" she said, "Miss Collett
is."

"Isn't she?" said he.

He saw her politely to the station.

That evening he drank his coffee politely in the drawing-room with Miss
Collett.

"Do you know," he said, "Miss Holland thinks you're nice."

To his wonder Miss Collett did not look as if the information gave her
any joy.

"Did she say so?"

"Yes. Do you think _her_ nice?"

"Of course I do."

"What," said he, "do you really think of her?" He was in the habit of
asking Miss Collett what she thought of people. It interested him to
know what women thought, especially what they thought of other women.

It was in the spirit of their old discussions that she now replied.

"You can see she is a great genius. They say geniuses are bad to live
with. But I do not think she would be."

He did not answer. He was considering very profoundly the question she
had raised.

Which was precisely what Miss Collett meant that he should do.

As the silver-chiming clock struck ten she rose and said good-night. She
never allowed these sittings to be prolonged past ten. Neither did
Brodrick.

"And I am not to read any more proofs?" she said.

"Do you like reading them?"

She smiled. "It's not because I like it. I simply wanted to save you."

"You do save me most things."

"I try," she said sweetly, "to save you all."

He smiled now. "There are limits," he said, "even to your power of
saving me. And to my capacity for being saved."

The words were charged with a significance that Brodrick himself was not
aware of; as if the powers that worked in him obscurely had used him for
the utterance of a divination not his own.

His secretary understood him better than he did himself. She had spent
three years in understanding him. And now, for the first time in three
years, her lucidity was painful.

She could not contemplate serenely the thing she thought she had seen.
Therefore she drew a veil over it and refused to believe that it was
there.

"He did not mean anything," said Gertrude to herself. "He is not the
sort of man who means things." Which was true.

XX

Brodrick, living on Putney Heath, was surrounded by his family. It was
only fifteen minutes' walk from his front door to his brother John's
house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon; only five minutes from his back door
to Henry's house in Roehampton Lane. You went by a narrow foot-track
down the slope to get to Henry. You crossed the Heath by Wimbledon
Common to get