He saw then that she did not mind at all the fact that she had once
been a circus-clown. Rather he had tossed her a memory on which she
feasted joyfully, almost greedily. She pushed her plate and glass away
from her, and sat with her face between her hands.

"Well--I 'ave 'ad good times always--but per'aps they were ze best of
all. Ah, ze good old Circus--ze jolly life--one big family--monkeys
and bears and camels and elephants and we poor 'umans, all shapes and
sizes, long legs and short legs and no legs--loving and
quarrelling--good friends always--Monsieur George with 'is big whip and
'is silly soft 'eart--ze gay dinners after we 'ave 'ad full 'ouse and
ze no dinners at all when things go bad--and then ze journeys from town
to town--sometimes it rain all day and sometimes it is so hot and the
dust rise up and smother us. But always when we come near ze town we
brighten up, we pretend we are not tired at all. We make jokes and
wonder what it will be like 'ere. Always new faces--new streets--new
policemen--and always ze same too--ze long procession and ze
torchlights and ze music and ze people running like leetle streams down
ze side streets to join up and march along--ze leetle boys and girls
with bright eyes--shouting and waving, so glad to see us."

It was not much that she said, and she did not say it to them. She
disregarded them all, and yet by some magic, through the medium of the
jerky, empty sentences she made them see the vulgar, gaudy thing as she
was seeing it. The subdued music, the tinkling of plates and glasses,
they themselves made a background for her swift picture. They watched
it--the old third-rate circus--trail its cheap glitter and flare and
bang out of darkness and across the stage and into darkness
again--tawdry and sordid, and yet kindly and gay and gallant-hearted
too.