Mr. Ricardo rose noiselessly.  He looked at no one.  He passed them like a ghost.  They heard him creeping down the stairs and his hurrying, unequal footsteps on the empty street.  Cosgrave and Connie Edwards nodded to one another and took hands and were gone.  Francey, too, slipped to her feet.  She gathered up her hat and coat, her silence effortless.  She did not so much as glance at Robert, but at the head of the steep, ladder-like stairs he overtook her.

“Francey—­listen——­”

With one foot on the lower step, her back against the wall, she waited for him.  It was too dark for them to see each other clearly.  They were shadows to one another.  They spoke in whispers, as though they were afraid of waking something more than the sleeper in the room behind them.  He could not have told how he knew that her face was wet.

“I wanted to say—­I don’t know why I behaved like that.  I’m not usually—­nervy—­uncontrolled.  I don’t think I’ve ever lost my temper before.  I’ve had so little to do with people.  Perhaps that’s it.  I’ve gone my own way alone——­”

“And now that our ways have crossed,” she began with a sad irony.

“No—­not crossed—­come together—­run out together into the high-road——­” He clenched his hands till they were bloodless in the effort to speak.  “You see, a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have lost my temper—­and I wouldn’t have said queer, silly things like this——­ I’m a sort of kaleidoscope that someone’s shaken up.  I don’t know myself; things have been hard—­but awfully simple.  I’ve only thought of—­wanted—­the one thing.  It doesn’t seem to me that I’ve had to fight until now.  You don’t understand—­what it has been——­”

“I do—­I do!” she interrupted hurriedly.  “I’ve seen Christine—­and the way you live—­and that dreadful cupboard.  Oh, I’m not sorry for you—­only afraid.  You’re nothing but a boy——­”

“You needn’t be afraid.  I’ll pull through.  It’s only another year now.  But I can’t be like the other people you know—­who can be jolly and easy-going—­because they’re not going anywhere at all.  Can’t you be patient, Francey?”

“Was I impatient?” He felt her humour flicker up like a flame in the darkness.  “I suppose I was.  It was the jam-puff.  You hurt their feelings.  And it was such a little thing.”

“I hate jam-puffs,” he said, but humbly, because it was not the truth, and he could never explain.

“Come with us, Robert.”

“I can’t.”

“But you want to come?”

“That’s just it.  I don’t know why.  It would be waste of time—­money—­everything—­all wrong.  What have I to do with Howard and that lot—­with girls like Connie Edwards?”

“—­and me,” she added, smiling to herself.

“Or you with them?”

“Oh, they’re my friends.  As you say, they’re not going anywhere—­just dawdling along and picking up things by the wayside—­queer, interesting things——­”