road. Snoo and Poo, husband and wife, had
suddenly fascinated him in Villiers Street that morning. He was on his
way to offer them at Victoria's shrine. Instinctively he liked the smart
dog, as he liked the smart woman and the American novel. Snoo and Poo,
tiny, fat, curly, khaki-coloured, with their flat Kalmuck faces,
unwillingly trundled behind him. They would, thought Cairns, be in
keeping with the establishment. A pleasant establishment. A nice little
house, in its quiet street where nothing ever seemed to pass, except
every hour or so a cab. It was better than a home, for it offered all
that a home offers, soft carpets, discreet servants, nice little lunches
among flowers and well-cleaned plate, and beyond, something that no home
contains. It was adventurous. Cairns had knocked about the world a good
deal and had collected sensations as finer natures collect thoughts. The
women of the past met and caressed on steam-boats, in hotels at Cairo,
Singapore and Cape Town, the tea gardens of Kobe and the stranger
mysteries of Zanzibar, all this had left him weary and sighing for
something like the English home. Indeed he grew more sentimental as he
thought of Dover cliffs every time his tailor called the measurement of
his girth. An extra quarter of an inch invariably coincided with a
sentimental pang. Cairns, however, would not yet have been capable of
settling down in a hunting county with a well-connected wife, a costly
farming experiment and the shilling weeklies. A transition was required;
he had no gift of introspection, but his relations with Victoria were
expressions of this mood. Thus he was happy.

He never entered the little house in Elm Tree Place without a thrill of
pleasure. Under the placid mask of its respectability and all that went
with it, clean white steps, half curtains, bulbs in the window boxes,
there flowed for him a swift hot stream. And in that stream flourished a
beautiful white lily whose petals opened and smiled at will.

'I wonder whether I'm in love with her?' This was a frequent subject for
Cairns's meditations. Victoria was so much more for him than any other
woman had been that he always hesitated to answer. She charmed him
sensually, but other women had done likewise; she was beautiful, but he
could conceive of greater beauty. Her intellect he did not consider, for
he was almost unaware of it. For him she was clever, in the sense that
women are clever in men's eyes when they can give a