“You see, I can’t tell anyone at home about her.  It’s not as though she were even what people call a lady. (Oh, I’m perfectly sane—­I don’t humbug myself.) Mother’d have a fit, and the Pater only looks at that kind of thing in one way—­his own particularly disgusting way.  She drops her aitches sometimes.  But she’s good, and she’s pretty as a flower.  I met her at a dance club.  I’d never been to such a place before.  And then one evening it suddenly came over me that I wanted to be among a lot of people who were having a good time.  So I plunged.  You pay sixpence, you know, and everybody dances with everybody.  Of course I can’t dance.  She saw me hanging round and looking glum, I suppose, and she was nice to me.  She taught me a few steps, and I told her about the exam, and how worried I was about it, and we became friends.  I’ve never had a girl-friend before.  It’s amazing.  And she’s different, anyway——­ She’s on the stage—­in the chorus to begin with—­but you’d think they’d given her a lead, she’s so happy about it.  That’s what I love about her.  Everything seems jolly to her.  She enjoys things like a kid—­a ’bus ride, a cinema, our little suppers together.  She loves just being alive, you know.  It’s extraordinary—­I say, are you listening, Stonehouse?”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to listen.  I thought you wanted to talk.  I was thinking of an operation I saw once—­you wouldn’t understand—­it was a ticklish job, and the man lost his head.  He tried to hide it, but I knew, and he saw I knew.  A man like that oughtn’t to operate.”

“And did the other fellow die?”

“Oh, yes.  But he would have died anyway, probably.  It wasn’t that that mattered.  It was losing his nerve like that.”

“If I saw an operation,” Cosgrave said humbly, “I should be sick.”

Stonehouse had not heard.  They reached the bridge in silence, and under a street lamp stopped to take leave of one another.  It was their customary walk and the customary ending, and each wondered in his different way how it was that they should always want to meet and to talk to one another of things that only one of them could understand.

“Why does he bother with me?” Cosgrave thought.

But he was sorry for Robert, partly because he guessed that he was hungry and partly because he knew that he was not in love.

“I wish you’d come along too,” he said a little breathlessly; “I want you to meet her, you know—­for us all to be friends together—­just a quiet supper—­and my treat, of course.”

It was very transparent.  He tried to look up at his companion boldly and innocently.  But the light from the street lamp fell into his strange blue eyes, with their look of young and anxious hopefulness, and made them blink.  Robert Stonehouse laughed.  He knew what was in Cosgrave’s mind, and it seemed to him half comic and half pathetic and rather irritating.