To be
independent you must acquire the right to be dependent on the world's
labour, to be a drone . . . and the biggest drone is queen of the hive.
Yet I wish it had been otherwise with you.' He looked at her
regretfully.

Victoria toyed with a dessert knife.

'Why?' she asked.

'Oh, you had possibilities . . . but after all, we all have. And most of
them turn out to be impossibilities. At any rate, you're not disgusted
with your life, with any detail?'

'No, I don't think so. I don't say I'll go on any longer than I need,
but it's bearable. But even if it were repulsive in every way I'd go on
if I saw freedom ahead. If I fight at all I fight to a finish.'

'You're strong,' said Farwell looking at her. 'I wish I had your
strength. You've got that force which makes explorers, founders of new
faiths, prophets, company promoters.' He sighed.

'Let's go,' he added, 'we can talk in the warm night.'

For an hour they talked, agreeing always in the end. Farwell was cruelly
conscious of two wasted lives: his, because his principles and his
capacity for thought had no counterweight in a capacity for action;
Victoria's, because of her splendid gifts ignobly wasted and misused by
a world which had asked her for the least of them.

Victoria felt a peculiar pleasure in this man's society. He was elderly,
ugly, ill-clad; sometimes he was boorish, but a halo of thought
surrounded him, and the least of his words seemed precious. All this
devirilised him, deprived him of physical attractiveness. She could not
imagine herself receiving and returning his caresses. They parted on
Waterloo Bridge.

'Good-bye,' said Farwell, 'you're on the right track. The time hasn't
come for us to keep the law, for we don't know what the law is. All we
have is the edict of the powerful, the prejudice of the fool; the last
especially, for these goaled souls have their traditions, and their
convictions are prisons all.'

Victoria pressed his hand and turned away. She did not look back. If she
had she would have seen Farwell looking into the Thames, his face lit up
by a gas lamp, curiously speculative in expression. His emotions were
not warring, but the chaos in his brain was such that he was fighting
the logical case for and against an attempt to find enlightenment on the
other slope of the valley.

CHAPTER VI

VICTORIA stretched herself lazily in bed. Her eyes took in a picture of
Cairns on the mantelpiece framed between a bottle of