At that moment he hailed a passing taxi, and, giving the man an address in Kensington, he jumped in. He folded up his paper and thrust it into a side pocket, and, with the sudden change of environment, his thoughts underwent a third development. Somewhere in the west, there, he knew that a woman was waiting impatiently for his news. He had 'phoned her of his coming, and hinted at his success. Her reply had set every pulse in his body hammering out a reciprocal emotion. "Of course you have succeeded," she had replied. "The rapidity with which you have done so only the more surely points my original conviction. You cannot fail. I shall be in Kensington until a late hour." The invitation had been irresistible to a man of Ruxton's temperament. He snatched at it with an almost boyish impulse, determined to lose no moment of communion with this wonderful creature whose attractions had so overwhelmed the youth that was in him. He knew that whatever the future might hold for him there could be nothing comparable with the wonderful stirring which the bare thought of her created in him. As he drove along her image was before his smiling dark eyes. The grey glory of her deeply fringed eyes had a power to thrill him as nothing else in life could. Her beautiful, oval face, so full of a power to express every emotion, suggested to him the mirror-like surface of a sunlit lake reflecting the wonders of a perfect life. The radiance of her smile alone seemed to him worth living for. The heart of the man had been unloosed from the bondage of early restraint. Now it was a-riot, claiming in its freedom an excess of interest for its years of deprivation. He had no power nor desire to check it. It was as though a new life had opened out before eyes which had all too long confronted the sober grey of mere existence, a life which had been hidden behind a dark curtain raised at last only to dazzle and amaze. Mrs. Jenkins, a hard-faced lady with a sniff, who had undoubtedly seen "worse" days, had performed her duty as only a superior British char-lady-turned-cook-housekeeper could have possibly performed it. She had regarded Ruxton Farlow on the door-step of Vita's flat for a few speculative moments. Then she sniffed. "Name of Farlow, ain't it? She's in." Then, shuffling down the passage, she thrust her head through the doorway of the sitting-room and sniffed again. "It's 'im, miss," she announced, and beat a strategical retreat to the back regions of the flat, with the virtuous conviction that she had performed her duty in a manner which might well have been an example to a superior parlor-maid, or even a well-trained footman. There seemed to be no necessity for greeting between Vita and Ruxton Farlow. For the man it was as if Vita had become a part of his life, as though she were always with him, ready to support him at every turn, ready to lead him on towards those great ideals which were his.