y. "We're just nothing at all.
We're young now. But when we aren't young, what's going to happen to
the bunch of us?"

"This is a picnic," Howard reminded her. "Not a funeral. You haven't
eaten enough. Have a pickle."

But the shadow lingered. It was like the shadow thrown by the white
clouds riding the light spring wind. It put out the naming colours of
the grass and flowers. It was as though winter, slinking sullenly to
its lair, showed its teeth at them in sinister reminder. Then it was
gone. It was difficult to believe it could return.

Robert looked up shyly into Francey's face, and she smiled down at him
with her warm eyes. They had scarcely spoken to one another, but
something delicate and exquisite had been born between them in their
silence. He was afraid to touch it, and afraid almost to move. He
felt very close to her, very sure that she was living with him,
withdrawn secretly from the rest into the strange world that he had
discovered. He was happy. And happiness like this was new to him and
terrifying. He was like a waif from the streets, pale and gaunt and
young, with dazzled eyes gazing for the first time into great distances.

"Italy----" Gertie Sumners muttered. She threw away her cigarette, and
sat with her sickly face between her hands. "I've got to get there
before I die. Think of all the swine that hoof about the Sistine
Chapel yawning their fat heads off, and me who'd give my immortal soul
for an hour----"

"You'll go," Howard said, blinking kindly at her. "I'll take you.
We'll get out of this for good and all. I'll bust a bank or forge a
cheque. You've got the divine right to go, old dear!"

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.)