'Ah, then we're in for a cycle of good trade. I think I'll have some industrials. You might pick me out the best.'
The manager seemed a little surprised at this knowledge of commercial crises but said nothing more, and made out a list of securities averaging six per cent net.
'And please buy me a hundred P. R. R. shares,' added Victoria.
She could have laughed at the manager's stony face because he did not see the humour of this. He merely said that he would forward the orders to a stockbroker.
Victoria felt that she had put her hand to the plough. She was scoring so heavily that she never now wished to turn back. Holt was every day growing more dreamy, more absorbed in his thoughts. He never seemed to quicken into action except when his companion touched him. He grew more silent too; the hobbledehoy was gone. He was at his worst when he had received a letter bearing the Rawsley postmark. Victoria knew of these, for Holt's need of her grew greater every day; he was now living at Elm Tree Place. He hardly left the house. He got up late and passed the morning in the boudoir, smoking cigarettes, desultorily reading and nursing the Pekingese which he now liked better. But on the days when he got letters from Rawsley, letters so bulky that they were sometimes insufficiently stamped, he would go out early and only return at night. Then, however, he returned as if he had been running, full of some nameless fear; he would strain Victoria to him and hold her very close, burying his face below the bedclothes as if he were afraid. On one of those days Victoria accidentally saw him come out of a small dissenting chapel near by. He did not see her, for he was walking away like a man possessed; she said nothing of this but understood him better, having an inkling that the fight against the Rawsley tradition was still going on.
She did not, however, allow herself to be moved by his struggle. It behoved her to hold him, for he was her last chance and the world looked rosy round her. As the spring turned into summer he became more utterly hers.
'You distil poison for me,' he said one day as they sat by the rose hung pergola.
'No, Jack, don't say that, it's the elixir of life.'
'The elixir of life. Perhaps, but poison too. To make me live is to make me die, Victoria; we are both sickening for death and to hasten the current of life is to hasten our doom.'
'Live quickly,' she whispered, bending towards him, 'did you live at all a year ago?'