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.