“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.

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