it was a difficulty he was unused to, and he could not account
for it. It oppressed him, too, now, in Miss Varley's presence; the
achievement of intimacy did not progress. Tommy supposed it might have
something to do with Lent; Lent often affected one's spirits
unfavourably. Life in general, in fact, was rather a bore. Tommy told
Betty so.

'I'm tired of being overworked,' he remarked. 'I wish I wasn't a
newspaper man. I wish I wrote novels, like Mrs. Venables. Let's write a
novel, Betty. I wish I had a motor-car to play with, like Venables. I
wish we were older, Betty--old enough to go home to Santa Caterina and
live in peace on our hard-won earnings. Let's chuck it and go. We've got
enough, if we leave our debts behind us, and eat like moderate
Christians, and are out of reach of shops. What's the good of fooling
here, and never having enough to live on, and--and----'

His stammer or his disgust choked the rest of his grievances from his
lips.

Betty looked sympathetic.

'You'll feel better in the morning,' she said, 'if it's a fine day.'

She was standing by the open window, leaning out into the soft darkness.
From the narrow steep alley below, and from the wide lit thoroughfare
into which it ran, the cheerful revel of Naples at night hummed up.

'Let's come out,' said Betty, 'into the streets.'

And the two seekers after a quiet life strolled through the city
together. They returned home a little after midnight, having made a very
heroic and quite successful fight against care.

CHAPTER VII

RETROSPECT WITH THE SEARCH-LIGHT

'D'autres jours ouvriront les portes,
La foret garde les verrous,
La foret brule autour de nous,
C'est la clarte des feuilles mortes,
Qui brulent sur le seuil des portes....'
MAETERLINCK.

At the end of the first week in March the Venables went to Sicily; they
would stay there, probably, for the rest of the month.

'So for three weeks we shan't have a chance of eating too much at
lunch,' Tommy remarked, on the evening after they had gone. 'Pity, isn't
it? I loved those lunches.'

Betty nodded. She was feeling horribly flat. They both, that first
evening, felt horribly flat. By the measure of their flatness they might
have gauged the late immensity of their interest; there was revelation
in it. To shake it off they went to their favourite gambling-place, and
lost some money, and talked to some friends, and in general raised their
spirits.

Som