'Of course we shan't be able to live in Notting Hill,' she added. 'We'll have to go further out, Shepherd's Bush way, so as to be on the Tube. And he says I shan't go to the P. R. R. any more.' 'Happy girl,' said Victoria. 'I'm so glad, Betty; I hope . . .' She restrained a doubt. 'And as you say you can't stay to tea I think I know where you're going.' 'Well, yes, I am going to meet him,' said Betty laughing. 'Yes . . . and you're going to look at little houses at Shepherd's Bush.' Betty looked up dreamily. She could see a two-storeyed house in a row, with a bay window, and a front garden where, winter or summer, marigolds grew. After lunch, as the two women sat once more in the boudoir, they said very little. Victoria, from time to time, flicked the ash from her cigarette. Betty did not smoke, but, her hands clasped together in her lap, watched a handsome dark face in the coals. 'And how are you getting on, Vic?' she asked suddenly. Swamped by the impetuous tide of her own romance she had not as yet shown any interest in her friend's affairs. 'I? Oh, nothing special. Pretty fair.' 'But, I mean . . . you said you wanted to make a lot of money and . . .' 'Yes, I'm not badly off, but I can't go on, Betty. I shall never do any good like this.' Betty was silent for some minutes. Her ingrained modesty made any discussion of her friend's profession intolerable. Vanquished in argument, grudgingly accepting the logic of Victoria's actions, she could not free her mind from the thought that these actions were repulsive, that there must have been some other way. 'Oh? You want to get out of it all . . . you know . . . I have never said you weren't quite right, but . . .' 'But I'm quite wrong?' 'No . . . I don't mean that . . . I don't like to say that . . . I'm not clever like you, Vic, but . . .' 'We've done with all that,' said Victoria coldly. 'I do want to get out of it because it's getting me no nearer to what I want. I don't quite know how to do it. I'm not very well, you know.' Betty looked up quickly with concern in her face. 'Have those veins been troubling you again?' 'Yes, a little. I can't risk much more.' 'Then what are you going to do?' Victoria was silent for a moment. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I never thought of all this when the Major was alive.' 'Ah, there never was anybody like him,' said Betty after a pause. Victoria sat up suddenly. 'Betty,' she cried, 'you're giving me an idea.' 'I? an idea?' 'There must be somebody like him. Why shouldn't I find him?' Betty said nothing. She looked her stiffest, relishing but little the fathering upon her of this expedient. 'But who?' soliloquised Victoria. 'I don't know anybody. You see Betty, I want lots and lots of money. Otherwise it's no good. If I don't make a lot soon it will be too late.' Betty still said nothing. Really she couldn't be expected. . . . Then her conscience smote her; she ought to show a little interest in dear, kind Vic.