ings, things that he thought were adequately imbecile, and shot them
into letter-boxes. As to what became of them, Tanqueray had never seen
anybody more unsolicitous, more reckless of the dark event.

He went away with Prothero's poems in his pocket.

Nina followed him and held him on the doorstep.

"You do believe in him?" she said.

"What's the good of _my_ believing in him? I can't help him. I can't
help myself. He's got to wait, Nina, like the rest of us. It won't hurt
him."

"It will. He can't wait, George. He's desperately poor. You must do
something."

"What can I do?"

"There are things," she said, "that people always do."

"I could offer him a five-pound note; but he wouldn't take it."

"No. He wouldn't take it. You can do better than that. You can get him
to meet that man of yours."

"What man?"

"That magazine man, Brodrick."

He laughed. "Considering that I all but did for him and his magazine!
Brodrick's Jane Holland's man, not mine, you know. Have you told Jane
about Prothero?"

"No."

A faint flame leaped in her face and died.

"You'd better," he said. "She can do anything with Brodrick. She could
even make him take a poem. Why didn't you ask Prothero to meet her?"

"I haven't seen her for six months."

"Is that your fault or hers?"

"Neither."

"He's had to wait, then, six months?"

There was no escaping his diabolical lucidity.

"Go and see her at once," he went on, "and take Prothero. That's more to
the point, you know, than his seeing me. Jinny is a powerful person, and
then she has a way with her."

Again the flame leaped in her face and died, slowly, as under torture.

"Even Laura can do more for him than I. She knows people on papers. Take
him to see Laura." He was backing out of the doorway.

"It was you," she said, "that he wanted to see. I promised him."

Her face, haggard, restless with the quivering of her agonized nerves,
was as a wild book for him to read. He was sorry for her torture. He
lingered.

"I'd go and speak to Brodrick to-morrow, only he loathes the sight of
me, and I can't blame him, poor devil."

"It's no matter," she said. "I'll write to Jane Holland."

"Do. She'll get him work on Brodrick's paper."

He went away, meditating on Nina and her medical, surgical poet. She
would have to write to Jinny now. But she wouldn't take him to see her.
She was determined to keep him to herself. That was why none of them had
seen anything of Nina for six