“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.