ing to forget him;
I could have, till it was too late. You can go home now and feel quite
easy; you've done your job. There's to be no new life for me, or Thomas,
or Lucy, or Francesco--only the same old emptiness. The same old ... oh,
damn!"

Peter, who never swore, that ugly violence being repugnant to his nature,
swore now, and woke Francesco, who put up his head to lick his friend's
face. But Peter pushed him away, surprising him violently, and caught at
his half-filled bag and snatched at the contents and flung them on the
top of one another on the floor. They lay in a jumbled chaos--Thomas's
clothes and Peter's socks and razor and Thomas's rabbit and Peter's
books; and Francesco snuffled among them and tossed them about, thinking
it a new game.

"Go away now." Peter flung out the words like another oath. "Go away to
your poverty which you like, and leave us to ours which we hate. There's
no more left for you to take away from us; it's all gone. Unless you'd
like me to throw Thomas out of the window, since you think breakages are
so good."

Rodney merely said, "I'm not going away just yet. Could you let me stay
here for the night and sleep on the sofa? It's late to go back to-night."

"Sleep where you like," said Peter. "There's the bed. I don't want it."

But Rodney stretched himself instead on the horse-hair sofa. He said no
more, knowing that the time for words was past. He lay tired and quiet,
with closed eyes, knowing how Peter and the other disreputable forsaken
outcast sat together huddled on the floor through the dim night, till the
dawn looked palely in and showed them both fallen asleep, Peter's head
resting on Francesco's yellow back.

It was Rodney who got up stiffly from his hard resting-place in the dark
unlovely morning, and made tea over Peter's spirit-lamp for both of them.
Peter woke later, and drank it mechanically. Then he looked at Rodney and
said, "I'm horribly stiff. Why did neither of us go to bed?" He was pale
and heavy-eyed, and violent no more, but very quiet and tired, as if,
accepting, he was sinking deep in grey and cold seas, that numbed
resistance and drowned words.

The milk came in, and Peter gave Thomas to drink; and on the heels of the
milk came the post, and a letter for Peter.

"I suppose," said Peter dully, as he opened it, "she too has found out
that it can't be done."

The letter said: "Peter, we can't do it. I am horribly, horribly sorry,
but I know it now for ce