Before all the others he was conscious of pose.

Jane, with her cockney common-sense, her shrewdness, her outspoken criticism of follies, her unfailing sympathy in essentials, was welded into the very structure of his being.

Only when he had lost her did he realize this.

Amidst all the artificialities and pretences and pseudo-emotionalities of his young actor's life, she was the one thing that was real.

She alone knew of Bludston, of Barney Bill, of the model days the memory of which made him shiver.