brary the foundations of material prosperity. They owed also
their corrupt breed which, through some paradox of healing, might be
valuable to women in the mood for oblivion whom the ordinary anaesthetics
of memory had failed.

One Saturday night early in January, Arthur suggested that the two girls
should come to tea and spend the evening at the flat in Victoria. Irene
looked at Jenny, and Jenny nodded her approval of the plan.

Greycoat Gardens lay between the Army and Navy Stores and Vincent
Square. The windows at the back looked out over the playground of an
old-fashioned charity school, and the roof made a wave in that sea of
roofs visible from the studio window in Grosvenor Road. But that was ten
months ago.

When Jenny and Irene reached the Gardens, the mud-splashed January
darkness had already fallen; but for some reason the entrance-hall of
the block containing the Danbys' flat was not yet lighted up. It seemed
cavernous and chill; the stone stairs were repellent and the whole air
full of hollow warnings. Half-way up, a watery exhalation filtered
through the frosted glass of a flat's front door in a cold effulgence
which added eerily to the lifelessness of all the other doors. The
Danbys lived at the very top, and it took all Irene's powers of
persuasion to induce Jenny to complete the ascent. At last, however,
they gained their destination and immediately on the shrilling of an
electric bell walked through a narrow hall misty with the fumes of
Egyptian cigarettes. The sitting-room looked cosy with its deep crimson
paper and fireglow and big arm-chairs heaped with downy cushions. Yet
the atmosphere had the sickly oppression of an opiate, and it did not
take Jenny long to pull back the purple velvet curtains and throw open
the window to the raw winter night.

"It's like being in a bottle of port in this room. Phew! I shall have a
most shocking headache soon," she prophesied.

"Won't you leave your coats and things in my room?" said Jack Danby.

"That's not such a dusty idea. Come on, young Ireen."

The two girls followed their host to his room which was hung with rose
du Barri draperies prodigally braided with gold.

"What a glorious room," cried Jenny.

"You think so?" asked its owner.

"Rather."

The evening passed away without any development of the situation. The
girls looked at books and pictures according to the custom of first
visits, and drank Green Chartreuse after the supper which they had