"I was beginning to get quite worried about you." He could hardly hear her. "Where have you been, Robert?"
He answered heavily, not moving from the doorway where he hung like a sullen shadow.
"At the Circus."
"Is there a Circus? Why didn't Mrs. Withers tell me? If I had known that I shouldn't have worried. I expect you were there yesterday too—and the day before, weren't you, dear?"
He nodded, and she began to bundle everything back into the drawer, as though at last a tiresome question had been satisfactorily settled.
"I knew it was all right. Mr. Ricardo was here this afternoon. He thought I was ill—he thought you had told him you couldn't come because I was ill. I said I had had to stay at home—it was easier—I knew there had been a mistake."
The old life again. They were confederates and she had lied to shield him even from herself. She was looking past him as though she saw someone standing behind him in the dark passage. He was so sure of it that he wanted to turn round. But he did not dare.
"I wish I'd known. We—we might have gone together. I used to be very fond of a good circus. Did they have elephants? Robert—Robert, dear, why didn't you tell me about it?"
He shook his head. He knew now that he could never have told her or made her understand. She would have thought him silly—or disloyal. She would never see that this new love had nothing to do with the Robert who would die if Christine left him. It had to do with another boy who longed for bands and processions and worshipped happy, splendid people who did not have to tell lies and who were so strong and fearless that even fierce animals had to obey them. They were different. They did not live in the same life. You could love them without pain or pity.
It was a secret thing, inside himself. If he tried to drag it out and show it her, no one could tell what would happen to it.