderful things.
+What will _you_ do?"
+
+(As though, he thought, his hands were something apart and she was
+inquiring deeper into what was vitally him.)
+
+He told her.  It reassured him to go back to his foundations and to
+find them still standing.  He lost his tongue-tied clumsiness and spoke
+rapidly, clearly, with brief, strong gestures.  His haggard youth gave
+place to a forcible, aggressive maturity.  He was like an architect who
+had planned for every inch and stone of his masterpiece.  Next year he
+would pass his finals.  He would take posts as locum tenens whenever he
+could and keep his hospital connexions warm.  In five years he would
+save enough to specialize--the throat gave wide opportunities for
+research.  There were men already interested in him who would send him
+work.  In ten years Harley Street--if not before.
+
+In the midst of it all he faltered and broke off to ask:
+
+"Why do you love me, Francey?"
+
+And then, impulsively, she flung her arm about him and drew him close
+to her.  His head was on her breast, and for one uncertain moment she
+was not Francey Wilmot at all, but the warm living spirit of the
+sunlight, of the quiet trees and the grass in which they lay--of all
+the things of which he was afraid.
+
+"Because you're such an odd, sad, little boy----"
+
+
+
+3
+
+After tea it began to rain, not dismally, but in a gentle way as people
+cry who have been too happy.
+
+"In this jolly old country fine weather means bad weather," Connie
+Edwards commented cynically.  She had reason to be depressed.  The
+impossible poppies dripped tears of blood over the brim of the
+cartwheel hat.  But apart from that misfortune she had never got over
+her original mood of puzzled dissatisfaction, and she and Cosgrave
+walked droopingly down the narrow lane arm in arm and almost wordless.
+
+So much of winter days was left that it was dark when they reached the
+foot of the hill--the eerie luminous darkness of the country when there
+is a moon riding somewhere behind the clouds.  Robert could see
+Christine and Francey just ahead of him.  Christine had taken Francey's
+arm, and they talked together in undertones like people who have secret
+things to say to one another.  How small Christine was!  She seemed to
+have shrunk into a handful of a woman as though the sun had withered
+her.  She walked timidly, with bowed head, feeling her way.  Her voice
+lifted for a moment into the old clearness.
+
+"His father was a wonderful man--a wonderful, good man.  Unhappy.  Very
+unfortunate.  Not meant for this world.  His mother was my dear friend.
+If they had lived--those two----  I did what I could--I think they
+will be satisfied--it makes me happy----"
+
+She murmured wearily.  And Francey bent her head to listen.  Robert
+loved her for the tenderness of that gesture.  Yet it was bitter, too,
+that they should talk of his father.  He wanted to go up to them and
+tell the truth brutally to Christine's face.  He would have liked to
+have told them the one dream which he carried over from his sleep.  But
+it would have been useless.  Christine would only smile with a cruel,
+loving wisdom.
+
+"You don't understand.  You were only a child.  Your father was so
+unhappy----"
+
+The myth had become an invulnerable reality and had grown golden in the
+twilight of her coming blindness.  James Stonehouse had been a good
+man, a faithful friend, and broken-hearted husband.  If those two had
+lived everything would have been different.  She threw her hallowed
+picture of them on the screen of the dripping dusk so that they seemed
+to live.  Robert saw them too.  That was his mother walking at
+Christine's side, and then his father----  In a sort of shattering
+vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle
+of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions,
+lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course,
+because he could not give up worthlessness for worth.
+
+Himself----
+
+He staggered before the brief hallucination.  The moisture broke out on
+his white face.  It wasn't enough to hate his father.  He had to be
+fought down day by day.  He was always there, waiting to pounce out.
+He lay on his face, pretending to be dead----
+
+It was gone.  He shook himself free as from the touch of an evil,
+insinuating hand out of the dark.  This love was his strength.  If
+Francey were like his mother, then she was also good.  It was these rag
+and bobtail friends that poisoned everything.  They would have to be
+shaken off.  Francey was a child, fond of gaiety and pleasure, with no
+one to guide her.  She didn't understand.
+
+Howard and Gertie Sumners were walking behind him now with the
+luncheon-basket between them, talking earnestly in muffled whispers
+that were too intimate, and behind them again came the Gang itself,
+laughing, jostling one another, exchanging facetiousness in their
+medical-Chelsea jargon.
+
+His father would have liked them.  Connie Edwards, no doubt, would have
+been one of those dazzling, noisy phenomena that burst periodically on
+the Stonehouse horizon.
+
+Supposing he should come to like them too--to tolerate their ways,
+their loose living, loose thinking----?
+
+He remembered how that very afternoon he had tried to be one of them,
+and sickened before himself.
+
+Francey called to him through the darkness.
+
+"Miss Forsyth's so tired, Robert.  Couldn't you carry her?"
+
+And he took Christine in his arms, whilst she laughed and protested
+feebly.  It was awful to feel how little she was.  Her head rested
+against his shoulder.
+
+"It's a longer road than I thought.  You're very strong, Robert.  Your
+father was strong too."
+
+It had been a successful day.  And yet, as they sat packed close
+together in the dim, third-class carriage, they were like captives who
+had escaped and were being taken back into captivity.  The sickly,
+overhead light fell on their tired faces, out of which the blood,
+called up by the sun and wind, had receded, leaving their city pallor.
+Connie Edwards had indeed produced a lip-stick from her gaudy bead bag,
+but after a fretful effort had flung it back.
+
+"What's the good?  Who cares----?"
+
+And Cosgrave huddled closer to her, wan-eyed, hunted-looking.  It was
+the ghost of that exam that wouldn't be laid--the prophetic vision of
+the row that waited for him, grinding its teeth.
+
+Only Gertie Sumners and Howard had a queer, remote look, as though in
+that recent muffled exchange they had reached some desperate resolve.
+
+The wet, gleaming platform slid away from them.  There was a faint red
+light in the west where the sunset had been drowned.  Christine turned
+her face towards it.  She was like a little old child.  Her little feet
+in the shabby, worn-out shoes scarcely touched the floor.  Her drooping
+hat was askew--forgotten.
+
+"It has been a wonderful day.  But I mustn't come again.  I'm too old.
+It's silly to fall in love with life when one is old."
+
+Robert leant across to her.  He ached with his love and pity.
+
+"Tired, Christine?"
+
+"A little.  But it has been worth while.  You carried me so nicely--so
+big and strong."
+
+She leant against Francey, nodding and smiling to reassure him.  And
+presently she was asleep.  He saw how Francey shifted her arm so that
+it encircled the bowed figure, and every ugly thing that had dogged him
+in that lonely, haunted walk vanished before the kind steadfastness of
+her eyes.
+
+It was as though she had said aloud:
+
+"We'll take care of her together.  We won't let her die before we've
+made her very, very happy."
+
+Then he took out a note-book and made a shaky sketch of a pompous,
+drunken-looking house with a huge door, on which were two brass plates,
+side by side, bearing the splendid inscriptions:
+
+  Dr. Frances Stonehouse, Robert Stonehouse,
+      M.D.,                     F.R.C.S.
+                    Hours 10--1
+
+He showed it to her and they smiled at one another, and there was no
+one else in the carriage but themselves and their happiness.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1
+
+It meant a tightening--a screwing up of his whole life.  Time had to be
+found.  The hours had to be packed closer to make room for her.  He
+grasped after fresh opportunities to make money with a white-hot
+assiduity.  He worked harder.  For he was hag-ridden by his
+unfaithfulness.  He drew up a remorseless programme of his days, and
+after that Francey might only walk home with him from the hospital.
+And there was an hour on Sunday evening when he was too tired for
+anything else.
+
+It meant a ceaseless, active negation: a "No" to the simple wish to buy
+her a bunch of flowers, "No" to the longing to walk a little farther
+with her in the quiet dusk, "No" to the very thought of her.
+
+
+
+2
+
+As usual, on the way home, they discussed their best "cases."  There
+was No. 10 in A Ward, a raddled woman of the streets who had been
+brought in the night before as the result of a _crime passionnel_, and
+whose injuries had been the subject of long deliberations.  Even before
+they had reached the hospital archway Robert and Francey agreed that
+Rogers' air of mystery was simply a professional disguise for complete
+bafflement.
+
+"It's the sort of case I'd like to have," Robert said.  "Something you
+can get your teeth into and worry.  I believe if I were on my
+own--given a free hand--I'd work it out--pull her through.  Rogers may
+too.  But just now he's marking time.  And there's nothing to hope from
+time in a job like that.  No constitution.  Rotten all through.  Still,
+it would be a feather in one's cap."
+
+He brooded fiercely, intently, like a hound on a hot scent.  People
+turned to look at the big, shabby young man with the sunken, burning
+eyes that stared through them as though they had been so many shadows.
+He did not, in fact, see them at all.  He made his way by sheer
+instinct across the crowded street.
+
+"She's terribly afraid of death," Francey said.  "It's awful to be so
+afraid.  It must make life itself terrible."
+
+"They'll operate soon as they dare--an exploratory operation.  If only
+I could have a say--a real say!  It's maddening to know so much--to be
+sure of oneself.  I don't believe Rogers would take me out on his
+private work if he knew I knew all I do.  I'm glad we're on a surgical
+post together, Francey.  I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't got you
+to talk things over with."
+
+"You daren't talk of anything else," she answered unexpectedly.
+"You're frightened of our being happy together.  You're always trying
+to justify yourself."
+
+"I'm not--what rubbish!"
+
+He tried to laugh at her.  It was so like Francey to dash off down a
+side issue.  And yet it was true.  He did try to think as much as he
+could of that side of their common life.  It did add an appearance of
+stability and reason to the splendid unreason of his loving her.  It
+made up to him for those dismaying breaks when her face and body stood
+like a scorching pillar of fire between himself and his work, to find
+that when they were together they could be sternly practical, discuss
+their eases and criticize their superiors as though, beneath it all,
+there were not this golden, insurgent sea whose high tides swirled over
+his landmarks.  Not destroying them.
+
+In those latter times he loved her humbly, with wonder and passionate
+self-abasement.  But in their work they stood further away from one
+another.  He could criticize her, and that gave him a heady sense of
+power and freedom.  He never forgot the year that she had deliberately
+thrown away.  And even now, when she stood at the beginning of the road
+which he had already passed over, she seemed to him full of strange
+curiosities and wayward, purposeless interests.  There were days when
+an ugly Chinese print, picked up in some back-street pawnshop, or the
+misfortunes of one of her raffish hangers-on, or some wild student rag,
+appeared to wipe out the vital business of life.  She was known to be
+brilliant, but he distrusted her power of leaping to conclusions over
+the head of his own mathematical and exact reasoning.  He distrusted
+still more her tendency to be right in the teeth of every sort of
+evidence to the contrary.  It seemed that she took into her
+calculations factors that no one else found, significant,
+unprofessional straws in the wind, things she could not even explain.
+
+And yet she understood when he talked about his work, and that alone
+was like a gift to him.  No one else understood--for that matter, no
+one else had had to listen.  He knew that Christine was too tired, and
+poor overburdened Cosgrave would only have gazed helplessly at him,
+wondering why this strong, self-sufficient friend should pour out such
+unintelligible stuff over his own aching head.  So he had learnt to be
+silent.  Even now it was difficult to begin.  He stammered and was shy
+and distrustful and eager, sometimes crudely self-confident, like a
+child who has played alone too long.
+
+And Francey listened, for the most part critical and dispassionate, but
+with sudden gestures of unmotivated tenderness: as when in the midst of
+his dissertation on a theory of insanity and crime she had kissed him.
+
+Sometimes for them both the prose and poetry of their relationship met
+and clasped hands.  That was when they took their walk down Harley
+Street to have another look at the house which was one day to be
+adorned with the celebrated brass plates.  At present it was solidly
+occupied by several eminent-sounding medical gentlemen who would have
+to be ruthlessly dislodged when their time came.
+
+For it was the best house in the street, and, of course, the Doctors
+Robert and Francey Stonehouse would have to have the best.
+
+And once they quarrelled about nothing at all, or about
+everything--they hardly knew.  It was an absurd quarrel, which blazed
+up and went out again like fire in stubble.  Perhaps they had waited
+too long for their allotted hour together--dreamed too much about it,
+so that when it came they could hardly bear it, and almost longed for
+it to be over.  And in the midst of it Mr. Ricardo drifted in on one of
+his strange, distressful visits to Christine, and drove them out of
+doors to roam the drowsy Sunday streets, hand in hand, like any other
+pair of vulgar, homeless lovers.  For Francey could not stay when Mr.
+Ricardo came.  His hatred of her was a burning, poisonous sore that
+gave no peace to any of them.
+
+"It's a sort of jealousy," Robert reflected.  "We three have always
+held together.  He's had no one else to care about.  And now you've
+come, and he thinks you want to take me away from him."
+
+"I do," Francey said unexpectedly.
+
+"Not in the way he means."
+
+"You don't know----"
+
+"He's been good to me.  I'd never have got through without him.  I
+can't have him hurt.  And you will fight him, Francey.  I know he's
+crabbed and bitter, but so would you be if you'd been twisted out of
+shape all your life.  And you only do it for the fun of the thing.
+Fundamentally, you think alike."
+
+"We don't, that's just it.  I'm sorry for him, and if it had been
+anything less vital I'd compromise--he'd compromise, too, perhaps.
+We'd both lie low and look pleasant about our differences.  But as it
+is we can't help ourselves.  We've got to stand up and fight----"
+
+"I say, that sounds jolly dramatic."
+
+"It is rather."
+
+"Next thing you'll be saying you believe in God."
+
+"Well, I do----"
+
+He stopped short and let go her hand.  He was physically ashamed and
+uncomfortable.  He tried to laugh, but for the moment they were face to
+face, and he could not mistake her seriousness.  They were like
+strangers, peering at each other through the grey dusk.
+
+"Look here, Francey, dearest, you don't expect me to believe that?
+You're just joking, aren't you?  You're--you're a modern woman, with a
+scientific training, too.  You can't believe in an old, worn-out myth."
+
+"I didn't say that."
+
+"'An untested hypothesis,'" he quoted teasingly, but with a stirring
+anger.
+
+"I don't know about that, either.  We're both bound by our profession
+to admit an empirical test.  And if we human beings can't survive
+without God----"
+
+"But we can--we do."
+
+"I can't."
+
+He threw up his head.
+
+"Why do women always become personal when they argue?"
+
+"And why do rationalists always become irrational?"
+
+They walked on slowly, apart, vaguely afraid.  He wanted to change the
+subject, to take her by the arm and hold her fast.  For she was
+drifting away from him.  Her voice sounded remote and troubling, like a
+little old tune that he could not quite remember.  Its emotion fretted
+his overstrained nerves.  He wanted to close his ears against it.  It
+was a trivial tune which might become a torment.
+
+"It's not only me.  It's everyone.  Most of us are frightfully unhappy.
+Don't you realize that?  And the more we understand life the more
+desperate we get.  Savages and children may do without a god, but we
+can't.  We know too much.  Even the stupidest--the most careless of us.
+Think of Howard and Gertie and all that lot.  Every second word is
+'What's the good?  What's it all about?'  They make a great deal of
+noise to cover up their unhappiness.  They're terrified of loneliness
+and silence.  And one day it'll have to be faced."
+
+"Oh, if you're going to take Howard as an example--" he interrupted.
+
+"--and Rufus Cosgrave," she added.
+
+He laughed with a boyish malice.
+
+"Cosgrave doesn't need a god.  He's got me.  I'll look after him."
+
+"You think you can?  And then we ourselves.  We're different, aren't
+we?  We've got our work.  We're going to do big things.  For whom?--for
+what?  For our fellow-creatures?  But if we don't care for our
+fellow-creatures?  And we don't, do we?  Not naturally.  The
+Brotherhood of Man is just dangerous nonsense.  Naturally men loathe
+one another in the mass.  How can we pretend to love some of those
+people we see every day in the wards with their terrible faces--their
+terrible minds?  But the idea of God does somehow translate them--it
+gets underneath the ugliness--they do become in some mystic way my
+brothers and my sisters."
+
+He found it strangely difficult to answer calmly.  It would have been
+easier to have bludgeoned her into silence by a shouted "It's all
+snivelling, wretched rot!" like an angry schoolboy.  He did not know
+why he was so angry.  Perhaps Ricardo was right.  It was something
+vital.  He could feel the old man's shadow at his side, his hand
+plucking his sleeve, urging him on, claiming his loyalty.  They were
+allies fighting together against a poisonous miasma that sapped men's
+brains--their intellectual integrity.
+
+"Piling one fallacy on another isn't argument, Francey.  We don't need
+to like our fellow-creatures.  It's a mistake to care.  Emotion upsets
+one's judgment.  Scientists--the best men in the profession--try to
+eliminate personal feeling altogether.  They're out for knowledge for
+its own sake.  That's good enough for them."
+
+"And the end of that--organized, scientific beastliness, like modern
+war.  Knowledge perverted to every sort of deviltry.  Huge swollen
+heads and miserable withered hearts.  One of these days we'll blow
+ourselves to pieces----"
+
+They were both breathless and more than a little incoherent.  They had
+entered into a playful tussle, and now they were fighting one another
+with set teeth.
+
+"I don't believe you believe a word you're saying," he stammered.  "You
+know as well as I do that it's only since we began to throw off
+superstition that we've begun to move.  Or perhaps you don't want to
+move--don't believe in progress."
+
+"Progress towards what?" she flung back impetuously.  "Perfection?
+Some point where we'd have no poverty, no war, no ignorance, no death
+even; where we'd all have every mortal thing we want?  The millennium?
+That's only another word for Hell.  It's only by pretending that there
+are things we want, and that we should be happy if we had them, that we
+can believe in happiness at all.  All this unrest, this sick despair
+every morning of our lives when we drag ourselves out of bed and wonder
+why we bother--it's just because we've begun to suspect that the
+millennium is of no use to us.  We've got to have more than that--some
+sort of spiritual background--or cut our throats."
+
+"Wild rhapsodizing, Francey.  You don't know a thing."
+
+"I don't.  Nor do you.  When I said I believed, I meant I hoped--I
+trusted.  And if there isn't a God at the end of it all, you people who
+want to keep us alive for the sake of the knowledge you get out of us
+will have to make one up."
+
+Whereat, suddenly, in a cool, refreshing gust, their sense of humour
+returned and blew them close to one another.  They laughed and took
+hands again--a little shyly, like lovers who had been parted for a long
+time.
+
+"What rot--our quarrelling over nothing at all," Robert said, "when
+we've only got this hour together.  I wanted to say 'I love you,
+Francey--I love you, dear' over and over again.  Say 'I love you too,
+Robert.'"
+
+"I love you too," she answered soberly.
+
+But the crack was there--a mere fissure in the ground between them--a
+place to be avoided even in their thoughts.
+
+
+
+3
+
+At night when his work was over and the unrest grew too strong to be
+fought, he crept down the black, creaking stairs, through the sleeping
+backwater of Drayton Mews, and out into the streets.  He walked fast,
+with his head down, guiltily, like a man flying from a crime.  But in
+the grave square where Francey Wilmot lived he slackened speed, and,
+under the thick mantle of the trees, stood so still that he was only a
+deeper shadow.  Then release came.  It was like gentle summer rain
+falling on his fever.  There was no one to see his weakness.  He could
+think and feel simply and naturally as a lover, without remorse.
+Sometimes a light burnt in her window, and then he knew that she was
+working, making up for those queer, wild play-hours.  He could imagine
+her under the shaded lamplight, the books heaped round her, and her
+hands clenched hard in the thick brown hair.  He could feel the peace,
+the rich, deep stillness round her.  And a loving tenderness, exquisite
+and delicate as a dream, welled up in him.  He said things out of his
+heart to her that he had never said: broken, stumbling things, melted
+in the white-heat of their truth into a kind of poetry of which the
+burden never changed.  "I can't live without you--I can't live without
+you."  He could have knelt before her, burying his burning face in her
+lap in strange humility--childlike surrender.
+
+And when the window was dark he knew that she had gone out to dance, to
+the theatre, with friends whom he did not know, belonging to that other
+life in which he had no part.  And then his loneliness was like a black
+sea.  He leant against the railings, weak with weariness and hunger,
+fighting his boy's tears, until she came.  He did not speak to her.
+She never knew that he was there.  He hid, his heart stifling him,
+until the door closed on her.  Then, since she had come back to him,
+belonged to him again, he could go in peace.
+
+The others--Howard and Gertie and even Connie now--went in and out,
+risking ruthless ejection if she were hard pressed, to sit in the best
+chairs, with their feet in the fender and drink coffee and smoke
+endlessly whilst they poured their good-natured cynicism over life.  If
+they were hungry they rifled Francey's larder, and if they were hard up
+they borrowed her money.  But after the one time Robert never went.  He
+did not want to meet them.  And besides the big square room with its
+mark of other stately days--its panelled walls, rich ceilings and noble
+doors--was his enemy.  It was steeped in a mellow, unconscious luxury
+that threatened him.  There were relics from Francey's old home,
+trophies from her Italian wanderings, books that his hands itched just
+to touch, and things of strange troubling beauty.  A bronze statue of a
+naked faun stood in the corner where the light fell upon it, and seemed
+to gather into itself everything that he feared--a joyous dancing to
+some far-off music.
+
+The room would not let him forget that Francey held money, which he had
+had to squeeze his life dry to get, lightly and indifferently.  She
+gave it with both hands.  She had always had enough, and it seemed to
+her a little thing.  Between people who cared for one another it
+counted less than a word, and his sullen refusal of every trivial
+pleasure and relief that lay in her power to give them hurt and puzzled
+her.  She saw in it only a bitter pride.
+
+"You might at least let me make Christine's life easier in little
+things," she said.
+
+He could not tell her that Christine would have been afraid for him, as
+he was afraid of the deep chairs that had seemed to clasp his tired
+body in drowsy arms, of the rugs that drank up every harsh sound, of
+the warm, fragrant atmosphere that was like a blow in the face of their
+chill and barren poverty.
+
+So after that one time he kept away.  But he could always see the room
+and Francey working there, and the slender, joyful body of the faun
+poised on the verge of its mystic dance.
+
+Once, Francey was too strong for him, and they bought tickets for the
+theatre, and he sat hunched beside her in the front row of the cheap
+seats and stared down at the great square of light like an outcast
+gazing at the golden gates of Paradise.  It was _The Tempest_, and he
+hardly understood.  It broke over him in overpowering sound and colour.
+He was dazed and blinded.  He forgot Francey.  He sat with his gaunt
+white face between his bands and watched them pass: Prospero, Miranda,
+Ferdinand, Ariel--figures of a noble, glittering company--and wretched,
+uncouth Caliban crouched on the outskirts of their lives, pining for
+his lost kingdom.  But in the interval he was silent, awkward and heavy
+with an emotion that could not find an outlet.  He felt her hand close
+over his--an, almost anxious hand.
+
+"Robert, you like it, don't you?  You're not bored?" He turned to look
+dazedly at her, stammering in his confusion.
+
+"I've never been to a theatre before."
+
+"Never?  Oh, my dear----"
+
+"Only to a circus, long ago."  He drew back hastily into himself.  He
+did not want her to be sorry like that.  He would not let her see how
+shaken he was.  "I never wanted to go," he said.
+
+After that they walked home together, and in the empty street that led
+into her square a moonlight spirit of phantasy seemed to possess her,
+and she sang under her breath and danced in front of him, rather
+solemnly as she had done as a little girl:
+
+  "Come unto these yellow sands
+  And then take hands. . ."
+
+He caught hold of her.  Everything was unreal--they themselves and the
+unfamiliar street, painted with silver and black shadows.
+
+"Don't--you're dancing away from me; there's nothing for you to dance
+to."
+
+She smiled back wistfully.
+
+  "'The isle is full of noises,
+  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
+  Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
+  Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices. . .'"
+
+"I don't hear them," he muttered clumsily.
+
+"Caliban heard them----"
+
+"And you're Ariel," he said, with sudden, sorrowful understanding.
+"Ariel!"
+
+From the steps of the dark house she looked down at him, her eager face
+smiling palely in the white, still light.
+
+"Ariel wasn't a woman, dear duffer.  You'll have to read it.  I'll lend
+it to you.  And then we'll go again."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No."
+
+"Yes--often--often, Robert.  We've been nearer to one another than ever
+before--just these last minutes--quite, quite close.  We've got to find
+each other in pleasure too."
+
+He rallied all his strength.  He said stiffly, pompously:
+
+"It's been awfully nice, of course.  And thank you for taking me.  But
+I don't really care for that sort of thing."
+
+And for a moment they remained facing one another whilst the joy died
+out of her eyes, leaving a queer distress.  Then they shook hands and
+he left her, coldly, prosaically, as though nothing had happened.  But
+he was like a drunken man who had fallen into a sea of glory.
+
+  "The clouds, methought, would open, and show riches
+  Ready to drop upon me. . ."
+
+There was all that work that he had meant to do before morning.  It
+seemed far off--more unreal and fantastic than a fairy tale.  His heart
+and brain, ached with willingness and loathing.
+
+  ". . . that, when I wak'd,
+  I cried to dream again. . ."
+
+He set his teeth.  He clenched his hands till they hurt him.
+
+"I'll have to keep away from all that," he thought aloud,
+"altogether--till I don't care any more."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+After all, Rufus Cosgrave had imagined his answers.  Connie Edwards met
+Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him.  It was raining
+dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street,
+and she had not dressed for bad weather.  Perhaps she did not admit
+unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe.  Perhaps she could not
+afford to do so.  Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV heels,
+and the cheap silk stockings which showed up to her knees, made her look
+like some bedraggled, long-legged bird-of-Paradise.  A gaudy parasol
+could not protect her flopping hat, or her complexion, which had both
+suffered.  Or she had been crying.  But she did not sound as though she
+had been crying.  She sounded breathless and resentful.
+
+"He heard this afternoon," she said.  "And what must he do but come
+bursting round to my place--half an hour before I'm due to start for the
+show--and carry on like a madman.  Scared stiff, I was.  Tried to make me
+swear I'd marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, and when I
+wouldn't, wanted to shoot himself and me too--as though I'd made a muck
+of things.  Well, I'd done my best, and when it came to that sort of
+sob-stuff I'd had enough.  What's he take me for?  Get me into trouble
+with my landlady--making a row like that."
+
+Robert heard her out in silence, and his intent, expressionless scrutiny
+seemed to flick her on the raw.  She stamped her foot at him.  "Oh, for
+the Lord's sake, get a move on---do something, can't you?  I didn't come
+here to be stared at as though I were a disease!"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"If I knew----!  My place probably--with the gas full on--committing
+suicide--making a rotten scandal.  You've got to come and dig him out."
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+"Ten minutes from here.  10E Stanton Place.  I'll show you a short way.
+I ran like a hare, hoping I'd catch you, and you'd put a bit of sense
+into the poor looney's head.  Serves me right--taking on with his sort."
+
+"Well--we'd better hurry," Robert said.
+
+"Thanks.  I said I'd show you the way.  I'm not coming in.  Don't you
+believe it.  I've had enough.  All I ask is--get him out and keep him
+out."
+
+"You're through with him?"
+
+Her habitual good-natured gaiety was gone.  She looked disrupted and
+savagely afraid, like an animal that has escaped capture by a frantic
+effort.  And yet it was difficult to imagine Rufus Cosgrave capturing or
+frightening anyone.
+
+"You bet I'm through with him.  You tell him so--tell him I don't want to
+see him again--I won't be bothered----"  She broke off, and added, with
+a kind of rough relenting: "Put it any blessed way you like--say what's
+true--we've had our good times together--and it seems they're over--we've
+no use for one another."
+
+"You mean--now he's failed."
+
+"What do _you_ mean--'now he's failed'?  What's his rotten old exam got
+to do with me?  I don't even know what it's about."
+
+"You took the good time whilst you could get it, and now when you can't
+hope for anything more----"
+
+She stopped short, and they faced each other with an antagonism that
+neither gave nor asked for quarter.  They had always been enemies, and
+now that the gloves were off they were almost glad.
+
+"So that's my line.  Cradle-snatching.  Vamping the helpless infant!" She
+burst into a fit of angry, ugly laughter.  "A good time!  Running round
+with a poor kid with ten shillings a week pocket-money--eating in beastly
+cheap restaurants--riding on the tops of 'buses when some girls I know
+are feeding at the Ritz and rolling round in limousines.  That's what I
+get for being soft.  And now because I won't shoot myself, or go off to
+nowhere steerage, I'm a bad, abandoned woman.  What d'you take me for?"
+
+"What you are," he said.
+
+She went dead white under her streaky paint.
+
+"You--you've got no right to say that.  You're a devil--a stuck-up
+devil--I hate you--I'd have always hated you if I'd bothered to mind.
