"You don't want—don't want to go to the Circus?"
"I don't like Circuses."
The big man stared down at the white set face gazing stolidly back at him over the wooded ledge. He tossed the coin indignantly across.
"Well, of all the unnatural, ungrateful young jackanapes——"
But he was so astonished that he had to lean out of his box and watch the blasphemer—a quaint figure, bowed as though under a heavy burden, its hands thrust hard into its trousers pockets—stalk away from the great tent and without so much as a backward glance lose itself among the crowd.
PART II
I
1
They came to an idle halt near Cleopatra's needle, and leaning against the Embankment wall, looked across the river to the warehouses opposite, which, in the evening mist, had the look of stark cliffs guarded by a solitary watchful lion. The smaller of the two young men took off his soft hat and set it beside him so that he could let the wind brush through his thick red hair. He held himself very straight, his slender body taut with solemn exultation.
"If only one could do something with it," he said; "eat it—hug it—get inside of it somehow—belong to it. It hurts—this gaping like an outsider. Look now—one shade of purple upon another. Isn't it unendurably beautiful? But if one could write a sonnet—or a sonata—or paint a picture—— That's where the real artist has the pull over us poor devils who can only feel things. He wouldn't just stand here. He'd get out his fountain pen or his paint-box and make it all his for ever and ever. Think of Whistler now—what he would do with it."