vii

"You're tired," suggested Monty. "Don't talk. Keep very still, and your headache will go. Let me do the talking. I'm not so used to that as some of our friends are; and it will please me and rest you. Will you have some of this—and this?" His voice was so low, and its quality had so much the soft smoothness of velvet, that every word brought peace. "It ought to be possible for us all to leave England now and follow the sun. One ought now to be starting for the East, where the sun is, and spending the days in winter quarters. We ought to be going soon to Tunisia or beyond, further than the winter tourists go; and then we could come back and explore the ruins of Carthage; and you should learn all about the ancient civilisations, and forget that this sharp and strident Europe exists. It's so very lovely to travel back gradually to the West, and to see Sicily, where the most beautiful things in the world are; or it must be enchanting to go to India, to those places where Europeans rarely go, and learn something about the Hindu philosophy by going back for a dozen or so centuries and forgetting that the world as we know it has any existence. I've never been to India; but one day I shall go, because the wish to see it is growing stronger and stronger, and I'm afraid of dying or growing old before I've savoured all the beauties of the unfamiliar."

Monty spoke very slowly, and as if to cast a spell upon her, so that she might forget her tiredness and her headache. Patricia nodded. She thought how beautiful it would be to escape from all her present distress, and to wander over the face of the earth, where there was always sunshine and happiness.

"I should like," continued Monty, "to travel by car all over the world, and go through the roads, staying where the fancy suggested, and going on when I was tired. It would be very good to go through France, and Northern Italy, and on to the East. One's seen the familiar beauties. Now is the time to try and see what remains."

"I haven't seen even the familiar beauties," said Patricia, staring straight in front of her. In imagination she could see a long white road winding towards distant mountains. "I've never been out of England. Why, I still think that to go to France and Italy and Spain would be the most glorious thing in the world. Perhaps I shall go, one day."

"Nothing could be easier, I'm sure," sympathised Monty. "Why not go?"

"Because I haven't any money," retorted Patricia. "You can't go, if you haven't any money."

"You should get somebody to take you," ventured Monty. "It could easily be arranged."

Patricia remained serious: Harry, she knew, tramped through Europe. It would have been easy to go with him. He would make everything easy. A film was across her eyes. Meditatively, forgetting Monty, she sipped her champagne, and felt its incomparable pricking upon her tongue, delicious and golden.

"Yes, it could easily be arranged," said Patricia, drowsily. Then a little dryness touched her, and she looked straight at Monty, smiling. "But it won't," she added.

Monty's glance held her eyes for an instant. But Patricia's eyes were blue and clear, as baffling to Monty in their purity as his own were unreadable to Patricia by reason of their impenetrable softness. Something in those eyes smouldered.

"What a pity," said Monty.