+I--I gave _him_ a good time.  That's the truth.  He was down and out when
+I met him, and I set him on his feet.  I didn't mind what I missed--or
+the other girls guying me--I made him laugh and believe he had as good a
+chance in the world as anyone else.  I put a bit of fun into him.  I
+liked the kid.  I--I like him now.  If he wanted a good time to-morrow
+I'd run round with him again.  But I'm no movie heroine--I'm not out for
+poison and funerals and slow music.  Life's too damn serious for my sort
+to make a wail and a moan about it."
+
+He stood close to her.  He almost menaced her.  He did in fact look
+dangerous enough with his white, set face and unflinching eyes in which
+stood two points of metallic light.  If he had seen himself then he might
+have cowered away as from a ghost.
+
+"I don't care a rap about you.  I do care about my friend.  You've got to
+stand by Cosgrave till he's over the worst."
+
+"I won't--I won't!"
+
+"I'll make you.  You took him up.  You made him think you cared about
+him.  You're responsible----"
+
+"I'm not--I won't be responsible; it's not my line.  I've got myself to
+look after."
+
+She had the look of someone struggling against an invisible
+entanglement--a pitiable, rather horrible look of naked purpose.  She
+meant to cut free at whatever cost.
+
+"You little beast!" he said.
+
+He was sick with contempt.  He swung away from her, and she stood in the
+middle of the pavement and called names after him like a drunken, furious
+street-girl.  She did not seem to be even aware of the people who stared
+at her.  When he was almost out of hearing, she added:
+
+"Give him my love!" shrilly, vindictively, as though it had been a final
+insult.  But he took no notice and now, at any rate, she was crying
+bitterly enough.
+
+
+
+2
+
+"E" proved to be the top room of No. 10, a dingy lodging-house whose
+front door, in accordance with the uncertain habits of its patrons, stood
+open from year's end to year's end.  Robert went in unnoticed.  He ran up
+the steep, narrow stairs, with their tattered carpeting, two steps at a
+time.  A queer elation surged beneath his anger and distress.  Cosgrave's
+failure was like a personal challenge--a defiance thrown in his teeth.
+The old fight was on again.  It was against odds.  But then, he had
+always fought against odds--won against them.
+
+The room was Connie Edwards herself.  It seemed to rush out at him in a
+tearing rage, flaunting its vulgar finery and its odour of bad scent and
+cheap cigarette smoke.  It made him sick, and he brushed it out of his
+consciousness.  He did not see the poor attempts to make it decent and
+attractive--the bed disguised beneath a faded Liberty cretonne, a
+sentimental Christ hanging between a galaxy of matinee heroes, nor a
+full-length woman's portrait, across which was scrawled "Gyp Labelle" in
+letters large enough to conceal half of her outrageous nakedness.  There
+were even a few flowers, drooping forlornly out of a dusty vase, and a
+collection of theatrical posters, to lend a touch, of serious
+professionalism.
+
+But the end of it all was a frowzy, hopeless disorder.
+
+Cosgrave lay huddled over the littered table by the open window.  The red
+untidy head made a patch of grotesque colour in the general murk.  He
+looked like a poor rag doll that had been torn and battered in some wild
+carnival scrimmage and flung aside.
+
+There was not much in him--not much fight, as he himself said.  Not the
+sort to survive.  Life was too strong--too difficult for him.  He bungled
+everything--even an exam.  It would be wiser, more consistent to let him
+drift.  And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, it was not impatience
+or contempt that Robert felt, but a choking tenderness--a fierce pity.
+He had to protect him--pull him through.  He had promised so much--he
+forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty grass behind the
+biscuit factory, or that night when he had dragged Cosgrave breathless
+and staggering in pursuit of the Greatest Show in Europe.  It did not
+matter.  It had become part of himself.  And Cosgrave had always trusted
+him--believed in him.
+
+"It's all right, old man; it's only me--Robert."  For Cosgrave had leapt
+up with an eager cry, and now stood staring at him open-mouthed.  The
+light was behind him, and the open mouth and blank, shadowy face made a
+queer, ghastly effect, as though a drowned man had suddenly stood up.
+Then he sagged pitifully, and Robert caught him by the shoulders and
+shook him with a rough, boyish impatience.  "Don't be an idiot.  It
+doesn't matter all that much.  Exams are not everything.  Everyone knows
+that.  We'll find something else.  If your people are too beastly, you'll
+come and share with us.  I'll see you through--it'll be all right."
+
+But a baffling change came over Cosgrave.  He shook himself free.  He
+stood upright, looking at Robert with a kind of stony dignity.
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Connie.  She sent you, didn't she?"
+
+"Yes.  We met----"
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know.  Gone to the theatre probably."
+
+"Isn't she coming back?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Didn't she send a message?"
+
+"She said--it was finish between you.  She's a little rotter, Cosgrave."
+
+"She made me laugh," Cosgrave said simply.  "I don't mind about the
+exam.--or about anything now.  I suppose I was bound to fail.  But I was
+so jolly happy.  I'd never had a good time like that.  It's all over now.
+She doesn't care.  She said she couldn't be tied up with a lot of
+trouble.  That's what I am.  A lot of trouble.  It was all
+bunkum--make-believe--to think I could be anything else."
+
+So it wasn't his failure.  It wasn't even the loss of a good-for-nothing
+chorus-girl.  It was a loss far more subtle.  The recognition of it lamed
+Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had
+struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre.  He could only stammer
+futilely:
+
+"She's not worth bothering about."
+
+Cosgrave slumped back into his chair.  His hands lay on the table, half
+clenched as though they had let go and didn't care any more.  He looked
+at Robert wide-eyed with a sudden absolute knowledge.
+
+"That's it," he said.  "Not worth bothering about--nothing in this whole
+beastly, rotten, world. . . . . ."
+
+
+
+3
+
+A convenient uncle found him a berth as clerk to a trading firm in West
+Africa, and with a cheap Colonial outfit and 10 pounds in his pocket,
+Cosgrave set out for the particular swamp which was to be the scene of
+his future career.  He went docilely, with limp handshakes and dull,
+pathetic eyes.  If he betrayed any feeling at all, it was a sort of
+relief at getting away from everybody.  But emotionally he was dead--like
+cheap champagne gone flat, as he expressed it in one twisted mood of
+self-revelation.
+
+Probably he was thinking of Connie Edwards and of their last spree
+together.
+
+But he never spoke of her.
+
+And it was very unlikely that the swamp would give him a chance to see
+any of them again.
+
+After all, he had stood for something.   He was a rudderless little craft
+that had come leaking and tumbling willy-nilly in the wake of the bigger
+vessel.  But also he had been a sort of talisman.  He had protected
+Robert as the weak, when they are humble and loving, can protect the
+strong, giving them greater confidence, making their defeat impossible.
+With his going went security.  Little old fears came crawling out of
+their hiding-places.  At night when Robert climbed the dark stairs to
+their stable-attic, they set upon him.  They clawed his heart.  He called
+to Christine before he saw her, and the answering silence made him sick
+with panic.  It was reasonless panic, for Christine often fell asleep at
+dusk.  She was difficult to wake and when she woke it was strangely, with
+a look of bewilderment, like a traveller who has come home after a long
+absence.  Once she had spoken his father's name with a ringing joy, and
+he had answered roughly and had seen her shrink back into herself.  Her
+little hands trembled, fumbling apologetically with the shabby bag she
+always carried.  She was like a girl who, in one withering tragic moment,
+had become old.  But his aching love found no outlet, no word of regret
+or tenderness.  It recoiled back on himself in a dead weight of pain.
+
+He began to watch himself like a sick man.  There were hours when he knew
+his brain to be losing edge--black periods of hideous impotency which,
+when they passed, left him shaken and wet with terror.  Supposing, at the
+end of everything, be failed?  He didn't care so much.  His very power of
+caring had been dissipated.  His single purpose lost itself amidst
+incompatible dreams.  He was being torn asunder--and there was a limit to
+endurance.
+
+Cosgrave had failed.  He couldn't concentrate.  He was always looking for
+happiness.  He had fallen in love and wasted himself and made a mess of
+his life.
+
+It was mad to fall in love.
+
+And yet the worst dread of all was the dread of losing Francey.  It
+seemed even the most unreasonable, for they had their work in common and
+they loved one another.  There was no doubting their love.  They were
+very young and might have to wait, but he could trust her to wait all her
+life.  He knew dimly that she had been fond of him as a little boy, and
+had gone on being fond of him, simply and unconsciously, because it was
+not possible for her to forget.  She would love him in the same way.
+That steadfastness was like a light shining through the mists of her
+character--through her sudden fancies, her shadowy withdrawals.
+
+And still he was afraid, and sometimes he suspected that she was afraid
+too.  It was as though inexorable forces were rising up in both of them,
+essentially of them, and yet outside their control, two dark antagonisms
+waiting sorrowfully to join issue.
+
+
+
+4
+
+It had happened suddenly--not without warning.  One little event trod on
+the heels of another, rubble skirling down the mountain-side, growing to
+an avalanche.
+
+Or, again, Cosgrave might have been the odd, unlikely keystone of their
+daily life.  He had not seemed to matter much, but now that he had been
+torn out the bridge between them crumbled.
+
+It had been a day full of bitterness--of set-backs, which to Robert
+Stonehouse were like pointing fingers.  They were the outward expressions
+of his disorder.  He did not believe in luck, but in a man's strength or
+weakness, and he knew by the things that happened to him that he was
+weakening.  A private operation had gone badly.  He had bungled with his
+dressings, so that the surgeon had turned on him in a burst of irritation.
+
+"Better go home and sleep it off, Stonehouse."
+
+He had not gone.  He would not admit that he was ill--dared not.  All
+illness now meant the end of everything.  It would wipe out all that they
+had endured if he were to break down now.  It would kill Christine.  She
+must not even guess.
+
+He hung about the hospital common-room.  The summer heat surging up from
+the burning pavements stagnated between the faded walls.  He could not
+touch the food that he had brought with him.  He was faint and sick, and
+the long table at which he sat, with its white blur of newspapers, rose
+and fell as though it were floating on an oily sea.  But he held out.  At
+five o'clock he was to meet Francey at the gates, and, as though she had
+some magic gift of relief, he strained towards that time, his head
+between his hands, his ears counting the seconds that dripped heavily,
+drowsily from the moon-faced clock.
+
+And then she did not come.  Outwardly it was only one more trifle,
+capable of simple explanations.  But he saw it through a disfiguring haze
+of fever, and it was deadly in its significance.  He hardly waited.  He
+crossed the thoroughfare, and once in a side street stumbled into a
+shambling run.  He did not stop until he reached her house.  His former
+reluctance broke before the imperative need to see her and make sure of
+her.  He stormed the broad, deep, carpeted stairs, pursued by a senseless
+panic, But at the top his strength failed him.  He felt his brain
+throbbing in torture against his skull.
+
+The old maid-servant nodded gravely, sympathetically.
+
+"Yes, she's in, sir, but very busy--going away--sir." Going away.  He
+wavered in the dim hall, trying to control his flying thoughts.  Going
+away.  And she had said nothing the night before--had not even warned
+him.  Some unexpected, untoward event striking in the dark.  Illness.  A
+long separation.  (And yet, he argued, he could not live without her.
+She had no people who could claim her.  They were dead.  No one to come
+between them.  And there was her work.  She would never leave that again.)
+
+But there she stood in the midst of the disorder of a sudden going.  Open
+suit-cases, clothes strewn about the floor, she herself in some loose,
+bright-coloured wrap, her brown hair tousled and her brows knit in
+perplexity.  She stopped short at sight of him, smiling ruefully, her
+arms full.
+
+"Oh, my dear--I'd forgotten."  (Then she must have seen his face with its
+dead whiteness, for she added quickly, half laughing): "Not you.  Only
+the time.  I've not been at the hospital, and I thought I had still half
+an hour.  I've had to run round like mad, and even now I've got a hundred
+things to do----"
+
+He gulped.  He said: "Where are you going?" in a flat, emotionless voice,
+as though he did not care.
+
+For a moment she did not answer.  She let the clothes drop, forgotten, on
+the sofa.  He could see her weighing--considering what she should say to
+him.
+
+"Italy--Rome--I expect----"
+
+"Italy--when?"
+
+"I've got to be at the hospital to-morrow.  Wednesday probably.  I don't
+believe it'll be for long.  I hope not.  A week or two.  I've got leave
+for a month."
+
+"Why are you going?"
+
+And now he could not keep the harsh break out of his voice.  He could not
+hide the physical weakness which made it impossible for him to stand.
+And yet, though she looked at him, she seemed unaware that he was
+suffering.  She was absorbed in some difficulty of her own, set on her
+own immediate purpose.  He knew that mood.  It was the other side of her
+fitful, whimsical way of life that she could be as relentless, as deadly
+resolute and patient in attainment as himself.
+
+"It's about Howard," she said, abruptly coming to a decision.  "I wasn't
+sure at first what to do about it.  I didn't want anyone to know.  But
+you're different.  We have to share things.  Howard and Gertie--they've
+both gone--gone off--no one knows where."
+
+"Together?"
+
+"I'm pretty certain of it.  At any rate, Gertie, who couldn't even pay
+her rent, has vanished, and Howard--I heard about Howard this morning."
+
+"What did you hear about him?"
+
+"It was from Salter.  You probably don't know him.  He came to me because
+he knew I was a friend of Howard's.  He was frightfully upset.  It seems
+there was some sort of club which a crowd of students were collecting
+for, and he and Howard held the funds.  It wasn't much--150 pounds--and
+Howard drew it out two days ago."
+
+"Does that astonish you?" Robert asked.
+
+She seemed not to hear the scorn and irony of the question.   She went on
+packing deliberately, and he watched her, not knowing what he would say
+or do.  The tide was rising faster.  His dread would carry him off his
+feet.
+
+"No.  I was sure things were coming to a crisis."
+
+"He was no good.  Anyone could see that."
+
+"I didn't see it."
+
+"Well, you see it now," he flung at her with a hard triumph.
+
+"I don't."
+
+"A mean thief----"
+
+"Not mean, Robert."
+
+"I don't know anything meaner than stealing money from a lot of hard-up
+students."
+
+"There was Gertie," she said as though that were some sort of extenuation.
+
+"Gertie--they've gone off on some rotten spree--not even married."
+
+(He hated himself--the beastly righteousness of his voice, his
+contemptible exultation.  It was as though he were under some horrid
+spell which twisted his love and anguish into the expressions of a
+spiteful prig.  Why couldn't he tell her of those deadly, shapeless
+fears, of his loneliness, his sorrowful jealousies?  He was shut up in
+the iron fastness of his own will--gagged and helpless.)
+
+He saw her start.  She stopped definitely in her work as though she were
+at last aware of some struggle between them.  The room was growing dark,
+and she came a little nearer, trying to see his face.
+
+"I don't suppose so.  I don't think it would occur to them."
+
+"No--that's what I should imagine."
+
+"You're awfully hard on people, Robert."
+
+"That sort of thing makes me sick.  It ought to make you sick.  I don't
+know why it doesn't.  You don't seem to care--to have any standards.
+You're unmoral in your outlook--perhaps you're too young--you don't
+realize.  A rotter like Howard who takes other people's money just to
+enjoy himself--a girl like Gertie Sumners who goes off with the first man
+who asks her----"
+
+"You don't understand, Robert."
+
+"No," he said with a laugh, "I don't."
+
+"Gertie Sumners hasn't long to live.  I sent her to the hospital last
+week, and they told her honestly.  And she wanted so much to see Italy.
+I don't think Howard cares for her or she for him, except in a comradely
+sort of way.  They loved the same things--and he was sorry--he wanted to
+give her her one good time."
+
+"He told you all that, I suppose?"
+
+"No," she answered soberly.  "But I know."
+
+He waited a moment.  He was trying desperately to hold back--to stop
+himself.  He was sorry about Gertie Sumners.  But everything was against
+him.  The room was against him--the faun dancing noiselessly among the
+shadows, the little things that Francey had gathered about her, the dear
+personal things that can become terrible in their poignancy, Francey
+herself, standing there slender and grave-eyed, judging him, weighing
+him.  They were all leagued together.  They spoke with one voice.  "We
+belong TO one another.  We understand.  But you don't belong.  You are
+outside."
+
+"I don't see, at any rate," he said, "what it has got to do with you--or
+why you should be going away."
+
+"I'm going after them.  There's no one else.  Howard will expect
+prosecution.  He will think that he'll never be able to come home.  He's
+pretty reckless, but they will be thinking of that all the time.  It will
+spoil everything for them."
+
+"And what can you do?"
+
+"I can tell them it's all right."
+
+"How can it be?"
+
+"It is," she said curtly.  "The money has been paid back."
+
+"Paid back!"  Understanding burst upon him.  "_You_ paid it?"
+
+He stood up.  He knew that resentment flickered in her--a fine, dangerous
+resentment against him because he had dragged so simple and obvious a
+thing out of its insignificance.  But his own anger was like a mad,
+runaway horse, rushing him to destruction.
+
+"It was stupid of him not to have come to me in the first place," she
+said, with an effort.  "He should have known----"
+
+He broke in fiercely.
+
+"You can't--can't go like that."
+
+"I must.  If they had left an address--but, of course, they haven't.
+I'll have to track them down.  It won't be so difficult."  A spark of
+gaiety lit up her serious eyes.  "I'll find Gertie lying on her back in
+the Sistine Chapel.  She'll scorn the mirrors."
+
+"You can't leave your work like that."
+
+"The hospital people have been awfully decent about it."
+
+"You told them----?"
+
+"I told them I had urgent, personal business."
+
+"You told them a lie, then?"
+
+(Steady.  Steady.  But it was too late.  His only hope lay in her
+understanding--her pity.)
+
+"It wasn't a lie.  My friends are my business."
+
+"Your friends!" he echoed.
+
+There was silence between them.  She was controlled enough not to answer.
+It would have been better if she had returned taunt for taunt so that at
+last in the white heat of conflict his prison might have melted and let
+him free.  But there followed a cold, deadly interlude, in which their
+antagonism hardened itself with reason and bitterness.  He went and stood
+by the window looking out on to the dim square.  He said at last roughly,
+authoritatively:
+
+"Don't go.  I don't want you to go."
+
+(If only he could have gone on--driven the words over his set
+lips--"because I'm afraid--because I'm at breaking-point--because I can't
+do without you.  I'm frightened of life.  I've been starved in body and
+heart too long.  I'm frightened because Christine is hard to wake at
+night--because I can't work any more.")
+
+"I've got to," she said briefly, sternly.
+
+He walked from the window to the door.
+
+"You don't care.  You care more for these two than you do for me.  I've
+lived hard and clean.  I don't lie or steal.  I've never thought of any
+girl but you.  And you put me second to a feckless thief and a----"
+
+She stopped him.  Not with a word or gesture, but with the sheer upward
+blaze of a chivalrous anger.  And it was not only anger.  That would have
+been bearable.  It was sorrow, reproach, a kind of grieving bewilderment,
+as though he had changed before her eyes.
+
+"You'd--you'd better go, Robert.  We're both of us out of hand.  We'll
+see each other to-morrow.  It will be different then."
+
+He went without a word.  But on the dark stairs he stood still, leaning
+back against the wall, his wet face between his hands.  He said aloud:
+"Oh, Francey.  Francey, I can't live without you!"  He would have gone
+back to tell her, but he was physically at the end of everything, and at
+the mercy of the power outside himself.  He thought:
+
+"There's still to-morrow.  I'll tell her everything.  I'll help her to
+get away.  I'll make her understand that it wasn't Howard.  To-morrow it
+will be all right."
+
+And so went on.  And the stolid Georgian door closed with a hard metallic
+click, setting its teeth against him.
+
+"Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!"
+
+
+
+5
+
+But he came out of a night of fever and hallucination with very little
+left but the will to keep on.  Apathy, like a thin protecting skin, had
+grown over him, shielding him from further hurt.  He did not want to feel
+or care any more.  The very memory of that "scene" with Francey made him
+shrink with a kind of physical disgust.  Only no more of that.  Back to
+work--back to reason.  If she wished to go in pursuit of Howard and
+Gertie she would have to go.  It seemed strange to him now that he should
+have minded so desperately.
+
+Christine called to him as he passed her door.
+
+"Is that you, Robert?  Have you had your breakfast?  Wait, dear--I'll get
+it for you."
+
+But he crept down the stairs as though he had not heard.  Only not so
+much caring--if only he could forget that he cared.
+
+"Good-bye, dearest, good-bye!"
+
+Her voice followed him, plaintive and clear.  It seemed to lodge itself
+in his heart so that ever afterwards he had only to think of her to hear
+it like the echo of a small, sad bell.  He went on stubbornly, in silence.
+
+He did not try to see Francey.  They met inevitably in the wake of the
+surgeon on whose post they worked, but they did not speak.  Their eyes
+avoided one another.  Yet he could not forget her.  It was not the old
+consciousness that had been full of mystery and delight.  It hurt.  He
+felt her unsapped joyous living like a blow on his own aching weariness.
+He thought bitterly of her.  How easy life had been for her!  She played
+at living.  Her airy fancies, her belief in God, her vagrant tenderness
+for the rag and bobtail of the earth were all part of that same thing.
+She had never suffered.  Her people had died, but they had died in the
+odour of sanctity and wealth.  She had never had to ask herself: "If I
+fall out, what will become of us?"  She saw pain and poverty through the
+softening veil of her own well-being.  Nothing could really hurt her.
+
+(And yet how lovable she was!  He watched her covertly as she stood at
+the surgeon's elbow--a little graver than usual--a little paler.  To-day
+there was no warm glance with a flicker of a smile in its serene depths
+to greet him.  Her hands were thrust boyishly into the pockets of her
+white coat, and there was an air of austere earnestness about her that
+sat quaintly, charmingly upon her youth.  He loved the businesslike
+simplicity of her dress--the dark, tailored skirt and white silk
+shirt--immaculate--expressive of her real ability, an accustomed wealth.
+He flaired and hated its expensiveness.)
+
+Money.  That lay at the root of everything.  If she were ill--what would
+it matter?  A mere set-back.  Her work would wait for her.  Money would
+wave anxiety from her door.  So she was never ill.  Even though she loved
+him and they had quarrelled she had kept her fresh skin and clear eyes.
+Even if she had worried a little, in the end she had slept peacefully.
+(He felt his own shabbiness, his exhaustion, his burning hands and eyes,
+his dry and bitter mouth like a sort of uncleanliness.)
+
+And there in the midst of his jagged thoughts there flickered a red
+anger--a desire to hurt too, to strike, to come to grips at last with her
+laughing philosophy of life--to tear it down and batter it into the dust
+and misery in which he stood.
+
+They had come to No. 10's bedside.  Things had gone badly with No. 10.
+She had stood a successful operation, but there had been severe
+haemorrhage, and, as Robert had said, there was no constitution to fight
+at the turning point.  Her face just showed above the creaseless sheet.
+Death had already begun to clear away the mask of vice and cynicism and a
+lost prettiness peered through.  But the eyes were terribly alive and
+old.  So long as they kept open there could be no mistaking her.  They
+travelled from face to face, and sought and questioned.  Her voice
+sounded reedy and far-off.
+
+"Not going this trip, am I, doctor?"
+
+Rogers patted the bed.
+
+"Certainly not.  Going along fine.  What do you expect to feel like--with
+a hole like that in your inside?  Next time you have a young man, see he
+doesn't carry firearms."
+
+One of the eyes tried to wink--pitifully, obscenely.
+
+"You bet your life.  Don't want to die just yet."
+
+"Nobody does."
+
+They drew a little apart.  Rogers consulted with his colleague.  The
+serious loss of blood must be made good.  A transfusion.  There was a
+young man who had offered himself.   A suitable subject.  This afternoon
+at the latest.
+
+They moved on.  Robert spoke to the man next him.  But he knew that
+Francey heard him.  He meant her to hear.
+
+"It's crazy.  They ought to be glad to let a woman like that slip out.
+If she lives she'll only infect more people with her rottenness.  She's
+better dead.  Instead of that they'll suck out somebody else's vitality
+to save her.  The better the life the more pleased they'll be to risk it.
+This sacrificing the strong to the weak--a snivelling sentimentality."
+
+The man he spoke to glanced at him curiously--it was not usual for Robert
+Stonehouse to speak to anyone--and said something about the medical
+profession and the sanctity of life.  Robert laughed.  He argued it over
+with himself.  It was true.  For that matter Howard and Gertie and Connie
+would all be better dead.  There was no use or purpose in their living.
+Only sentimentalists like Francey wanted to patch them up and keep them
+on their feet.
+
+People who cluttered up life ought to be cleared out of it.
+
+He felt light-headed, yet extraordinarily sure of himself again.  He
+answered Rogers' questions with the old lucidity.  And presently he found
+himself in the corridor, still arguing his theme over.  He would prove to
+Francey that she must let Howard and Gertie go to the devil and they
+would never quarrel again.
+
+He came to the head of the stairs where they met after the morning's work.
+
+The steps were very broad and white and shallow, and gave the impression
+of great distance.  Mr. Ricardo, at the bottom of them, was a black
+speck--a bird that had blundered into the building by mistake and beaten
+itself breathless against the walls.  As he saw Robert he began to drag
+himself up, limping.  He seemed to shrivel then to a mere face, stricken
+and yellow, that gaped and mouthed.
+
+Robert did not move.  He stood leaning against the balustrade.  It was as
+though an iron fist had smashed through the protecting wall about him,
+letting in a rush of bitter wind.
+
+"Robert--Robert!"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I'm coming----"
+
+For he had known instantly.
+
+
+
+6
+
+The tragic journey through the streets was over.  They stood beside her.
+Robert knew too much to struggle, but Ricardo's voice went on, saying the
+same things over and over again, pleading.
+
+"Do something--do something.  Wake her, Robert, dear boy, for God's sake.
+What is the use of all your studying if you can't even wake her?"
+
+"It's no use," he said.
+
+"She was sitting there--I was to have read her the last chapter--she was
+so quiet--asleep she seemed---for an hour--I sat--not moving--then I was
+afraid!"
+
+Robert nodded.
+
+She had laid his supper for him.  It was much too early for her to have
+laid it.  She had spread muslin over the bread and cheese.  And then she
+had sat down quietly in her chair by the window and waited.  (How long
+had she waited there?  Many years perhaps.  It had been very lonely for
+her.)  Her head was thrown back a little, and her closed eyes lifted to
+the light that came over the stable roofs.  The grey hair hung in wisps
+about the transparent face--very still, as though the air had died too.
+She had changed profoundly, indefinably.   She looked younger, and there
+was a new serenity about the faintly opened mouth.  Her hands lay
+peacefully on the little shabby bag.  Her little feet in the ill-fitting
+shoes just reached the ground.  In a way it was all so familiar.  And yet
+he felt that if he touched her he would find out that this was not
+Christine at all.  This was something that had belonged to her--as
+poignant, as heart-rending as a dress that she had worn.
+
+"Robert, isn't there anything--to do?"
+
+"No."
+
+They had nothing to say to one another.  They had made a strange
+trio--lonely and outcast by necessity--but now a link had snapped and it
+was all over.  They stood apart, each by himself.  Ricardo, crouching
+against the window-sill, pressed his hand to his side as though he were
+hurt and bleeding to death.  He said, almost inaudibly:
+
+"I've no one.  Nobody will ever listen.  She believed in me.  She was
+sure that one day--I would go out--and tell the truth.  She knew I
+wasn't--a cowardly--beaten, old man."
+
+Robert could not touch her whilst Ricardo stood there crying.  Her repose
+was too dominating.  And if he touched her something terrible and
+incalculable might happen.  He felt as though he were standing on the
+edge of a precipice, and that suddenly he might let go and pitch over.
+
+It had come true at last--his boy's nightmare that had grown up with
+him--that only waited for darkness to show itself.  Christine had left
+him.  She was dead, and it seemed that he had no one in the world.  For
+Francey, loving him as she did, had failed him.  But Christine had never
+failed him.  Never at any time had she asked, "Are you a good little boy,
+Robert?"  It would never have occurred to her.  She was so sure.  She had
+loved him and, believed in him unfalteringly, and, in her quiet way, died
+for him.
+
+Ricardo drew himself up.  He plucked at Robert's sleeve.  A change had
+come over him in the last minutes.  His sunken brown eyes had dried and
+become rather terribly alert.  Something too fine--too exquisitely
+balanced in him had been disturbed and broken beyond hope.
+
+"It proves what I have suspected for a long time, Robert.  You know it's
+not a light thing to make an enemy like that.  He's taken his time, but
+you see in the end he has taken everything I had.  First he made me a
+liar and a hypocrite.  Then he took you.   He sent that girl specially to
+come between us.  And now Miss Christine.  I suppose he thinks that's
+done for me.  But it's a great mistake to make people desperate, Robert.
