Robert stirred, drawing himself a little nearer to Francey, touching her rough tweed skirt humbly, secretly, as a Catholic might touch a sacred relic for comfort and protection.  They were talking a language that he could not understand—–­they were occupied with things that he despised, not knowing what they were; they made him ashamed of his ignorance and angry with his shame.  He could not free himself of his first conviction that they were really the Banditti—­inferior children, who yet had something that he had not.  He was cleverer than they were.  He would be a great man when they had wilted from their brief, shallow-soiled youth to a handful of dry stubble. (This Gertie Sumners would not even live long.  He recognized already the thumb-marks of disease in her sunken cheeks.) And yet he was an outsider, blundering in their wake.  Just because they accepted him, taking it for granted he was one of them, they deepened his isolation.  He could not talk their talk.  He could not play with them.  He had tried.  The old hunger “to belong” had driven him.  But he was stiff with strength and clumsy with purpose.  If he and Francey had not belonged to one another, he would have been overwhelmed in loneliness.

He shut his ears against them.  But when she spoke he had to listen—­jealously, fearfully.

“It would be no use, Howard.  You’d come back.  You can’t strip off your nationality like an old-fashioned coat and throw it away.  All this—­isn’t it English and different from any other country in the world—­deeply, deeply different, just as we are different?  England—­she’s a human, lovely woman, quiet and broad-bosomed, busy about her home, and only sometimes, in the spring and autumn, she stops a little to dream her mystic dreams.  In the summer and winter she pretends to forget.  She’s anxious about many things—­how she shall keep us warm and fed—­a little stupid-seeming, with wells of all sorts of kindly wisdom.

“And Italy—­the saint, the austere spirit, close to God, preparing herself for God, with unspeakable visions of Him.  Where I lived”—­she made a sudden passionate gesture of delight—­“we looked over the Campagna, and there were three hills close to one another with towns perched on their crest, as far from the world and comfort as they could get.  And at night they were like the three kings with their golden crowns and dark flowing robes, waiting for God to show them the sign.

“But we build our towns in the valleys and sheltered places.  We like our trains to be punctual, and to do things in decent order.  We pretend to be a practical and reasonable people.  We’re of our soil.  In Italy what do trains matter—­or when they come and go—­when, even to those who don’t believe in Him at all, it’s only God who matters?” She laughed, shaking herself free.  “So you’ll come back, Howard—­because you’re part of all this.  You’ll always hate waiting for your train, and you’ll always be a little ashamed of your dreams.  And you’ll never be real anywhere else.”