sually pensive and philosophic
mood--a trifle wide-eyed and even awe-struck. It seemed that the night
before the "French dame" had appeared unexpectedly during a
rehearsal--a peculiarly gingerless performance according to Connie's
account--and had watched from the wings awhile, and then, unasked and
apparently without premeditation, had broken in among them and at the
edge of the footlights, to a gaping, empty theatre, had danced and sung
a little song.

"A French song," Connie said solemnly. "Not a word of the blessed
thing could we understand, and yet we were all hugging ourselves. Not
pretty either--a mere bone and a yank of hair--and no more voice than a
sparrow. But you just went along too. Couldn't help it. And
afterwards we played up as though we liked it, and hadn't been plugging
at the rottenest show in England for the last ten weeks. And she
laughed and clapped her hands, and our tongues hung out we were that
pleased. She's It, friends. It. Gyp Labelle from the Folies Bergeres
and absolutely It."

Rufus Cosgrave rolled over on his face and lay blinking out of the long
grass like a sleepy, red-headed satyr.

"Gyp Labelle," he said drowsily, "Gyp Labelle!"

Robert knew that he was thinking of the Circus. And he did not want to
think about the Circus. He pushed the memory from him. He was glad
when Howard said gravely:

"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 fiercel