+You should always leave them some little thing that they care for and
+which makes them cowards.  Now, you see, I simply don't care any more.  I
+don't care for myself or even my poor sister.  I'm going to fight him in
+the open, gloves off.  I'll wrestle with him and prevail.  I'll give blow
+for blow.  I'm going now to Hyde Park to tell people the truth about him.
+They take him altogether too lightly, Robert.  They're inclined to laugh
+at him as of no account.  That's a great mistake, too.  I shall warn
+them."  He nodded mysteriously.  "God is a devil--a cruel, dangerous
+devil."
+
+Then he bent and kissed Christine's hand, very solemnly and tenderly, as
+some battered, comical Don Quixote might have done before setting out on
+a last fantastic quest.  And presently Robert heard him patter down the
+narrow stairs and over the cobbles to the open street.
+
+They were alone now.  He bent over her and said: "Christine--Christine,"
+reassuringly, so that she should not be afraid, and gathered her in his
+arms.  How little she was--no heavier than a child--and cold.  Her grey
+head rested against his shoulder.  If she had only stirred and laughed,
+and said: "Your father was strong too!" he would have answered gently.
+He would have been glad that the memory of his father could make her
+happy.  But it was all too late.
+
+He carried her into her room.  It was like her to have left it so neat
+and ordered--each thing in its place--her out-door shoes standing
+decorously together under the window, and her best skirt peeping out from
+behind the cretonne curtain.  Her hair-brush, with the comb planted in
+its bristles, lay exactly in the middle of the pine-wood dressing-table.
+When she had put it there, she had not known that it was for the last
+time.
+
+Or had she known?  She had called out to him so insistently.  She had
+wanted to say good-bye.  And he had gone on, not answering.
+
+They said that people, at the end, saw their whole life pass before them.
+Perhaps she had seen hers.  Perhaps she had trodden the old road that he
+was travelling over now.  Only her vision of it would be different.  It
+was James Stonehouse and Robert's mother that she would see--radiant
+figures of wonderful, unlucky people--and little Robert, who belonged to
+both of them, tagging in the rear.
+
+But he saw her--Christine lying white and still under the great mahogany
+side-board, Christine coming back day after day in gallant patience to
+scrub the floors and his ears, and pay the bills and chase away the duns,
+and do whatever was necessary to keep the staggering Stonehouse menage on
+its feet.
+
+She had held him close to her and comforted him.
+
+Her splendid faithfulness.
+
+He laid her on the narrow bed against the wall, and smoothed her dress
+and folded her hands over her breast.  Her bag, which he had gathered up
+with her rolled on to the floor.  A book fell out.  He picked it up
+mechanically.  It was a little Bible, and on the fly-leaf was written:
+
+  "From JIM and CONSTANCE
+    to their friend, CHRISTINE."
+
+The writing was his father's.  It had faded, but one could still see how
+regular and beautiful it was.  Then the date.  His own birthday--the
+first of all the unfortunate birthdays.
+
+He looked at it for a long time, stupidly, not realizing.  Then suddenly
+he saw it--in a new light.  Ricardo.  How frightfully--excruciatingly
+funny.  Ricardo.   He felt that he was going to laugh--shout with
+laughter.  It was horrible.  Laughter rising and falling---like a sort of
+awful sickness--choking him.
+
+Instead his heart broke.  He flung himself down beside her and pressed
+his face against her cold, thin cheek.  And, instead of laughter, sobs
+that tore him to pieces--and at last, in mercy, tears.
+
+"Oh, Christine, Christine--my own darling!  I did love you--I never told
+you--you never, never knew how much!"
+
+The earth-old cry of unavailing, inevitable remorse.
+
+
+
+7
+
+So there was no one but Francey now.
+
+He did not know what he hoped, or indeed if he hoped for anything.  He
+turned to her instinctively.  And when the door of the ward opened he
+did, in fact, feel a faint lifting of the flat indifference which had
+followed on that one difficult rending surrender.  He went to meet her.
+If she had looked at him with her usual straightness, she might have
+remembered the boy of whom she had been fond--a small, queer boy, who did
+not like having his face washed, and who came to her truculent and
+swaggering, with smears under his red eyes.
+
+Even then it is doubtful whether she could have changed the course on
+which both of them were set.
+
+He did not want her to see.  And yet, unknown to himself, he did count on
+her instant understanding, on some releasing, quickening word or look
+that would give back life to the dead thing in him.  But her eyes,
+preoccupied and unhappy, avoided him.  He could not have appealed to her.
+He could not have said, as he had meant to do, "Christine is dead."  He
+was silenced by the certain knowledge that all real communication between
+them had been broken off.
+
+"No. 10 is going to pull through," she said.
+
+They walked slowly down the corridor.  He found it difficult to keep his
+feet.  He wondered vaguely why she should talk of No. 10 when Christine
+was dead.  He was puzzled---confused.
+
+"It seemed likely," he muttered.  "Rogers had got his teeth into her."
+
+"I suppose you think he was a fool to try?"
+
+(What was she talking about?  He would have to arrange for the funeral.
+And the money.  He did not know whether there would be money enough.  It
+was hideous--to think of a thing like that--to have to go into a shop and
+say to some bored shopkeeper: "I want a nice cheap coffin, please."  For
+Christine--for whom he had never been able to buy so much as a bunch of
+flowers.)
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"You see, I heard what you said."
+
+(What had he said?  He tried to remember.  No. 10.  Better dead.  Yes, of
+course that was it.  He couldn't go back on that.  His mind seemed to
+strain and stagger under the challenge like a half-dead horse under the
+whip.)
+
+"She didn't hear me, anyway."
+
+"I want to know--was it just--just a sort of pose--or did you mean it?"
+
+"It was true."
+
+"That doesn't seem to me to matter.  It was a beastly thing to have
+thought--beastlier to have said----"
+
+He stopped short, as though she had struck him across the face.  For an
+instant he was blind with pain, but afterwards he steadied, grew deadly
+cool and clear-headed.  There was a constant movement in the corridor and
+he turned abruptly, almost with authority, into an empty operating
+theatre.  Instinctively he had chosen his ground.  Here was symbolized
+everything that he trusted and believed in--a cool, dispassionate
+seeking, the ruthless cutting out of waste.  Yet in the half-light the
+place surrounded them both with a ghostly, almost sinister unreality.
+Its stark immaculateness lay like a chill, ironic hand on their distress.
+It made mock of their unhappiness.  It divested them of their humanity.
+The nauseating sweetness that still lingered in the sterilized air was
+like incense offered up on the grotesque sacrificial altar that stood
+bare and brutal beneath the glass-domed roof.
+
+And now Robert saw Francey's face.  It was white and pinched and
+unfamiliar, as though all her humour and whimsical laughter and
+loving-kindness had been twisted awry in a bitter fight with pain.  But
+he knew her eyes of old.  Long ago he had seen them with the same burning
+deadly anger.  And he knew that it was all over.  Their patient
+antagonism had come to grips at last over the bodies of their suffering
+love for one another.
+
+Even then she held back.
+
+"You don't know how hard life can be.  It was hard for her----"  But at
+that he burst out laughing, and she added quickly, reading his thought:
+"Nothing that you've gone through is of any use if it hasn't taught you
+pity."
+
+"Your pity would take a half-dead rat from a terrier."
+
+"You have no right to judge," she persisted.
+
+He smiled with white lips.
+
+"Oh, yes, I have!  We all have.  We condemn men to prison--to death."
+
+"You do believe in God," she said bitterly.  "You believe in yourself."
+
+"It comes to this, Francey, doesn't it?  You're through with me?  You
+don't care any more?"
+
+Her eyes narrowed with a kind of desperate humour.  It was as though for
+a moment she had regained her old vision of him--a sad queer little boy.
+
+"You say that because you want to shirk the truth.  You're almost
+glad--presently you will be very glad.  You never did want to care--not
+from the first.  Caring got in your way.  You will be free now."  She
+waited, and then added very quietly, without anger: "I love you.  I dare
+say I always shall--but I couldn't live with you--it would break my heart
+if we should come to hate one another.  Don't think any more about it.
+I'll have gone to-morrow, and I'll try to arrange not to come back till
+you're through.  It will be all right."
+
+"Francey, it's such a foolish thing to quarrel about."
+
+"It's everything," she said simply.
+
+She turned to go.  Even then he could have stopped her.  He could have
+said: "Francey, Christine died this morning!" and their sad enmity might
+have melted in grief and pity.  But what she had said was true.  It was
+everything.  And his reason, his will, rising up out of the general ruin,
+monstrous and powerful, stood like an admonishing shadow at his elbow.
+
+"It's much better.  There's nothing to make a coward of you now.  You're
+free."
+
+He half held out his hand, but it was only a convulsive, dying movement.
+He let her go.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+I
+
+1
+
+As to Gyp Labelle, if she had known the part she played in their lives,
+which in the nature of things was not possible, she would have broken
+into that famous laugh of hers.
+
+To her, at any rate, it would have seemed immensely, excruciatingly funny.
+
+As the result of an exchange of two remarkably casual notes they met at
+Brown's for dinner.  Brown's had occurred to both of them as a natural
+meeting-place.  Cosgrave, it is true, had only dined there once and that
+free (as a friend of Brown's friend), but the impression made upon a
+stomach accustomed to Soho and tea-shop fare had been indelible.
+Stonehouse himself dined there as a matter of custom.  Besides, there was
+a touch of sentiment to their choice--a rather bitter sharp-tasting
+sentiment like an aperitif.
+
+Brown himself had aged considerably, and did not remember very well.
+
+"Old friend of the doctor's, sir?  Well, so am I.  Getting on--getting
+on.  But I'm waiting till I can squeeze my money's worth out of him.
+When's that knighthood coming, doctor?  I want to be able to tell that
+story--as good a story as you'd read anywhere.  He's got to keep me
+alive, sir, till it comes true."
+
+He went off to the kitchen tittering to himself over an ancient joke
+which, together with his "feeling" for the psychological moment in the
+matter of roasts, was about all that was left him.
+
+Stonehouse, his chin resting in his hand, studied the menu from which
+they had already chosen.
+
+"When the last Honours List came out, he was quite serious and pathetic
+about it," he said.  "Things move either too slowly or too quickly for
+old people.  He does realize that I make quite a good story as I stand,
+but he wants the finishing touches--the King clasping me by the hand, or
+kissing me on both cheeks, or whatever he thinks happens on those
+occasions--and wedding bells as a grand finale."
+
+"The place seems to have grown shabby," Cosgrave said.  "Or perhaps it's
+only me."
+
+"Oh, no.  It is shabby.  And perhaps you've noticed, they don't wait here
+as they used to."
+
+Cosgrave looked directly at his companion, almost for the first time, and
+caught a spark in the eyes that stared into his--a rather dangerous
+spark, which cleverer people than himself had found difficult to make
+sure of.  Then he laughed flatly.
+
+"You can see how funny it is now----"
+
+"I always did."
+
+"--because you were so sure it would pan out--like this.  How long is it?"
+
+"About eight years."
+
+"My word!  Let's--let's look at one another and take stock."
+
+Stonehouse sat back and bore the inspection with a faint smile.  He knew
+himself, and how he impressed others.  The eight years had done a great
+deal for him.  His strength had cast its crudeness and had attained a
+certain grace--the ease of absolute control and tried confidence in
+itself.  He still dressed badly--indifferently, rather--but his body had
+toned down to the level of the fine hands, which he held loosely clasped
+upon the table.
+
+He looked at once very young and very fine drawn and, as Cosgrave
+thought, a little cruel.
+
+"You seem--awfully well and prosperous, Robert.  And a sight better
+looking."
+
+Stonehouse laughed.  All he said in reply was:
+
+"And you look prosperous and ill.  What was it?  Enteric?"
+
+Cosgrave shrugged his thin shoulders.  He was still flamboyantly
+red-headed and generously freckled, but now that the first flush of
+excitement had ebbed, his face showed a parchment yellow.  His eyes,
+wistful in their setting, were faded, as though a relentless tropical sun
+had drunk up their once vivid, boyish colouring.
+
+"Oh yes, that and a few other trifles.  I think I've housed most West
+African bugs in my time.  Everyone had them, but I was such poor pasture
+that I got off better than most.  Three of my superiors died of 'em, and
+I stepped right into their shoes.  It pays, you see, if you can hold out.
+People like a fellow who isn't always clamouring to come home--and you
+bet I never did.  But, finally, I took an overdue leave and a hunk of
+savings and trekked back.  I'd always planned it--a good time, you
+know--but somehow it hasn't come off.  I expect I left it too long.  In
+the end I didn't really want to come at all--wanted to lie down and die,
+but hadn't the strength of mind to insist.  I'd been in London a week
+before I wrote you--just drifting round--too weak-kneed to take the first
+step.  I tore up that idiotic note three times."
+
+"Well, as long as you posted the fourth effort," Stonehouse said, "it's
+all right."
+
+They fell then unexpectedly into one of those difficult silences which
+beset the road of friends who have been separated too long.  The past
+stood at their elbow like an importunate and shabby ghost.  And yet it
+was all they had to lead them back into the old intimacy.
+
+"We've got too much to say," Cosgrave broke out at last, with a painful
+effort, "too much ground to cover--and I dare say we don't want to cover
+it.  If we'd written--but I never heard from you after that one
+letter--after Miss Christine's death."
+
+"I was ill," Stonehouse explained, eating tranquilly.  "I got through my
+finals with a temperature which would have astonished my examiners, and
+then I went to pieces altogether.  Had to go into hospital myself.  A
+nervous breakdown.  Three months I had of it.  They were very decent to
+me, and when I came out they got me a berth as ship's doctor on one of
+the smaller transatlantic liners.  I got hold of things again and pulled
+them my way.  But I didn't want to look back.  My illness had made a
+definite break--I wanted to keep free."
+
+Cosgrave nodded.  He had been playing with his food, and now a look of
+disgust and weariness came into his thin face.
+
+"I can understand that.  I suppose it would have been better if I'd left
+well alone, and not written at all."
+
+"It wouldn't have made much difference," Stonehouse said: "A week or two.
+Sooner or later we'd have run into one another.  People who've been at
+school together always seem to.  And you and I especially."
+
+"I don't know.  I was always a poor specimen--I never meant much to you."
+
+Stonehouse looked up at him and smiled.  This time it was an unmistakable
+smile and rather charming, like a warm line of light falling across his
+face.
+
+"I was awfully glad to get your letter," he said.  "I'd begun to worry
+rather."
+
+Cosgrave flushed up.
+
+"That's--that's about the nicest thing that's happened to me for a long
+time.  I'd probably cry with pleasure--only I don't seem able to feel
+much anyway.  It's those damn bugs, I suppose!"
+
+"I'll pull you out of that."
+
+"Got me diagnosed already?"
+
+"It's not very difficult."
+
+"I suppose--I suppose you're an awful swell, Stonehouse."
+
+"Not yet.  I'm better at my job than a great many men who are swells.
+But I'm young--that'll cure itself.  Oh, yes--I'm all right.  Things have
+gone on coming my way.  I'll tell you about it sometime."
+
+Cosgrave's eyes had rounded with their old solemn admiration.
+
+"A fashionable West-End surgeon--oh, my word!  I say, have you got a
+bed-side manner tucked away somewhere?"
+
+"No.  That's not fashionable for one thing, and for another, it wouldn't
+suit my style.  I'm not interested in people.  I'm interested in their
+diseases.  They know it, and rather like it."  A touch of chill scorn
+showed itself for a moment in his face.  "They're frightened of me.  I'm
+as good as an electric shock to their lethargic, overfed carcasses.  They
+can't get over a young man with his way to make who wipes his boots on
+them.  They have to come back for more."
+
+Cosgrave gave his little toneless laugh.
+
+"I wish to God you'd frighten me.  You know, when I felt how rotten I was
+I thought of you.  You always bucked me up--I believe I had a fool idea
+that I'd find you in some scrubby suburban practice.  Shows the bugs must
+have got into my brain too, doesn't it?  Now I suppose I'll have to ask
+you to reduce your fees."
+
+"I'll let you down easy.  Say, a guinea a consultation!"
+
+"I could manage that--if you don't want to consult too often.  I've got
+my bit saved.  Not much to squander on out there, except whisky, and I
+never took to that.  Besides--my father's dead.  He didn't mean to leave
+me his money--you know how he loathed me--but there was a mix-up over the
+will that was to cut me out--not properly witnessed or something.
+Anyhow, I came out into a few thousand.  Rather a joke on the old man,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"One might almost hope for another life if one were sure he were grinding
+his teeth over it."
+
+A faint perplexity flickered across the sallow face.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  I don't seem to bear him any particular grudge now.
+Perhaps it would be better if I could.  When one's young one judges very
+harshly.  Parents and kids don't understand each other--not really--and
+don't always love each other either, if the truth were known.  Why should
+they?  The old man and I were like strangers tied to one another by the
+leg.  I used to think if I could pay him back for all the beastly times
+he gave me I'd die happy.  But I don't feel like that now.  I expect he
+was pretty miserable himself.  There's too much of that sort of thing for
+us to wish it on to one another."
+
+"You're very tolerant," Stonehouse said.  "I'm not.  But then I haven't
+inherited anything."  He stopped abruptly and his manner hardened.  But
+Cosgrave did not pursue the subject.  His interest had suddenly slumped
+into what was evidently an habitual apathy, and only when they had paid
+their bill and drifted out into the street did he revert for a moment to
+the past.
+
+"And the Gang--and Frances Wilmot?" he asked.  He looked shyly at his
+companion's profile, which showed up for a moment in a bold, tranquil
+outline against the lamplight.  It betrayed nothing.
+
+"We might walk back to my rooms and talk in peace.  Oh--Francey Wilmot?
+I don't know much.  She went abroad--finished her course very late--she
+was always a bit of a dilettante.  People with money usually are."
+
+Cosgrave said no more.  He knew all he wanted to know.  It saddened him.
+Somehow he had counted on that half-divined romance, had played with it
+in his fancy as with a kind of vicarious happiness.
+
+
+
+3
+
+On board the S.S. _Launceston_ there had arrived, an hour before sailing,
+an American gentleman--a certain Mr. Horace Fletcher, who, having been
+called home suddenly, had had to take what accommodation he could get on
+the first available boat.  Two days later he had lain unconscious,
+strapped to the captain's table, whilst the ship's doctor, a young man,
+himself in the horrible throes of seasickness, had performed a radical
+operation for acute mastoiditis.  There had been no facilities.  The
+whole thing had been in the last degree makeshift.  The half-trained
+stewardess had held his instruments ready for him, and the sea-sickness,
+comic in retrospect, had weighed heavily against Mr. Fletcher's chance of
+seeing land again.  Nevertheless, the eminent New York surgeon, consulted
+at the first opportunity, had pronounced the operation a neat
+performance--under the circumstances a masterpiece.
+
+It was the nearest possible approach to a medical advertisement.  Mr.
+Fletcher was a member of a well-known New York family, and the papers had
+given the story, with fantastic details as to the ship's doctor's career,
+a first-page prominence.  Mr. Fletcher himself had proved to be both
+generous and grateful.  In assessing the value of his own life at 1,000
+pounds, he had argued with good humour and good sense, he had erred on
+the side of modesty, and Robert Stonehouse, having weighed the argument
+gravely, had accepted its practical conclusion as just and reasonable.
+He had taken rooms, thereupon, if not actually in Harley Street, at least
+under the ramparts, fitted them out with the most modern surgical
+appliances that his capital allowed, and had sat down to wait.
+Fortunately he had learnt the art of starving before.  He slept in a
+garret, and the bottom drawer of the handsome mahogany desk in his
+consulting-room knew the grim secret of his mid-day meals.  But in six
+months the tide had turned.  Doctors had remembered him from his hospital
+days when, if they had not liked him, they had learnt to respect his
+genius and his courage, and had sent him patients.  The patients
+themselves, oddly enough, took a fancy to this gaunt, very serious young
+man, who so obviously cared nothing at all about them, but whose interest
+in their diseases was almost passionate.  And within two years the tide
+had brought him in sight of land.
+
+This was what he had meant by "getting hold of things again and pulling
+them his way."  There was perhaps something rather simple in a theory of
+life which had necessitated so much suffering on the part of Mr. Fletcher
+in order that Dr. Stonehouse might take the first long stride in his
+career.  But Cosgrave, listening to Stonehouse's own account of the
+incident, saw in it only an example of a strange, inexorable truth.  What
+men called "Fate" was the shadow of themselves.  They imposed their
+characters upon events, significant or insignificant, willingly or
+unwillingly.  Beyond that there was no such thing as Fate at all.
+
+They stepped back from the crowd into the shelter of the Piccadilly Tube.
+They had been walking the streets for an hour, and as much of their lives
+as they were able to tell one another had been told.  Now they were both
+baffled and tired out.  Of what had really happened to them they could
+say nothing, and their memories, disinterred in a kind of desperate haste
+("Do you remember that row with Dickson about my hair, Robert?") had
+crumbled, after a moment's apparent vitality, into a heap of dust.  It
+was all too utterly dead--too unreal to both of them.  The things that
+had mattered so much, which had seemed so laughable or so tragic, were
+like the repetition of a story in which they could only force a polite
+interest.  Their laughter, their exclamations, sounded shallow and
+insincere.
+
+And yet it was borne in upon them that they did still care for one
+another.  They had had no other friendship to compare with this.
+Strictly speaking, there had been no other friends.  There had been
+acquaintances--people whom you talked to because you worked with them.
+
+Robert Stonehouse had always known his own loneliness.  His patients
+believed in him; his colleagues respected him.  Their knowledge of him
+went no further than the operating theatre where they knew him best.  He
+had reckoned loneliness as an asset.  But to feel it, as he felt it now
+beneath this stilted exchange, was to become aware of a dull, stupid
+pain.  He found himself staring over the heads of the people, and wishing
+that Cosgrave had never come back.  And Cosgrave said gently, as though
+he had read his thought and had made up his mind to have done with
+insincerities:
+
+"You're not to bother about me, Robert.  It's been jolly, seeing you
+again and all that, but we'd better let it end here.  It always puzzled
+me--your caring, you know, about a hapless fellow like myself.  It's
+against your real principles.  I'm a dead weight.  I couldn't give anyone
+a solitary water-tight reason for my being alive.  I think you did it
+because you'd got your teeth into me by accident and couldn't let go.  I
+don't want you to get your teeth into me again."
+
+"I don't believe," Stonehouse said, with an impatient laugh, "that I ever
+let go at all."
+
+His attention fixed itself on the illuminated sign that hung from the
+portico of the Olympic Theatre opposite, and mechanically he began to
+spell out the flaming letters:
+
+"Gyp Labelle--Gyp Labelle!"  At first the name scarcely reached his
+consciousness, but in some strange way it focused his disquiet.  It was
+as though for a long time past he too had been indefinitely ill, and now
+at an exasperating touch the poisoned blood rushed to a head of pain.  He
+felt Cosgrave plucking at his sleeve, fretfully like a sick child, raised
+to a sudden interest.
+
+"I say, Stonehouse, don't you remember?"
+
+"The Circus?  Yes, I was just thinking about it.  It's not likely to be
+the same though."
+
+"Why not? She was a nailer.  Oh--but you didn't think so, did you?  It
+was the woman on the horse--the big barmaid person--I forget her
+name--Madame--Madame----"
+
+It was ridiculous--but even now it annoyed him to be reminded of her
+essential vulgarity.  There was a glamour--almost a halo about her memory
+because of all that he had felt for her.  A silly boy's passion.  But he
+would never feel like that again.
+
+"Well, she could ride, anyhow.  I don't know what your long-legged
+favourite was good for."
+
+"She made me laugh," Cosgrave said.  He asked after a moment: "Have you
+ever wanted anything so much as you wanted to go to that Circus,
+Stonehouse?"
+
+"Oh, yes--crowds of things!"
+
+"I don't believe it somehow.  I know I haven't.  Oh, I say, I wish I
+could want again like that--anything--to get drunk--to go to the
+dogs--anything in the world.  It's this damnable not wanting.  Do you
+know I've been trying every night this week to drift into that show--just
+to see if it were really that funny kid.  I felt I ought to want to.
+Why, even the fellows down in Angola had heard of her."
+
+"She's probably well known in hotter places than that," Stonehouse
+remarked.
+
+"Yes--so I gathered.  That's what made them so keen.  They used to talk
+of her--telling the wildest yarns, as though it did them good just to
+think there was someone left alive who had so much go in them.  Queer,
+isn't it?  Do you remember what a susceptible chap I used to be--that
+poor little Connie--what's-her-name, whom I nearly scared out of her five
+senses?  Well, I've not cared a snap for any woman since then.  And I
+want to--I want to.  I'd be so awfully happy if I could only care for
+some nice girl and marry her.  There was someone on the boat--such a
+jolly good sort--and I think if I only could have cared she'd have cared
+too.  But I couldn't.  I tried to work myself up--but it was like
+scratching on a dead nerve--as though something vital had gone clean out
+of me."
+
+His voice cracked.  Stonehouse, startled from his own reflections, became
+aware that Cosgrave, whose apathy had hung about them like a fog, hiding
+them from each other, was on the point of tears--of breaking down
+helplessly in the crowded entrance.  And instantly their old relationship
+was re-born.  He took him by the arm, sternly, authoritatively, as he had
+always done when little Rufus Cosgrave had begun to flag or cry.
+
+"You're coming home with me.  When you're fit enough we'll do the show
+opposite and make a night of it.  We'll see what going to the devil can
+do for you."
+
+"Perhaps she'd make me laugh again," Cosgrave said, quavering
+hysterically.
+
+
+
+4
+
+At any rate he had kept faith with himself.  That theatre-night with
+Frances Wilmot had been the first and last until now, and now assuredly
+he did not care any more.  But it made him remember.  How intoxicated he
+had been!  He had walked home like a man translated into a strange
+country--words had rushed past his ears in floods of music, and the
+silver and black streets had been magic-built.  Was it his youth, or had
+Francey, dancing before him, her head lifted to catch unearthly
+harmonies, thrown a spell over his judgment?  She had gone, and he was
+older--but he had a feeling that the disillusionment was not only in
+himself.  It was in the atmosphere about him--in the stale air, stamped
+on the stereotyped gilt and plush of the shabby theatre and on the faces
+of the people.  He wondered whether they had all grown too old.  Perhaps
+the spirit which had driven them into these dark boxes to gaze
+open-mouthed, crying or laughing, through a peep-hole into a world of
+ideal happiness, or even ideal sorrow, was dead and gone like their faith
+in God and every other futile shadow which they had tried to interpose
+between themselves and truth.  This that remained was perhaps no more
+than a tradition--a convention.  When people were bored or unhappy they
+said: "Let's go to a theatre!" and when they came out they wondered why
+they had been, or what they had hoped for.
+
+Reality was beginning to press hard on men.  It was driving them into an
+iron cul-de-sac, from which there was no escape.  Suicide and madness,
+obscure and hideous maladies of the brain herded in it.  Perhaps, after
+all, there had been some value in those old fairy stories.  And he
+remembered, with a faint movement of impatience, Francey Wilmot's final
+shaft: "If there isn't a God you'll have to make one up."  But even if a
+man were to juggle with his own integrity, turn charlatan, there was no
+faith-serum which you could inject into a patient's veins.
+
+Cosgrave sat limply in his stall, and by the reflected light from the
+stage Stonehouse could see his look of wan indifference.  He was no
+better.  All day long he lay on his bed in the small spare room Robert
+had given him and stared up at the white ceiling.  There was a crack,
+running zig-zag from the window to the door, which reminded him, so he
+said, of a river in Angola, a beastly slimy thing trailing through
+mosquito-infested swamps and villainous-tangled jungles.  When he dozed
+it became real, and he felt the heat descend on him like a sticky hand,
+and heard the menacing drone of the mosquitoes and the splash of oars as
+unfriendly natives who had tracked him along the water's edge shot out
+suddenly from under the shadow of the mango trees in their long
+boats--deadly and swift as striking adders.
+
+And then, near the door, the river broke off--poured into the open
+sea--or fell over a cataract--he did not know what--and he woke up with a
+sweating start and took his medicine.  He was so painstakingly docile
+about his medicine that Robert Stonehouse guessed he had no faith in it.
+Sometimes indeed he had an idea that Cosgrave was rather sorry for him,
+very much as old people are sorry for the young, knowing the end to all
+their enthusiasms.  It was as though he had travelled ahead, and had
+found out how meaningless everything was, even his clever friend's
+strength and cleverness.
+
+So he did not get better.  And the forces that Robert Stonehouse had
+counted on had failed.  He had been a successful physician outside his
+specialty and his sheer indifference to his patients as human beings had
+been one of his chief weapons.   He braced them, imposing his sense of
+values so that their own sufferings became insignificant, and they ceased
+to worry so much about themselves.  But with Cosgrave he was not
+indifferent.  Some indefinable element of emotion had been thrown into
+the scales, upsetting the delicate balance of his judgment.
