stayed, and in the
mornings and afternoons he read his Indian law and history, or wandered
about London, loitering in picture galleries or threading the ways of
Bloomsbury with many a passing glance at the house where Freda slept.
Squarely and simply it stood, with no flaunting brick-work or Victorian
embellishment: its colour was the nameless colour that a London house
should have, the sombre blending of grey and red and deepest brown. On
one side was a mean street, one of those sad thoroughfares which Chance
has brought to destitution: the houses were good and strong, but each
contained a score of people and belched out numberless squalid children
to play and quarrel in the teeming gutters. On the other side a wide
street ran straight up to a square garden and the two lines of houses
converged and faded away in a haze of smoke and branches. In the
afternoons, when Martin walked there, sunset would stain the gentle
greyness with pink or, in angrier mood, would stab dark clouds and
leave great rifts of red. It was all so strong and quiet and
dignified, seeming actually to exhale the finest quality of London.
The street, at any rate, was worthy of her.

When the long day's wait was over he would have Freda to himself. Then
London became beautiful in every line and form and colour. The lamps
were flaming jewels and the rain-soaked, glittering streets were bands
of silver: the murkiest lane threw off its squalor, and the night, with
its great glooms and shadows, its sudden bursts of iridescence and its
mystery of swiftly moving figures, made him think of Eastern jungles,
splashed with fierce colours, cavernous with infinite shade. Then a
woman, rouged and powdered and swathed in tawny fur, would sweep
majestically past: she was the tiger who burned brightly. Formerly he
hated these women, because they charmed him, challenged and held his
gaze, hated them too because they brought home to him the fact that he
had not the courage of his desires. But now he need not care. That
was the great joy of it.

So in this enchanted forest of London they walked and drove, feasted
and saw the play: not one play, but all the plays. And after the play
they feasted again and were contented. It was a forest that tended to
swallow gold rather than yield it, and Martin had to borrow on the
security of his position as a probationer in the Indian Civil Service.
But there was pleasure in the signing of the bond.

Sometimes they wo