"Gyp Labelle," he said drowsily, "Gyp Labelle!"
Robert knew that he was thinking of the Circus. And he did not want to
think about the Circus. He pushed the memory from him. He was glad
when Howard said gravely:
"That's genius. That's what we poor devils pray to and pray for. We
know we haven't got it, but we're always hoping that if we agonize and
sweat long enough, one day God will lean out of His cloud and touch us
with His finger."
"Michael Angelo," said Gertie Sumners, with a kind of sombre triumph.
"The Sistine Chapel. I've got a print of it in my room. That's where
you saw it." She leaned back against a tree trunk with her knees drawn
up to her chin, and blew out clouds of smoke, and looked more than
usually grey and dishevelled and in need of a bath. "In a way it's
like that with Jeffries. He rubs his beastly old thumb over my
rottenest charcoal sketch, and it's a masterpiece."
Robert, lying outstretched at Francey's feet, wondered at them--at
their talk of genius in connection with a revue star and a smudgy,
underpaid studio hack, more still at their reverence for a God in Whom
they certainly did not believe.
Miss Edwards snatched off her cartwheel hat smothered with impossible
poppies, and sent it spinning down the hill.
"What's the good?" she demanded fiercely. "We're just nothing at all.
We're young now. But when we aren't young, what's going to happen to
the bunch of us?"
"This is a picnic," Howard reminded her.
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