e true. I love him so dreadfully . . . I
just can't wait for one o'clock. He didn't come on Wednesday. I thought
he'd forgotten me and I was going off my head. But it was all right,
they'd kept him in over something.'

'Poor little girl,' said Victoria gently. 'It's hard isn't it, but good
too.'

'Good! Vic, when he kisses me I feel as if I were going to faint. He's
strong, you see. And when he puts his arms round me I feel like a mouse
in a trap . . . but I don't want to get away: I want it to go on for
ever, just like that.'

She paused for a moment as if listening to the first words of love. Then
her mind took a practical turn.

'Of course we shan't be able to live in Notting Hill,' she added. 'We'll
have to go further out, Shepherd's Bush way, so as to be on the Tube.
And he says I shan't go to the P. R. R. any more.'

'Happy girl,' said Victoria. 'I'm so glad, Betty; I hope . . .'

She restrained a doubt. 'And as you say you can't stay to tea I think I
know where you're going.'

'Well, yes, I am going to meet him,' said Betty laughing.

'Yes . . . and you're going to look at little houses at Shepherd's
Bush.'

Betty looked up dreamily. She could see a two-storeyed house in a row,
with a bay window, and a front garden where, winter or summer, marigolds
grew.

After lunch, as the two women sat once more in the boudoir, they said
very little. Victoria, from time to time, flicked the ash from her
cigarette. Betty did not smoke, but, her hands clasped together in her
lap, watched a handsome dark face in the coals.

'And how are you getting on, Vic?' she asked suddenly. Swamped by the
impetuous tide of her own romance she had not as yet shown any interest
in her friend's affairs.

'I? Oh, nothing special. Pretty fair.'

'But, I mean . . . you said you wanted to make a lot of money and . . .'

'Yes, I'm not badly off, but I can't go on, Betty. I shall never do any
good like this.'

Betty was silent for some minutes. Her ingrained modesty made any
discussion of her friend's profession intolerable. Vanquished in
argument, grudgingly accepting the logic of Victoria's actions, she
could not free her mind from the thought that these actions were
repulsive, that there must have been some other way.

'Oh? You want to get out of it all . . . you know . . . I have never
said you weren't quite right, but . . .'

'But I'm quite wrong?'

'No . . . I don't mean that . . . I don't like to say that . . . I'm not