"And when I'd met you afterwards--you think _that_ would have been
nicer--for all three of us?"
His voice was low, shaken, surcharged and crushed with passion. But he
could see things plainly. It was with the certainty, the terrible
lucidity of passion that he saw himself. The vision was disastrous to
all ideas of integrity, of propriety and honour; it destroyed the long
tradition of the Brodricks. But he saw true.
Jane's eyes were searching his while her mouth smiled at him.
"And is it really," she said, "as bad as that?"
"It always is as bad as that, when you're determined to get the thing
you want. Luckily for me I've only really wanted one thing."
"One thing?"
"You--or a woman like you. Only there never was a woman like you."
"I see. _That's_ why you care for me?"
"Does it matter why?"
"Not a bit. I only wondered."
He looked at her almost as if he also wondered. Then they were silent.
Jane was content to let her wonder die, but Brodrick's mind was still
groping in obscurity. At last he seemed to have got hold of something,
and he spoke.
"Of course, there's your genius, Jinny. If I don't say much about it,
you mustn't think I don't care."
"Do you? There are moments when _I_ hate it."
Her face was set to the mood of hatred.
"Hugh dear, you're a brave man to marry it."
"I wouldn't marry it, if I didn't think I could look after it."
"You needn't bother. It can look after itself."
She paused, looking down where her finger traced and traced again the
pattern of the sofa-cover.
"Did you think I cared for it so frightfully?" she said.
"I know you did."
"I care for it still." She turned to him with her set face. "But I could
kill it if it came between you and me."