Page:Lolly Willowes - 1926.djvu/243

 The Vatican and the Crystal Palace, and all the neat human nest-boxes in rows, Balham and Fulham and the Cromwell Road—he saw through them, they went flop like card-houses, the bricks were earth again, and the steel girders burrowed shrieking into the veins of earth, and the dead timber was restored to the ghostly groves. Wolves howled through the streets of Paris, the foxes played in the throne-room of Schönbrunn, and in the basement at Apsley Terrace, the mammoth slowly revolved, trampling out its lair.

"Then I needn't really have come here to meet you!" she exclaimed.

"Did you?"

"I didn't know I did. I thought I came here to be in the country, and to escape being an aunt."

"Titus came here to write a book on Fuseli, and to enjoy himself."

"Titus! I can't believe you wanted him."

"But you believe I wanted you."

Rather taken aback she yet answered the Devil honestly.

"Yes! I do believe you wanted me. Though really I don't know why you should."

A slightly malevolent smile crossed the