All that was requested of it in return was that it should praise Victoria to her face and allow her to exercise her power of command.
Millie did not think the worse of human nature for this. She perceived that in these strange times when prices were so high and incomes so low any one would do anything for money. A certain Captain Blatt—a cheerful gentleman of any age from thirty to fifty—was quite frank with her about it. "I was quite a normal man before the war, Miss Trenchard. I was, I assure you. Stockbroking in the City and making enough to have a good time. Now I'm making nothing—and I would do anything for money. Anything. Let some one offer me a thousand pounds down and I will sell my soul for three months. One must exist, you know."
Victoria's happiness was touching to behold. The Blocks, the Balaclavas and the rest were entirely forgotten. Millie had hoped, at first, that she might do something towards stemming this new tide of hungry ones. But after a warning or two she saw that she was powerless. "Why, Millie," cried Victoria, "you're becoming a cynic. You suspect every one. I'm sure Mrs. Norman is perfectly sweet and it's too adorable of her to want me to be god-mother to her new darling baby. And poor Mr. Hackett! With his brother consumptive at Davos and depending entirely upon him and his old mother nearly ninety, and his business all gone to pieces because of the War, of course I must help him. What's my money for?"
Meanwhile this same money poured forth like water. Would it one day be exhausted? Millie wrote to Dr. Brooker and asked him to keep a watch. "She's quite hopeless just now," she wrote, "but we're only here for another three weeks. I suppose we must let her have her fun while she can."
Nevertheless it was upon this same beautiful afternoon that she realized a more sinister and personally dangerous effect of Victoria's generosity. She was sitting back in her chair, almost asleep. The world came as a coloured murmur to her, the faint rhythm of the band, the soft blue of sea and sky, the sharp note of Victoria's voice—"Oh, really!" "Fancy indeed!" "Just think!" The warmth upon her body was like an encircling arm caressing her very gently with the little breeze that was its voice. She seemed to swing out to sea and back again, lazily, lazily, too happy, too sleepy to think, fading into unreality, into nothing but colour, soft blue swathes of colour wrapping her round. . . . Then suddenly, with a sharp outline like a black pencil drawing against a white background, she saw Bunny.
Beautifully dressed in white flannels, a straw hat pushed back a little from his forehead, he stood, some way down the green path, half-turned in her direction, searching amongst the chairs.
She noticed all the things about him that she loved—his neatness, his slim body, his dark eyes, sunburnt forehead, black moustache, his mouth even then unconsciously half-smiling, his breeding, his self-confidence.
"Ah! how I love him!" and still swaying out to sea she, from that blue distance, could adore him without fear that he would hold her cheap.
"I love him, I love him——" Then from the very heart of the blue, sharply like the burst of a cracker in her ear, a sound snapped—"Look out! Look out! There's danger here!"