"Yes." Nicky's face expressed a tender relief. If she could talk about
it----"But it was only at the last minute."
"I wonder," said she, "why he didn't tell us."
"Well, you know, I think it was because she--the lady----"
He hesitated. He knew what would hurt most; and he shrank almost visibly
from mentioning Her.
"Yes--you've forgotten the lady."
She smiled, and he took courage. "There it is. The lady, you see, isn't
altogether a lady."
"Oh, Nicky----"
He did not look at her. He seemed to be a partaker in what he felt to be
her suffering and Tanqueray's shame.
"Has he known her long?" she said.
"About two months."
She was right then. It had been since that night. It had been her own
doing. She had driven him to her.
"Since he went to Hampstead then?"
"Yes."
"Who was she?"
"His landlady's daughter, I think, or a niece. She waited on him
and--she nursed him when he was ill."
Jane drew in her breath with an almost audible sound. Nicky had sunk
into his chair in his attitude of vicarious, shamefaced misery.
It made her rally. "Nicky," she said, "why do you look like that? I
don't think it's nice of you to sit there, giving him away by making
gloomy faces, in a chair. Why shouldn't he marry his landlady's daughter
if he likes? You ought to stand up for him and say she's charming. She
is. She must be; or he wouldn't have done it."
"He ought not to have done it."
"But he has. It had to happen. Nothing else could have happened."
"You think so? It seems to me the most unpredestined, the most horribly,
fantastically fortuitous occurrence."
"It was what he wanted. Wouldn't you have given him what he wanted?"
"No," said Nicky, "not if it wasn't good for him."
"Oh, Nicky, how do you know what's good for him? You're not George
Tanqueray."
"No. If I were I'd have----" He stopped. His passion, growing suddenly,
recklessly, had brought him to the verge of the depth they were trying
to avoid.
"If you were," said she, with amazing gaiety, "you'd have married this
lady who isn't a lady. And then where would you have been?"
"Where indeed?" said Nicky bitterly.
Jane's face, so gay, became suddenly tragic. She looked away, staring
steadily, dumbly, at something that she saw. Then he knew that he had
raised a vision of the abyss, and of Tanqueray, their Tanqueray, sinking
in it. He must keep her from contemplating that, or she would betray
herself, she would break down.
He searched his heart for some consoling inspiration, and found none. It
was his head which suggested that irrelevance was best.
"_When_," said he, by way of being irrelevant, "are you going to give us
another big book?"
"I don't know," she said. "Never, I think."
He looked up. Her eyes shone perilously over trembling pools of tears.
He had not been irrelevant at all.
"You don't _think_ anything of the sort," he said, with a sharp
tenderness.
"No. I feel it. There isn't another book in me. I'm done for, Nicky."
Her tears were hanging now on the curve of her eyelashes. They shook and
fell.
She sat there silent, fronting the abyss. Nicky was horrified and looked
it. If that was how she took it----
"You've overworked yourself. That's all," he said presently.
"Yes. That's all."
She rose. "Nicky," she said, "it's half-past four. If we're going we
must go."
"Are you sure you want to?"
"Of course I want to." She said it in a tone that for Nicky pointed to
another blunder.
"I only thought," said he simply, "it might bore you."