+
+And his old influence had gone too.  It had failed him from that moment
+in Connie Edwards' room when suddenly Cosgrave had realized the general
+futility of things.
+
+"I'll see him through all the same," Stonehouse thought, with a kind of
+violence, "I'll pull him through."
+
+After the first few moments he had ignored the scene before him.  It was
+boring--imbecile.  Even to him, with his contempt for the average of
+human intelligence, it seemed incredible that the gyrating of a few
+half-naked women and the silly obscenities of a comedian dressed in a
+humourless caricature of a gentleman should hold the attention of sane
+men for a minute.  Now abruptly the orchestra caught hold of him, shook
+him and dragged him back.  It was playing something which he had heard
+before--on a street barrel-organ, and which he disliked now with an
+intensity for which he could give no reason.  It was perhaps because he
+wanted to remain aloof and indifferent, and because it would not let him
+be.  It destroyed his isolation.  His pulse caught up its beat like the
+rest.  His personality lost outline--merging itself into the cumbrous
+uncouth being of the audience.
+
+Though it was a rhythm rather than a tune it was not rag-time.  Rag-time
+Stonehouse appreciated.  He recognized it as a symptom of the _mal du
+siecle_, a deliberate break with the natural rhythm of life, a desperate
+ennui, the hysterical pressure upon an aching cancer.  Ragtime twitched
+at the nerves.  This thing jostled you, bustled you.  It was a shout--a
+caper--the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay of its day, riotous and vulgar.  It was
+the sort of thing coster-women danced to on the pavements of Epsom on
+Derby night.
+
+The stage, set with a stereotyped drawing-room, was empty as the curtain
+rose.  Two hands, dead white under their load of emeralds, held the black
+hangings over the centre doorway--then parted them brusquely.  Stonehouse
+heard the audience stir in their seats, but there was only a faint
+applause.  No one had come to the theatre for any other purpose than to
+see her, but they knew her history.  And, after all, they were
+respectable people.
+
+Cosgrave caught him by the arm.
+
+"Oh, my word--it's her right enough!"
+
+She stood there, motionless, her fair head with its monstrous crest of
+many-coloured ostrich feathers flaming against the dead background.  Her
+dress was impudent.  It winked at its own transparent pretence at
+covering a body which was, in fact, too slender, too nervously alive to
+be quite beautiful (Stonehouse remembered her legs--the long, thin legs
+in the parti-coloured tights, like sticks of peppermint, belabouring the
+rotund sides of her imperturbable pony).  But her jewels clothed her.
+Their authentic fire seemed to blaze out of herself--to be fed by her.
+And each one of them, no doubt, had its romance--its scandal.  That rope
+of pearls in itself was a king's ransom.  People nudged each other.  It
+was part of the show that she should flaunt them.
+
+She had been a plain child, and now, if she was really pretty at all, it
+was after the fashion of most French women, without right or reason, by
+force of some secret magnetism that was not even physical.  Her wide
+mouth was open in a rather vacant, childish smile, and she was looking up
+towards the gallery as though she were expecting something.  "Hallo,
+everyone!" she said tentatively, gaily.  They stared back at her, stolid
+and antagonistic, defying her.  She began to laugh then, as she laughed
+every night at the same moment, spontaneously, shrilly, helplessly, until
+suddenly she had them.  It was like a whirlwind.  It spared no one.  They
+were like dead leaves dancing helplessly in its midst.  Even Stonehouse
+felt it at his throat, a choking, senseless laughter.
+
+He saw Cosgrave lean forward, and in the half light he had a queer,
+startled look.  With his thick red hair and small white face he might
+have been some sick thing of the woods scenting the air in answer to
+far-off familiar piping's.  He made Robert Stonehouse see the faun in
+Frances Wilmot's room, the room itself and Frances Wilmot, with her chin
+resting in her hands, gazing into the fire.  The picture was gone almost
+before he knew what he had seen.  But it was knife-sharp.  It was as
+though a hand fumbling over a blank wall had touched by accident a secret
+spring and a door had flown wide open, closing instantly.
+
+  "I'm Gyp Labelle;
+  If you dance with me
+  You must dance to my tune
+  Whatever it be."
+
+She jumped into the incessant music as a child jumps into a whirling
+skipping-rope.  She had a quaint French accent, but she couldn't sing.
+She had no voice.  And after that one doggerel verse she made a gesture
+of good-humoured contempt and danced.  But she couldn't dance either.  It
+was a wild gymnastic--a display of incredible, riotous energy, the
+delirious caperings of a gutter-urchin caught in the midst of some
+gutter-urchin's windfall by a jolly tune.  A long-haired youth leapt on
+to the stage from the stage-box, and caught her by the waist and swung
+her about him and over his shoulder so that her plumes swept the ground
+and the great chain of pearls made a circle of white light about them
+both.
+
+"Those pearls!" Stonehouse heard a man behind him say loudly.  "Prince
+Frederick gave them to her.  And then he shot himself.  They belonged to
+the family.  He had no right, of course, but she wanted them."
+
+He could feel Cosgrave stir impatiently.
+
+It went on, as it seemed to him, for an incredible length of time.  It
+was like a prairie fire that spread and blazed up, higher and brighter.
+And there was no escape.  He had a queer conviction that his was the only
+static spirit in the whole theatre, that secretly, in their hearts, the
+audience had flung themselves into the riot with her, the oldest and
+staidest of them, as perhaps they had often wanted to do when they heard
+a jolly tune like that.  It was artless, graceless.  One only needed to
+let oneself go.
+
+  "I'm Gyp Labelle,
+  Come dance with me."
+
+The jaded disgust and weariness were gone.  Something had come into the
+theatre that had not been there before.  Nothing mattered either so much
+or so little.  The main business was to have a good time somehow--not to
+worry or care.
+
+She had whirled catherine-wheel fashion, head over heels from end to end
+of the stage.  The long-haired youth swept the hair from his hot,
+blue-jowled face in time to catch her, and they stood side by side, she
+with her thin arms stretched up straight in a gesture of triumph, her
+lips still parted in that curiously empty, expectant smile.
+
+Then it was over.  Once the curtain rose to perfunctory applause.  People
+settled back in their seats, or prepared to go.  It was as though the
+fire had been withdrawn from a molten metal which began instantly to
+harden.  A woman next to Stonehouse tittered.
+
+"So vulgar and silly--I don't know what people see in her."
+
+"I want to get away," Cosgrave said sharply.  "It's this beastly
+closeness."
+
+He looked and walked as though he had been drinking.
+
+Although the show was not over, the majority of the audience had begun to
+stream out.  Two men who loitered in the gangway in front of Stonehouse
+exchanged laconic comments.
+
+"A live wire, eh, what?"
+
+For some reason or other Stonehouse saw clearly and remembered afterwards
+the face of the man who answered.  It was bloated and full of a weary,
+humorous intelligence.
+
+"Life itself, my dear fellow, life itself!"
+
+
+
+5
+
+Cosgrave scarcely answered his companion's comments.  He withdrew
+suddenly into himself, and after that he shirked the subject,
+understandably enough, for if he had had illusions on her account they
+must have been effectively shattered.  But also he ceased to lie all day
+on his bed and stare up at the mosquito-infested river of his nightmare.
+He grew restless and shy, as though he were engaged with secret business
+of his own of which Stonehouse knew nothing, and of which he could say
+nothing.  Yet Stonehouse had caught his eyes fixed on him with the
+doubtful, rather wistful earnestness of a child trying to make up its
+mind to confide.  (There was still something pathetically young about
+Rufus Cosgrave.  Now that his body was growing stronger, youth peered out
+of his wan face like a famished prisoner demanding liberty.)
+
+What he did with himself during the long hours when Stonehouse was in his
+consulting-room or on his rounds Stonehouse never asked.  At night he sat
+at the study window of his friend's flat (shabby and high up since all
+spare money was diverted to other and better purposes), and looked over
+the roofs of the houses opposite, smoking and watching the dull red glow
+that rose up from the blazing theatres westwards.
+
+"It is a fire," he said once, "and all the cold, tired people in London
+come to warm their hands at it."
+
+Robert Stonehouse went on with his writing under the lamplight.
+
+"Are you cold?"
+
+"Not now."  He added unexpectedly: "You think I'd be all right, don't
+you, if only you could have a go at my tonsils or my adenoids? I believe
+you're just waiting to have a go at them."
+
+"Your tonsils are septic," Stonehouse agreed gravely.  "I told you so,
+but I wouldn't advise anything drastic until you're stronger.  We'll
+think about it in a month or two.  You're better already."
+
+Cosgrave chuckled to himself.  In the shadow in which he sat the chuckle
+sounded elfish and almost mocking.
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm better!"
+
+
+Stonehouse took his first holiday for three years, and carried Cosgrave
+off with him to a rough shooting-box in the Highlands lent him by a
+grateful and sporting patient, and for a week they tramped the moors
+together and stalked deer and fished in the salmon river that ran in and
+out among the desolate hills.  The place was little more than a
+shepherd's cottage, growing grey and stubborn as a rock out of the
+heather, and beyond that proffered them occasionally by a morose and
+distrustful gillie they had no help or other companionship.  They won
+their food for themselves, cooked it by the smoking fire, and washed
+heroically in the icy river water.  A sting of winter was already in the
+wind and a melancholy and bitter rain swept the hills, giving way at
+evening to unearthly sunsets.  They saw themselves as pioneers at the
+world's end.  And Stonehouse, who had calculated its effect on Cosgrave,
+was himself caught up in the fierce, rough charm of that daily life.  He
+who had never played since that circus night played now in passionate
+earnest.  He proved a good shot, and, for all his inexperience, an
+indomitable and clever hunter.  His close-confined physical energy could
+not shake itself.  He liked the long and dogged pursuit, the cruel, often
+fruitless struggle up the mountain-sides, the patient waiting, the
+triumph of that final shot from a hand unshaken by excitement or fatigue.
+A stag showing itself for an instant against the sky-line called up all
+the stubborn purpose in him; then he would not turn back until either his
+quarry had fallen to him, or night had swallowed them both.
+
+And Cosgrave, half forgotten, tagged docilely at his heels, or lay in the
+wet heather on the crest of a hill overlooking the world, and watched and
+waited with strange, wide-open eyes.  But he never gave the signal.  He
+shot nothing.  His failure seemed to amuse and even please him.  A faint,
+excited colour came into his cheeks, lashed up by the wind and rain.  And
+once, a hare running out from under his feet, he gave a wild "halloo!"
+like a boy and set off in pursuit, headlong down the stony hillside, his
+gun at full cock, threatening indiscriminate destruction.
+
+"You might have killed yourself," Robert said angrily.  But Cosgrave
+laughed, his eyes narrowed to blue-grey slits as though he did not want
+Stonehouse to see all that was in them.
+
+"I shouldn't have minded," he panted, "going off on the crest like
+that--I wanted to run--I forgot."
+
+"Well, for the Lord's sake, don't forget."
+
+But for an instant at least he knew what Cosgrave meant.  It had been the
+sight of that downward rushing hill and the sudden choking exultation.
+He had felt it too--that night in Acacia Grove in pursuit of the Greatest
+Show--and once again.  He could smell the scent of the trees and the
+young grass blowing in his face.
+
+And at the bottom there had been a mysterious wood like a deep, green
+pool.
+
+
+Then on the eighth day Cosgrave disappeared.  He had set out in the early
+morning for the nearest station to fetch their letters and fresh
+provisions, and at dusk a village youth reached Stonehouse with a note
+which had been scrawled in such haste that it was almost illegible.  It
+was as though Cosgrave had yielded suddenly and utterly to a prolonged
+pressure.
+
+He had to go back to town.  It was something urgent.  Stonehouse was not
+to bother.  He would be all right now.
+
+The next day Stonehouse stalked and brought down his first "Royal." This
+time the chase had cost him every ounce of his endurance, and in the
+chill dusk he stood watching the gillie at his work on the lovely body
+(still so warm and lissom that one could almost see the last sorrowful
+heaving of its golden flanks) with a kind of stolid triumph as though now
+he had wiped out that other failure, for he realized that he had been
+both too sanguine and too impatient.  When you were angling a man with a
+sick brain back to health, you had to go slowly--delicately.
+
+"It's because I care," he thought, half amused and half angry.  "And why
+do I care?  It's as he said--a rotten habit."
+
+But he returned to town.  He tracked Cosgrave to his former
+lodging-house, where a stout, heavily-breathing landlady showed every
+readiness to be communicative and helpful.
+
+"Yes, sir--he's here again--I think he was expecting you--mentioned your
+name--he's out now and won't be back till late--dinner at the Carlton, he
+said.  If you'd like to leave a note, sir----"
+
+She led him upstairs and watched him with a fat amusement as he stood
+silent and frowning on the threshold.
+
+"It _is_ a fair mess," she admitted blandly.  "I was just trying to get
+things a bit together when you rang, sir.  I'm to throw away all that old
+stuff, he said.  A reg'lar new start he's making--_and_ a lively one, I
+don't think.  Theatres and supper parties ever since he's been back, sir,
+and right glad I've been to see it, though I don't 'old with
+carryings-on, in a general way.  But after them there tropiks he'd need a
+change.  He was that down, sir, when he first came, I didn't know what to
+think."
+
+The room might have belonged to a young dandy returned to London from the
+wilds of Central Africa.  It was littered with half-open boxes, new
+suits, a disorderly regiment of shining, unworn boots and shoes, a pile
+of ties that must have been chosen for sheer expensiveness.  (Stonehouse
+remembered the spotted affair with which Cosgrave had wooed Connie
+Edward's approval.)  The shabby suit in which Stonehouse had first met
+him had been flung with the other cast-offs into a far corner.  It was
+all very young and reckless and jolly.  One could see the owner, as he
+rampaged about the room, whistling and cursing in a good-humoured haste.
+
+"'Ere's 'is writing-table; I'll just make room for you, sir----"
+
+He stopped her.
+
+"It doesn't matter.  If he's to be at the Carlton I'll probably look him
+up myself."
+
+"Dining early, he said, sir--seven o'clock."
+
+"Yes--thank you."
+
+A folded, grey-tinted letter lay half hidden in the general melee.  It
+had a bold, irrepressible look, as though it were aware of having blown
+the room to smithereens and was rather amused.  Stonehouse could see the
+large, sprawling hand that covered it.  He touched it, not knowing
+why--nor yet that he was angry.  Something that had been asleep in him
+for a long time stirred uneasily and stretched itself.
+
+"Ladies"--his companion simpered---"always the ladies, sir."
+
+Stonehouse laughed.
+
+An hour later he was waiting for Cosgrave in the Carlton lounge.  He had
+never been in the place before--or in any place like it--and it confused
+and astonished him.  He was like a monk who had come unprepared into the
+crude noise and glitter of a society desperately pleasure-seeking.  He
+could regard the men and women round him with contempt, but not with
+indifference, for they represented a force against which he had not yet
+tried himself except in theory.  And they set a new standard.  Here his
+life and his attainments were of no account.  What mattered was that he
+wore his travelling clothes, and that he stood stockily in the gangway
+like a man who does not know what is expected of him.  It was ridiculous,
+but it was true that he became ashamed.
+
+But he held his ground stubbornly.  He was not aware of any definite plan
+or expectation.  If he had asked himself what he intended he would have
+said he meant to look after Cosgrave, who was in a bad way.  As a friend
+and as a doctor he had the right.  He would not have admitted that his
+own personality had become involved, that he had felt himself obscurely
+challenged.
+
+Then he saw Cosgrave.  He saw him before his companion, though for
+everyone else she obscured him utterly.  She walked a few steps ahead, a
+bizarre, fantastic figure, her fair head with its deep band of diamonds
+lifted audaciously, the same fixed smile of childish expectancy on her
+oval, painted face.  Her dress had left vulgarity behind.  It was too
+much a part of herself--in its way too genuine--to be merely laughable.
+It was like her execrable dancing, the expression of an exuberant,
+inexhaustible life.  As she walked, with short impatient steps, she
+swayed the great ostrich-feather fan and twisted her rope of pearls
+between her slender fingers.  The open stare that greeted her seemed to
+amuse and please her.
+
+And Cosgrave.  Saville Row, Stonehouse reflected rapidly and
+contemptuously, must have been bribed to have turned out such perfection
+at such short notice.  Too much perfection and too new.  An upstart young
+rake.  No, not quite that, either.  Pain had lent an elusive beauty to
+the plain and freckled face, and happiness had made it lovable.  It was
+obvious that he was trying to suppress his pride and astonishment at
+himself and not succeeding.  The corners of his mouth quivered shyly and
+self-consciously, and the wide-open eyes were fixed with an engaging
+steadfastness on the figure in front of him as though he knew that if he
+looked to the right or left he would give himself away altogether.
+Stonehouse could almost hear his voice, high-pitched and boyish.
+
+"Oh, I say, Robert, isn't it wonderful--isn't she splendid?"
+
+Stonehouse himself stood right across their path.  It was accidental, and
+now he could not move.  He had grown to rely too much on his emotional
+inaccessibility, and the violence and suddenness of his anger transfixed
+him.  This woman had trapped Cosgrave.  She had caught him in the
+dangerous moment of convalescence--in that rebound from inertia which
+carries men to an excess incredible to their normal conscience.  And she
+was infamous.  She had broken one man after another.
+
+She could not have overlooked Stonehouse.  Apart from his conspicuous
+clothes, his immobility and white-set face must have inevitably drawn her
+attention to him.  Her eyes, very blue and shadowless, met his stare with
+a kind of bonhomie--almost a Masonic understanding--and the
+uncompromising antagonism that replied seemed to check her.  She
+hesitated, then as he at last stood back, passed on still smiling, but
+mechanically, as though something had surprised her into forgetting why
+she smiled.
+
+Cosgrave followed her.  He brushed against Stonehouse without recognition.
+
+
+In that moment Stonehouse's anger ran away with him.  Thrusting aside the
+protests of a puzzled and rather frightened waiter he chose a table that
+faced them both.  Cosgrave, blindly absorbed, never looked towards him,
+but twice she met his eyes, still with a faintly puzzled amusement, as
+though every moment she expected to penetrate a mask of crude enmity to a
+no less crude admiration and desire.  Then she spoke to Cosgrave
+laughingly, as Stonehouse knew, with the light curiosity of a woman who
+has met something tantalizingly novel, and Cosgrave turned, uttered an
+exclamation, and a moment later came across.  He acted like a man
+suffering from aphasia.  He seemed totally oblivious of the immediate
+past.  They might have been casual friends who had met casually.  He was
+radiant.
+
+"What luck your being here.  I didn't know you went in for frivolity of
+this sort--if you call it frivolous dining in solitary state.  Come over
+and join us.  We're just having a bite before the show.  You remember
+Mademoiselle Labelle, don't you?"
+
+Stonehouse nodded assent.  He left his table at once.  He seemed frigidly
+composed, but he was sure that she would not be deceived.  She knew too
+much about men--that was her business--and she meant to pay him out, make
+him seem crude and absurd in his own eyes.
+
+"It's Stonehouse--my old friend--I was telling you about him--we don't
+need to introduce you, Mademoiselle."
+
+She gave him her hand, palm down, to kiss, and he turned it over
+deliberately.  The fingers were loaded to the knuckles.  He reflected
+that each of these stones had its history, tragic, comic or merely
+sordid.  He let her hand drop.  He saw that the affront had not touched
+her.  Perhaps others had begun like that.
+
+"_Ce cher docteur_--'e don't like me," she complained pathetically to
+Cosgrave.  "'E sit opposite to me and glare like a 'ungry tiger.  Believe
+me, I grow quite cold with fear.  Tell me why you don't like me,
+Monsieur?"
+
+"He was only wanting to be asked," Cosgrave broke in with his high,
+excited laugh.  "Why, he introduced us.  I was all down and out--couldn't
+decide which bridge to chuck myself off from--and he lugged me into your
+show.  He said----"
+
+"Well, what 'e say?"
+
+Cosgrave blushed.
+
+"He said: 'Let's see what going to the devil can do for you.'"
+
+She jerked a jewelled thumb at him, appealing to Stonehouse.
+
+"'E 'as cheek, that young man.  'E send in 'is card to my dressing-room,
+saying 'e got to meet me.  _Comme ca_!  As though anyone could just walk
+in!  I was curious to see a young man with cheek like that.  So I let 'im
+come.  _Et nous voila_!"  She leant across to Stonehouse, speaking
+confidentially, earnestly.  "But you--_c'est autre chose_--_monsieur est
+bien range_--an artist perhaps for all that--'e see me dance and think
+perhaps, '_Voyons_--she cannot dance at all--nor sing--nor nozzings.
+Just enjoy 'erself.'  You think I don't deserve all I get, _hein_?"
+
+"I think," said Stonehouse smiling, "that there are others in your
+profession less fortunate, Mademoiselle."
+
+As, for instance, that woman in the hospital--Frances Wilmot's protegee.
+Queer how the memory of that ruined, frightened face peering over the
+bed-clothes and begging for life should come back to him after eight
+years.  And yet the connexion was obvious enough.  He looked at
+Mademoiselle Labelle with a new interest.  It was impossible that she
+should have read his thoughts, but he knew by the little twist of her red
+mouth that she had understood his insult.  She seemed to ponder over it
+dispassionately.
+
+"That's true--_c'est bien vrai, ca_.  I 'ave been lucky.  I shall always
+be lucky.  Everybody knows that.  They say: 'Our Gyp, she will 'ave a
+good time at 'er funeral.'  No, no.  Monsieur Rufus, I will not drink.
+If I drink I might dance--'ere on this table--and ze company is so ver'
+respectable.  Listen."  She laid her hand on Stonehouse's arm as
+unconsciously as though he had been an old friend.  "Listen.  They play
+ze 'Gyp Gal-lop.'  That is because I am 'ere.  Ze conductor, 'e know
+me--he like 'is leetle joke.  _C'est drole_--every time I 'ear it played
+I want to get up and dance and dance----"  She hummed under her breath,
+beating time with her cigarette.
+
+  "I'm Gyp Labelle;
+  If you dance with me. . . ."
+
+Obviously she knew that the severely elegant men and women on either hand
+watched her with a covert, chilly hostility.  But there was something
+oddly simple in her acceptance of their attitude.  Therein, no doubt, lay
+some of her power.  She was herself.  She didn't care.  She was too
+strong.  She had ruined people like that--people every whit as hostile,
+and self-assured, and respectable--and had gone free without a scratch.
+She could afford to laugh at them, to ignore them, as it pleased her.
+
+(And what would Frances Wilmot with her wrong-headed toleration, have
+urged in extenuation?  A hard life, perhaps?  Stonehouse smiled
+ironically at himself.  The old quarrel was like an ineradicable drop of
+poison in the blood.)
+
+She smoked incessantly.  She ate very little.  And as time went on she
+seemed to draw away from the two men into a kind of secret ecstasy of
+enjoyment like some fierce animal scenting freedom.  The sentences she
+dropped were shallow, impatient, even stupid.  And yet there was Rufus
+Cosgrave with his hungry eyes fixed on her, trapped by the nameless force
+that lay behind her triviality, her daring commonness.
+
+She rose to go at last.
+
+"And you take him with you, _Monsieur le docteur_.  If 'e sit many more
+nights in ze front row 'e find out, too, I can't dance, and then I break
+my 'eart.  Besides, I 'ave my reputation to think of in this ver'
+propaire England, _hein_?"
+
+"I'm coming with you," Cosgrave said quietly.
+
+She shrugged her shoulder.
+
+"_Eh bien_, what can I do?  They are all ze same.  Good-bye, _Monsieur le
+docteur_.  You scare me stiff.  But I like you.  Nest time I 'ave ze
+tummy-ache I ring you up.
+
+"I shouldn't--if I were you."
+
+"Why?  You give me poison, p'raps?"
+
+"I might," he said.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+So Rufus Cosgrave disappeared, like an insignificant chip of wood
+sucked into a whirlpool, and this time Stonehouse made no attempt to
+plunge in after him.  With other advanced and energetic men of his
+profession he stood committed to a new enterprise--the creation of a
+private hospital, which was to be a model to the hospitals of the
+world--and he had no time to waste on a fool who wanted to ruin
+himself.  But though he never thought of Cosgrave, he could not
+altogether forget him.  At night he found himself turning instinctively
+towards the window where the delicate, rather plaintive profile had
+shown faintly against the glow of the streets, and the empty frame
+caused him a sense of unrest, almost of insecurity, as though a ghost
+had risen to convince him that the dead are never quite dead, and then
+had vanished.
+
+He took to returning to his consulting-rooms, where he regained his
+balance and his normal outlook.  The sober reality of the place thrust
+ghosts out-of-doors.  Here was no lingering shadow of poverty to recall
+them.  The bright, cold instruments in their glass cases, the neatly
+ordered japanned tables, the cunning array of lights were there to
+remind him that he was a man who had made a record career for himself
+and who was going farther.  In the day-time he took them as a matter of
+course, but now he regarded them rather solemnly.  He went from one to
+another, handling them, testing them, switching the lights of special
+electrical devices on and off, like a boy with a new and serious
+plaything.  There was no one to laugh at him, and he did not laugh at
+himself.  He stood in the midst of his possessions, a little
+insolently, with his head up, as though he were calling them up one by
+one to bear him witness.  He was self-made.  He had torn his life out
+of the teeth of circumstance.  There was not an instrument, not a chair
+or table in the lofty, dignified room that he had not paid for with
+sweat and sacrifice and deprivation.  No one had given him help that he
+had not earned.  Even in himself he had been handicapped.  The boy he
+had been had wanted things terribly--silly, useless, gaudy things that
+would have ruined him as they had ruined his father.  He remembered how
+in the twilight of Acacia Grove he had listened to the music of far-off
+processions, and had longed to run to meet them and march with the
+jolly, singing people, and how once it had all come true, and he had
+lied and stolen.
+
+Once only.  Then he had stamped temptation under foot.  He had become
+master of himself.  And now he was not tempted any more by foolish
+desires.  He meant to do work that would put him in the front rank of
+big men.
+
+And, thinking of the old struggle, he threw out his hand, as he had
+done that night when he had met Francey Wilmot, and clenched the
+slender, powerful fingers as though he had life by the throat, smiling
+a little in the cold, rather cruel way that Cosgrave knew--a theatrical
+gesture, had it been less passionately sincere.
+
+
+It was in his consulting-room that Cosgrave found him after a
+prolonged, muddle-headed search that had lasted till close on midnight.
+Cosgrave himself was drunk--less with wine than with a kind of heady
+exhilaration that made him in turn maudlingly sentimental or recklessly
+hilarious.  And yet there was a definite and serious purpose in his
+coming--a rather pathetic desire to "put himself right," to get
+Stonehouse, who leant against the mantleshelf watching him with a frank
+contempt, to understand and sympathise.
+
+"Of course--you're mad with me--you've got every right to be--it was a
+rotten thing to do--bolting like that--beastly ungrateful and
+inconsiderate.  It was just because I couldn't explain.  I knew you
+thought it was the fresh air and--and hunting down those poor jolly
+little beggars--and all the time it was just a girl and a blessed tune
+running through my head."
+
+He began to hum, beating time with tipsy solemnity, and even then the
+wretched song brought something riotous and headlong into the subdued
+room.
+
+The door seemed to have been flung violently open with an explosive
+gesture, as though some invisible showman had called out: "Look who's
+here!" and the woman herself had catherine-wheeled into their midst,
+standing there in her exotic gorgeousness, with her arms spread out in
+salutation and her mouth parted in that rather simple smile.  Robert
+could almost smell the faint perfume that surrounded her like a cloud.
+It was ridiculous--yet for the moment she was so real, that he could
+have taken her by the shoulders and thrust her out.
+
+"And you did want me to get better, didn't you?" Cosgrave pleaded
+wistfully, "even if it wasn't with your medicine.  And in a sort of way
+it was your medicine, wasn't it?  You made me go to see her."
+
+Stonehouse had to sit down and pretend to rearrange his papers in order
+to hide how impatient he felt.
+
+"My professional vanity isn't wounded, if that's what you're getting
+at.  If you were better I'd be very glad.  As far as I can see you're
+only drunk."
+
+"I know--a little--I'm not accustomed to it--but it's not that, Robert.
+Really, it isn't.  I'm jolly all--the time--even in the early morning.
+Seem to have come back to life from a beastly long way off--all at
+once--by special aeroplane.  I don't think I've felt like this
+since--since----"
+
+"Since Connie Edwards' day," Robert suggested.  "But I expect you've
+forgotten her."
+
+Cosgrave stared, round-eyed and open-mouthed and foolish.
