'Can't you laugh at yourself?'
'Laugh! Dear God, I do nothing else.'
'I mean—happily. You wouldn't be you if you didn't make mistakes—to learn. You had to learn more about your work than just the tricks of it. Isn't it so? You despise acting. But it is just the same there. I wanted to learn more about it than the tricks.'
'Ay, that's it; to learn the tricks and keep decent. That is what one stands out for.'
Clara held out her hand to him,—
'Very well, then. We understand each other and there is nothing so very terrible in my being at the Imperium. Is there?'
He held her hand. She wanted him to draw her to him, to hold her close to him, to comfort him for all that he had lost; but once again he was governed by his humility, and he just bowed low, and thanked her warmly for her generosity in giving so poor a devil as himself so exquisite a day.
Nothing was said about another meeting. As he took her down the stairs the door of the flat below was opened and a woman's face peeped out. Near the bottom of the stairs they met a man in a tail coat and top hat who sidled past them, took off his hat and held it in front of his face, but before he did so Clara had recognised Mr Cumberland, erstwhile Mr Clott.
'Does that man live here?' she asked Rodd at the door.
Rodd looked up the stairs.