He spoke cynically, bitterly.  She grasped at his sleeve, as though she would pull him back.

“Oh—­,” she gasped.

“D-don’t keep s-saying ‘Oh’ like that!” he cried impatiently.  “S-say s-something s-sensible.”

“Does your mother know all about the way you live?” she asked desperately.

“I told her.  I enjoyed letting her know what they drove me to.  But she doesn’t understand.  They don’t ever understand, these easy, half-alive, untempted folks!  She’s never been away from a world of afternoon calls, broughams and shopping!  I tell her I’m a beer-bum—­yes, that’s the word for it in Australia!  Not a pretty word—­not a pretty thing either!  I gave the Mater and Pater a picture of myself once—­broken shoes tied on with string, trousers tied on with a bit of rope because I’d sold my braces for threepence—­slinking along in the gutter outside the Theatre Royal picking up cigarette ends that had been thrown away!  Counter lunches!  D’you know what counter lunches are?”

She shook her head.  It seemed as though he were trying to shock her, as he piled on his miseries to her.

“Three times a day the hotel keeper in Australia covers his counter in all sorts of food—­cold meat, bread, cheese, pickles, cakes—­oh, just everything there is going.  He doesn’t want you to go out to get food, you see, and perhaps get caught by some other pub.  You don’t have to pay.  You just eat what you like, so long as you go on buying drinks or having them bought for you.  There’s a lot more there to eat than you want.  You don’t want much when you’re boozing.  I lived on counter lunches once—­crayfish and celery mostly, with vinegar and cayenne—­for four months.  I spent not a single penny on food the whole time.  Then I nearly died in hospital.  They had me in the padded cell for three days.”

“Were you mad?” she whispered, wishing he would tell her no more, but fascinated by the horror of it all, the pity of it.  “I think you are mad, really, even now—­talking like this, almost as if you’re proud of it.”

“No, I’m not mad—­only the usual pink rat sort of madness.  The thing’s obvious,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.  It was not obvious to her; he had put her into a maelstrom of puzzles, but she did not tell him so.  She preferred to think it out for herself.  But suddenly she coupled her little broken arm and the barrel as effect and cause.

He went on muttering.  She had great difficulty in hearing all he said.

“At night, at kicking out time, you can hang on, sometimes, to a man with some cash and get asked to kip with him for the night.  You can get a bed for a shilling a night in many places.  It isn’t a feather-bed.  If there is no Good Samaritan about you go and lie down in the Domain—­that’s the public park, you know—­praying to whatever gods there be that it won’t rain.  You never get a decent wash, and as soon as the hotels are open at six o’clock you start again—­if you can get the entrance fee.  If you haven’t, you cadge round till you have.”