oman had borne her. And, queerer
still, her genius had rushed in and seized upon that body, that it might
draw wild nature into it through her woodland, pastoral blood. And for
the blood it took it had given her back fire.

Latterly, owing to Tanqueray's behaviour, whenever Jane looked in the
glass, it had been the element of queerness and ugliness that she had
seen. She had felt herself cruelly despoiled, disinherited of the
splendours and powers of her sex. And here she was, looking, as she
modestly put it, like any other woman. Any one of the unknown multitude
whom lately, in prophetic agony, she had seen surrounding Tanqueray;
women dowered, not with the disastrous gift of genius, but with the
secret charm and wonder of mere womanhood. One of these (she had always
reckoned with the possibility), one of these conceivably might at any
moment, and inevitably would when her moment came, secure and conquer
Tanqueray. She had been afraid, even in vision, to measure her power
with theirs.

But now, standing there in the long nightgown that made her so straight
and tall, with arms raised, holding up the thick mass of her hair, her
body bent a little backwards from the waist, showing it for the slender
and supple thing it was, seeing herself so incredibly feminine and so
alive, she defied any one to tell the difference. If any difference
there were it was not in her body, neither was it in her face. That was
the face which had looked at Tanqueray last night; the face which he had
called up to meet that strange excitement and that tenderness of his.
Her body was the body of a woman created in a day and a night by joy for
its own wooing.

This glorious person was a marvel to itself. It was so incomprehensibly,
so superlatively happy. Its eyes, its mouth, its hands and feet were
happy. It was happy inside and out and all over. It had developed a
perfectly preposterous capacity for enjoyment. It found pleasure in
bathing itself, in dressing itself, in brushing its hair. And its very
hair, when it had done with it, looked happy.

It was at its happiest at ten o'clock, when Jane sat down to write a
letter to Tanqueray. The letter had to be written. For yesterday Nina
Lempriere had asked her to supper in her rooms on Sunday, and she was to
bring George Tanqueray. If, said Nina, she could get him.

Sunday was the seventeenth. This was Wednesday, the thirteenth. She
would hear from Tanqueray to-night or to-morrow at the latest.