+
+"Connie----?  No--I haven't.  You bet I haven't.  Often wonder what
+became of her.  She was a jolly good sort."
+
+"You didn't think so by the time she'd finished with you."
+
+"I was an ass.  A giddy, hysterical ass.  I didn't understand.  Poor
+old Connie!  She could just swim for herself--but not for both of us.
+And I scared her stiff--tying myself round her neck like that."
+
+Stonehouse cut him short.
+
+"Nobody could accuse Mademoiselle Labelle of being a poor swimmer," he
+said.  (He wondered at the same moment whether there was something
+wrong with him.  He was so intently conscious of her.  He could see her
+lounging idly in the big chair opposite, so damnably sure of herself
+and amused.  He wanted to insult and, if possible, hurt her.)
+
+"You're awfully down on people, Robert.  Hard on 'em.  Often wonder why
+you haven't chucked me off long ago.  But that's an old story.  You
+ought to like her for being able to swim well.  It's what you do
+yourself."
+
+"I don't mind her swimming well," Robert returned.  "But I understand
+that she's been able to drown quite a number of people better able to
+look after themselves than you are.  As far as you're concerned, it
+seems--rather a pity."
+
+Cosgrave shook his head.  A certain quiet obstinacy, not altogether
+that of intoxication, came into his flushed face.  And yet he looked
+sorry and almost ashamed.
+
+"I'm not going to drown.  You know--I hate standing out against you,
+Robert.  You've been so--so jolly decent to me--and I believe in
+you--more than in anything in the world.  Always have done.  If you
+said 'the earth's square,' I'd say, 'Why, yes, so it is--old chap!' But
+this--this is different--it's like a dog eating grass--a sort of
+instinct."
+
+"Instinct!" Robert echoed ironically.  "If you know where most
+instincts lead to----"  He stopped, and then went on in a cold,
+matter-of-fact tone, as though he were diagnosing a disease.  "It's not
+my business--but since you've come here I'd be interested to hear what
+you think is going to be the end of it all.  I might persuade you to
+look facts in the face.  By position you're a little suburban nobody,
+who was pushed out to West Africa to become a third-rate little trader.
+You've survived, and you've got a little money to burn.  To you it
+seems a fortune.  But it won't pay this woman's cigarette bills.  She
+makes you ridiculous."
+
+"I am ridiculous," Cosgrave interrupted patiently.  "I always have
+been, you know.  I expect I always shall be.  I'm the square peg in the
+round hole--and that's always comic.  But she doesn't laugh at me.
+She's just let me join in like a good sport.  I know I'm out of place,
+too, among her smart pals--you needn't rub it in--but she doesn't seem
+to make any difference, I might be the smartest of the lot.  I tell
+you, when I think of the good times I've had, I feel--I feel"--absurd
+and drunken tears came into his eyes--"as though I were in church--I'm
+so awfully grateful."
+
+"Her smart pals pay pretty dearly for their good times.  It will be
+time to be grateful when she's had enough of you."  It escaped him
+against his will.  He knew the futility of such taunts which seemed to
+betray an anger too senseless to be admitted.  He did not care enough
+to be angry.
+
+"You--you don't understand, old chap.  Seems cheek--my saying that to
+you.  But you're not like other people--you don't need the things they
+have to have to keep going.  And, anyhow, she's not responsible for the
+asses men make of themselves."  He was becoming more fuddled as the
+warmth of the room closed over his wine-heated brain.  But his eyes had
+changed.  They had narrowed to two twinkling slits of gay
+secretiveness.  "More things in heaven and earth than you dream of, old
+chap.  But you don't dream, do you?  Never did.  Got your teeth into
+facts--diseases--and getting on--and all that.  What's a song and a
+dance to you?  But I wish you liked her, all the same.  P'raps you do,
+only you won't own up.  She liked you, you know.  Fact is, it was she
+sent me along to dig you out."
+
+At that Stonehouse was caught up sharply out of his indifference.  He
+flushed and thrust his hands into his pockets to prevent them from
+clenching themselves in absurd resentment.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Cosgrave nodded.  But he looked suddenly confused and rather sulky,
+like a play-tired child who has been shaken out of its sleep to be
+cross-examined.
+
+"Well--some people would be jolly flattered.  There's to be a big beano
+on her birthday--a supper party behind the scenes--and she said: 'You
+bring along your nice, sad, little friend--_ce pauvre jeune homme_.'
+You know, Stonehouse, it made me laugh, her describing you like that.
+I said: 'You don't need to be sorry for Robert Stonehouse.  He can keep
+his own end up as well as anybody.'  But she said: '_Ce pauvre jeune
+homme_.'  I couldn't get her to see you were a damned lucky fellow."
+He dropped back into the corner of the chesterfield and yawned and
+stretched himself.  "I want you to come too.  Do you good.  P'raps
+she's right.  P'raps you've had a rotten time in your own way.  Though
+I don't know--I'd be happy enough, if I were you--always seem to come
+out on top--not to care for any damn thing on earth, except that--not
+even Francey Wilmot--or even me--just a sort of pug-dog you trailed
+behind on the end of a string--a sort of mascot."
+
+He was going to sleep.  He waggled his arm feebly, groping for
+Stonehouse.  "Say you'll come.  I'd be awfully proud--show you off, you
+know.  Always was--awfully proud--have such a pal."
+
+He was the very figure of stupid intoxication as he lay there with his
+crumpled evening clothes and disordered hair--and yet not ugly either,
+but in some way innocent and simple.  (Robert could see little Rufus
+Cosgrave, excited and tired out after the chase to the Greatest Show in
+Europe, peering through the disguise of rowdy manhood.)
+
+Stonehouse threw a rug over him, resigning himself to the inevitable.
+But when he had switched off the main lights he gave an involuntary
+glance over the suddenly shadowed room as though to make sure that the
+darkness had exorcised an alien and detestable presence.
+
+So she was sorry for him.  That, at any rate, was amusing.  Or perhaps
+she thought he was afraid of her in the obscure duel that was being
+fought out between them.
+
+Cosgrave caught hold of him as he passed.
+
+"The end of it all will be that I'll go back to my old swamp and tell
+the fellows that I've had a first-rate leave.  I'll tell 'em about her,
+and they'll sit round open-mouthed--thinking I'm no end of a dog--and
+that they'll do the same next time they get a chance.  They'll be
+awfully bucked to hear there's a good time going after all."  He
+pleaded drowsily: "Say you'll come though, Robert.  You're such a
+brick.  I'm beastly fond of you, you know."
+
+Robert Stonehouse withdrew his hand sharply from the hot, moist clasp.
+(How he had run that night!  As though the devil had been after him
+instead of poor breathless little Cosgrave with his innocent
+confession.)
+
+"Oh, I'll come," he said.
+
+
+
+2
+
+After all, nothing changed very much.  Grown-up people masqueraded.
+They pretended to laugh at the young fools they had been and were still
+behind the elaborate disguise of adult reasonableness and worldly
+wisdom.  For Robert Stonehouse, at any rate, it was ridiculously the
+old business over again--children whose games he despised and could not
+play, despising him.
+
+It seemed that she had invited everyone and anyone whose name had come
+into her head, without regard for taste or sense, and the result, half
+raffish and half brilliant, somehow justified her.  The notable and
+notorious men there, the bar-loungers whose life gave them a look of
+almost pathetic imbecility, the women of fashion and the too
+fashionable ladies of the chorus had, at least temporarily, accepted
+some common denominator.  They rubbed shoulders in the stuffy, dingy,
+green-room with an air of complete good-fellowship.
+
+Robert Stonehouse stood alone among them, for nothing in his life had
+prepared him to meet them.  He had been accustomed to encounter and
+master significant hardship, not an apparently meaningless luxury and
+aimless pleasure.  He knew how to deal with men and women whose
+sufferings put them in his power or with men of his own profession, but
+these people with their enigmatic laughter, their Masonic greetings,
+almost their own language (which was the more troubling since it seemed
+his very own), threw him from his security.  They made him
+self-conscious and self-distrustful.  They might be ten times more
+worthless than he believed them to be, and he might be ten times a
+bigger man than the Robert Stonehouse who had made such a good thing of
+his life.  They had still the power to put him in the wrong and to make
+him an oaf and an outsider.  And they knew it.  He felt their glances
+slide over him furtively and a little mockingly.  Yet outwardly he
+conformed to them.  He wore his clothes well enough, and his
+self-control covered over his real distress with a rather repellent
+arrogance.  He was even handsome, as a plain man can become handsome
+whose mind has dominated from the start over a fine body.  And with
+this air of power went his flagrant youthfulness.
+
+But the girl standing next him dropped him a flippant question with
+veiled irony and dislike in her stupid eyes, and turned away from him
+before he answered.  She was a vulgar, garish little creature, and he
+could afford to smile satirically (and perhaps too consciously) at the
+powdered shoulder which she jerked up at him.  And yet he was deeply,
+miserably shamed.
+
+It was like a play in which he was the only one who did not know his
+part.  Even Cosgrave played up--a little too triumphantly, showing
+off--as a tried man-of-the-world.  And at her given moment the star
+performer made a dramatic entry into the midst of them, a cloak of pale
+blue brocade thrown over her scanty dress and her plumes still tossing
+from the elaborately tousled head.
+
+They greeted her with hand-clapping and laughter, and she held out her
+thin arms, embracing them as old friends.  In her attitude and in her
+eyes which passed rapidly from one to another, there was good-humoured
+understanding.  She knew probably what the more immaculate among them
+thought of her, and that they were there to boast about it as English
+people boast of having visited Montmartre at midnight.  It was daring
+and amusing to be at this woman's notorious dinners.  They thought they
+patronized her, whatever else they knew.  But in reality the joke was
+on her side.
+
+"_Allons_--to ze feast, friends."
+
+She had seen Robert Stonehouse, and she went straight to him, waving
+the rest aside like a flock of importunate pigeons, and took his arm.
+"You and I lead the way, _Monsieur le docteur_."
+
+He did not answer.  He was glad that she had signalled him out.  It
+smoothed his raw pride.  And yet he thought: "This is her way of making
+fun of me."  And he hated her and the scented warmth of her slim body
+as it brushed lightly against his.  He hated his own excited triumph.
+For the first time he became aware of something definitely abnormal in
+himself, as though a dead skin had been stripped off his senses and he
+had begun to see and hear with a primitive and stupefying clearness.
+
+The rest followed them noisily along grimy, winding passages and
+between dusty wedges of improbable landscapes out on to the stage.  A
+long table had been laid in the midst of the stereotyped drawing-room,
+which formed the scene of her grotesque dancing, and absurdly elaborate
+waiters in powdered hair and knee-breeches hovered in the wings.  They
+were not real waiters, and from the moment they came out into the
+footlights the guests themselves became the chorus of a musical comedy.
+It was difficult to believe in the over-abundant flowers with which the
+table was strewn or in the champagne lying ostentatiously in wait.
+
+The curtain had been left up, and the dim and dingy auditorium gaped
+dismally at them.  The empty seats were threatening as a silent,
+starving mob pressed against the windows of a feasting-house.  But the
+woman on Stonehouse's arm waved to them.
+
+"I like it so.  I see all my friends there--my old friends who are
+gone--God knows where.  They sit and laugh and clap and nod to one
+another.  They say: '_Voyons_, our Gyp still 'aving a good time.'  And
+I kiss my 'and to them all."
+
+She kissed her hand and threw her head back in the familiar movement as
+though she waited for their applause.  And when it was over she looked
+up into Robert Stonehouse's face.
+
+"_Monsieur le docteur_ is a leetle pale.  One is always nervous at
+one's debut.  You never act before, _hein_?"
+
+"Not in a theatre like this," he said.
+
+And he felt a momentary satisfaction because she knew that his answer
+had a meaning which she did not understand.
+
+She persisted.
+
+"Monsieur Cosgrave say you would not come.  To say you never do
+nothing--only work and work.  Is that true?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't dance--don't go to the theatre--don't love no one--don't get a
+leetle drunk sometimes?  Never, never?"
+
+"No," he said scornfully.
+
+"Don't want to, _hein_?"
+
+"I hate that sort of thing."
+
+(But she was making him into a ridiculous prig.  She turned the values
+of life topsy-turvy with that one ironic, good-natured gesture.)
+
+"_Eh, bien_, it's a good thing for my sort there are not too many of
+your sort, my friend.  But per'aps it is not quite so bad as it seems,
+for you 'are come after all."
+
+"I had to," he thrust at her.
+
+"'Ow you say--professionally?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But I 'ave not get ze tummy-ache--not yet."
+
+"I don't care about you."
+
+"You want to look after your leetle friend, _hein_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She was unruffled--even concerned to satisfy him.
+
+"Well, then, you be policeman.  You sit 'ere.  It is always better to
+watch ze thief than ze _coffre-fort_.  You keep an eye on me and see I
+don't run away with 'im.  _Voyons, mesdames et messieurs_, our friend
+'ere 'ave the place of honour.  'E sit next me and see I behave nice.
+'E don't like me ver' much.  'E think me a bad woman."
+
+They laughed with her and at him.  He felt himself colour up and try to
+laugh back.  (And it was oddly like his attempt to propitiate Form I
+when it had gibed him on that bitter pilgrimage from desk to desk.)  He
+took his place at her right hand.  He could see Cosgrave half-way down
+the table, and his thin, freckled face with its look of absurd
+happiness.  He was unselfishly overjoyed that his friend should have
+been thus signalled out for honour.  Perhaps he harboured some crazy
+certainty that after this Stonehouse would understand and even share
+his infatuation.  He caught Robert's eye and smiled and nodded
+triumphantly.
+
+"Now you see what she's really like, don't you?"
+
+A string band, hidden in the orchestra under a roof of palms, played
+the first bars of her dance, and then stopped short and waited
+solemnly.  She still stood, glass in hand.
+
+"It is my birthday.  God and I alone know which one.  I drink to
+myself.  I wish myself good luck.  _Vive_ myself.  _Vive_ Gyp Labelle
+and all who 'ave loved 'er and love 'er and shall love 'er!"
+
+She drank her wine to the last drop, and the band began to play again,
+knitting the broken, noisy congratulations into a kind of triumphal
+chorus.  It was very crude and theatrical and effective.  It did not
+matter, any more than it matters in a well-acted play, that the whole
+incident had been rehearsed.  It was as calculated and as spontaneous
+as that nightly, irresistible burst of laughter.
+
+Rufus Cosgrave stood up shyly in his place.  Had he been dressed a
+shade less perfectly and resisted the gardenia in his button-hole, he
+would have been better disguised.  As it was, there could be no
+mistaking a little fellow from the suburbs who had got into bad
+company.  And in spite of the West Africa swamp and its peculiar forms
+of despairing vice, he was so frightfully innocent that he did not know
+it,
+
+"And--and we're here to--to wish you luck too--that you go on--as you
+are--dancing and laughing--making us all laugh and dance with
+you--however down in the dumps we are--for ever and ever--and to bring
+you offerings--for you to remember us by."
+
+There must have been a great deal more to it than that.  Stonehouse
+could see the notes clenched in one tense hand, but they had become
+indecipherable and he let them drop.  He came from his place, stumbling
+over the back of somebody's chair, to where she stood, and laid a small
+square box done up in tissue paper at her side.  She laughed and caught
+him by the ear, and kissed him on both flaming cheeks.
+
+"A precedent--fair play for all!" the man opposite Stonehouse shouted.
+
+They came then, one after another, treading on each other's heels, and
+she waited for them, an audacious figure of Pleasure receiving custom,
+and kissed them, shading her kiss subtly so that each one became a
+secret little joke out of the past or lying in wait in the future, at
+which the rest could guess as they chose.  Some of the women whom she
+knew best joined in the stream.  They bore her, for the most part, an
+odd affinity and no ill-will.  They had set out on the same road and
+had failed, and their failure stared out of their crudely painted
+faces.  But perhaps they were grateful to her for not having forgotten
+them--or for other more obscure reasons.  They gave her what they
+could--extemporary gifts some of them--a tawdry ring or a flower which
+she stuck jauntily among the outrageous feathers.  The significantly
+small parcels she did not open--either from idle good nature or from
+sheer indifference.  Stonehouse wondered what Cosgrave's little box
+contained.  Probably a year or two of the mosquito-infested swamp to
+which he would soon return to boast of this night's extravaganza.
+
+"And you, _Monsieur le docteur_?"
+
+For he had gone on eating and drinking with apparent tranquillity.
+
+"Oh, I have nothing--nothing but admiration," he said smiling.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"_Ca ne va pas_.  The chief guest.  Ah, no! That is not kind.  A
+birthday--_c'est une chose bien serieuse, voyons_.  Who knows?  Per'aps
+you never 'ave another chance--and then you 'ave remorse--'orrible,
+terrible remorse.  Or do you never 'ave remorse either, _Monsieur le
+docteur_?"
+
+"No--not yet."
+
+"You must not run ze risk, then."
+
+He thought savagely.
+
+"If I had a diamond stud she would make me give it her."
+
+He took a shilling from his pocket and laid it gravely in the midst of
+her trophies.
+
+"Is that enough?"
+
+And then before he could draw back she had kissed him between the eyes.
+
+"_Quite_, then.  I keep it for a mascot, and you will remember
+to-morrow morning, when you are ver' grave and important with some poor
+frightened patient, that Gyp Labelle kiss you last night, and that you
+are not different from ze others, after all.  And I will take my
+shilling from under my pillow, and say: 'Poor Gyp, that's what you're
+worth, my friend!'"
+
+"He doesn't know you yet."
+
+Robert Stonehouse looked up sharply.  The interruption had started a
+new train of thought.  Beyond the flushed face of the man opposite him,
+he could see the empty stalls, row after row of gaunt-ribbed and
+featureless spectators, watching him.  The play had become a nightmare
+farce in which he had chosen a ludicrous, impossible part.  But he had
+to go on now.
+
+"Except for Cosgrave there, I've known Mademoiselle Labelle longer than
+any of you.  I've known her ever since I was a boy."
+
+He felt rather than saw their expressions change.  She too stared with
+an arrested interest, but he looked away from her to Cosgrave, smiling
+ironically.  If it humiliated her and made her ridiculous too--well,
+that was what he wanted.  He wanted to pay her back--most of all for
+the excitement boiling in him--the sense of having been toppled out of
+his serenity into a torrent of noise and colour by that audacious touch
+of her lips upon his face.  And there was Cosgrave--and then again some
+older score to be paid off--something far off and indistinct that would
+presently come clear.
+
+"Don't you remember, Rufus?"
+
+"Rather.  But I know you a minute longer, Mademoiselle.  I saw you
+before he did."
+
+"That was because Mademoiselle Moretti rode first."
+
+"Ah--the Circus!"  She threw her head back, drawing a deep breath
+through her nostrils as though she savoured some long-lost perfume
+blown in upon her by a sudden wind.  "Now I remember too.  Ze good
+Moretti.  She ride old Arabesque.  'E 'ave white spots all over 'im--on
+'is chest and what you call 'is paws, and every evening she 'ave to
+paint 'im like she paint 'er face.  Madame Moretti--that was a good
+sort--_bonne enfant_--what you say?--domestic--not really of ze Circus
+at all.  She like to wash up and cook leetle _bonnes-bouches_ for
+supper.  She was a German--Fredechen we call 'er--and she could make
+Sauerkraut--_eh bien_, I--_moi qui vous parle_--_une bonne
+Francaise_--I make myself sick with 'er Sauerkraut.  Afterwards she
+grow too stout and marry ze _proprietaire_ of what you call it?--a
+public-'ouse--'Ze Crown and Garter' at some town where we stop a week.
+By now, I think she 'ave many children and a chin for each."
+
+Cosgrave laughed noisily.
+
+"Didn't I tell you, Robert?  A barmaid!"
+
+"Yes--you had better taste."  But he was hot with anger.  "And then you
+came at her heels, Mademoiselle.  You rode--what was it--a donkey, a
+fat pony?  I forget which.  Perhaps I was thinking too much of Madame
+Moretti.  But I remember you were dressed as a page and wore coloured
+tights that didn't fit very well, and that everybody laughed because of
+your thin long legs.  And you threw kisses to us--even Cosgrave got
+one, didn't you, Cosgrave?  And then I'm afraid I forgot you
+altogether.  You see, there were camels and elephants and a legless
+Wonder and I don't know what, and it was my first circus."
+
+"It must 'ave been a donkey," she said, narrowing her eyes.  "I 'ave
+ridden so many donkeys."
+
+He saw then that she did not mind at all the fact that she had once
+been a circus-clown.  Rather he had tossed her a memory on which she
+feasted joyfully, almost greedily.  She pushed her plate and glass away
+from her, and sat with her face between her hands.
+
+"Well--I 'ave 'ad good times always--but per'aps they were ze best of
+all.  Ah, ze good old Circus--ze jolly life--one big family--monkeys
+and bears and camels and elephants and we poor 'umans, all shapes and
+sizes, long legs and short legs and no legs--loving and
+quarrelling--good friends always--Monsieur George with 'is big whip and
+'is silly soft 'eart--ze gay dinners after we 'ave 'ad full 'ouse and
+ze no dinners at all when things go bad--and then ze journeys from town
+to town--sometimes it rain all day and sometimes it is so hot and the
+dust rise up and smother us.  But always when we come near ze town we
+brighten up, we pretend we are not tired at all.  We make jokes and
+wonder what it will be like 'ere.  Always new faces--new streets--new
+policemen--and always ze same too--ze long procession and ze
+torchlights and ze music and ze people running like leetle streams down
+ze side streets to join up and march along--ze leetle boys and girls
+with bright eyes--shouting and waving, so glad to see us."
+
+It was not much that she said, and she did not say it to them.  She
+disregarded them all, and yet by some magic, through the medium of the
+jerky, empty sentences she made them see the vulgar, gaudy thing as she
+was seeing it.  The subdued music, the tinkling of plates and glasses,
+they themselves made a background for her swift picture.  They watched
+it--the old third-rate circus--trail its cheap glitter and flare and
+bang out of darkness and across the stage and into darkness
+again--tawdry and sordid, and yet kindly and gay and gallant-hearted
+too.
+
+Robert Stonehouse stared heavily in front of him.  He had drunk--not
+much, but too much.  He was not accustomed to drinking.  The very
+austerity of his life betrayed him.  These people too--these
+women--half-naked with their feverish, restless eyes--these men with
+their air of cynical and weary knowledge--were getting on his nerves.
+He wished he had not come.  He wished he had not reminded her of that
+accursed circus, for it had involved remembering.  He had called up a
+little old tune that would not be easily forgotten, that would go on
+grinding itself round and round inside his brain, and when he had
+chased it out would come back, popping out at him, bringing other
+small, pale ghosts to bear it company.  He could see Cosgrave and
+himself--the little boys with bright eyes--and feel the reverberations
+of their astonishment, their incredulous delight.  For a moment they
+had held fast to the tail-end of the jolly marching procession, and
+then it had been ripped out of their feeble hands.  But the procession
+went on.  It was always there, round the corner, with its music and
+fluttering lights, and if one was infirm of purpose like Cosgrave, or
+like a certain James Stonehouse, one ran to meet it, flung oneself into
+it, not counting the cost, lying and stealing.
+
+He heard her voice again and pressed his hands to his hot eyes like a
+man struggling back out of a deep sleep.
+
+"Where are they all now?  _Dieu sait_.  Monsieur Georges 'e die.  As
+for me I go 'ome to ze old Folies Bergeres, and for six months I
+wait--a leetle ugly nobody with long thin legs dancing with ten other
+ugly leetle nobodies with all sorts of legs be'ind La Jolleta.  You
+don't remember 'er, '_hein_!  Ah, _c'est vieux jeu ca_ and you are all
+too young, _Mesdames et Messieurs_.  She was ze passion of your
+grandpapas.  God knows why.  Why do you all love me, _hein_?  _Une
+Mystere_.  Well, she was ver' old then, but she 'ave ze good 'ealth and
+ze thick skin of ze rhinoceros.  And some'ow no one 'ave ze 'eart to
+tell 'er.  It become a sort of joke--'ow long she keep going--ze
+Boulevards make bets about it.  But for me it is no joke.  I am in a
+'urry, _moi_, and I know I can do better than she did ever--I 'ave
+something--'ere--'ere--that she never 'ave.  And so one night I put a
+leetle pinch of something that a good friend of mine give me in La
+Jolleta's champagne what she drink before she dance, and when ze
+call-boy come she lie there on ze sofa--'er mouth open--_comme
+ca_--snoring--like a pink elephant asleep--'ow you say--squiffy--dead
+to ze world.  Ze manager 'e tear 'is 'air out, and then I come and show
+'im and 'e let me go on instead because there is no one else.  And the
+people boo and shriek at me, they are so angry and I make ze long nose
+at them all--and presently they laugh and laugh."
+
+They could see her.  It wouldn't have seemed even impudent.  Even then
+she had been too sure of herself.
+
+"And when I come off ze manager kiss me on both cheeks.  _Et c'etait
+fait_."
+
+They applauded joyously.  Her brutal egotism was a good joke.  They
+expected nothing else from her.  She was like an animal whose cruelty
+and cunning one could observe without moral qualms.
+
+"It was a mean thing to have done," Stonehouse said loudly and
+truculently--"a treacherous thing."
+
+A shadow was on Cosgrave's face.  He leant towards her, almost pleading.
+
+"And La--La--what did you call her?  La Jolleta--what became of her?"
+
+She made a graphic gesture.
+
+"She went into the sack, little one---into the sack.  She was old.  One
+should go gracefully."
+
+"You too," Stonehouse said, in a savage undertone.
+
+"I----  Oh, no, _jamais, jamais_."  She lifted the monstrous crest of
+plumage from her head and set it in the midst of the flowers and
+rumpled up her hair till she was like the child riding the fat pony.
+"You see yourself--I never grow old, my friend."
+
+"You are older already," he persisted.
+
+But the man opposite broke in again.  He leant towards Stonehouse, his
+inflamed eye through the staring monocle fixing him with an
+extraordinary tipsy earnestness.
+
+"No, doctor, you are mis-mistaken.  It would be intolerable--you
+understand--quite intolerable.  There are things that--that must not be
+true--as there are other things that must be true.  We've staked our
+last penny on it, sir, and we've got to win.  Mademoiselle here knows
+all about it, and she'll play the game.  A sport, doctor, a sport.
+Won't let old friends go bankrupt--no--certainly not."
+
+They laughed at him.  It seemed unlikely that he himself knew what he
+was talking about.  But he shook his head and remained sunk in solemn
+meditation, twirling the stem of his glass between thick, unsteady
+fingers.  The girl next him nudged him disgustedly.
+
+"Oh, wake up!  You'll be crying in a minute.  Talk of something else."
+
+"Tell us the story of the Duke and the Black Opal, Gyp."
+
+She waved them off.
+
+"No--no--that is not discreet.  One must not tell tales.  That might
+frighten someone 'ere who loves me."
+
+And she looked at Stonehouse, a little malicious and insolently,
+childishly sure.  He leant towards her, speaking in an undertone,
+trying to stare her down.
+
+"Do you mean me, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"And why not, _Monsieur le docteur_?  Would it be so strange?  You say
+you love nobody.  But it seems you love ze poor fat Moretti--terribly,
+terribly, no doubt, so that you almost break your small 'eart for 'er.
+And per'aps someone else too.  You say you don't drink--but you are
+just a leetle drunk already.  You are not different from ze rest.  I
+tell you that before--and I know.  I am a connoisseur.  It is
+written--'ere in the eyes and in the mouth.  It is dangerous, the way
+you live.  _Quant a moi_--I don't want you, my friend--we two--that
+would be an eruption--a disaster--I should be afraid."
+
+She pretended to shudder, and a moment later seemed to forget him
+altogether.  She pressed her cigarette out on her plate and went over
+to the piano, touching Cosgrave lightly on the shoulder as she passed
+him.
+
+"Come, my latest best-beloved, we 'ave to amuse ze company.  We sing
+our leetle song together."
+
+But first she made a deep low bow to the shadowy theatre.  She kissed
+her fingers to the empty boxes that stared down at her with hollow,
+mournful eyes.  (Were there ghosts there too, Stonehouse wondered
+bitterly?  The unlucky Frederick, perhaps, with the fatal hole gaping
+above the temple, applauding, leaning towards her!)
+
+She sang worse than usual.  She was hoarse, and what voice she had gave
+way altogether.  It did not seem to matter either to her or to anyone
+else.  What she could not sing she danced.  There was a chorus and they
+joined in filling the gloom behind them with sullen, ironic echoes.
+She reduced them all, Stonehouse thought, to the cabaret from which she
+sprang.
+
+And it was comic to see Cosgrave with his head thrown back, playing the
+common, noisy stuff as though inspired.
+
+When it was over he swung round, gaping at them with drunken,
+confidential earnestness.
