grew much better as a sex; then why pin faith
to the coming of better times? Women were parasites, working only under
constraint, badly and at uncongenial tasks; their right to live was
based on their capacity to please. This brought her to her own
situation. The future lay before her in the shape of two roads. One was
the road which led to the struggle for life; ending, she felt it too
well, in a crawl to death on crippled limbs. The other was the road
along which grew roses, roses which she could pluck and sell to men; at
the end of that was the heaven of independence. It had golden gates; it
was guarded by an angel in white garments with a palm leaf in his hands
and beyond lay the pleasant places where she had a right of way. And as
she looked again the heaven with the golden gates turned into a bank
with a commissionaire at the door.

Her choice being made, she did not regret it. For the time being her
life was pleasant enough, and if it could be made a little more
profitable it would soon be well worth living, and her freedom would be
earned. Meanwhile she took pleasure in small things. The little house
was almost a show place, so delicate and refined were its inner and
outer details. Victoria saw to it that frequently changed flowers
decorated the beds in the front garden; Japanese trees, dwarfed and
gnarled, stood right and left of the steps, scowling like tiny Titans;
all the blinds in the house were a mass of insertion. These blinds were
a feature for her; they implied secrecy. Behind the half blinds were
thick curtains of decorated muslin; behind these again, heavy curtains
which could be drawn at will. They were the impenetrable veil which
closed off from the world and its brutalities this oasis of forbidden
joys.

In the house also she was ever elaborating, sybaritising her life. She
had a branch telephone fixed at the head of her bed; the first time that
Cairns used it to tell his man to bring up his morning coat she had the
peculiar sensation that her bed was in touch with the world. She could
call up anybody, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Governor of the Bank
of England or the headquarters of the Salvation Army. Her bed was the
centre of the world. She fitted the doors of her bedroom and her boudoir
with curious little locks which acted on the pressure of a finger for
her mind was turned on delicacies and the sharp click of a bolt, the
grating of a key savoured of the definite, therefore of the coar