He was shivering as if with bitter cold.  His teeth chattered in his head.  He caught a ghost-like glimpse of a boy in the glass opposite—­a strange, unfamiliar figure with a white, tear-stained face and haggard eyes and fair hair all on end.

“Oh, Christine—­I’m frightened!”

“You think money must come from somewhere.  Something will turn up.  That was what your father used to say.  He was so hopeful.  It wasn’t possible that it shouldn’t turn up.  But I was younger and stronger then—­I can’t begin again.—­I can’t—­I can’t.  If you’re not good, Robert, I can’t go on.”

“I will be good.  I won’t tell lies.  I won’t spend money ever again.  I won’t love anyone but you.  I won’t be a doctor; I’ll be something cheap—­now.”

He had forgotten the photographs.  He still held them in one tight-clenched hand.  But she had seen them.  And all at once she braced herself although to meet an implacable enemy.  She was not tender any more.  She was the Christine who had faced bailiffs and his father’s strange, gay friends—­ice-cold and bitter and relentless.  She took the pictures from him.  With a terrible ironic calm she sorted them from his pockets, and spread them out on the table like a pack of cards.  He dared not look at her.  He was afraid to see what she was seeing.  She had torn open the door of his secret chamber, and there in that blasting light was his treasure, naked, defenceless.  He could have cried out in his dread, “Only don’t say anything—­don’t say anything!”

“So that’s what you liked so much, Robert—­that’s what you spent the money on.  It’s the old story—­beginning again—­only worse.”  She added, almost to herself: 

“A vulgar, common woman.”

She put her face between her hands.  He could hear her quiet crying.  It was awful.  His love for her was a torture.  Because she was not wonderful at all but human and pitiful like himself, he felt her grief like a knife turning and turning in his own heart.  But he could not comfort her.  He could only stare aghast at that row of faces—­grinning, smirking, arrogant, insolent faces.

It was true.  The jolly lights had been turned out.  The band had stopped playing.

A vulgar, common woman!

* * * * *

He stood with his back to the Circus entrance where he could smell the sawdust and hear the hum of the audience crowding into their seats.  The invisible band gave funny noises like a man clearing his throat.  There was still a number of people coming in—­some strolling idly, others pulled along by their excited charges.  It was queer, Robert thought, that they should be excited.  The smell of the sawdust made him feel rather sick.

He gave out his last handbill.  Nobody noticed him.  They took the slip of paper which he thrust into their hands without looking at him.  He went and stood at the box-office where the big man in riding boots was counting out his money.  It was a high box-office, so that Robert had to stand on tip-toe to be seen.