+
+"You know, when I was a kid I used to see myself--on a stage like
+this--playing the Moonlight Sonata."
+
+She rumpled up his thick hair so that it stood on end like Loga's names.
+
+"You play my song ver' nice.  And that is much better than playing ze
+Moonlight Sonata all wrong, my leetle friend."
+
+
+
+3
+
+It was a sort of invisible catastrophe.
+
+No one else knew of it.  In the day-time he himself did not believe in
+it--did not, at first, think of it at all.  It had all the astonishing
+unreality of past pain.  He went his way as usual, was arbitrary and
+cocksure with his patients, and looked forward to the evening when he
+could put them out of his mind altogether and give himself to his vital
+work.  For the hospital had become a fact.  It stood equipped and
+occupied, an unrecognized but actual witness to his tenacity.  Other
+men would get the credit.  The Committee who had appointed him
+consulting surgeon, not without references to his unusual youth and
+their own daring break with tradition--had no suspicion that even the
+fund which, in a fit of inexplicable far-seeingness they had allotted
+to research, had been created under his ceaseless pressure.  And not
+even in his thoughts was he satirical at their expense.  They had
+provided the money and done what he wanted and so served their purpose.
+Among his old colleagues he bore himself confidently but unobtrusively.
+He could afford to pay them an apparent deference.  He was going
+farther than they were.  His eyes were fixed on a future far beyond the
+centres of their jealousies and ambitions when he would be freed from
+the wasteful struggle with petty ailments and petty people, and the
+last pretence of being concerned with individual life.  It was a time
+of respite and revision.  He was young--in his profession
+extraordinarily young--and he was able to look back, as a mountaineer
+looks back from his first peep over the weary foothills, knowing that
+the bitter drudgery is past and that before him lies the true and
+splendid adventure.
+
+That was in the day-time.  But with the dusk, the discreet shutting of
+doors and the retreating steps of the last patient, a change came.  It
+was like the subtle resistless withdrawal of a tide--a draining away of
+power.  He could do nothing against it.  He could only sit motionless,
+bowed over his papers, striving to keep a hold over the personality
+that was slipping from him.  And then into the emptiness there flowed
+back slowly, painfully, a strange life--a stream choked and muddied at
+its source--breaking through.
+
+It was a physical thing.  Some sort of nervous reaction.  With the
+dread of that former break-down overshadowing him he yielded
+deliberately.  He would leave the house and walk--anywhere--but always
+where there were people--down Regent Street, sweeping like a broad
+river into a fiery, restless lake.  There he let go altogether, and the
+crowds carried him.  He eddied with them in the glittering backwaters
+of the theatres, and studied the pallid, jaded faces that drifted in
+and out of the lamp-light with the exaggerated attention of a mind on
+guard against itself.  He hated it all.  It emphasized and justified
+his aloofness from the mass of men.  These people were sick and
+ugly--sicklier and uglier in their pleasure-seeking than in their
+stubborn struggle for survival, which had at least some elemental
+dignity.  It was from their poisoned lives that women like Gyp Labelle
+sucked their strength.  It was their childish perverted instincts that
+made her possible.  They made the very thought of immorality a grisly
+joke.  And yet their nearness, the touch of their ill-grown,
+ill-cared-for, or grossly over-nurtured bodies against his, the sound
+of their nasal strident voices brought him relief.  He could not shake
+off their fascination for him.  He was like a man hanging round the
+scene of some conquered, unforgotten vice.
+
+It was one dismal November evening that, turning aimlessly into a Soho
+side-street, he came upon an old man who stood on a soap-box under a
+lamp and preached.  He held a Bible to the light and read from it, and
+at intervals leant forward and beat the tattered book with his open
+hand.
+
+"You hear that, men and women.  This is the liar, the tyrant, the
+self-confessed devil whom you have worshipped from the beginning of
+your creation.  You see for yourselves the sort of beast he is.  There
+isn't a brute amongst us who would do the things he's done.  He's made
+you fight and kill and torture each other for his sake.  And all down
+the ages he has laughed at you--he is laughing now because, after
+all--he knows the truth--he knows what I tell you here night after
+night"--and Mr. Ricardo leant forward and pointed a long, dirty finger
+at the darkness--"that he doesn't exist--that he is a dream--a myth--a
+hope----"
+
+Someone cheered--perhaps because the last words had a sound of eloquent
+conclusion--and Mr. Ricardo nodded and took breath.  He was like a
+scarecrow image that had been stuck up by a freakish joker in a London
+street.  The respectability that still clung to him made him the more
+ludicrous.  His clothes were the ruined cast-offs of a middle-class
+tradesman, and over them he wore his old masters gown.  It did not
+flutter out behind now, but lay dank and heavy along his sides like the
+wings of a shot bird.
+
+Robert Stonehouse stood back against the shuttered windows of a shop
+and stared at him.  The sea, rushing out in some monstrous tidal wave
+had left its floor littered with old wreckage, with dead, forgotten
+people who stirred and lifted themselves.  A grotesque, private
+resurrection. . . .
+
+The crowd around Mr. Ricardo listened in silence, not mocking him.
+There were wide-eyed, haunted-looking children, and men and women not
+quite sober who drifted out from the public-houses to gape heavily at
+this cheaper form of entertainment.  Possibly they thought he was some
+missionary trying to induce them to sign the pledge.  Some of them must
+have known that he was mad.  But even they did not laugh at him.  Into
+their own dark and formless thoughts there may have come the dim
+realization that they, too, were misshapen and outcast.  The rain
+falling in long, slanting lines through the dingy lamplight seemed to
+merge them into a mournful kinship.
+
+He spoke rapidly, and for the most part the long, involved sentences
+rolled themselves without meaning.  But now and then something
+struggled clear--a familiar phrase--an ironical echo.  Then Robert
+Stonehouse saw through the disfigurement to the man that had been--the
+poor maimed and shackled fighter gibing and leering at his
+fellow-prisoners.
+
+"And now, my delightful and learned young friends----"
+
+And yet he had stood up for little Robert Stonehouse in those days--had
+armed him, and opened doors, and made himself into a stepping-stone to
+the freedom he had never known.  And had gone under. . . .
+
+"That is all for tonight, men and women.  I thank you for your support.
+You may rest assured that the fight will go on.  The end is in sight,
+and if need be I shall lead the last attack in person."
+
+Then he stepped down from his soap-box and swung it on to his shoulders
+by means of a cord, and went limping off in a strange and anxious haste.
+
+Stonehouse pushed roughly through the dispersing, purposeless crowd and
+caught up with him as he was about to lose himself in a dark network of
+little squalid streets.  He felt oddly young and diffident, for the
+schoolmaster is always the schoolmaster though he be mad and broken.
+
+"Mr. Ricardo--don't you remember me?"
+
+The old man stopped and blinked up uncertainly from under the sodden
+brim of his hat.  His dirty claw-like hands clutched his coat together
+in an instinctive gesture of concealment.  He seemed disturbed and even
+rather offended at the interruption.
+
+"I--ah--I beg your pardon.  No, I'm afraid not.  It is--ah--not
+unnatural.  You understand--I have too many supporters."
+
+"Yes--yes--of course.  But you knew me years ago when I was a boy.
+Don't you remember Robert Stonehouse?"
+
+It was evident that the name fanned some faint memory which flickered
+up for a moment and then went out.
+
+"You will excuse me.  It is possible.  I have heard the name.  But I
+have long since ceased to concern myself with persons.  In a great
+struggle such as this individuals are submerged."
+
+He walked on again, slip-slopping in his shapeless boots through the
+slush, his head down to the rain.
+
+"Christine," Robert said, "don't you remember Christine?"
+
+(He himself had not thought of her for years, and now deliberately he
+had conjured her up.)
+
+Mr. Ricardo hunched his shoulders.  He peered round at Stonehouse,
+frowning suspiciously.
+
+"You are very persistent, sir.  Are you God?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It is better to be quite frank with one another.  Not an emissary of
+God?"
+
+"No."
+
+He seemed only half satisfied.
+
+"You will excuse my asking.  I have to be very careful.  There have
+been certain signs of late that the enemy is anxious to
+negotiate--to--ah--reach some compromise.  No direct offer, you
+understand, but various feelers--hints--suggestions--terms of a most
+unscrupulous and subtle nature--traps into which a man less--ah--wary
+than myself might well fall.  This Christine--yes--yes--I have to be on
+my guard."
+
+"I have nothing to do with God," Robert said gently.  "I'm a friend--on
+your side.  I'd like to help.  If I knew where you lived so that I
+could learn more about your work----"
+
+But Mr. Ricardo shrank away from him.
+
+"I don't like the sound of that.  I dare say I do you an injustice,
+young man, but I can't afford to take risks.  My headquarters are my
+secret."
+
+"Well"--he tried to speak in a matter-of-fact and reasonable way--"at
+any rate, a general must have munition.  I'd like to help financially.
+You can't refuse me that."
+
+They were almost through the labyrinth of Soho and on the brink of
+Oxford Street.  Mr. Ricardo stopped again with his hand spread out flat
+upon his breast in a gesture not without power and dignity.
+
+"You think I am a failure, sir, because I go poorly dressed.  You are
+mistaken.  In the struggle that I am carrying on, outward and material
+things are of no account.  I might have all the wealth and all the
+armies of the world, sir, and be further from victory than I am now.
+The fight is here, sir, in the spirit of man, and the weaker and poorer
+I become the nearer I am to the final effort.  I am a fighter, sir,
+stripping himself--presently I shall throw off the last hindrance, and
+if the enemy will not show himself I shall seek him out--I shall force
+him to stand answer----"  He broke off.  The chain of white-hot
+coherency had snapped and left him peering about him vaguely, and a
+little anxiously, as though he were afraid someone had overheard him.
+
+"It has been very difficult--there were circumstances--so many
+circumstances----"  He sighed and finished on the toneless
+parrot-note of the street orator: "My next meeting will be at Marble
+Arch, 3 p.m., on Tuesday.  Thank you for your attention, and
+good-night."
+
+He lifted his hat and bowed to left and right as though to an assembled
+multitude.  The lamp-light threw his shadow on to the grey, wet
+pavements, and with the soap-box perched on his shoulders it was the
+shadow of a huge hunchback.  Then he shuffled off, and Stonehouse lost
+sight of him almost at once in the dripping, uncertain darkness.
+
+He walked on mechanically, aimlessly.  He was tired out and dejected
+beyond measure by this tragic encounter.  It was not any immediate
+affection for the old man, who had been no more to him than a strange
+force driving him on for its own purposes; it was the others he had
+evoked--and, above all, the sense of common misfortune which no man can
+avert for ever.  For the moment he lost faith in his own power to
+maintain himself against a patient and faceless Nemesis.
+
+It was morbid--the old terrifying signs of breakdown--the pointing
+finger.
+
+"Thus far and no further with your brain, Robert Stonehouse."
+
+
+And then, suddenly, he found that he was in a familiar street, and,
+stopping short, as though from old custom, to look up.  There was the
+finest house in Harley Street which they were to have decorated with
+their brass plates.  If it had risen straight out of the ground at the
+behest of his fancy he could not have been more painfully disconcerted.
+He had never known before that he had avoided it.  He knew it now, and
+the realization was like the opening of a door into a dark and
+unexplored chamber of his mind.  He stood there shivering with cold,
+and wet, and weariness.  Who lived there now, he wondered?  The old
+back-numbers whom they were to have ousted so ruthlessly?  Well, he
+could find out.  Someone lived there, at any rate.  He could see a
+light in one of the upper rooms.  He crossed over and went up the steps
+cautiously, like a thief.  All the brass plates but one had gone.  That
+one shone brightly in the lamp-light, giving the door a one-eyed,
+impish look.  He could read the letters distinctly, and yet he had to
+spell them over twice.  It was as though she herself had suddenly
+opened the door and spoken to him.
+
+    "Frances Wilmot, M.D."
+
+Then he turned and walked away.  But at the next corner he stopped and
+looked up again at the lighted window.  What freakish fancy had
+possessed her----?  Perhaps she was there now.  He could see her in
+the room that had been his enemy.  And he had brief vision of himself
+standing there in the empty street as he had done when he had loved her
+so desperately, gazing up at that signal of warmth and comfort out of
+the depths of his own desolateness.
+
+He said "Francey!" under his breath, ironically, as though he had
+uttered a child's "open-sesame!" to prove that there had never been any
+magic in the word.  But the sound hurt him.
+
+This time he did not look back.
+
+
+Nor was there any reassurance to be found that night in the concrete
+justification of his life.  He set himself down to work in vain.  One
+ghost called up another.  The room with its solemn, bloodless
+impedimenta became--not a monument to his success, but a Moloch, to
+whom everything had been sacrificed--the joy of life, its laughter, its
+colour--and Christine.  And not only Christine.  He had been sacrificed
+too.
+
+But he saw Christine most clearly.  She sat in the big arm-chair where
+his patients waited for his verdict.  She wore the big, floppy, black
+hat that she had liked best, and the grey hair hung in the old untidy
+wisps about her face.  The chair was much too big for her.  Her little
+feet hardly touched the ground.  Her hands in the darned gloves were
+folded gravely over the shabby bag.  He could see her looking about
+dimly and hear the clear, small voice.
+
+"How wonderful of you, Robert!  How proud your dear father would have
+been!"
+
+He fidgeted with the papers on his table, rearranging, re-sorting,
+desperately trying not to suffer.  But he would have torn the whole
+place down in ruins to have remembered that he had given her one day of
+happiness.
+
+Well, there had been that one day on Francey's hill--the picnic.  She
+had liked that.  The wood at the bottom, like a silent, deep, green
+pool--and Francey's arms about his shoulders, Francey's mouth on his,
+giving him kiss for kiss.
+
+Ghosts everywhere--and no living soul who cared now whether he failed
+or won through, whether he suffered or was satisfied.  Only Cosgrave
+perhaps--poor, unlucky little Cosgrave--always hunting for
+happiness--breaking himself against life--going to the dogs for the
+sake of a rotten woman.
+
+He fell forward with his face hidden in his arms and lay there shaken
+by gusts of fever.  They weakened gradually, and he fell asleep.  And
+in his sleep his father drew himself up suddenly, showing his terrible
+white face, and clutched at little Robert Stonehouse, who skirted him
+and ran screaming down the dark stairs.
+
+"You can't--you can't--you're dead.  I'm grown up--I'm free--I'm not
+like you--you can't--you can't----"
+
+But the next morning he was himself again, sure and cool-headed and
+cool-hearted.  He did not believe that he had suffered or in the
+recurrence of that terror.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1
+
+Probably she had expected him.  It must have seemed to her, so
+Stonehouse reflected as he followed the shrivelled old woman down a
+passage dim and gorgeous with an expensive and impossible Orientalism,
+a natural sequel to his enmity.  Men did not hate her--or they did so
+at their peril.  Then she would be most dangerous.  The luckless
+Frederick, so the story ran, had snubbed her at a charity bazaar, and
+had made fun of her dancing.  And he had stolen and finally shot
+himself for her sake.  Perhaps she thought there was a sort of
+inevitability in this programme.
+
+He had to wonder at and even admire the mad splendour of the place.
+Her taste was as crude and flamboyant as herself, but it too had
+escaped vulgarity which at its worst is imitative of the best, a stupid
+second-handness, an aggressive insolent self-distrust.  She was not
+ashamed of what she was.  She was herself all through, and she trusted
+herself absolutely.  She wanted colour and there was colour.  She
+wanted Greek columns in a Chinese pagoda and they were there.  The
+house was like a temple built by a crazy architect to a crazy god, and
+every stick and stone in it was a fanatic's offering.
+
+The old woman jerked her head and stood aside.  Her toil-worn face with
+the melancholy monkey eyes was inscrutable, but Stonehouse guessed at
+the swift analysis he was undergoing.  In his iron temper he could
+afford to be amused.
+
+"Mademoiselle is within."
+
+The room was a huge square.  To make it, two floors at least of the
+respectable Kensington house must have been sacrificed.  The walls were
+decorated with Egyptian frescoes and Chinese embroideries, and silk
+divans which might have figured in a cinema producer's idea of a
+Turkish harem were set haphazard on the mosaic floor.  In the centre a
+stone fountain of the modern-primitive school and banked with flowers
+splashed noisily.  Somehow it offered Kensington the final insult.  But
+she had wanted it, just as she had wanted the Greek columns.  There was
+even a certain magnificence about the room's absurdity.  It was so
+hopelessly wrong that it attained a kind of perfection.
+
+She herself sat on the edge of the fountain and fed a gorgeous macaw
+who, from his gilded perch, received her offerings with a lofty
+friendliness.  But as Stonehouse entered she sprang up and ran to him,
+feeling through his pockets like an excited child.
+
+"The poison--the poison!" she demanded.
+
+He had to laugh.
+
+"I forgot it," he said.
+
+"_C'est dommage_.  You 'ave not taken it yourself by any chance?"
+
+"No--I wouldn't do that at any rate."
+
+"_C'est vrai_.  I ask--you 'ave an air _un peu souffrant_.  Well, never
+mind.  It's droll though--I think about you just when you ring up--I
+'ave a damn pain--not ze tummy-ache this time--and I say: '_Le pauvre
+jeune homme_, 'ere is a chance for 'im to pay me out for kissing 'im
+when 'e don't want to be kissed.'  You remember--I say I send for you
+one day.  But ze old pain--it 'as gone now.  You--'ow do you say?--you
+conjure it away."
+
+"Your pains don't interest me," he said.  "For one thing I don't
+believe you ever had any.  I suppose you think a pain is the best
+entertainment to offer a doctor.  It's thoughtful of you, but I didn't
+come here to be amused."
+
+"Then I wonder what you want of me," she remarked.  She went back to
+her place on the fountain's edge, sitting amidst the flowers and
+crushing them under her hands.  The pose appealed to him as
+expressively callous, and yet it was innocent too, the pose of a child
+or an animal who destroys without knowledge or ill-will.
+
+"Do people usually want things from you?" he asked.
+
+"Always--all ze time."
+
+"And you give so much."
+
+She eyed him seriously.
+
+"I give what I 'ave to give."
+
+"And take what you can get."
+
+"Like you, _Monsieur le docteur_."
+
+The absoluteness of his hatred made it possible for him to laugh with
+her.
+
+"My fees are fairly reasonable at any rate.  I've helped some people
+for nothing."
+
+"Because you love them?"
+
+"No."
+
+"_C'est dommage aussi_.  You should love someone.  It is much
+'ealthier.  I love everyone.  Per'aps I love too much.  I make
+experiments.  You make experiments--and sometimes leetle mistakes.
+_Comme nous autres_.  'Ze operation was a _grand succes_--but ze
+patient die.'  I know.  Some of mine die too."
+
+"Prince Frederick, for instance?"
+
+She lifted the long chain of pearls about her neck and considered them
+dispassionately.
+
+"That _canard_!  You think 'e give me these?  _Ce pauvre_ Fredi!  'E
+couldn't 'ave given me a chain of pink coral.  I could 'ave bought 'im
+and 'is funny little kingdom with my dress-money.  'E shoot 'imself.
+Well, that was 'is _affaire_.  'E 'ave no doubt explain 'imself to ze
+_bon Dieu_, who is particulaire about that sort of thing.  As to ze old
+pearls--my agent 'e set that story going--_pour encourager les autres_."
+
+"Cosgrave among them?" he suggested.
+
+"Monsieur Cosgrave?  We won't talk about 'im just now, if you please.
+'E make me ver' cross.  I 'ate to be cross.  It is ver' difficult to
+'ave a good time with English people.  They are so damn thorough.  When
+they want to go to ze devil they want to go ze whole way."
+
+"Perhaps that's why I'm here," he said ironically.
+
+"_Voyons--voyons, c'est ennuyeux_----"  She broke off and gave a little
+husky, good-natured laugh.  "I remember.  You think me a bad woman.
+But I am not a bad woman at all.  Ze leetle girls in ze chorus--they
+are sometimes bad because they want things they 'ave no right to 'ave.
+They are just leetle girls with nothing to give, and they want to live
+ze big life and they tumble into ze gutter.  They are ze ginger-beer
+who pretend to be ze champagne.  _Mais mot_--I am ze real champagne.  I
+make things seem jolly that are not jolly at all--ze woman who sit next
+you at dinner--ze food--ze bills who wait for you at 'ome--life.  If
+you take too much of me you 'ave ze 'eadache.  _Enfin, ce n'est pas ma
+faute_.  I 'ave so much to give.  I 'ave so much life.  One life--one
+country--one 'usband is not enough.  But I am not bad.  If there was
+any sense in things they would give me an order and a nice long
+title--_Grande Maitresse de la Vie_--_Princesse de Joie_."  She lifted
+her eyebrows at him to see whether he appreciated the joke.  "Ah
+well--no.  I talk too much about myself.  Tell me instead what you
+think of my leetle 'ome.  _C'est joli, n'cest-ce-pas_?"  She waved
+towards the Chinese embroideries and added, with a child's absolute
+content: "I like it."
+
+"I suppose you do," he retorted.  "It reminds me of a quaint old custom
+I read about somewhere.  When our early ancestors were building a
+particularly important house they buried a few of the less important
+citizens alive under the foundations.  It seemed to have a beneficial
+influence on the building process."
+
+She offered him her cigarette-case.  She seemed to be considering his
+remark carefully.  Suddenly she laughed out with an unfeigned enjoyment.
+
+"I see.  My victims, _hein_?  You can make leetle jokes too.  But why
+so ver' serious?  I'm not burying you, am I?"
+
+"No.  You couldn't.  And you're not going to bury Cosgrave.  Oh--I
+don't want to waste my time and yours making accusations or appealing
+to what doesn't exist.  I only want to point out to your--your business
+instinct that Cosgrave isn't worth burying.  He's poor and he's
+unlucky.  He won't bring you luck or anything else.  Much better to let
+him go."
+
+"Let 'im go?  But I want 'im to go!  Yesterday I would not see 'im.  I
+didn't want to see 'im."
+
+"That was a good reason.  It's all rather late in the day, though.  Two
+months ago Cosgrave came to England with about 3000 pounds.  I know,
+because he told me.  And now that's gone.  You know where."
+
+"I make a guess, my friend."
+
+"He bought you presents--outrageous for a man in his position."
+
+"Someone 'ave to buy them," she explained good-humouredly.  "I don't
+ask about positions.  It's not polite."
+
+"Now he's at the end of his tether.  He's got to go back to his job.
+Last night he came to my rooms for the first time for weeks.  He
+was--was almost mad.  When he first came to England he was very ill.
+That does not concern you.  But what may concern you is that he has
+become dangerous.  He threatened to shoot you."
+
+"Well, before 'e know me 'e threaten to shoot 'imself.  Decidedly, 'e
+is getting better, that young man."
+
+Her shameless, infectious laughter caught him by the throat.  He wanted
+to laugh too, and then thrust her empty, laughing face down into the
+water of her comic fountain till she died.  There were people who were
+better dead.  He had said so and it was true, in spite of Francey
+Wilmot and her childish sentimentality.  Suddenly the woman in the
+hospital and this riotous houri were definitely merged into one
+composite figure of a mindless greed and viciousness.  He clenched his
+hands behind his back, hiding them.
+
+"If you would only sit down we should talk so much 'appier," she said
+regretfully.  "You seem so far off--so 'igh up.  Please sit down."
+
+"I don't want to."
+
+"Because you're afraid we might get jolly together, _hein_?  Well, you
+stand up there then, and tell me something.  Tell me.  You don't love
+nobody.  You are a very big, 'ard young man, who 'ave made 'is way in
+ze world and know 'ow rotten everybody else is.  You 'ave 'ad 'ard
+times and 'ard times is ver' bad for everyone, except per'aps Jesus
+Christ, for either they go under and are broken, un'appy people, or
+they come out on top, and then zey are 'arder than anyone else.  Well,
+you are ze big, 'ard young man.  But you run after this leetle Monsieur
+Rufus as though 'e was your baby brother.  Well--'e is a nice leetle
+fellow--but 'e is just a leetle fellow--with a soft 'eart and a soft
+'ead.  Not your sort.  And, you're not 'is sort.  'E's frightened of
+you.  'E want someone who pat 'is 'ead and let 'im cry on 'is shoulder.
+You can't 'elp 'im--and you fuss over 'im--you come 'ere and try to put
+'is 'eart _affaires_ in order and it's no use at all.  _C'est ridicule,
+enfin_."
+
+He looked away from her, so that she should not see that this time she
+had struck home.  She had knocked the weapon out of his hand, and for
+the moment, in his astonishment and pain, he could not even hate her.
+It was true.  He couldn't help Cosgrave any more.  His strength and
+ability were, as she said, of no use.  That was what Cosgrave had meant
+when he had laughed about the adenoids.  He had failed Cosgrave from
+the moment that Cosgrave had demanded love for himself and human
+tenderness.  He had no tenderness to give.  He was a hard young man.
+He said slowly, and with a curious humility:
+
+"I used to back him up when he was a kid.  He trusted me too--and it's
+got to be a sort of habit.  I want him to be happy."
+
+"Because you are so un'appy yourself?"
+
+"I'm all right," he said stubbornly.  And then he added, still not
+looking at her.  "Please give him up--so--so that he won't break his
+heart over it.  I'm not a rich man either, but I'll make it worth your
+while."
+
+She sprang up with a gesture of amused exasperation.
+
+"'Ow _stupide_ you are, my clever friend.  You are like ze old father
+in ze _Dame aux Camellias_.  You make me quite cross.  This Rufus--I
+can't give 'im up.  'E don't belong to me.  I never ask for 'im.  'E
+come into my dressing-room and I like 'im for 'is cheek and I give 'im
+a good time.  Now he is _ennuyeux_.  'E want to marry me and make an
+honest woman of me."  She patted Stonehouse on the shoulder with so
+droll a grimace that he bit his lip to avoid a gust of ribald,
+incredible laughter.  It was as though by some trick she changed the
+whole aspect of things so that they became simply comic--scenes in a
+jolly, improper French farce.  "And now I 'ope you see 'ow funny that
+is.  And please take Monsieur Cosgrave away and keep 'im away.  I don't
+ask no better."
+
+His anger revived against her.  And it was a thing apart from Cosgrave
+altogether--a bitter personal anger.
+
+"It can't be done like that.  You can't take drugs away from a
+drug-fiend at one swoop.  Let him down gently--treat him as a friend
+until he has to go--get him to see reason."
+
+"No," she said.  "You don't understand.  You 'ave not 'ad my
+experience.  If I let 'im 'ang on 'e get much worse.  If I push 'im
+off--poof!--an explosion!  Then 'e find a nice leetle girl who is not
+like me at all and marry--ver' respectable--and 'ave 'eaps of babies.
+That is what 'e want.  But it is not my _affaire_--and I won't be
+bothered.  I tell you 'e is too _ennuyeux_----"
+
+He lashed out at her.
+
+"--and too poor.  My God, you're no better than a woman of the streets."
+
+She assented with a certain gravity.
+
+"_C'est bien vrai, ca--bien vrai_.  I was born in ze gutter--I crawl
+out of ze gutter by myself.  I keep out of ze gutter--always.  And I
+don't cry and wring my 'ands when people try to kick me back again.  I
+kick them.  I look after myself.  Monsieur Cosgrave--and all those
+others--they must look after themselves too.  Do you think they bother
+about me if I become _ennuyeuse_--like them--and cry because they don't
+love me and like some leetle girl in ze chorus better?  Not they.  They
+want fun and life from me--and I give them that.  When they want more
+they can--'ow you say?--get out?"
+
+He stared at her in white-hot detestation.
+
+"I see.  I've just wasted my time.  You're--you're as infamous as they
+say.  You're taking everything he has, and now he can go and hang
+himself.  You're worse than a woman of the streets because you're more
+clever."
+
+She kissed her fingers at him in good-humoured farewell.  "I like you
+ver' much--_quand meme_," she said.  "Next time I come and call on you,
+per'aps!"
+
+
+
+2
+
+That same night Cosgrave, frustrated at the theatre, tried to force an
+entrance to the Kensington house, and the old woman, seconded by a
+Japanese man-servant, flung him out again and into the arms of a
+policeman who promptly arrested him.  Stonehouse went bail for him, and
+there was a strange, frantic scene in his own rooms.
+
+For this was not the gentle young man who had met Connie Edwards'
+infidelity with an apathetic resignation.  He was violent and
+indignant.  His sense of outrage was a sort of intoxication which gave
+an extraordinary forcefulness to his whole bearing.  He stormed and
+threatened--the misery that stared out of his haggard blue eyes
+shrivelling in the heat of an almost animal fury.  (And yet he
+stammered too--which was comically what the other Rufus Cosgrave would
+have done.)
+
+"I--I love her.  I've never loved anyone else.  That Connie business--a
+b-boy and girl affair--a silly flirtation--this--the real thing.
