ing, as though a skeleton came to life and
jiggled its bones and mouthed at you, "You see, I used to do that too."
That was why you told lies to them--even to Christine.

He had forgotten his cap. The sales-boy ran after him with it and stuck
it on his thick fair hair back to front.

"There--you'll be losing your 'ead next!"

It was dusk outside. The evening performance began at once, and already a
thick black stream of people was pouring up the roped gangways and
frothing and seething at the box offices. As they came out of the
darkness they had a mystical air of suddenly returned life. They were
pilgrims' souls surging at the entrance of Paradise. In a little while
they would see her. Not that they would know what they saw. They would
not be able to understand how great, how brave and splendid she was. In
their blindness of heart they would prefer the ugly little French girl
with her shrill voice and absurd caperings; their clapping would be
half-hearted, polite, and there would be no passionate, insistent pair of
hands to beat up their flagging enthusiasm and bring her back once more
into the arena, bowing in regal scorn of them.

For he, Robert, had brought her back twice, just because he wouldn't
stop--had beaten his hands till even now they were hot and swollen. She
had not known, and he would not have had her know for the whole world.
That was part of the mystery. You yourself were as nothing.

But it did hurt intolerably to think that perhaps because he was not there
she would not be called back so often. It was as though he betrayed
her--broke his allegiance. That afternoon, when it had seemed that the
evening could never really come, he had told himself that this was the
last time; but now, standing on the dim outskirts of the crowd, the
photographs that he hadn't been able to fit into his pockets held fast in
his burning hands, he saw how impossible, how even wrong and faithless
that decision had been. So long as a shilling remained to him he had to
go, he had to take his place among her loyal people. It meant being
"found out" hopelessly and violently. They--the mysterious "they" of
authority--might destroy him utterly. That would be the most splendid
thing of all. He would have done all that he could do. He would have
laid his last tribute at her unconscious feet and gone out in fire and
thunder.

He had actually joined the box-office queue when Rufus Cosgrave found him.
Rufus had b