worth while to share both dreams with a man like Jake Barton.
'Perhaps being in love allows one to see more clearly,' she thought, as
she watched him with secret pleasure. 'Or perhaps it simply makes it
easy to kid yourself,' and she felt annoyance that her natural cynicism
should overtake her now.
'No,' she decided. 'It's not make believe. He is strong and good and
he'll stay that way,' and immediately she thought that perhaps she was
trying too hard to convince herself.
Unbidden, the memory of the night she had spent so recently with
another man flooded back to her, and for a moment she found herself
confused and uncertain. She tried to thrust the memory firmly aside,
but it nagged at her, and she found herself comparing two men,
remembering the wanton and wicked delights she had known,-and doubting
wistfully that she might ever recapture them.
Then she looked closer at the man she thought she loved, and saw that
although his arms were thick and dark with hair, and his hands were
large and heavy-knuckled, yet the thick spatulate fiLigers worked with
an almost sensuous skill and lightness, and she tried to imagine them
moving on her skin and the image was so clear and voluptuous that she
shuddered and drew in her breath sharply.
Immediately Jake looked up at her, the surprise in his eyes changing
instantly to pleasure, and that slow warm smile spreading over his face
as he ran his eyes swiftly from the top of her silken head down to the
silken ankles.
'Hello, haven't I met you somewhere before?' he asked, and she laughed
and pirouetted, flaring the dress.
'Do you like it?' she asked. He nodded silently and then asked,
'Are we going somewhere special?'
'The Ras's feast, didn't you know?'
not sure I can stan another of his feasts, don't know which is more
dangerous an Italian attack or that liquid dynamite he serves.'
'You'll have to be there you're one of the heroes of the great victory,
and Jake grunted and returned his attention to Priscilla the Pig's
internal processes.
'Have you found the trouble?'
'No.' Jake sighed with resignation.
'I've taken her to pieces and put her together again and I can't find a
thing.' He stood back, shaking his head and wiping his greasy hands on
a wad of cotton waste. 'I don't know. I just don't know.'
'Have you tried starting her again?'
'No point in that not until I find and cure the trouble.'
'Try,'said Vicky, and he grinned at her.
'It's no use but to humour you.' He stooped to the crank handle,
and Priscilla fired at the first swing, caught and ran smoothly,
purring like a great hump-backed cat in front of the fire.
'My God.' Jake stepped back and stared in amazement.
'There's just no logic to it.'
'She's a lady,' Vicky explained.
'You know that and there isn't necessarily logic in the way a lady
behaves.' He turned to face her directly and grinned at her, such a
