ms, the cries of the water and chestnut vendors, all their senses
offended by the cafes on the wharf where sailors from every land drank
vodka, arrack, pale ale, among zouaves and chasseurs d'Afrique.

Sometimes Holt would go into Algiers by himself and remain away all day.
Victoria stayed at the villa careless of flying time, desultorily
reading Heine or sitting in the garden where she could play with the
golden and green beetles. Her solitude was complete, for Holt had
avoided the British consul and of course knew none of the Frenchmen. She
watched the current of her life flow away, content to know that all the
while her little fortune was increasing. England was so far as to seem
in another world. Christmas was gone; and the link of a ten pound note
to Betty, to help to furnish the house at Shepherd's Bush, had faded
away. When she was alone, those days, she could not throw her mind back
to the ugly, brutish past, so potently was the influence of the East
growing upon her being. Then in the cool of the evening Jack would
return, gay, and anxious to see her, to throw his arms round her and
hold her to him again. Those were the days when he brought her some
precious offering, aqua-marines set in hand-wrought gold, or chaplets of
strung pearls.

'Jack,' she said to him one day as he lay in the grass at her feet, 'do
you then love me very much?'

'Very much.' He took her hand and, raising himself upon his elbow,
gravely kissed it.

'Why?'

'Because you're all the poetry of the world. Because you make me dream
dreams, my Aspasia.'

She gently stroked his dark hair.

'And to think that you are one of the enemy, Jack!'

'One of the enemy? what do you mean?'

'Man is woman's enemy, Jack. Our relation is a war of sex.'

'It's not true.' Jack flushed; the idea was repulsive.

'It is true. Man dominates woman by force, by man-made law; he
restricts her occupations; he limits her chances; he judges of her
attire; he denies her the right to be ugly, to be old, to be coarse, to
be vicious.'

'But you wouldn't--'

'I'd have everything the same, Jack.'

Holt thought for a moment.

'Yes, I suppose we do keep them down. But they're different. You see,
men are men and--'

'I know the rest. But never mind, Jack dear, you're not like the others.
You'll never be a conqueror.'

Then she muzzled him with her hand, and, kissing its scented palm, he
thought no more of the stern game in which they were the shuttlecocks.