“It’s because we are so different from the women he has known,” said Mary.

“I should hope so!  Well, sister, what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know what to do,” sighed Miss Nellie.  “He hasn’t any other relatives as far as I know.  And the summer coming on, what shall we do?”

“Nothing for it but to send him to an orphanage if she doesn’t write soon,” said Miss Eva.

“Oh, auntie, you wouldn’t!”

“Why not?  How can we afford to give children free board and education?”

“It’s only one child.”

“It would be a dozen, if we once started it.”

“I’ll wait another month,” said Miss Nellie, “and then, really, something will have to be done.”

The girl looked out of the window.

“There he is now,” she said, “sitting on the stone wall at the end of the garden.  It’s his favourite spot.”

“What on earth he wants to sit there for—­away from all the other children!  He never plays.  Look at him!  Just sitting there—­not moving.  How stupid!” exclaimed Miss Eva impatiently.

“I do declare, I believe he’s fallen asleep,” said Miss Nellie.

Freddy was not asleep.  He had only to close his eyes and it would all come back to him.  Memories that he could not put into words, sensations without definite thought, crowded in upon him.  The smell—­the thick smell of grease paint, choking powder, dust, gas, old walls, bodies, and breath, and sharp perfume; the sickening, delicious, stale, enchanting, never-to-be-forgotten odour of the theatre; the nerves’ sudden tension at the cry of “Ov-a-chure”; their tingling as the jaded music blares; the lift of the heart as the curtain rises; the catch in the throat as Florette runs on to do her turn.

Florette was a performer on the trapeze in vaudeville.  Her figure was perfect from the strenuous daily exercise.  She was small, young, and a shade too blonde.  First she appeared in a sort of blue evening dress, except that it was shorter even than a d butante’s.  She ran out quickly from the wings, bowed excessively, smiled appealingly, and, skipping over to the trapeze, seized the two iron rings that hung from ropes.  Lifting her own weight by the strength in her slender wrists, she flung her legs upward and hooked her knees into the rings.  Then hanging head downward she swung back and forth; flung herself upright again, sat and swung; climbed to the topmost bar of the trapeze and hung down again.  Her partner ran on and repeated her monkeylike manoeuvres.  Then Florette held his hands while he swung upside down, he held Florette while she swung upside down.  They turned head over heels, over and over each other, up and down, catching and slipping, and adjusting their balance, in time to gay tunes.

Sometimes the audience clapped.  Sometimes they were too familiar with their kind of flirtation with death to clap.  Then Florette and her partner would invent something a little more daring.  They would learn to balance themselves on chairs tilted on two legs on the trapeze, or Florette would hang by only one hand, or she would support her partner by a strap held in her teeth.  Sometimes Florette’s risks were great enough to thrill the audience with the thought of death.