o the
figure which was round and inclined to be full. Her arms and neck,
framed with white frillings, were uniformly cream coloured, shadowed a
little darker at the elbows, near the rounded shoulders and under the
jaw; all her skin had a glow, half vigorous, half delicate. But the
woman's face interested Victoria more. Her hair was piled high and black
over a broad low white forehead; the cream of the skin turned faintly
into colour at the cheeks, into crimson at the lips; her eyes were
large, steel grey, long lashed and thrown into relief by a faintly mauve
aura. There was strength in the jaw, square, hard, fine cut; there was
strength too in the steadiness of the eyes, in the slightly compressed
red lips.

'Yes,' said Victoria to the picture, 'you mean business.' She reflected
that she was fatter than she had ever been. Two months of rest had
worked a revolution in her. The sudden change from toil to idleness had
caused a reaction. There was something almost matronly about the soft
curves of her breast. But the change was to the good. She was less
interesting than the day when the Major sat face to face with her in
Soho, his pulse beating quicker and quicker as her ravished beauty
stimulated him by its novelty; but she was a finer animal. Indeed she
realised to the full that she had never been so beautiful, that she had
never been beautiful before, as men understand beauty.

The past two months had been busy as well as idle, busy that is as an
idle woman's time. She had felt weary now and then, like those
unfortunates who are bound to the wheel of pleasure and are compelled to
'do too much.' Major Cairns had launched out into his first experiment
in pseudo-married life with an almost boyish zest. It was he who had
practically compelled her to take the little house in Elm Tree Place.

'Think of it, Vic,' he had said, 'your own little den. With no prying
neighbours. And your own little garden. And dogs.'

He had waxed quite sentimental over it and Victoria, full of the
gratitude that makes a woman cling to the fireman when he has rescued
her, had helped him to build a home for the idyll. Within a feverish
month he had produced the house as it stood. He had hardly allowed
Victoria any choice in the matter, for he would not let her do anything.
He practically compelled her to keep to her suite at the hotel, so that
she might get well. He struggled alone with the decoration, plumbing,
furniture and linoleum, linen and