+I--I'm a m-man now.  N-no one's going to play fast and loose with me.
+No, by God!  I'll see her--she's got to have it out with me.  I've a
+right to an explanation at least--and by God I'll have one!"
+
+"For what?" Stonehouse asked.
+
+"She loved me," Cosgrave retorted.
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"You d-don't believe it?  W-what do you know about it?  Didn't she
+behave as though she did?  Didn't she go about with me?  Didn't she
+take things from me--no decent woman would have taken unless she loved
+me?"
+
+"She doesn't happen to be a decent woman," Stonehouse observed.  "To do
+her justice she doesn't pretend to be one."
+
+Cosgrave advanced upon him as though he would have struck him across
+the face.  But he stopped in time, not from remorse, but as though
+pulled up by a revelation of maddening absurdity.
+
+"Oh, you--you!  You don't understand.  You aren't capable of
+understanding.  You're a block--a machine--you don't feel--you g-go
+about--rolling over p-people and things like--like a damned
+steam-roller.  You're not a man at all.  You don't love anyone--not
+even yourself.  What do you know about anything?"
+
+He was grotesque in his scorn, and yet Stonehouse, leaning with an
+apparent negligence against the mantel-shelf, felt himself go dead
+white under the attack.  He had lost Cosgrave.  And he knew now that he
+needed him desperately--more now than even in his desolate
+childhood--that unconsciously he had hugged the knowledge of that
+boyish affection and dependence to him with a secret pride as a
+talisman against he hardly knew what--utter isolation, a terrifying
+hardness.  He made up his mind to have done now with reserve, to show
+before it was too late at least some of that dwarfed and suffocated
+feeling.  But he faltered over his first sentence.  He had trained
+himself too long and too carefully to speak with that cold, ironic
+inflexion.  He sounded in his own ears formal--unconvincing.
+
+"You're wrong.  I do care.  I care for you.  You're my friend.  I do
+understand, in part, at any rate.  I can prove it.  When I saw how
+unhappy you were I went to her--I tried to reason with her."
+
+He broke off altogether under the amazed stare that greeted this
+statement.  The next instant Cosgrave had tossed his hands to heaven,
+shouting with a ribald laughter:
+
+"Oh, my Heaven--you poor fish!  You think you can cure everything.  I
+can imagine what you said: 'I suggest, Mademoiselle, that you reduce
+the doses gradually.'"
+
+It was so nearly what he had said that Stonehouse flinched, and
+suddenly Cosgrave seemed to feel an impatient compassion for him.  "Oh,
+I'm a beast.  It was jolly decent of you.  You meant well.  But you
+can't help."
+
+And _that_ was what she had said.  Stonehouse made no answer.  He saw
+himself as ridiculous and futile.  He was sick with disgust at his own
+pain.  If he had lost Cosgrave he wanted to have done with the whole
+business now--quickly and once and for all.
+
+There was a sense of finality in the shabby room.  The invisible bond
+that had held them through eight years of separation and silence had
+given way.  It was almost a physical thing.  It checked and damped down
+Cosgrave's excitement so that he said almost calmly:
+
+"Well, I shan't attempt to see her again.  You'll have that
+satisfaction.  I'll get out of here--back to my jolly old swamp, where
+there aren't any beastly women--decent or indecent--only mosquitoes."
+
+He waited a moment, as though trying hard to finish on a warmer, more
+generous note.  Perhaps some faint flicker of recollection revived in
+him.  But it could only illuminate a horrifying indifference.  He went
+out without so much as a "good-night."
+
+The morning papers gave the Kensington House incident due prominence.
+It was one more feather in Mademoiselle Labelle's outrageous head-gear.
+The Olympic had not so much as standing room for weeks after.
+
+Cosgrave kept his word.  He did not see her again, and within a week he
+had sailed for West Africa--to die.  But ten days later Stonehouse
+received a wireless, and a month later a letter and a photograph of a
+fair-haired, tender-eyed, slightly bovine-looking girl in evening
+dress.  It appeared that she was a Good Woman and the daughter of
+wealthy and doting parents, and that in all probability West Africa
+would see Rufus Cosgrave no more.
+
+So that was the end of their boyhood.  Cosgrave had saved himself--or
+something outside Stonehouse's strength and wisdom had saved him.  They
+would meet again and appear to be old friends.  But the chapter of
+their real friendship, with all its inarticulate romance and
+tenderness, was closed finally.
+
+Stonehouse kept the photograph on the table of his consulting-room.  He
+believed that it amused him.
+
+
+
+3
+
+Still he could not work at night.  He resumed his haunted prowlings
+through the streets.  But he took care that he did not pass Francey
+Wilmot's house again.  He knew now that he was afraid.  He was ill,
+too, with a secret, causeless malady that baffled him.  There were
+nights when he suffered the unspeakable torture of a man who feels that
+the absolute control over all his faculties, which he has taken for
+granted, is slipping from him, and that his whole personality stands on
+the verge of disintegration as on the edge of a bottomless pit.
+
+For some weeks he hunted for Mr. Ricardo in vain.  He tried all the
+favoured spots which a considerate country sets aside for its
+detractors and its lunatics so that they may express themselves freely,
+without success.  Mr. Ricardo seemed to have taken fright and vanished.
+But one afternoon, returning from the hospital, Stonehouse met him by
+accident, and followed him.  He made no attempt to speak.  He meant,
+this time, to find out where the old man lived, and, if possible, to
+come to his assistance, and his experience taught him the danger and
+futility of a direct approach.  He followed therefore at a cautious
+distance that it was not always possible to maintain.   Although it was
+early in the afternoon a dense but drifting fog wrapped the city in its
+dank folds, and the figure in front of him sometimes loomed up like a
+distorted shadow and then in a moment plunged into a yellow pocket of
+obscurity, and was lost.  Then Stonehouse could only listen for his
+footfalls, quick and irregular, echoing with an uncanny loudness in the
+low vault of the fog.
+
+Mr. Ricardo had evidently been speaking, for he carried the soap-box
+slung over his shoulder, and he was in a great hurry.  It was
+extraordinary how fast the lame, half-starved old man could walk.
+
+They crossed the park and over to Grosvenor Place.  There was no doubt
+that Mr. Ricardo knew where he was going, but it flashed upon
+Stonehouse that he was not going home.  There was something pressed and
+sternly in earnest about the way he hurried, as though he had some
+important appointment to keep and knew that he was already late.  Once
+Stonehouse had to run to keep him within hearing.
+
+They went the whole length of Victoria Street.  Stonehouse had been
+physically tired out when he had started.  Now he was not aware of
+being tired at all.  A gradually rising excitement carried him on,
+unconscious of himself.  He had no idea what he expected, but he knew
+definitely that something deeply significant was about to happen to
+them both, that they were running into some crisis.
+
+Outside the Abbey the fog became impenetrable.  The traffic had
+stopped, and the lights, patches of opaque rayless crimson, added to
+the confusion.  There were people moving, however, faceless ghosts with
+loud footfalls, feeling their way hesitatingly, and among them Mr.
+Ricardo vanished.  Almost at once Stonehouse lost his own bearings.  In
+the complete paralysis of all sense of direction which only fog can
+produce, he crossed the wide street twice without knowing it.  Then he
+came up suddenly under the spread statue of Boadicea and into little
+knots of people.  A policeman was trying to move them on without
+success.  They hung about hopefully like children who cannot be
+convinced that a show is really over.
+
+"It's no good messing round here.  You aren't helping anyone.  Better
+be getting home."
+
+Stonehouse knew what had happened.  It was extraordinary how sure he
+was.  It was almost as though he had known all along.  But he said
+mechanically to one slouching shadow:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+A face, dripping and livid in the fog, like the face of a dead man,
+gaped at him.
+
+"Some old fellow gone over--no, he didn't tumble, I tell yer.  You
+cawn't tumble over a four-foot parapet.  Chucked 'isself, and I don't
+blame 'im.  One of them police-launches 'as gone out to fish 'im out.
+But they won't get 'im.  Not now, anyway.  Can't see two feet in front
+of yer, and the tide running out fast."
+
+Stonehouse felt his way to the parapet and peered over.  Above the
+water the fog was pitch-black and moving.  It looked a solid mass.  He
+could almost hear it slapping softly against the pillars of the bridge
+as it flowed seawards.  By now Mr. Ricardo had travelled with it a long
+way.  His death did not seem to Stonehouse tragic, but only inevitable
+and ironical.  It was as though someone had played a grave and
+significant, not unkindly, joke at Mr. Ricardo's expense.  Nor did
+Stonehouse feel remorse, for he knew that he could have done nothing.
+As Mr. Ricardo had said, it was not material things that had mattered.
+He had not killed himself because he was starving, but because the long
+struggle of his spirit with the enigma of life had reached its crisis.
+He had gone out to meet it with a superb gesture of defiance, which had
+also been the signal of surrender and acknowledgment.
+
+The crowd had moved on at last.  In the muffled silence and darkness
+Stonehouse's thoughts became shadowy and fantastic.  Though he did not
+grieve he knew that a stone had shifted under the foundations of his
+mental security.  Death took on a new aspect.  It seemed unlikely that
+it was so simply the end.
+
+He found himself wondering how far Mr. Ricardo had travelled on his
+journey, and whether he had met his enemy, and, face to face with him,
+had become reconciled.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+He did not know why he had consented to receive her, unless it was
+because he knew that they would meet inevitably sooner or later.  He
+felt very able to meet her--cool, and hard and clear-thinking.  It was
+early yet.  A wintry sunlight rested on his neatly ordered table, and
+he could smile at the idea that in a few hours he would begin to be
+afraid again.
+
+She had made no appointment.  Urged by some caprice or other she had
+driven up to his door and sent up her card with the pencilled
+inscription "_Me voici_!"  Standing at his window he could just see the
+long graceful lines of her Rolls-Royce, painted an amazing blue--pale
+blue was notoriously her colour--and the pale-blue clad figure of her
+chauffeur.  It occurred to him that she had chosen the uniform simply
+to make the man ridiculous--to show that there were no limits to her
+audacity and power.  She was, he thought, stronger than the men who
+thought they were ruling the destinies of nations.  For she could ride
+rough-shod over convention and prejudice and human dignity.  She was
+perhaps the last representative of an autocratic egotism in a world in
+which the individual will had almost ceased to exist.  She seemed to
+him the survival of an eternal evil.
+
+And yet when he saw her he laughed.  She was so magnificently
+impossible.  It seemed that she had put on every jewel that she could
+carry.  She was painted more profusely than usual, and her dress was
+one of those fantastic creations with which producers endeavour to
+bluff through a peculiarly idiotic revue.  But she carried it all
+without self-consciousness.  It was as natural to her as gay plumage to
+a bird-of-paradise.
+
+She gave him her hand to kiss, and then laughed and shook hands instead
+with an exaggerated manliness.
+
+"I forget," she said.  "It is a bad 'abit.  You see.  I keep my
+promise.  I make ze return call.  And 'ow kind of you to see me."
+
+"It didn't occur to you that I might refuse," he told her.
+
+"No, that's true.  I never thought about it.  You 'ave a leetle time
+for me, _hein_?"
+
+"About ten minutes," he said.
+
+He assumed a very professional attitude on the other side of his table.
+He wanted to nonplus and disconcert her, if such a thing were possible.
+Now that his first involuntary amusement was over he felt a return of
+the old malignant dislike.  She had cost him Cosgrave's friendship, and
+he wanted to hurt her--to get underneath that armour of soulless
+good-humour.  "I knew that you'd turn up one day or other," he said.
+
+She looked at him with a rather wistful surprise.
+
+"'Ow clever of you!  You knew?  Don't I look well, _hein_?  I feel
+well--quite all right.  But I say to myself: '_Voyons_--'alf an hour
+with nothing to do.  I pay that cross doctor a visit.'  I would 'ave
+come before, but I 'ave been so busy.  We re'earse 'Mademoiselle
+Pantalonne,' ze first night to-morrow.  You come?  I send you a ticket."
+
+"Thanks.  That form of entertainment wouldn't entertain me--except
+pathologically.  And if I went to the theatre I'd rather leave my
+profession outside."
+
+"Path--pathologically," she echoed.  "That sounds 'orrid--rather rude.
+You don't like me still, _hein_, doctor?"
+
+"Does that surprise you?"
+
+"It surprise me ver' much," she admitted frankly.  She picked up the
+photograph on the table and examined it with an unconscious
+impertinence.  "You like 'er?" she asked.  "That sort of woman?"
+
+"I don't know," he said.  "I've never met her."
+
+"She is not your wife?"
+
+"She is Cosgrave's wife."
+
+It was evident that although the episode had been concluded less than
+three months before she had already almost forgotten it.
+
+"Cosgrave?  _Ah oui, le cher petit Rufus_?  There now--did I not tell
+you?  Didn't I 'ave reason?  Tell me--'ow many babies 'ave 'e got?"
+
+"They were married last month," Stonehouse observed.
+
+"_Ah--la la_!  But 'ow glad I am!  I can see she is the right sort for
+'im.  A nice leetle girl.  But first 'e 'ave to 'ave a good time--just
+to give 'im confidence.  Now 'e be a ver' good boy--a leetle dull
+per'aps, but ver' good and 'appy.  I would write and tell 'im 'ow glad
+I am--but per'aps better not, _hein_?"
+
+She winked, and there was an irresistible drollery in the grimace that
+made his lips twitch.  And yet she was shameless--abominable.
+
+"The ten minutes are almost up," he said, "and I suppose you came here
+to consult me."
+
+He knew that she had not.  She had come because he was a tantalizing
+object, because she could not credit his invincibility, which was a
+challenge to her.  She laughed, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+"You are an 'orrible fellow!  You think of nothing but diseases and
+wickedness.  I wonder if you 'ave ever 'ad a good time yourself--ever
+laughed, like I do, from ze 'eart?"
+
+He looked away from her.  He felt for a moment oddly uneasy and
+distressed.
+
+"No, I don't suppose I have."
+
+"Ah, _c'est dommage, mon pauvre jeune homme_.  But you don't like me.
+What can I do?"
+
+"I don't expect you to do anything."
+
+"Not my business, _hein_?  No one 'ave any business 'ere who 'ave not
+got an illness.  Ver' well.  I will 'ave an illness--a ver' leetle one.
+No, not ze tummy-ache.  _C'est vieux jeu ca_.  But a leetle sore
+throat.  You know about throats, _hein_?"
+
+"My specialty," he said smiling back at her with hard eyes.
+
+"Bien, I 'ave a leetle sore throat--_fatigue plutot_--'e come and 'e
+go.  I smoke too much.  But I 'ave to smoke.  It's no good what you
+say."
+
+"I'm sure of that," he said.
+
+He made her sit down in the white iron chair behind the screen and,
+adjusting his speculum, switched on the light.  He was bitterly angry
+because she had forced this farce upon him.  He felt that she was
+laughing all over.  The pretty pinkness of her open mouth nauseated
+him.  He thought of all the men who had kissed her, and had been ruined
+by her as though by the touch of a deadly plague.  He pressed her
+tongue down with a deliberate roughness.
+
+"You 'urt," she muttered.  But her eyes were still amused.
+
+"A great many people get hurt here," he said contemptuously, "and don't
+whine about it."
+
+
+
+2
+
+Ten minutes later they sat opposite each other by his table.  She was
+coughing and laughing and wiping her eyes.
+
+"_C'est abominable_," she gasped, "_abominable_!"
+
+He waited.  He could afford to wait.  He had the feeling of being
+carried on the breast of a deep, quiet sea.  He could take his time.
+Her laughter and damnable light-heartedness no longer fretted and
+exasperated him.  Rather it was a kind of bitter spice--a tense
+screwing up of his exquisite sense of calm power.  She was like a
+tigress sprawling in the sunshine, not knowing that its heart is
+already covered by a rifle.  He prolonged the moment deliberately,
+savouring it.  In that deliberation the woman in the hospital, Francey
+Wilmot, Cosgrave, and a host of faceless men who had gone under this
+woman's chariot wheels played their devious, sinister parts.  They
+goaded him on and justified him.  He became in his own eyes the figure
+of the Law, pronouncing sentence, weightily, without heat or passion or
+pity.
+
+"You do it on purpose," she said, "you make me cough."
+
+He arranged his papers with precise hands.
+
+"I'm sorry--I know you came here as a joke.  It isn't--not for you.
+It's serious."  He saw her smile, and though he went on speaking in the
+same quiet, methodical tone, he felt that he had suddenly lost control
+of himself.  "Medical science isn't an exact science.  Doctors are
+never sure of anything until it has happened.  But speaking with that
+reservation I have to tell you that your case is hopeless--that you
+have three--at the most four months----"
+
+She had interrupted with a laugh, but the laugh itself had broken in
+half.  She had read his face.  After a long interval she asked a
+question--one word--almost inaudibly--and he nodded.
+
+"If you had come earlier one might have operated," he said.  "But even
+so, it would have been doubtful."
+
+Already many men and women had received their final sentence here in
+this room, and each had met it in his own way.  The women were the
+quietest.  Perhaps their lives had taught them to endure the hideous
+indignity of a well-ordered death-bed without that galling sense of
+physical humiliation which tormented men.  For the most part they
+became immersed in practical issues--how the news was to be broken to
+others, who would look after the house and the children, and how the
+last scene might be acted with the least possible inconvenience and
+distress for those who would have to witness it.  Some men had raved
+and stormed and pleaded, as though he had been a judge whose judgment
+might be revoked: "Not me--others--not me--not to-day--years hence."
+They had paced his private room for hours, trying to get a hold over
+themselves, devastated with shame and horror at the breakdown of their
+confident personalities.  Some had risen to an impregnable dignity,
+finer than their lives.  One or two had laughed.
+
+And this woman?
+
+He looked up at last.  He thought with a thrill that was not of pity,
+of a bird hit in full flight and mortally hurt, panting out its life in
+the heather, its gay plumage limp and dishevelled.  The jewels and
+outrageous dress had become a jest that had turned against her.  A
+shadow of the empty, good-humoured smile still lingered on a painted
+mouth palsied with fear.  She was swaying slightly, rhythmically,
+backwards and forwards, and rubbing the palms of her hands on the
+carved arms of her chair, and he could hear her breath, short and
+broken like the shallow breathing of a sick animal.  And yet he became
+aware that she was thinking--thinking very rapidly--calling up
+unexpected reserves.
+
+"_Trois--mois--trois mois_.  Well, but I don't feel so ill--I don't
+feel ill at all--per'aps for a leetle month--just a leetle month."
+
+He had no clue to her thought.  She looked about her rather vaguely as
+though everything had suddenly become unreal.  There were tears on her
+cheeks, but they were the tears of her recent laughter.  She rubbed
+them off on the back of her hand with the unconscious gesture of a
+street child.
+
+"I suffer much?"
+
+"I'm afraid so.  Though, of course, anyone who attends on you will do
+his best."
+
+"Death so ugly--so sad."
+
+"Not always," he said.
+
+It was true.  She had been a beast of prey all her life.  Now it was
+her turn to be overtaken and torn down.  Only sentimentalists like
+Francey Wilmot could see in her a cause for pity or regret.
+
+They sat opposite each other through a long silence.  He gave her time.
+He showed her consideration.  He thought of the pale-blue chauffeur
+waiting in the biting cold of a winter's afternoon.  Well, he would be
+alive after she had become a loathsome fragment of corruption.  He was
+revenged--they were all revenged on her now.
+
+She fumbled with her gold and jewelled bag.
+
+"What do I owe, _Monsieur le docteur_?"
+
+"Three guineas."
+
+She put the money on the table.
+
+"That is ver' little for so much.  I think--when I can't go on any
+more--I come to your 'ospital.  You take me in, _hein_?  I 'ave a
+fancy."
+
+He made an unwilling movement.  It revolted him--this obtuseness that
+would not see that he hated her.
+
+"I can't prevent your coming if you want to.  You would be more in your
+element in your own home.  Even in their private rooms they don't allow
+the kind of things you're accustomed to.  There are regulations.  Your
+friends won't like them."
+
+She looked up at him with a startled intentness.
+
+"_Mes pauvres amis_--I 'ave so many.  They won't understand.  They say:
+'That's one of Gyp's leetle jokes.' They won't believe it--they won't
+dare."
+
+She gave him her hand, and he touched it perfunctorily.
+
+"It's as you like, of course.  You have only to let me know."
+
+"You are ver' kind."
+
+He showed her to the door, and rang the bell for the servant.  From his
+vantage point he saw the pale-blue chauffeur hold open the door of the
+pale-blue limousine.  A few loiterers gaped.  By an ironical chance a
+barrel-organ in the next street began to grind out the riotous,
+familiar gallop.  It sounded far-off like a jeering echo:
+
+  "I'm Gyp Labelle;
+  If you dance with me
+  You dance to my tune. . ."
+
+A danse macabre.  He wondered if she had brains or heart enough to
+appreciate the full bitterness of that chance.  He could see her, in
+his mind's eye, cowering back among the pale-blue cushions.
+
+The next morning he received a note from her and a ticket for the first
+night of "Mademoiselle Pantalonne"--"with her regards and thanks."
+
+
+
+3
+
+He went.  In the morning he had tossed the ticket aside, scornful and
+outraged by such a poor gesture of bravado.  But the night brought the
+old restlessness.  He was driven by curiosity that he believed was
+professional and impersonal.  It was natural enough that he should want
+to see how a woman of her stuff acted under sentence of death.  But
+once in the theatre h e became aware of a black and solitary pride
+because he alone of all these people could taste the full flavour of
+her performance.  He had become omniscient.  He saw behind the scenes.
+Whilst the orchestra played its jaunty overture he watched her.  He saw
+her stare into her glass and dab on the paint, thicker and thicker,
+knowing now why she needed so much more, shrinking from the skull that
+was beginning to peer through the thin mask of flesh and blood.  He
+foresaw the moment, probably before the footlights, when the naked
+horror of it all would leap out on her and tear her down.  Even in that
+she would no doubt seek the consolation of notoriety.  It would be in
+all the papers.  If she had the nerve to carry on people would crowd to
+see her, as in the Roman days they had crowded to the circus (gloating
+and stroking themselves secretly, thinking: "It is not I who am
+dying").  Or she would seek dramatic refuge in her absurd palace and
+surround herself with tragic glamour, making use of her own death as
+she had used the death of that infatuated and unhappy prince.
+
+And yet he was sick at heart.  In flashes he saw his own attitude as
+something hideous and abnormal.  Then again he justified it, as he had
+always justified it.  He found himself arguing the whole matter out
+with Francey Wilmot--a cool and reasoned exposition such as he had been
+incapable of at the crisis of their relationship.  ("This woman is a
+malignant growth.  Nature destroys her.  Do you pretend to feel regret
+or pity?")  But though he imagined the whole scene--saw himself as
+authoritative and convincing--he could not re-create Francey Wilmot.
+She remained herself.  Her eyes, fixed on him with that remembered look
+of candid and questioning tenderness, blazed up into an anger as
+unexpectedly fierce and uncompromising.  And he was not so strong.  He
+had overworked all his life.  Starved too often.  The ground slipped
+from under his feet.
+
+
+It was a poor, vulgar show--a pantomime jerry-built to accommodate her
+particular talent.  She walked through it--the dumb but irresistible
+model of a French atelier, who made fools of all her lovers, cheated
+them, sucked them dry and tossed them off with a merry cynicism.  When
+the mood took her she danced and her victims danced behind her, a
+grotesque ballet, laughing and clapping their hands, as though their
+cruel sufferings were, after all, a good joke.  Neither they nor the
+audience seemed to be aware that she could not dance at all, and that
+she was not even beautiful.
+
+It was an old stunt, disguised with an insolent carelessness.  The
+producers had surely grinned to themselves over it.  "We know what the
+public likes.  Rubbish, and the older the better.  Give it 'em."  She
+even made her familiar entry between the curtains at the back of the
+stage, standing in the favourite attitude of simple, triumphant
+expectation, and smiling with that rather foolish friendliness that
+until now had never shaken her audiences from their frigidity.  To them
+she had always been a spectacle, a strange vital thing with a lurid
+past and a dubious future, shocking and stimulating.  They would never
+have admitted that they liked her.  But tonight they gave her a sort of
+ashamed welcome.  Perhaps it was the dress she wore--the exaggerated
+peg-top trousers and bonnet of a conventional Quartier Latin which made
+her look frank and boyish.  Perhaps it was something more subtle.
+Stonehouse himself felt it.  But then, he knew.  He saw her as God saw
+her.  If there was a God He certainly had His amusing moments.
+
+But he found himself clapping her with the rest, and that made him
+angry and afraid.  It seemed that he could not control his actions any
+more than his thoughts.  The whole business had got an unnatural hold
+over him.  He half got up to go, and then realized that he was trying
+to escape.
+
+It was jolly music too.  That at any rate her producers had toiled at
+with some zeal.  Incredibly stupid and artless and jolly.  Anyone could
+have danced to it.  And she was a gutter-urchin, flinging herself about
+in the sheer joy of life (with death capering at her heels).  He
+watched her, leaning forward, waiting for some sign, the faltering
+gesture, a twitching grimace of realization.  Or was it possible that
+she was too empty-hearted to feel even her own tragedy, too shallow to
+suffer, too stupid to foresee?  At least he knew with certainty that in
+that heated, exhausted atmosphere pain had set in.
+
+He became aware that the sweat of it was on his own face--that he
+himself was labouring under an intolerable physical burden.  He knew
+too much.  (If God had His amusing moments he had also to suffer,
+unless, as Mr. Ricardo had judged, he was a devil.)  She was facing
+what every man and woman in that theatre would have to face sooner or
+later.  How?  She at any rate danced as though there were nothing in
+the world but life.  With each act her gestures, her very dress became
+the clearer expression of an insatiable, uncurbed lust of living.  At
+the end, the orchestra, as though it could not help itself, broke into
+the old doggerel tune that had helped to make her famous:
+
+"I'm Gyp Labelle."
+
+She waltzed and somersaulted round the stage, and as the curtain fell
+she stood before the footlights, panting, her thin arms raised
+triumphantly.  He could see the tortured pulse leaping in her throat.
+He thought he read her lips as they moved in a voiceless exclamation:
+
+"_Quand meme--quand meme_."
+
+The audience melted away indifferently.  They, at any rate, did not
+know what they had seen.
+
+
+And the next day he had another little note from her, written in a
+great sprawling hand.  She had made all her arrangements, and she
+thought she had better reserve rooms in his hospital in about six
+weeks' time for about a month.  After that, no doubt, she would require
+less accommodation.
+
+A silly, fatuous effort, in execrable taste.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+Robert Stonehouse took a second leave that he could not afford and went
+back to the grey cottage on the moors, and tramped the hills in haunted
+solitude.  The spring ran beside him, a crude, bitter, young spring,
+gazing into the future with an earnest, passionate face, full of
+arrogance and hope, and self-distrust.  His own frustrated youth rose
+in him like a painful sap.  He was much younger than the Robert
+Stonehouse who, proud in his mature strength, had dragged an exhausted,
+secretively smiling Cosgrave on his relentless pursuit--young and
+insecure, with odd nameless rushes of emotion and desire and grief that
+had had no part in his ordered life.
+
+The hills had changed too.  They had been the background to his
+exploits.  They had become brooding, mysterious partners whose purpose
+with him he had not fathomed.  The things that ran across his path, the
+quaint furry hares and scurrying pheasants had ceased to be objects on
+which he could vent his strength and cunning.  They were live things,
+deeply, secretly related to him and to a dying, very infamous woman,
+and his levelled gun sank time after time under the pressure of an
+inexplicable pity.  He had stood resolutely aloof from life, and now it
+was dragging him down into its warmth with invisible, resistless hands.
+Its values, which he had learnt to judge coldly and dispassionately,
+weighing one against another, were shifting like sand.  He seemed to
+stand, naked and alone, in a changing, terrifying world.
+
+In those days the papers in their frivolous columns, were full of Gyp
+Labelle.  Her press-agent was working frenziedly.  It seemed that she
+had quarrelled with her manager, torn her contract into shreds, and
+slapped his face.  There were gay doings nightly at the Kensington
+house--orgies.  One paper hinted at a certain South African millionaire.
+
+A last fling--the reckless gesture of a worthless panic-stricken soul,
+without dignity.
+
+Or perhaps she had found that his diagnosis had been a mistake.  Or she
+would not believe the truth.  Or she was drugging herself into
+forgetfulness.  Perhaps she might even have the courage to make an end
+before the time came when forgetfulness would be impossible.
+
+He returned to town, drawn by an obsession of uncertainty.  He found
+that she had arrived at her rooms in the hospital with the shrivelled
+old woman and the macaw and a gramophone.
+
+She had signed the register as Marie Dubois.
