“That’s genius.  That’s what we poor devils pray to and pray for.  We know we haven’t got it, but we’re always hoping that if we agonize and sweat long enough, one day God will lean out of His cloud and touch us with His finger.”

“Michael Angelo,” said Gertie Sumners, with a kind of sombre triumph.  “The Sistine Chapel.  I’ve got a print of it in my room.  That’s where you saw it.”  She leaned back against a tree trunk with her knees drawn up to her chin, and blew out clouds of smoke, and looked more than usually grey and dishevelled and in need of a bath.  “In a way it’s like that with Jeffries.  He rubs his beastly old thumb over my rottenest charcoal sketch, and it’s a masterpiece.”

Robert, lying outstretched at Francey’s feet, wondered at them—­at their talk of genius in connection with a revue star and a smudgy, underpaid studio hack, more still at their reverence for a God in Whom they certainly did not believe.

Miss Edwards snatched off her cartwheel hat smothered with impossible poppies, and sent it spinning down the hill.

“What’s the good?” she demanded fiercely.  “We’re just nothing at all.  We’re young now.  But when we aren’t young, what’s going to happen to the bunch of us?”

“This is a picnic,” Howard reminded her.  “Not a funeral.  You haven’t eaten enough.  Have a pickle.”

But the shadow lingered.  It was like the shadow thrown by the white clouds riding the light spring wind.  It put out the naming colours of the grass and flowers.  It was as though winter, slinking sullenly to its lair, showed its teeth at them in sinister reminder.  Then it was gone.  It was difficult to believe it could return.

Robert looked up shyly into Francey’s face, and she smiled down at him with her warm eyes.  They had scarcely spoken to one another, but something delicate and exquisite had been born between them in their silence.  He was afraid to touch it, and afraid almost to move.  He felt very close to her, very sure that she was living with him, withdrawn secretly from the rest into the strange world that he had discovered.  He was happy.  And happiness like this was new to him and terrifying.  He was like a waif from the streets, pale and gaunt and young, with dazzled eyes gazing for the first time into great distances.

“Italy——­” Gertie Sumners muttered.  She threw away her cigarette, and sat with her sickly face between her hands.  “I’ve got to get there before I die.  Think of all the swine that hoof about the Sistine Chapel yawning their fat heads off, and me who’d give my immortal soul for an hour——­”

“You’ll go,” Howard said, blinking kindly at her.  “I’ll take you.  We’ll get out of this for good and all.  I’ll bust a bank or forge a cheque.  You’ve got the divine right to go, old dear!”