'You're strong,' said Farwell looking at her. 'I wish I had your strength. You've got that force which makes explorers, founders of new faiths, prophets, company promoters.' He sighed.
'Let's go,' he added, 'we can talk in the warm night.'
For an hour they talked, agreeing always in the end. Farwell was cruelly conscious of two wasted lives: his, because his principles and his capacity for thought had no counterweight in a capacity for action; Victoria's, because of her splendid gifts ignobly wasted and misused by a world which had asked her for the least of them.
Victoria felt a peculiar pleasure in this man's society. He was elderly, ugly, ill-clad; sometimes he was boorish, but a halo of thought surrounded him, and the least of his words seemed precious. All this devirilised him, deprived him of physical attractiveness. She could not imagine herself receiving and returning his caresses. They parted on Waterloo Bridge.
'Good-bye,' said Farwell, 'you're on the right track. The time hasn't come for us to keep the law, for we don't know what the law is. All we have is the edict of the powerful, the prejudice of the fool; the last especially, for these goaled souls have their traditions, and their convictions are prisons all.'
Victoria pressed his hand and turned away. She did not look back. If she had she would have seen Farwell looking into the Thames, his face lit up by a gas lamp, curiously speculative in expression. His emotions were not warring, but the chaos in his brain was such that he was fighting the logical case for and against an attempt to find enlightenment on the other slope of the valley.
CHAPTER VI
Victoria stretched herself lazily in bed. Her eyes took in a picture of Cairns on the mantelpiece framed between a bottle of eau-de-cologne and the carriage clock; then, little by little, she analysed details, small objects, powderpuffs, a Chelsea candlestick, an open letter, the wall paper. She closed her eyes again and buried her face in the pillow. The lace edge tickled her ear pleasantly. She snuggled like a stroked cat. Then she awoke again, for Mary had just placed her early cup of tea on the night table. The tray seemed to come down with a crash, a spoon fell on the carpet. Victoria felt daylight rolling back sleep from her brain while Mary pulled up the blinds. As light flooded the room and her senses became keener she heard the blinds clash.
'You're very noisy, Mary,' she said, lifting herself on one elbow.