Nicky, concealed beside Miss Bickersteth in a corner, had begun by trying to make her talk about Shelley (she had edited him). He hoped that thus he might be led on to talk about himself. To Nicky the transition was a natural one.
But Miss Bickersteth did not want to talk about Shelley. Shelley, she declared irreverently, was shop. She wanted to talk about people whom they knew, having reached the absolving age of forty, when you may say anything you please about anybody to an audience sufficiently discreet. And she had just seen Jane and Tanqueray going out together through the long window on to the lawn.
"I suppose," said she, "if they liked, they could marry now."
"Now?" repeated poor Nicky vaguely.
"Now that one of them has got an income."
"I didn't think he was a marrying man."
"No. And you wouldn't think, would you, she was a marrying woman?"
"I—I don't know. I haven't thought about it. He said he wasn't going to marry."
"Oh." Two small eyes looked at him, two liquid, luminous spots in the pinkness of Miss Bickersteth's face.
"It's got as far as that, has it? That shows he's been thinking of it."
"I should have thought it showed he wasn't."
Miss Bickersteth's mouth was decided in its set, and vague in its outline and its colouring. Her smile now appeared as a mere quiver of her face.
"How have you managed to preserve your beautiful innocence? Do you always go about with your head among the stars?"
"My head——?" He felt it. It was going round and round.
"Yes. Is a poet not supposed ever to see anything under his exquisite nose?"
"I am not," said Nicky solemnly, "always a poet. And when a person tells me he isn't going to do a thing, I naturally think he isn't."
"And I naturally think he is. Whatever you think about George Tanqueray, he's sure to do the other thing."
"Come—if you can calculate on that."
"You can't calculate on anything. Least of all with George Tanqueray. Except that he'll never achieve anything that isn't a masterpiece. If it's a masterpiece of folly."
"Mind you," she added, "I don't say he will marry Jane Holland, and I don't say it would be a masterpiece of folly if he did."
"What do you say?"
"That if he ever cares for any woman enough to marry her, it will be Jane."
"I see," said Nicky, after some reflection. "You think he's that sort?"
"I think he's a genius. What more do you want?"
"Oh, I don't want anything more," said Nicky, plunging head-first into a desperate ambiguity. He emerged. "What I mean is, when we've got Him, and when we've got Her—creators——" He paused before the immensity of his vision of Them. "What business have we——"
"To go putting one and one together so as to make two?"
"Well—it doesn't seem quite reverent."
"You think them gods, then, your creators?"
"I think I—worship them."
"Ah, Mr. Nicholson, you're adorable. And I'm atrocious."
"I believe," said Nicky, "tea is in the garden."
"Let us go into the garden," said Miss Bickersteth.
And they went.
Tea was served in a green recess shut in from the lawn by high yew hedges. Nicky at his tea-table was more charming than ever, surrounded by old silver and fine linen, making tea delicately, and pouring it into fragile cups and offering it, doing everything with an almost feminine dexterity and grace.
After tea the group scattered and rearranged itself. In Nicky's perfect garden, a garden of smooth grass plots and clipped yew-trees, of lupins and larkspurs, of roses that would have been riotous but for the restraining spirit of the place; in a green alley between lawn and orchard, Mr. Hugh Brodrick found himself with Miss Holland, and alone. Very quietly, very persistently, with eyes intent, he had watched for and secured this moment.
"You don't know," he was saying, "how I've wanted to meet you, and how hard I've worked for it."
"Was it so hard?"
"Hard isn't the word for it. If you knew the things I've done——" He spoke in his low, even voice, saying eager and impulsive things without a sign of eagerness or impulse.
"What things?"
"Mean things, base things. Going on my knees to people I didn't know, grovelling for an introduction."
"I'm sorry. It sounds awful."
"It was. I've been on the point of meeting you a score of times, and there's always been some horrid fatality. Either you'd gone when I arrived, or I had to go before you arrived. I believe I've seen you—once."
"I don't remember."
"At Miss Bickersteth's. You were coming out as I was going in." He looked at his watch. "And now I ought to be catching a train."
"Don't catch it."
"I shan't. For I've got to tell you how much I admire your work. I'm not going to ask how you do it, for I don't suppose you know yourself."
"I don't."
"I'm not even going to ask myself. I simply accept the miracle."
"If it's miracles you want, look at George Tanqueray."
He said nothing. And now she thought of it, he had not looked at George Tanqueray. He had looked at nobody but her. It was the look of a man who had never known a moment's uncertainty as to the thing he wanted. It was a look that stuck.
"Why aren't you at his feet?" she said.
"Because I'm not drawn—to my knees—by brutal strength and cold, diabolical lucidity."
"Oh," she cried, "you haven't read him."
"I've read all of him. And I prefer you."
"Me? You've spoilt it all. If you can't admire him, what is the use of your admiring me?"
"I see. You don't want me to admire you."
He said it with no emphasis, no emotion, as if he were indifferent as to what she wanted.
"No. I don't think I do."
"You see," he said, "you have a heart."
"Oh, if people would only leave my heart alone!"
"And Tanqueray, I believe, has a devil."
She turned on him.
"Give me George Tanqueray's devil!" She paused, considering him. "Why do you talk about my heart?"
"Why do you talk about my heart?"