'I swear I will not. I swear it. It is finished. All that is over.... I don't know how I shall ever begin again. Perhaps I shall not.... All last night I was struggling to get away from it, to avoid facing it.... They're all mean and ignoble and pitiful; brain-sick most of them; and not fit to live in the same world as you. They're not fit to be exhibited on the public stage, these poor nervous little modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts, clever and helpless, rotting in inaction.... No. It has been all wrong. I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend.... I think I knew it in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me.... I'm not fit to live in the same world as you. I ought not to have seen you to-day....' '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. 'No-o,' he said. 'No. I think I have seen him before, but there are many people living in the house. Strange people. They come and go, but I sit there in my room upstairs gazing at the tree-tops, working....' 'You should get in touch with the theatre,' said Clara; 'swallow your scruples, and find out that we are not so very bad after all.' They stood for some moments on the wide doorstep. It was night now and the lamps were lit. Lovers strolled by under the trees, and against the railings of the garden opposite couples were locked together. 'You turn an August day into Spring,' said Rodd.