n to talk.
Victoria encouraged him to take long walks alone along the front. She
had some occupation, for two little girls who were there in charge of a
Swiss governess had adopted the lovely lady as their aunt. A new
sweetness had come into her life, shrill voices, the clinging of little
hands. Sometimes these four would walk together, and Holt would run with
the children, tumbling in the sand in sheer merriment.

'You seem all right again, Jack,' said Victoria on the tenth morning.

'Right! Rather, by jove, it's good to live, Vicky.'

'You were a bit off colour, you know.'

'I suppose I was. But now, I feel nothing can hold me. I wrote a rondeau
this morning on the pier. Want to see it?'

'Of course, silly boy. Aren't you going to be the next great poet?'

She read the rondeau, scrawled in pencil on the back of a bill. It was
delicate, a little colourless.

'Lovely,' she said, 'of course you'll send it to the _Westminster_.'

'Perhaps . . . hulloa, there are the kiddies.' He ran off down the
steps from the front. A minute after Victoria saw him helping the elder
girl to bury her little sister in the sand.

Victoria felt much reassured. He was normal again, the half wistful,
half irresponsible boy she had once known. He slept well, laughed, and
his crying need for her seemed to have abated. At the end of the
fortnight Victoria was debating whether she should take him home. She
was in the hotel garden talking to the smaller girl, telling her a
wonderful story about the fairy who lived in the telephone and said
ping-pong when the line was engaged. The little girl sat upon her knee;
when she laughed Victoria's heart bounded. The elder girl came through
the gate leading a good-looking young woman in white by the hand.

'Oh, mummie, here's auntie,' cried the child, dragging her mother up to
Victoria. The two women looked at one another.

'They tell me you have been very kind . . .' said the woman. Then she
stopped abruptly.

'Of course, mummie, she's not _really_ our auntie,' said the child
confidentially.

Victoria put the small girl down. The mother looked at her again. She
seemed so nice and refined . . . yet her husband said that the initials
on the trunks were different . . . one had to be careful.

'Come here, Celia,' she said sharply. 'Thank you,' she added to
Victoria. Then taking her little girls by the hand she took them away.

Jack willingly left Broadstairs that afternoon when Victoria explained