it, as he felt it now
beneath this stilted exchange, was to become aware of a dull, stupid
pain. He found himself staring over the heads of the people, and wishing
that Cosgrave had never come back. And Cosgrave said gently, as though
he had read his thought and had made up his mind to have done with
insincerities:

"You're not to bother about me, Robert. It's been jolly, seeing you
again and all that, but we'd better let it end here. It always puzzled
me--your caring, you know, about a hapless fellow like myself. It's
against your real principles. I'm a dead weight. I couldn't give anyone
a solitary water-tight reason for my being alive. I think you did it
because you'd got your teeth into me by accident and couldn't let go. I
don't want you to get your teeth into me again."

"I don't believe," Stonehouse said, with an impatient laugh, "that I ever
let go at all."

His attention fixed itself on the illuminated sign that hung from the
portico of the Olympic Theatre opposite, and mechanically he began to
spell out the flaming letters:

"Gyp Labelle--Gyp Labelle!" At first the name scarcely reached his
consciousness, but in some strange way it focused his disquiet. It was
as though for a long time past he too had been indefinitely ill, and now
at an exasperating touch the poisoned blood rushed to a head of pain. He
felt Cosgrave plucking at his sleeve, fretfully like a sick child, raised
to a sudden interest.

"I say, Stonehouse, don't you remember?"

"The Circus? Yes, I was just thinking about it. It's not likely to be
the same though."

"Why not? She was a nailer. Oh--but you didn't think so, did you? It
was the woman on the horse--the big barmaid person--I forget her
name--Madame--Madame----"

It was ridiculous--but even now it annoyed him to be reminded of her
essential vulgarity. There was a glamour--almost a halo about her memory
because of all that he had felt for her. A silly boy's passion. But he
would never feel like that again.

"Well, she could ride, anyhow. I don't know what your long-legged
favourite was good for."

"She made me laugh," Cosgrave said. He asked after a moment: "Have you
ever wanted anything so much as you wanted to go to that Circus,
Stonehouse?"

"Oh, yes--crowds of things!"

"I don't believe it somehow. I know I haven't. Oh, I say, I wish I
could want again like that--anything--to get drunk--to go to the
dogs--anything in the world. It's this damnab