plot again. Even though
he had made the great renunciation he could not help hoping. It was the
kind of hope that, when one is very young, follows on the heels of
absolute despair, and is based on magical impossibilities. It was like
his birthday hopes, which had been known to rise triumphant above the most
obvious and discouraging facts. After all there was to-morrow. He would
tell Christine everything--open his heart to her as to a good and
understanding friend--and she would give him six-pence so that he could
stand in the cheap places, or perhaps a shilling so that he could go
twice. He would tell her how he had saved Cosgrave from a fearful row,
and she would approve of him and sympathize with Cosgrave, who had such
beastly, understanding people.

He would hug her and say;

"It's jolly to have someone like you, Christine!"

And she would be enormously pleased, and in the dusk they would sit close
together and he would tell her of his superb being who changed the course
of his life, who was like his mother and Francey and God rolled into one,
and for whose sake he had emptied the housekeeping purse.

Perhaps it would all have happened just as he planned it, could it have
happened then and there. But the front door was closed and he had to wait
a long time for the landlady's heavy answering tread. When she came at
last it was from upstairs--he could tell by her breathing and a familiar
creak--and a cold dead hand laid itself on his heart and squeezed the hope
out of it. They had been talking about him--those two grown-up people.
He knew the kind of things they had said: "It's very tiresome of him to be
out so late, Mrs. Withers," and, "Boys is worritting, outrageous critters,
M'am," and the cruel impossibility of reaching their far-off impervious
understanding lamed him before the door had opened.

Mrs. Withers' lumpy figure loomed up grotesquely against the yellow murk.

"Is that you, Master Robert? You'd better run up quick. Your aunt is
going to give you a jacketing, I can tell you."

"Aunt" was the term with which Mrs. Withers covered up what she considered
privately to be an ambiguous relationship.

Robert slunk past her. He crawled upstairs with an aggressive
deliberation. He would show how much he cared. He was not afraid of
Christine. He had seen her unhappy too often. In a way he knew that he
was stronger than she was. For she was old and had no one to love but
himself.

All the s