with one thought, one hope.

CHAPTER XVIII

'I'M glad we're going away, Jack,' said Victoria leaning back in the cab
and looking at him critically. 'You look as if you wanted a change.'

'Perhaps I do,' said Jack.

Victoria looked at him again. He had not smiled as he spoke to her,
which was unusual. He seemed thinner and more delicate than ever, with
his pale face and pink cheekbones. His black hair shone as if moist; and
his eyes were bigger than they had ever been, blue like silent pools and
surrounded by a mauve zone. His mouth hung a little open. Yet, in spite
of his weariness, he held her wrist in both his hands, and she could
feel his fingers searching for the opening in her glove.

'You are becoming a responsibility,' she said smiling. 'I shall have to
be a mother to you.'

A faint smile came over his lips.

'A mother? After all, why not? Phedra. . . .' His eyes fixed on the grey
morning sky as he followed his thought.

The horse was trotting sharply. The winter air seemed to rush into their
bodies. Jack, well wrapped up as he was in a fur coat, shrank back
against the warm roundness of her shoulder. In an excess of gentleness
she put her free hand in his.

'Dear boy,' she said softly bending over him.

But there was no tenderness in Jack's blue eyes, rather lambent fire. At
once his grasp on her hand tightened and his lips mutely formed into a
request. Casting a glance right and left she kissed him quickly on the
mouth.

Up on the roof their bags jolted and bumped one another; milk carts were
rattling their empty cans as they returned from their round; far away a
drum and fife band played an acid air. They were going to Ventnor in
pursuit of the blanketed sun; and Victoria rejoiced, as they passed
through Piccadilly Circus where moisture settled black on the fountain,
to think that for three days she would see the sun radiate, not loom as
a red guinea. They passed over Waterloo Bridge at a foot pace; the
enormous morning traffic was struggling in the neck of the bottle. The
pressure was increased because the road was up between it and Waterloo
Station. On her left, over the parapet, Victoria could see the immense
desert of the Thames swathed in thin mist, whence emerged in places
masts and where massive barges loomed passive like derelicts. She
wondered for a moment whether her familiar symbol, the old vagrant,
still sat crouching against the parapet at Westminster, watching rare
puffs of