and with the possession of their shoes he
had a sensation of possessing the wearers of them. The fog was denser
and denser: they paused upon the edge of the curb, listening for
oncoming traffic. A distant omnibus was lumbering far down the Fulham
Road. Michael caught their arms close, and the three of them seemed to
sail across to the opposite pavement. He had nothing to say because he
was so happy, and Lily had nothing to say because she talked now no more
than she used to talk. So it was Sylvia who had to carry on the
conversation, and since most of this consisted of questions to Lily and
Michael about their former friendship, which neither Lily nor Michael
answered, even Sylvia was discouraged at last; and they walked on
silently through the fog, Michael clasping the girls close to him and
watching all the time Lily's hand holding up her big black cloak.

"Here we are, you two dreamers," said Sylvia, pulling them to a stop by
a narrow turning which led straight from the pavement unexpectedly,
without any dip down into a road.

"Through here? How fascinating!" said Michael.

They passed between two posts, and in another three minutes stopped in
front of a door set in a wall.

"I've got the key," said Sylvia, and she unlocked the door.

"But this is extraordinary," Michael exclaimed. "Aren't we walking
through a garden?"

"Yes, it's quite a long garden," Sylvia informed him. There was a smell
of damp earth here that sweetened the harshness of the fog, and Michael
thought that he had never imagined anything so romantic as following
Lily in single file along the narrow gravel path of a mysterious garden
like this. There must have been thirty yards of path, before they walked
up the steps of what seemed to be a sort of balcony.

"She's downstairs," said Sylvia, tapping upon a glass door with the key.
A woman's figure appeared with an orange-shaded lamp in the passage.

"Open quickly, Mrs. Gainsborough. We're frozen," Sylvia called. As the
woman opened the door, Sylvia went on in her deep voice:

"We've brought an old friend of Lily's back from the dance. It wasn't
really worth going to. Oh, I oughtn't to have said that, ought I?" she
laughed, turning round to Michael. "Come in and get warm. This is Mrs.
Gainsborough, who's the queen of cards."

"Get along with you, you great saucy thing," said Mrs. Gainsborough,
laughing.

She was a woman of enormous size with a triplication of chins. Her
crimson cheeks shone