d good times always--but per'aps they were ze best of
all. Ah, ze good old Circus--ze jolly life--one big family--monkeys
and bears and camels and elephants and we poor 'umans, all shapes and
sizes, long legs and short legs and no legs--loving and
quarrelling--good friends always--Monsieur George with 'is big whip and
'is silly soft 'eart--ze gay dinners after we 'ave 'ad full 'ouse and
ze no dinners at all when things go bad--and then ze journeys from town
to town--sometimes it rain all day and sometimes it is so hot and the
dust rise up and smother us. But always when we come near ze town we
brighten up, we pretend we are not tired at all. We make jokes and
wonder what it will be like 'ere. Always new faces--new streets--new
policemen--and always ze same too--ze long procession and ze
torchlights and ze music and ze people running like leetle streams down
ze side streets to join up and march along--ze leetle boys and girls
with bright eyes--shouting and waving, so glad to see us."

It was not much that she said, and she did not say it to them. She
disregarded them all, and yet by some magic, through the medium of the
jerky, empty sentences she made them see the vulgar, gaudy thing as she
was seeing it. The subdued music, the tinkling of plates and glasses,
they themselves made a background for her swift picture. They watched
it--the old third-rate circus--trail its cheap glitter and flare and
bang out of darkness and across the stage and into darkness
again--tawdry and sordid, and yet kindly and gay and gallant-hearted
too.

Robert Stonehouse stared heavily in front of him. He had drunk--not
much, but too much. He was not accustomed to drinking. The very
austerity of his life betrayed him. These people too--these
women--half-naked with their feverish, restless eyes--these men with
their air of cynical and weary knowledge--were getting on his nerves.
He wished he had not come. He wished he had not reminded her of that
accursed circus, for it had involved remembering. He had called up a
little old tune that would not be easily forgotten, that would go on
grinding itself round and round inside his brain, and when he had
chased it out would come back, popping out at him, bringing other
small, pale ghosts to bear it company. He could see Cosgrave and
himself--the little boys with bright eyes--and feel the reverberations
of their astonishment, their incredulous delight. For a moment they
had held fast to th