inartistic. I meant--because it was cruel."

He smiled.

"Cruel? Do you mean to the hunchback?"

"I mean---- Of course the man himself was quite indifferent; no doubt,
it is to him just a way of getting a living, like the circus-rider's
way or the columbine's. But the thing makes one feel unhappy. It is
humiliating; it is the degradation of a human being."

"He probably is not any more degraded than he was to start with. Most of
us are degraded in one way or another."

"Yes; but this--I dare say you will think it an absurd prejudice; but
a human body, to me, is a sacred thing; I don't like to see it treated
irreverently and made hideous."

"And a human soul?"

He had stopped short, and was standing with one hand on the stone
balustrade of the embankment, looking straight at her.

"A soul?" she repeated, stopping in her turn to look at him in wonder.

He flung out both hands with a sudden, passionate gesture.

"Has it never occurred to you that that miserable clown may have a
soul--a living, struggling, human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk
of a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so tender-hearted to
everything--you that pity the body in its fool's dress and bells--have
you never thought of the wretched soul that has not even motley to cover
its horrible nakedness? Think of it shivering with cold, stilled with
shame and misery, before all those people--feeling their jeers that cut
like a whip--their laughter, that burns like red-hot iron on the bare
flesh! Think of it looking round--so helpless before them all--for the
mountains that will not fall on it--for the rocks that have not the
heart to cover it--envying the rats that can creep into some hole in the
earth and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb--it has no voice to cry
out--it must endure, and endure, and endure. Oh! I'm talking nonsense!
Why on earth don't you laugh? You have no sense of humour!"

Slowly and in dead silence she turned and walked on along the river
side. During the whole evening it had not once occurred to her to
connect his trouble, whatever it might be, with the variety show; and
now that some dim picture of his inner life had been revealed to her by
this sudden outburst, she could not find, in her overwhelming pity for
him, one word to say. He walked on beside her, with his head turned
away, and looked into the water.

"I want you, please, to understand," he began suddenly, turning to her
with a defiant air, "