ebody to meet her somewhere and take her to the Empire.

And nobody but Ranny ever came.

Sometimes, of course, he took her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum; but
going there with Ranny wasn't any fun. Ranny's idea of fun was not
Earl's Court or the Coliseum; it was to mount a bicycle and ride from
that lonely place, Acacia Avenue, into places that were more lonely
still. Sometimes they would have tea at a confectioner's, but what Ranny
loved best was to put bits of cake or chocolate in his pocket, and to
eat them in utter loneliness sitting in a field. In short, Ranny loved
to take her into places where there was nothing for them to do, nothing
for them to look at, and nobody to look at them. If Violet hadn't been
gone on Ranny she couldn't have endured it for a day.

* * * * *

Then in the late autumn the bicycle rides ceased. Violet was overtaken,
first, with a dreadful lassitude, then with a helplessness as great as
Granville's. And with it a sullenness that had no sweetness in it, for
Violet defied her fate. And now when she raised her old cry again, "I
can't see _why_ I shouldn't have gone on at Starker's like I did,"
instead of saying "Somebody's got to look after Granville" Ranny
answered, "_This_ is why."

All through the winter the charwoman came every day. And one midnight,
in the first week of March, nineteen-five, Violet's child was born. It
was a daughter.

CHAPTER XV

On that night Ransome acquired a dreadful knowledge. Granville was not a
place where you could be born with any decency. It seemed to participate
horribly in Violet's agony, to throb with her tortures and recoils, to
fill itself shuddering with her cries, such cries as Ransome had never
heard or conceived, that he would have believed impossible. They were
savage, inhuman; the cries and groans of some outraged animal; there was
menace in them and rebellion, terror, and an implacable resentment.

And as Ransome heard them his heart was torn with pity and with remorse
too, as though Violet's agony accused him. He could not get rid of the
idea that he had wronged her; an idea that he somehow felt he would
never have had if the baby had been born a month later. He swore that
she should never be put to this torture a second time; that if God would
only spare her he would never, never quarrel with her, never say an
unkind word to her again. He couldn't exactly recall any unkind words;
so he nourished hi