ake 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, whe