d dulled their effects: now Holt postponed
reading them; after a time she saw him throw one into the fire unread.
Little by little they grew rarer. Then they ceased. Holt was eaten up by
his passion, and Victoria's star rose high.

All conspired to favour her fortune. Perhaps her acumen had helped her
too, for she had seen correctly the coming boom. Trade rose by leaps and
bounds; every day new shops seemed to open; the stalks of the Central
London Railway could be seen belching clouds of smoke as they ground out
electric power; the letter-box at Elm Tree Place was clogged with
circulars denoting by the fury of their competition that trade was
flying as on a great wind. Other signs too were not wanting: the main
streets of London were blocked by lorries groaning under machinery,
vegetables, stone; immense queues formed at the railway stations waiting
for the excursion trains; above all, rose the sound of gold as it hissed
and sizzled as if molten on the pavements, flowing into the pockets of
merchants, bankers and shareholders. All the women at the Vesuvius
indulged in new clothes.

Victoria's investments were seized by the current. She had not entirely
followed the bank manager's advice. Seeing, feeling the movement, she
had realised most of her debentures and turned them into shares. One of
her ventures collapsed, but the remainder appreciated to an
extraordinary extent. At last, in the waning days of the year her
middle-class prudence reasserted itself. She knew enough of political
economy to be ready for the crash, she realised. One cold morning in
November she counted up her spoils. She had nearly five thousand pounds.

Meanwhile, while her blood was aglow, Holt sank further into the
dullness of his senses. A mania was upon him. Waking, his thought was
Victoria; and the cry for her rose everlasting from his racked body. She
was all, she was everywhere; and the desire for her, for her beauty, her
red lips, soaked into him like a philtre, narcotic and then fiery but
ever present, intimate and exacting. He was her thing, her toy, the
paltry instrument which responded to her every touch. He rejoiced in his
subjection; he swam in his passion like a pilgrim in the Ganges to find
brief oblivion; but again the thirst was on him, ravaging, ever
demanding more. More, more, ever more, in the watches of the night, when
ice seizes the world to throttle it--among all, in turmoil and in
peace--he tossed upon the passionate sea;