+
+"It is my real name," she explained, "but you couldn't have a good time
+with a name like that--_voyons_!  Only one 'usband and 'eaps of babies."
+
+She was much nearer the end than he had supposed possible.  The last
+month had to be paid for.  She lay very still under the gorgeous quilt
+which she had brought with her, and her hand, which she had stretched
+out to him in friendly welcome, was like the claw of a bird.  "Everyone
+'ere promise not to tell," she said.  "I'm just Marie Dubois.  Even ze
+undertaker--'e must not know.  You put on ze stone: 'Marie Dubois, ze
+beloved daughter of Georges and Marianne Dubois, rag-pickers of Paris.'
+That will be a last leetle joke, hein?"
+
+"It's as you wish," he said coldly.
+
+He forced back the natural questions that came to him.  He had a
+disordered conviction that he was fighting her for his sanity, for the
+very ground on which he had built his life, and that he dared not yield
+by so much as a kindly word.  He did what lay in his power for her with
+a heart shut and barred.
+
+She brought a little of her world and her whole outlook with her.  On
+the last day that she was able to be up she dressed herself in a gay
+mandarin's coat with a Chinese woman's trousers, and tried to do her
+dance for the benefit of a shocked and fascinated matron.  Every
+morning she wore a new cap to set off the deepening shadow of
+dissolution.
+
+By the open fire the old woman embroidered ceaselessly.
+
+"She is making--'ow you call it?--my shroud.  You see--with ze blue
+ribbons.  Blue--that's my colour--my lucky colour.  As soon as I could
+speak I ask for blue ribbons in my pinafore."
+
+"I should have thought your mind might be better occupied now," he
+retorted with brutal commonplaceness.
+
+She winked at him.
+
+"Oh, but I 'ave 'ad my leetle talk with _Monsieur le Cure_.  'E and I
+are ze best of friends, though I never met 'im before.  'E understand
+about ze blue ribbons.  But Monsieur Robert is too clever."
+
+"It seems so," he said scornfully.
+
+She questioned him from out of the thickening cloud of morphia.  "You
+don't believe in God?"  And then as he shook his head she smiled
+sleepily.  "Well, it is still possible 'e exist, _Monsieur_--_Monsieur
+le docteur_."
+
+She lay quiet so that he thought she had fallen asleep, but the next
+moment her eyes had opened, widening on him with a startling
+wakefulness.  It was as though her whole personality had leapt to arms,
+and bursting through the narcotic, stood free with a gay and laughing
+gesture.  "As to God--I don't know about 'im, but I exist--I go on.
+You bet your 'at on that, my friend.  I don't know where I go--but I go
+somewhere.  And I dance.  And if St. Peter sit at ze golden gates, like
+they say in ze fairybook, I say to 'im: ''Ave you ever seen ze Gyp
+Galop?' And then I dance for 'im and ze angels play for me"--she nodded
+wickedly--"not 'ymn tunes."
+
+She was serious.  She meant it.  If she survived she survived as what
+she was or not at all.  And looking down on her wasted, tortured body,
+Stonehouse had a momentary but extraordinarily vivid conviction that
+what she had said was true.  She would persist.  Whatever else
+happened, Gyp Labelle would go on having a good time.  She could not be
+extinguished.  There was in her some virtue altogether apart from the
+body--a blazing vitality, an unquenchable, burning spirit.
+
+He felt his hatred of her wither before it.
+
+"And 'e say: 'You dance ver' bad, Gyp, but you make me laugh.  You go
+on and dance to ze others.'  For 'e know who I am.  My poor parents
+they make ze mistake.  They think: ''Ere is such a ver' nice, good
+little _bebe_, and so they call me after my _Maman_, who is ver' nice
+and good too, and who love me ver' much--Marie--Marie Dubois."
+
+She turned her head towards the old woman bending lower and lower over
+her fine work, and, smiling at her, fell asleep.
+
+
+He returned, one night, to the hospital in the hope of being able to
+work in the laboratory, and instead, coming to her room, he went in.
+The action was so unpremeditated and unmotivated that he had closed the
+door before he knew what he had done.  But the excuse he framed in his
+confusion was never uttered, for he had the right to appear
+dumbfounded.  She sat, propped up like a painted wraith against a pile
+of gorgeous cushions, and all about her was scattered a barbarous loot
+of rings and bracelets, of strings of pearls, of unset stones, diamonds
+and emeralds, heaped carelessly on the table at her side, and twinkling
+like little malevolent eyes out of the creases of her coverlet.
+
+The old woman wrote toilingly on a slip of paper.  "Sh!  This is ver'
+solemn.  I could not sleep, and so I make my testament."  She put her
+finger to her lips as though her whisper were only a part of a playful
+mystery and beckoned him, and he went towards her, reluctant, yet
+unresisting like a man hypnotized.  He had a childish longing to touch
+all that colour, to take up great handfuls of it and feel its warmth
+and let it drip through his fingers.  The death that stared out of her
+painted face, the silence and grim austerity of her surroundings made
+that display of magnificence a fantastic parable.  The stones were the
+life that was going from her.  She picked up each one in turn and
+caressed it, and held it to the light, remembering who knew what
+escapade, what splendid, reckless days, what tragedy.  And yet there
+was no regret and surely no remorse in her farewell of them.
+
+"_Ma Vieille_--she make a list of all.  They will be sold--for ze
+children of Paris--ze _gamins_--as I was--for a good time."  She held
+out her hand: "_C'est joli, n'est ce pas_?"
+
+He looked unwillingly.  It was a black opal, and as she moved it it
+seemed to come to life, and a distant resentful fire gleamed out of its
+sullen depths.
+
+"Yes.  But you oughtn't to have all--all this stuff about.  No one
+could be held responsible----"
+
+"What does it matter?  If someone take it--someone 'ave it.  It won't
+worry me.  'Ere, I tell you something--a story, _hein_, to amuse you?
+You remember our leetle dinner and 'ow I would not tell about ze Grand
+Duke and ze black opal?  Well, I tell you now.  It don't matter any
+more."
+
+"No.  You're doing yourself harm.  You ought to sleep."
+
+"I don't want to--I can't.  It is 'orrible to lie awake in ze dark
+and----  And you, too, Monsieur Robert, you don't feel you sleep much
+to-night, _hein_?"
+
+"No."
+
+"_Alors_--'ere we are--two poor fellows shipwrecked--we make a leetle
+feast together--a feast of good stories.  You say you don't like me
+ver' much.  But that is _ridicule_ now.  One only 'ates when one is
+afraid, and you aren't afraid any more of poor Gyp."
+
+"Was I ever?" he demanded.
+
+"A leetle--per'aps?  You think to yourself: 'If I love 'er----!'
+Bah, that is all finished.  Come, I tell you my funny story."
+
+
+He had laughed.  He was incredulous of himself.  He sat on the edge of
+her bed listening to her whisper, a tortured whisper which she made
+supremely funny--a mock-conspirator's whisper which drew them close to
+one another in an outrageous intimacy.
+
+"At any rate you had made a good enemy that time," he said.
+
+She panted.
+
+"Ah no--no.  'E 'ave a fine sense of humour, Monsieur ze Grand Duke.
+'E laugh too.  'E say--'Gyp--you are ze ver' devil 'erself!'  'Ere, but
+this ruby--I don't care much for rubies--but this one 'ave a real fine
+story."
+
+And so one by one the stones were taken up and held a moment, some to
+be discarded with a name or a forgetful shrug, and some to linger a
+while longer whilst she recalled their little ribald histories.  And it
+seemed to Robert Stonehouse that gradually the room filled with
+invisible personages who, as the jewels dropped from her waxen fingers
+into the gaping box, bowed to her and took their leave.  And at last
+they were all gone but one.  He seemed to hear them, their footsteps
+receding faintly along the corridors.
+
+She held an unset pearl in her hand.
+
+"This one 'ave a ver' nice leetle story.  A brigand give it me when 'e
+'old up ze train between Mexico City and ze coast.  A fine fellow--with
+a sombrero and a manner!"  (She looked past Stonehouse, smiling, as
+though she too saw the shadow twirling its black moustache and staring
+back at her with gallant admiration.)  "And brave too, _nombre de
+Dios_!  And 'e bow and say: 'One does not take ransom from Mademoiselle
+Labelle.  One pays tribute.'  And 'e give me this to remember 'im
+by--as I give it you, Monsieur Robert."
+
+He stood up sharply.
+
+"No--I--I don't care for that kind of thing."
+
+"For your wife, then!"
+
+"I am not married."
+
+"But one day per'aps?  You love someone, _hein_?"  (Had she wilfully
+forgotten?  She studied his face with a wicked curiosity.  He could not
+answer her.)  "Give it 'er then--Monsieur Robert--_pour me faire
+plaisir_."
+
+"There is no one to give it to."
+
+"But there was----"
+
+He tried desperately to regain the old sarcastic inflection.
+
+"No doubt it seems inevitable to you."
+
+"Tell me about 'er.  _Voyons_, if you can't keep me alive, _Monsieur
+mon docteur_, you might at least amuse me."
+
+"There is nothing to tell.  I will give you something that will make
+you sleep."
+
+"I do not want to sleep.  That is bad, ugly sleep that you give me.  So
+you quarrel.  What you quarrel about, Monsieur Robert?  Another woman?"
+
+The sheer, grotesque truth of it drove him to an ironical assent.
+
+"As you say, another woman----"
+
+"_Oh, la la_!  So there was once upon a time a ver' serious young man
+who forget to be quite serious.  _Voyons_--you 'ave to tell me all
+now--just as I tell you."
+
+He turned on her then.  In five brief, savage sentences he had told her
+of Frances and the woman in the hospital.  And when he had done he read
+her face with its tolerant good-humour, and the full enormity of it all
+burst over him like a flood of crude light.  He turned away from her
+stammering:
+
+"I've no business here--I've no business to be your doctor--or anyone's
+doctor.  I think I must be going mad."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No--no--only too serious, _mon pauvre jeune homme_.  But I like
+your--your Francey.  I think she and I be good friends some'ow.  She
+would see things 'ow I see them."
+
+(He thought crazily:
+
+"Yes, she would sit by you and look over your shoulder at your rotten
+life, and say: 'So that's the way it seems to you?  And you're right.
+It's been a splendid joke.'")
+
+"One of these days you be friends again too.  And then you give 'er my
+leetle pearl.  Say it's from Gyp, who is sorry she made so much
+trouble.  Why not?  You think it make her sad?  It is not for that I
+give it you.  It is to give you pleasure too."
+
+He was labouring under an almost physical distress.  She was poking fun
+at him, at herself, at death.  She was making him a partner of thieves
+and loose women.  And yet:
+
+"It must not make you sad at all.  When you see it you laugh--just as
+you laugh when I dance because I dance so ver' bad.  Look 'ere, I 'ave
+something that you give me too."  She dived back into the box and
+brought out a shilling lying side by side with the pearl in the palm of
+her open hand.  "You tell 'er--that was all poor Gyp was worth to you,
+Monsieur Robert."
+
+He had taken it.  She tried to laugh out loud, triumphantly, the famous
+laugh.  And then grey agony had her by the throat.  She turned her face
+from him to the wall.
+
+He felt that the old woman had risen.  She was moving towards them.  He
+said quietly:
+
+"At least I can relieve you."
+
+She made a passionate, absolute gesture of refusal.  An astonished
+nurse had entered.  He gave brief instructions.  He said good-night,
+not looking at the limp, quiet figure on the bed, and went out.
+
+He knew that he had seemed competent, unhurried and unmoved as befitted
+a man to whom death was the most salient feature of life.
+
+But he knew also that he had fled from her.
+
+
+In the crowd that went with him that night were Francey Wilmot and
+Connie Edwards and Cosgrave and all the people who had made up his
+youth.  There were little old women who were Christines, and even James
+Stonehouse was there, tragically and hopefully in search of something
+that he had never found.  Any moment he might turn his face towards his
+son, and it would not be hideous, only perplexed and pitiful.
+
+It was as though an ugly, monstrous mass had been smashed to fragments
+whose facets shone with extraordinary, undreamed-of colours.
+
+Not only the bodies of the people drifted with him, but their lives
+touched his on every side.  It became a sort of secret pressure.  They
+were neither great nor beautiful.  They were identical with the people
+he had always seen on the streets and in the hospitals, sickly or
+grossly commonplace, but he could no longer judge them as from a great
+distance.  He was down in the thick of them.  They concerned him--or he
+had no other concern.  He was part of their strangely wandering
+procession.  He looked into their separate faces and thought: "This man
+says 'I' to himself.  And one day he will say: 'I am dying' (as Marie
+Dubois said it)."  And he recognized for the first time something
+common to them all that was not commonplace--an heroic quality.  At
+least that stark fact remained that at their birth sentence of death
+had been passed upon them all.  Before each one of them lay a black
+adventure, and they went towards it, questioning or inarticulate, not
+knowing why they should endure so much, but facing the utter loneliness
+of that final passage with patience and great courage.
+
+It was not ridiculous that they should demand their immortality, the
+least and worst of them.  Whether it was granted them or not, it was a
+just demand, and the answer to it more vital than any other form of
+knowledge.  For it was conceivable that one day they would be too
+strong and too proud to play the part of tragic buffoons in a senseless
+farce.
+
+In the meantime men might well be pitiful with one another.
+
+"What was it she had said?"
+
+"Nothing that you've gone through is of any use if it hasn't taught you
+pity."
+
+("Oh, Francey, Francey, if I had told you that Christine was dead would
+it have helped?  Would you have had more patience with me?")
+
+
+The quiet and emptiness of his own street restored him in some measure
+to his aloof scepticism.  But even then he knew there was a disruptive
+force secretly at work in him, tearing down stone by stone his
+confidence and courage.  He was afraid of shadows.  A bowed figure
+crouched against the railings of his house checked him as though a
+ghost had lain in wait for him.  He passed it hurriedly, running up the
+stone steps.  The sound of a thin, clear voice calling him made him
+turn again, his head thrown up in a sort of defiance.
+
+"Monsieur--excuse--excuse--I wait 'ere so long.  They tell me you come
+back 'ere perhaps.  But they don't know I 'ave come.  I creep out----
+Monsieur she cannot sleep--she cannot sleep.  They don't do nothing.
+It is not right.  I cannot 'ave it--that she suffer so."
+
+He came back down the steps.  He was conscious of having sighed deeply.
+He looked into the shrivelled, up-turned face, and saw the tears that
+filled the furrows with a slow moving stream.  He had hardly noticed
+her before.  Now she hurt him.  A very little old woman.  He said
+briefly, hiding a shaken voice:
+
+"They do all they can.  I can do no more."
+
+She reiterated with a peasant's obstinacy.
+
+"I will not 'ave it--I will not--not 'ave it--I cannot bear it."
+
+"Dr. Rutherford is there.  I tell you he can do all that can be done.
+I offered her an injection--she would not have it."
+
+"She pretend--all ze time she pretend.  Even before me, 'er mother, she
+pretend.  But I know."
+
+"Her mother!"
+
+He stepped back against the railings, freeing himself fretfully from
+the hand that clutched his arm.
+
+"If you are her mother she treats you strangely.  She treats you like a
+servant."
+
+"Before others, Monsieur.  She is different--of different stuff.  We
+'ave always understood.  If I am to be with 'er it must be as 'er
+servant.  That is our affair.  But you are not kind.  You let 'er
+suffer too much.  I will not 'ave it."
+
+She drew herself up.  She almost menaced him.  He saw that she knew.
+As a physician he had done what lay in his power, but as a human being
+he had failed utterly and deliberately.  Had always failed.  And he was
+aware of an incredible fear of her.
+
+"I will come now," he stammered.
+
+He gave her such sleep that night that it seemed unlikely that she
+would ever wake again.  He knew that he had exceeded the limits of
+mercy set down by his profession and that the nurse had looked
+strangely at him.  But he was indifferent.  It was as though he, too,
+had been momentarily released.
+
+Nor did he leave her again until the morning, but watched over her,
+whilst on the other side of the bed the old woman knelt, her face
+pressed against a still hand, a battered, sullen effigy of grief.
+
+
+
+3
+
+From the beginning she had defied the regulations of the hospital, as
+she had defied the rules of life, with an absolute success.  The
+inelastic, military system bent and stretched itself beneath her
+good-humoured inability to believe that there could be any wilful
+opposition, to her desires.  The macaw had been a case in point, the
+gramophone another.  After tea the old woman set the instrument going
+for her, and when the authorities protested, ostensibly on behalf of
+neighbouring patients, it transpired that the patients rather liked it
+than otherwise, and there were regular concerts, with the macaw
+shrieking its occasional appreciation.
+
+She inquired interestedly into her neighbours.  She seemed less
+concerned with their complaints than with their ages, their appearance,
+and the time when they would return to the outside world.  With a young
+man on her right hand she became intimate.  It began with an exchange
+of compliments and progressed through little folded notes which caused
+her infinite amusement to a system of code-tapping on the intervening
+wall, sufficiently scandalous in import, if her expression were
+significant.
+
+The nurses became her allies in this last grim flirtation, unaware
+apparently of its grimness.
+
+"Don't you let 'im know I am so bad," she adjured them.  "I tell 'im I
+'ave a leetle nothing at all, and that I am going 'ome next week to my
+dear 'usband.  I think that make 'im laugh ver' much.  'E is ver'
+bored, that young man.  'E say if I 'ave supper with 'im, the first
+night 'e come out 'e won't--'ow you say?--grouse so much.  I say my
+'usband ver' jealous, but that I fix it some'ow.  'E like that.
+Promise you won't tell?"
+
+They promised.
+
+She was almost voiceless now.  That she suffered hideously, Stonehouse
+knew, but not from her.  He believed--in the turmoil of his mind he
+almost hoped--that when she was alone she broke down, but before them
+all she bore herself with an unflagging gallantry.  It was that
+gallantry of hers that dogged him, that would not let him rest or
+forget.  It demanded of him something that he could not, and dared not,
+yield.
+
+And she was pitifully alone.  The woman in the hospital had not been
+more forsaken by her world.  As to Gyp Labelle she went her way, and
+the gossip columns cautiously recorded the more startling items of that
+progress.  It was as though some clever hand were building up a
+fantastic figure that should pass at last into the mists of legend.
+
+Men laughed together over her.
+
+"What poor devil of a millionaire has the woman hobbled now?"
+
+It was the matron who showed Stonehouse an illustrated paper which
+produced her full-length portrait.  She sat on the edge of her absurd
+fountain and her hand was raised in a laughing gesture of farewell.
+Over the top was written: "Gyp off to Pastures new," and underneath a
+message which all the daily papers were to reproduce.
+
+"I want this way to thank all the friends who have been so very kind to
+me.  We have had good times together.  I miss you very much.  I am
+going to find new friends now, but one day, I think, I dance for you
+again.  I love you all.  I kiss my hands to you.  _Au revoir_, Gyp."
+
+It was her vanity, that insatiable desire to figure impudently and
+triumphantly in the public eye.  He brought the paper to her.  But at
+the moment she was busy tapping feebly on the wall.  She winked at him.
+
+"Sh!  I tell 'im I go to-day.  I make an appointment--next week--ze
+Carlton Grill--seven o'clock--'e 'ave to wait a long time, ze poor
+young man.  There, it is finished."
+
+He showed her the picture without comment.  He had to hold it for
+her--hold it very close--for she had exhausted herself with that last
+gesture of bravado.  And then, as she smiled, a protest born of
+gathering distress and doubt burst from him.
+
+"Why do you allow--this--hideous, impossible pretence?"
+
+He could feel the old woman turn towards him like a wild beast
+preparing to spring.  But she herself lay still, with closed eyes.  He
+had to bend down to catch the remote suffering whisper.
+
+"_C'est vrai_.  We 'ave--such good times.  And they come 'ere--all
+those kind people--who 'ave laughed so much--and bring flowers--and
+pretend it is not true.  And they won't believe--and when they see it
+they won't believe--they won't dare----"  She tried to speak more
+clearly, clinging to his hand for the first time, whilst a sweat of
+agony broke out upon her face and made ghastly channels through its
+paint and powder.  "_Vous voyez_--for them--I am--ze good times.  They
+come to me--for good times.  When they are too sad--when things too
+'ard for them and they cannot believe any more--that ze good times come
+again--they think of me.  '_Voyons, la_ Gyp, she 'ave a good time
+always--she dance at 'er own funeral!'  But if they see me 'ere--like
+this--they go away--and think in their 'earts: '_Grand Dieu, c'est
+comme ca avec nous tous_--_avec nous tous_,' and they not laugh with
+me--any more."
+
+Her hand let go its hold--suddenly.
+
+
+They sent for him that night.  Haemorrhage had set in.  There was a
+light burning by her bedside, for she had complained of the darkness.
+She wore a lace cap trimmed with blue ribbons, but she had not had
+strength to paint her lips and cheeks again, and the old woman's
+efforts had ended pitifully.  She had grown very small in the last few
+hours, and with her thin, daubed face and blood-stained lips, she
+looked like a sorrowful travesty of the little circus clown who had
+ridden the fat pony and shouted "_Oh la--la_!" and blown kisses to the
+people.
+
+She smiled vaguely in Stonehouse's direction, but she was only half
+conscious.  Her hand strayed over the gorgeous quilt, stroking it with
+a kind of simple pleasure.
+
+(She was like that, too, he thought--a dash of gay, unashamed colour in
+the sad scheme of things.)
+
+Towards midnight she motioned to him and whispered something that he
+could not understand.  But the old woman rose heavily from her knees
+and went over to the gramophone, thrusting aside with savage resolution
+the nurse who tried to intercept her.  Stonehouse himself made an
+involuntary gesture.
+
+"Why not?" he said.  "Let her alone."
+
+He stood close to her and waited.  He felt that some part of him was
+dying with her, that he stood with her before a black partition which
+was thinning slowly, and that presently they would both know whatever
+lay beyond.
+
+The macaw fidgeted on its golden perch, craning towards the light and
+blinking uneasily as though a strange thing had come into the room.
+The needle scratched under a shaking hand.
+
+  "I'm Gyp Labelle;
+  Come dance with me. . ."
+
+He bent over her so that his face almost touched hers.
+
+"I'm sorry--I'm sorry, Gyp."
+
+She turned her head a little, her lips moving.  It was evident that she
+had not really heard.  But he knew that she had never borne him malice.
+
+And then suddenly it was over.  He had broken through.  Beyond were
+understanding and peace and strange and difficult tears.  He loved her,
+as beneath the fret and heat of passion Cosgrave and all those others
+had loved her, for what she sincerely was and for the brave, gay thing
+she had to give.  He loved her more simply still as in rare moments of
+their lives men love one another, saying: "This is my brother--this is
+my sister."  From his lonely arrogance his spirit flung itself down,
+grieving, beside her mysterious, incalculable good.
+
+He could hear the jolly bang-bang of the drum and the whoop of a
+trumpet.  He could see her catherine-wheeling round the stage, and the
+man with the bloated face and tragic, intelligent eyes.
+
+"Life itself, my dear fellow, life itself."
+
+And she was dead.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+For a moment they stared at one another.  He did not at once recognize
+Connie Edwards, in the puritanical serge frock and with her air of
+rather conscious sobriety, and he himself stood in the shadow.  He
+thought:
+
+"She's wondering if I'm a tramp."  He felt like one, broken and shabby.
+
+"Dr. Wilmot?" he muttered.
+
+She leant closer.
+
+"Oh, hallo--Robert."  She corrected herself severely, and held the door
+wide open.  "Dr. Stonehouse--to be sure.  Francey's upstairs."
+
+She led the way.  It was almost as though she had been expecting him.
+At any rate, she was not surprised at all.  But half-way up the stairs
+she glanced back over her shoulder.
+
+"I don't usually open the door.  I'm her secretary.  And a damn good
+one too.  Rather a jest, eh, what?"
+
+"Rather," he said.
+
+And it was really the same room--a fire burning and the faun dancing in
+the midst of its moving shadows.  There was a faint, warm scent of
+cigarette smoke and a solemn pile of books beside her deep chair.  It
+wouldn't be like Francey to rest under her laurels.
+
+She held both his hands in hers.  She wore a loose, golden-brown
+wrapper such as she had always worn when she had been working hard.
+She had changed very little and a great deal.  If something of the
+whimsical mysteriousness of her youth had faded she had broadened and
+deepened into a woman warm and generous as the earth.  Her thick hair
+swept back from her face with the old wind-blown look, and her eyes
+were candid and steadfast as they had ever been.  But some sort of mist
+had been brushed away from them so that they saw more clearly and
+profoundly.  He thought: "She has seen a great many people suffer.  She
+doesn't go away so often into herself."
+
+He had tried hard, over and over again, to imagine their meeting, but
+he had never imagined that it would be so simple or that she would say
+to him, as though the eight years had not happened:
+
+"Why didn't you tell me about Christine, Robert?"
+
+He said:
+
+"It wouldn't have made any difference."
+
+"I've been waiting for you to tell me."
+
+He tried to smile.
+
+"You don't know how difficult it has been to come.  I've been prowling
+past--night after night--trying to think what you'd say to me, if I
+turned up."
+
+"You might have known."
+
+"I didn't--I don't know even now."
+
+She had made him sit down by the fire and she sat opposite him, bending
+towards him, with her slim, beautiful hands to the blaze.  He felt that
+she knew, for all the outward signs of his prosperity, that he was
+destitute.  He felt that his real self with which she had always been
+so much concerned had been stripped naked, and that she was trying to
+warm and console him.  She was wrapping him round with that unchanged
+tenderness.
+
+"It's--it's the old room!" he said.
+
+But his enmity was dead.  He was at peace with it.  He had been
+initiated.  He had heard, very faintly it is true, but loud enough to
+understand, the music to which the faun danced.  He was not the
+outsider any more.
+
+"I wanted it to be the same."
+
+"And the house----"
+
+"I took it as soon as I could get it.  I made up my mind to live here,
+whatever it cost.  You see, I was quite sure that you would go past one
+of these days to have a look at it, and that you would say to yourself:
+'Why, there's Francey, after all!  I'll go in----'"
+
+But they both drew back instinctively.  He blundered into a hurried
+question.  The Gang?  What had happened to them all?  It seemed that
+Gertie still lived, defying medical opinion and apparently feeding her
+starved spirit on the treasures of the Vatican.  Howard, who had become
+a very bad artist and lived on selling copies of the masterpieces to
+tourists, looked after her.
+
+"But they're not married," Francey said.  "Just friends."
+
+He said humbly:
+
+"Well, he's been awfully decent to her."
+
+As to the rest, no one knew what had become of them.
+
+"And you've done splendidly, Robert, better than any of us."
+
+"I've been a failure," he answered, "a rotten failure!"
+
+She accepted the statement gravely, without protest, and that sincerity
+was like a skilled hand on a wound.  It brought comfort where a
+fumbling kindness would have been unendurable.  It made him strangely,
+deeply happy to know that she would see too that he had failed.  "I've
+never had pity on anyone--not even myself--I've learnt nothing that
+matters."
+
+For a while they sat silent, looking into the fire, like people who are
+waiting and preparing themselves for some great event.  And presently,
+without moving, in an undertone he began to tell her about the Marie
+Dubois who had died, and how he had seen her long ago at the Circus,
+his first and only circus.  He told her about the Circus itself.  He
+did not choose his words, but stammered and fumbled and jumped from one
+thing to another.  He opened his heart and took out whatever he found
+there, and showed it to her very humbly, just as it was.  It seemed
+certain and imperative that after a little while they should both see
+the pattern of it all.  He told her about his love for his dead mother,
+and how his father had died and had come back, haunting him in his
+sleep.
+
+Then he remembered something he had never thought of before--how he had
+looked up at the window of the room where his father was lying dead,
+and had wanted to run--run fast.
+
+"But I think I've lived in that dark house all my life," he said, "and
+I've gone about in it, blustering and swaggering and being hard and
+strong because I was so desperately afraid--of life, of caring too
+much, of failing.  And now--I've come out."
+
+And then he began to tremble all over and suddenly he was crying
+helplessly.
+
+She knelt beside him.  She drew him into her arms.  It was their moment
+in the green forest over again, but now there was no antagonism in
+their love.  She was the warm, good spirit of the life to which he had
+become reconciled.  They had belonged to one another from the
+beginning.  His fear had stood between them.  But she had gone on
+loving him, steadfastly, because nothing else was possible to her.
+
+"Francey--do you remember--that time we fought one another--over an
+idiotic stick?  I was such a young rotter--I wouldn't own up--that you
+were stronger than I was."
+
+She took his wet hands and kissed them.  It was as though she had said
+aloud, smiling to herself:
+
+"It's all right now, anyhow, you odd, sad little boy."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK HOUSE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 13546.txt or 13546.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/5/4/13546
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/old/13546.zip b/old/13546.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48fc3a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13546.zip