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.