"Because, if I may say so, it's what I like most in you."
"Anybody can like that."
"Can they?"
"Yes. For ten people who care for me there isn't one capable of caring for George Tanqueray."
"How very unfortunate for him."
"Unfortunate for me, you mean."
He smiled. He was not in the least offended. It was as if her perverse shafts never penetrated his superb solidity.
And yet he was not obtuse, not insensitive. He might fall, she judged, through pride, but not through vanity.
"I admit," said he, "that he is our greatest living novelist."
"Then," said she, "you are forgiven."
"And I may continue to adore your tenderness?"
"You may adore anything—after that admission."
He smiled again, like one satisfied, appeased.
"What," he said presently, "is Miss Lempriere's work like? Has she anything of your breadth, your solidity, your fire?"
"There's more fire in Nina Lempriere's little finger than in my whole body."
Brodrick took out his pocket-book and made a note of Nina.
"And the little lady? What does she do?"
"Little things. Charming, delicious, funny, pathetic things. Everything she does is like herself."
"I must put her down too." And he made another note of Laura.
They had turned on to the lawn. Their host was visible, gathering great bunches of roses for his guests.
"What a lovable person he is," said Brodrick.
"Isn't he?" said Jane.
They faced the house, the little house roofed with moss, walled with roses, where, thought Jane, poor Nicky nested like the nightingale he wasn't and would never be.
"I wonder," said Brodrick, "how he gets the perfection, the peace, the finish of it, the little feminine touches, the flowers on the table——"
"Yes, Mr. Nicholson and his house always look as if they were expecting a lady."
"But," said Brodrick, "it's so pathetic, for the lady never comes."
"Perhaps if she did it wouldn't be so peaceful."
"Perhaps. But it must be sad for him—living alone like this."
"I don't know. I live alone and I'm not sad."
"You? You live alone?"
"Of course I do. So does Mr. Tanqueray."
"Tanqueray. He's a man, and it doesn't matter. But you, a woman——It's horrible."
He was almost animated.
"There's your friend, Miss Bickersteth. She lives alone."
"Miss Bickersteth—is Miss Bickersteth."
"There's Nina Lempriere."
"The fiery lady?" He paused, meditating. "Why do her people let her?"
"She hasn't got any. Her people are all dead."
"How awful. And your small friend, Miss Gunning? Don't say she lives alone, too."
"She doesn't. She lives with her father. He's worse than a family——"
"Worse than a——?" He stared aghast.
"Worse than a family of seven children."
"And that's a misfortune, is it?" He frowned.
"Yes, when you have to keep it—on nothing but what you earn by writing, and when it leaves you neither time nor space to write in."
"I see. She oughtn't to have to do it."
"But she has, and it's killing her. She'd be better if she lived alone."
"Well—I don't know anything about Miss Gunning. But for you——"
"You don't know anything about me."
"I do. I've seen you. And I stick to it. It's horrible."
"What's horrible?" said Miss Bickersteth, as they approached.
"Ask Mr. Brodrick."
But Brodrick, thus appealed to, drifted away towards Nicholson, murmuring something about that train he had to catch.
"What have you done to agitate him?" said Miss Bickersteth. "You didn't throw cold water on his magazine, did you?"
"I shouldn't have known he had a magazine."
"What? Didn't he mention it?"
"Not to me."
"Then something is the matter with him." She added, after a thoughtful pause, "What did you think of him?"
"There's no doubt he's a very amiable, benevolent man. The sort of man who wants everybody to marry because he's married himself."
"But he isn't married."
"Well, he looks it. He looks as if he'd never been anything but married all his life."
"Anyhow," said Miss Bickersteth, "that's safe. Safer than not looking married when you are."
"Oh, he's safe enough," said Jane. As she spoke she was aware of Tanqueray standing at her side.
IX
The day was over, and they were going back.
Their host insisted on accompanying them to the station. They had given him a day, and every moment of it, he declared solemnly, was precious.
They could hardly have spent it better than with Nicky in his perfect house, his perfect garden. And Nicky had been charming, with his humble ardour, his passion for a perfection that was not his.
The day, Miss Holland intimated, was his, Nicky's present, rather than theirs. He glowed. It had been glorious, anyhow, a perfect day. A day, Nicky said, that made him feel immortal.
He looked at Jane Holland and George Tanqueray, and they tried not to smile. Jane would have died rather than have hurt Nicky's feelings. It was not in her to spoil his perfect day. All the same, it had been their secret jest that Nicky was immortal. He would never end, never by any possibility disappear. As he stuck now, he always would stick. He was going with them to the station.
Sensitive to the least quiver of a lip, the young man's mortal part was stung with an exquisite sense of the becoming.
"If I feel it," said he, "what must you feel?"
"Oh, we!" they cried, and broke loose from his solemn and detaining eyes.
They walked on ahead, and Nicholson was left behind with Laura Gunning and Nina Lempriere. He consented, patiently and politely, to be thus outstripped. After all, the marvellous thing was that he should find himself on that road at all with Them. After all, he had had an hour alone with Him, in his garden, and five-and-twenty minutes by his watch with Her. It was enough if he could keep his divinities in sight, following the flutter of Miss Holland's veil.
Besides, she had asked him to talk to Nina and look after Laura. She was always asking him to be an angel, and look after somebody. Being an angel seemed somehow his doom. But he was sorry for Laura. They said she had cared for Tanqueray; and he could well believe it. He could believe in any woman caring for Him. He wondered how it had left her. A little defiant, he thought, but with a quiet, clear-eyed virginity. Determined, too. Nicholson