master."

Jane remembered.

"He was training us; I really think he was," said Laura, still
reminiscent. "Can't you hear him saying, 'Come on, come on, what the
dickens does it matter if I do see you? It's got to be somebody and it
had much better be me. I shan't snigger. But I'm going to make you
squirm as much as you _can_ squirm. You've got to know what it feels
like.' I think he was positively proud of us when we did come on. I
can't imagine him taking any other view. And after all, you know, he
didn't snigger."

She pondered. "He's an abominable husband, but he's a glorious friend."

Jane assented. He was glorious and abominable.

Laura's face grew tender in meditation. She was no longer thinking of
George Tanqueray.

"There's one awful fear I have with Owen. I shan't be ready in time when
he's all nicely disembodied and on his way to heaven. I see him stopped
at some uninteresting station, and sitting there waiting--patiently
waiting--for me to disembody myself and come on. It'll take me ages."

"It always was difficult to get you off," Jane murmured.

"I know. And I shall feel as if I were keeping him back when he was
trying to catch a train."

"I imagine he's pretty sure of his train."

"The truth is Owen doesn't really wait. He's always in his train and out
of it, so to speak."

"And your disembodying yourself, darling, is only a question of time."

"And time," said Laura, "doesn't exist for Owen."

But time was beginning to exist for Owen. He felt the pressure of the
heavy days that divided him from Laura. He revolted against this tyranny
of time.

And Brodrick, the lord of time, remained inexorable for two months.

Long before they were ended, little Laura, with a determination as
inexorable as Brodrick's, had left Brodrick's house. To the great
disgust and scandal of the Brodricks she had gone back to her rooms in
Camden Town, where Prothero was living in the next house with only a
wall between them.

Then (it was in the middle of October, when Henry was telling them that
Jane must on no account be agitated) Brodrick and Jane nearly quarrelled
about Prothero. She said that he was cruel, and that if Owen went into a
consumption and Laura died of hunger it would be all his fault. And when
he tried to reason gently with her she went off into a violent fit of
hysterics. The next day Brodrick had a son born to him, a whole month
before Henry had expected anything of the kind.

At first Brodri