tremulous as a
body inhabited by leaping light and flame.

She knew that in them both the flame burned singly.

XLI

She was aware how wonderful the thing was that had happened to her, how
it stood solitary in the world.

It was not so, she knew, with any of the others. It was not so with Nina
or with Tanqueray. It was not so even with Jane. Jane had taken into her
life an element of tumult and division. The Lord her God (as Tanqueray
had once told her) was a consuming fire. Married she served a double and
divided flame. For Laura and Prothero the plots of Eden lay green for
ever inside the iron gate, and all heaven was held within the four walls
of a room.

They had established themselves, strictly speaking, in three rooms, two
for work and one for sleep. From the standpoint of tangible
requirements, three rooms on a silent upper floor was their idea of a
perfect lodging. It was Nina's, it had been Tanqueray's and Jane's. A
house, Laura declared, was all very well for a poet like poor Nicky
(what would poor Nicky be without his house?); but Jinny's house was a
curse to her, and Tanks did not regard his as an unmixed blessing,
though she would have died rather than say so to Tank's wife.

Tank's wife had her own theory of Laura's attitude. Laura was making (as
she herself had once made) the best of a bad job. Rose had the worst
opinion of Mr. Prothero's job; the job that sent him into Fleet Street
in all weathers and at all hours of the day and night, and was yet
compatible with his hanging about at home, doing nothing, four days out
of the seven. Rose was very fond of Laura and of Prothero. She had
always felt that they were interesting persons, persons who might any
day be ill and require to be taken care of, who required a good deal of
being taken care of, as it was. Rose superintended their removal. Rose,
very earnestly and gravely, took Laura's housekeeping in hand. To Rose,
Laura's housekeeping was a childish thing. She enlightened its innocence
and controlled its ardours and its indiscretions. Spring chicken on a
Tuesday and a Wednesday, and all Thursday nothing but such stuff as rice
and macaroni was, said Rose, a flyin' outrageous to extremes. She taught
them the secret of a breast of veal, stewed in rice (if rice they must
have), and many another admirable and economical contrivance.

Rose, fertile in contrivances, came and went a great deal to the house
with the iron gate. She, who had once f