who could not be happy without a woman to look after him.
Silently, almost furtively, Gertrude made herself indispensable to him.
She knew what he wanted before he knew it himself, and was on the spot
to supply it. Thus, watching the awful increase of Brodrick's
correspondence, as the editor grew great, she was prepared for the
coming of a secretary and had forestalled it.

She had kept herself prepared for the coming of a wife, a mistress of
Brodrick's house, and by making Brodrick supremely comfortable she had
managed to forestall that too. His secretary had become the companion
that his housekeeper could not hope to be. Hitherto he had kept Gertrude
Collett out of his library as far as possible. Now her intrusion had the
consecration of business, and it was even permissible for Gertrude to
spend long hours with him in the sanctuary. Brodrick invariably
breakfasted alone. This habit and his deadly and perpetual dining out,
had been a barrier to all intimacy. But now a large part of his work on
the "Monthly Review" could be done at home in the evenings, so that the
editor had less time for dining out. And latterly he had taken to
coming home early in the afternoons, when he rather liked to have
Gertrude in the drawing-room pouring out tea for him. She filled the
place of something that he missed, that he was as yet hardly aware of
missing. It seemed to him that he had got used to Gertrude.

He could not think what life would be like without Gertrude, any more
than he could think what it would be like with her in a closer and more
intimate relation. For none of them had ever suggested that he should
marry Gertrude. No Brodrick would have dreamed of marrying his
housekeeper. Gertrude would not have dreamed of it herself.

And yet she dreamed. But her dream was of continuance in the silent,
veiled adventure, the mystery and religion of her service. Service to
Brodrick, perpetual, unwearying service, constituted to her mind the
perfect tie. It was the purity of it that she counted as perfection. She
desired nothing further than her present surrender to the incorruptible,
inassailable passion of service. Whenever, in her dream, she touched the
perilous edges of devotion, Gertrude had pulled herself back. She had
told herself that she was there for nothing in the world but to save
Brodrick, to save him trouble, to save him worry, to save him expense;
to save and save and save. That was really what it came to when she
saved