“What then?”

“Do you think no one would stick to you—stick to you for yourself?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Who, then?”

“Quite several old ladies. It’s very strange, but old ladies of a certain class—the almost obsolete class that wears caps and connects piety with black brocade—like me. They think me ‘a bright young thing.’ And so I am.”

“I don’t know what you are. Sometimes I seem to divine what you are, and then—then your face is like a cloud which obscures you—except when you are singing.”

She laughed frankly.

“Poor Robin! It was always your great fault—trying to plumb shallows and to take high dives into water half a foot deep.”

He was silent for a minute. At last he said:

“And your husband?”