to have a look at it, and that you would say to yourself:
'Why, there's Francey, after all! I'll go in----'"

But they both drew back instinctively. He blundered into a hurried
question. The Gang? What had happened to them all? It seemed that
Gertie still lived, defying medical opinion and apparently feeding her
starved spirit on the treasures of the Vatican. Howard, who had become
a very bad artist and lived on selling copies of the masterpieces to
tourists, looked after her.

"But they're not married," Francey said. "Just friends."

He said humbly:

"Well, he's been awfully decent to her."

As to the rest, no one knew what had become of them.

"And you've done splendidly, Robert, better than any of us."

"I've been a failure," he answered, "a rotten failure!"

She accepted the statement gravely, without protest, and that sincerity
was like a skilled hand on a wound. It brought comfort where a
fumbling kindness would have been unendurable. It made him strangely,
deeply happy to know that she would see too that he had failed. "I've
never had pity on anyone--not even myself--I've learnt nothing that
matters."

For a while they sat silent, looking into the fire, like people who are
waiting and preparing themselves for some great event. And presently,
without moving, in an undertone he began to tell her about the Marie
Dubois who had died, and how he had seen her long ago at the Circus,
his first and only circus. He told her about the Circus itself. He
did not choose his words, but stammered and fumbled and jumped from one
thing to another. He opened his heart and took out whatever he found
there, and showed it to her very humbly, just as it was. It seemed
certain and imperative that after a little while they should both see
the pattern of it all. He told her about his love for his dead mother,
and how his father had died and had come back, haunting him in his
sleep.

Then he remembered something he had never thought of before--how he had
looked up at the window of the room where his father was lying dead,
and had wanted to run--run fast.

"But I think I've lived in that dark house all my life," he said, "and
I've gone about in it, blustering and swaggering and being hard and
strong because I was so desperately afraid--of life, of caring too
much, of failing. And now--I've come out."

And then he began to tremble all over and suddenly he was crying
helplessly.

She knelt beside him. She d