God Almighty to Hambleby or he won't kick."

"Doesn't he kick?"

"Oh, Lord, yes. You haven't gone in deep enough to stop him. I'm only
warning you against a possible danger. It's always a possible danger
when I'm not there to look after you."

He rose. "Anything," he said, "is possible when I'm not there."

She rose also. Their hands and their eyes met.

"That's it," she said, "you weren't there, and you won't be."

"You're wrong," said he, "I've always been there when you wanted me."

He turned to go and came back again.

"If I don't like to see you celebrated, Jinny, it's because I want to
see you immortal."

"You don't want to be alone in your immortality?"

"No. I don't want to be alone--in my immortality."

With that he left her. And he had not said a word about his wife.

Neither for that matter had Jane. She wondered why she had not.

"At any rate," she thought, "_I_ haven't hurt his immortality."

XVI

A week after his visit to Jane Holland, Tanqueray was settled, as he
called it, in rooms in Bloomsbury. He had got all his books and things
sent down from Hampstead, to stay in Bloomsbury for ever, because
Bloomsbury was cheap.

It had not occurred to him to think what Rose was to do with herself in
Bloomsbury or he with Rose. He had brought her up out of the little
village of Sussex where they had lodged, in a farmhouse, ever since
their marriage. Rose had been happy down in Sussex.

And for the first few weeks Tanqueray had been happy too. He was never
tired of playing with Rose, caressing Rose, talking nonsense to Rose,
teasing and tormenting Rose for ever. The more so as she provoked him by
turning an imperturbable face to the attack. He liked to lie with his
head in Rose's lap, while Rose's fingers played with his hair, stirring
up new ideas to torment her with. He was content, for the first few
weeks, to be what he had become, a sane and happy animal, mated with an
animal, a dear little animal, superlatively happy and incorruptibly
sane.

He might have gone on like that for an interminable number of weeks but
that the mere rest from all intellectual labour had a prodigiously
recuperative effect. His genius, just because he had forgotten all about
it, began with characteristic perversity to worry him again. It wouldn't
let him alone. It made him more restless than Rose had ever made him. It
led him into ways that were so many subtle infidelities to Rose. It tore
him from Rose an