“You were such a strange little boy.  Besides, you remember them too.”

“That’s different.  I’ve never had anyone else——­” He caught himself up.  “I suppose you think I’m still bragging?”

“You never bragged.  You always did what you said you were going to do—­even stupid things, like climbing that old wall.”

So she had seen him, after all.  She had watched—­perhaps a little frightened for him, a little impressed by his reckless daring.

“Oh, well, I admit it didn’t seem likely.  People think you have to have a lot of money.  We’ve often laughed about it.  For we hadn’t anything except what we saved from week to week.  And yet we’ve done it.  You can do anything so long as you don’t mind what you do.  It depends on the stuff you’re made of.”

He threw his head up and walked freely, with open shoulders.  After all, he was proud of those years, and had a right to be.  They had tested every inch of him, and it would have been stupid to pretend that he did not know his own mettle.  He heard his footsteps ring out through the fitful whimpering of the wind and they seemed to mark the rhythm of his life—­a steady, resolute progression.  The lighter fall of Francey Wilmot’s feet beside him was like an echo.  But yet it had its own quality.  Not less resolute.

He heard her say quickly, almost to herself: 

“It must have been hard going—­but awfully worth while.  An adventure.  I can’t be sorry for anyone who suffers on an adventure—­any sort of adventure—­even if it’s only in oneself.”

She was more moved than he could understand.  But the wind, dashed with ice-cold rain, blew them closer to one another.  He could feel the warmth of her arm against his.  It was difficult to seem prosaic and casual.

“That’s just it.  Worth while.  Why do people want ‘chances’ and ‘equality’ and things made smooth for them?  What’s the use of anything if there isn’t a top and a bottom to it?  What’s the use of having enough to eat if you haven’t been hungry?  I’m going to be a doctor, and I might have slumped into the gutter.  I’m jolly glad there is a gutter to slump into——­” He broke off, and then went on more deliberately.  “Christine and I mapped it out one night when I was ten years old.  After school hours I used to run errands and sell newspapers.  On half-holidays I went down into the West End and hunted taxis for people coming out of theatres.  I took my exams and scholarship one after the other.  We counted on that.  I kept on earning in one way or another all through my first M.B. and during the two years I’ve walked the Wards.  Now I’ve had to drop out for a bit to make enough to carry through my finals.  Christine’s illness was the only thing we hadn’t reckoned with.”

Her voice had an odd, troubling huskiness.

“You must be frightfully strong.  But then you always were.  You used to beat everyone——­”