Left to herself, Victoria felt rather at a loose end. The cheerful if uninteresting personality of Major Cairns had a way of filling the house. He had an expansive mind; it was almost chubby. For two days she rather enjoyed her freedom. The summer was gorgeous; St John's Wood was bursting everywhere into flower; the trees were growing opaque in the parks. At every street corner little whirlwinds of dry grit swayed in the hot air. One afternoon Victoria indulged in the luxury of a hired private carriage, and flaunted it with the best in the long line on the south side of the Park. Wedged for a quarter of an hour in the mass she felt a glow come over her. The horses all round her shone like polished wood, the carriage panels were lustrous, the harness was glittering, the brass burnished; all the world seemed to radiate warmth and light. Gaily enough, because not jaded by repetition, she caused the carriage to do the Ring, twice. She felt for a moment that she was free, that she could vie with those women whose lazy detachment she stirred for a moment into curiosity by her deep eyes, dark piled hair and the audacity of her diaphanous _crèpe de chine_. Cairns was still in Ireland, struggling conscientiously to pile up unearned increment; and Victoria, thoroughly aimless, suddenly bethought herself of Farwell. She had been remiss in what was almost a duty. Surely she ought to report progress to the man who had helped to open her eyes to the realities of life. She had misapplied his teaching perhaps, or rather remoulded it, but still it was his teaching. Or rather it was what a woman should know, as opposed to what Thomas Farwell preached; if men were to practise that, then she should revise her philosophy. At ten minutes to one she entered the Moorgate Street P.R.R. with a little thrill. Everything breathed familiarity; it was like coming home, but better, for it is sweeter to revisit the place where one has suffered, when one has emerged, than to brood with gentle sorrow on the spot, where there once was joy. She knew every landmark, the tobacconist, the picture shop, still full of 'Mother's Helps' and of 'artistic' studies in the nude; there was the red-coated bootblack too, as dirty and as keenly solicitous as ever. The P.R.R. itself did not chill her. In the crude June sunlight its nickel shone gaily enough. Everything was as before; the cakes had been moulded in the old moulds, and here was the old bill of fare, unchanged no doubt; even the marble-topped tables and the half cleaned cruets looked kindly upon her; but the tesselated red and blue floor aroused the hateful memory of another Victoria on her hands and knees, an old sack round her waist, painfully swaying from right to left, swabbing the tiles. Little rivulets of water and dirt flowed slowly across the spectre's hand.