“And you,” said he, kissing first one hand and then the other, “can’t tell how good I think God is to me.”

CHAPTER X

HE brought great news. Not only had his publishers thought well of the novel and offered him good terms, including a substantial advance, but they professed themselves able to place it serially in England for a goodly sum. They had also shown him the figures of the half-yearly returns on American sales of Through Blood and Snow which transcended his dreams of opulence.

“I had forgotten America,” he said naïvely.

“You’re nothing, if not original,” she laughed. “That’s what I like about you.”

He insisted on the wild extravagance of a taxi to the garden city. All that money he declared had gone to his head. He felt the glorious intoxication of wealth. When they were about to turn off the safe highway into devious garden-city paths, he said:

“Let us change our minds and go straight on to John o’ Groats.”

“All right. Let us. We’re on the right road.”

He swerved towards her. “Would you? Really?”

She opened her bag and took out her purse.