"He isn't. He only thinks he is."
"He thinks he's Shelley, because his father's a squire."
"That saves him. No man of letters, if he tried all night, could think anything so deliciously absurd. Don't you wish you could feel like that!"
He rose to it, his very excitement kindling his intellectual flame.
"To feel myself an immortal, a blessed god!"
They played together, profanely, with the idea that Nicky was after all divine.
"Such a tragic little god," said Jane, with a pitiful mouth, "a little god without a single apostle or a prophet—nobody," she wailed, "to spread the knowledge of him."
"I say—we'll build an altar on Wendover, to Nicky as the Unknown God."
"He won't like that, our calling him unknown."
"Let's call him the Unapparent—the Undeveloped. He is the Undeveloped."
"In one aspect. In another he's a finished poem, an incarnate lyric——"
"An ode to immortality on legs——"
"Nicky hasn't any legs. He's a breath—a perpetual aspiration."
"Oh, at aspiring he beats Shelley into apoplexy."
"He stands for the imperishable illusion——"
"The stupendous hope——"
"And, after all, he adores you."
"And nobody else does," said Tanqueray.
"That's Nicky's achievement. He does see what you are. It's his little claim to immortality. Just think, George, when Nicky dies and goes to heaven he'll turn up at the gates of the poets' paradise, and they'll let him in on the strength of that. The angel of the singing stars will come up to him and say, 'Nicky, you sing abominably, but you can see. You saw George Tanqueray when nobody else could. Your sonnets and your ballads are forgiven you; and we've got a nice place for you, Nicky, near Keats and Shelley.' Because it wouldn't be heaven for Nicky if he wasn't near them."
"How about them, though?"
"Oh, up in heaven you won't see anything of Nicky except his heart."
"I suppose he'll be stuck somewhere near you, too. It won't be heaven for him if he isn't. The first thing he'll ask is, 'Where's Jane?'"
"And then they'll break it to him very gently—'Jane's in the other place, Nicky, where Mr. Tanqueray is. We had to send her down, because if she wasn't there it wouldn't be hell for Mr. Tanqueray.'"
"But why am I down there?"
"Because you didn't see what Nicky was."
"If you don't take care, Jinny, he'll 'have' you like the rest. You're laying up sorrow for yourself in the day when Nicky publishes his poems."
"It's you he'll turn to."
"No. I'm not celebrated," said he grimly. "There, do you see the full horror of it?"
"I do," she moaned.
Tanqueray's devil came back to him.
"Do you think he'll fall in love with Laura?"
"No, I don't." She said it coolly, though his gaze was upon her, and they were both of them aware of Nicky's high infatuation.
"Why not?" he said lightly.
"Because Nicky'll never be in love with any woman as she is; and nobody could be in love with Laura as she isn't."
She faced him in her courage. He might take it, if he liked, that she knew Nicky was in love with her as she was not; that she knew Tanqueray would never, like Nicky, see her as she was not, to be in love with that.
"Oh, you're too subtle," he said. But he understood her subtlety.
He must tell her about Rose. Before the others could come up with them he must tell her. And then he must tell Nicky.
"Jane," he said, "will you forgive me for never coming to see you? I simply couldn't come."
"I know, George, I know."
"You don't. You don't know what I felt like."
"Perhaps not. And yet, I think, you might——"
But what she thought he might have done she would not tell him.
"At any rate," said he, "you'll let me come and see you now? Often; I want to come often."
He meant to tell her that his marriage was to make no difference.
"Come as often as you want. Come as often as you used to."
"Was it so very often?"
"Not too often."
"I say, those were glorious times we had. We'll have them again, Jinny. There are things we've got to talk about. Things we've got to do. Why, we're hardly beginning."
"Do you remember saying, 'When you've made yourself an absolutely clear medium, then you can begin'?"
"I remember."
He was content now to join her in singing the duet of remembrance.
She dismissed herself. "What have you been doing?"
"Not much. It looks as if I couldn't do things without you."
A look of heavenly happiness came upon her face, and passed.
"That isn't so, George. There never was anybody less dependent on other people. That's why nothing has ever stopped you. Nothing ever will. Whereas—you're right about me. Anything might stop me."
"Could I stop you?"
Not for his life could he have told what made him ask her that question, whether an insane impulse, or a purely intellectual desire to complete his knowledge of her, to know how deep she had gone in and what his power was, whether he could, indeed, "stop" her.
"You?" she said, and her voice had a long, profound and passionate vibration. He had not dreamed that such a tone could have been wrung from Jane.
Her eyes met his. Steady they were and deep, under their level brows; but in them, too, was that sudden, unexpected quality. Something in her startled him with its intensity.
Her voice, her look, had made it impossible for him to tell her about Rose. It was not the moment.
"I didn't know she was like that," he thought.
No, he had never known until now what Jane was; never seen until now that the gods in giving her genius had given her one passion the more, to complicate her, to increase tenfold her interest and her charm.
And, with the charm of Rose upon him, he could not tell whether, if he had known, it would have made any difference. All he knew or cared to know was that he was going to marry Rose the day after to-morrow.
He would have to ask Nicky to let him go back with him and stay the night. Then he could tell him. And he could get out of telling Jane. He liked teasing and tormenting her, but he did not want to stab her. Still less did he want to stand by with the steel in his hand and see her bleed.
He must get away from Jane.
XI
On the morning after Wendover Jane woke, bright-eyed and flushed with dreams. Last night a folding splendour had hung over her till she slept. It passed into her dreams, and joy woke her.
She sat up and swung her slender limbs over the bedside, and was caught, agreeably,