, the hopes and fears
of December, all that lay far away in those dark chambers of the brain
into which memory cannot force a way but swoons on the threshold.

Yes, she was happy enough. Her eyes, casting through the bay window over
the evergreens, trimly stationed and dusty, strayed over the low wall.
On the other side of the road stood another house, low and solid as this
one, beautiful though ugly in its strength and worth. It is not the
house you live in that matters, thought Victoria, unconsciously
committing plagiarism, but the house opposite. The house she lived in
was well enough. Its inhabitants were kind, the servants respectful,
even the mongrel Manchester terrier with the melancholy eyes of some
collie ancestor did not gnaw her boots.

She let her hands fall into her lap and, for a minute, sat staring into
space, seeing with extraordinary lucidity those things to come which a
movement dispels and swathes with the dense fog of forgetfulness. With
terrible clarity she saw the life of the last three months and the life
to come, as it was in the beginning ever to be.

The door opened softly. Before she had time to turn round two hands were
clapped over her eyes. She struggled to free herself, but the hands grew
more insistent and two thumbs softly touched her cheeks.

'Dimple, dimple,' said a voice, while one of the thumbs gently dwelled
near the corner of her mouth.

Victoria struggled to her feet, a little flushed, a strand of hair
flying over her left ear.

'Mr Jack,' she said rather curtly, 'I don't like that. You know you
mustn't do that. It's not fair. I really don't like it.' She was angry;
her nostrils opened and shut quickly; she glared at the good looking boy
before her.

'Naughty temper,' he remarked, quite unruffled. 'You'll take a fit one
of these days, Vicky, if you don't look out.'

'Very likely if you give me starts like that. Not that I mind that so
much, but really it's not nice of you. You know you wouldn't do that if
your mother was looking.'

'Course I wouldn't,' said Jack, 'the old mater's such a back number, you
know.'

'Then,' replied Victoria with much dignity, 'you ought not to do things
when we're alone which you wouldn't do before her.'

'Oh Lord! morals again,' groaned the youth. 'You are rough on me,
Vicky.'

'And you mustn't call me Vicky,' said Victoria. 'I don't say I mind, but
it isn't the thing. If anybody heard you I don't know what they'd
think.'

'Who cares