Her light rose. She met his gaze with a flame
of the sacrificial fire.

"I'll do whatever you want," she said.

That was how Gertrude came back to Brodrick's house.

"And now," Jane wrote to Sophy Levine, "we're all happy."

But Sophy in her wisdom wondered. As soon as she heard of Gertrude's
installation she rushed over to Putney at the highest speed of her
motor-car.

She found Jane on the lawn, lying back in her long chair. An expression
of great peace was on her face.

She had been writing. Some sheets of manuscript lay under the chair
where she had thrust them out of Sophy's sight. She had heard the
imperious trump of the motor-car, sounding her doom as it swung on to
the Heath.

Sophy looked at her sister-in-law and said to herself that, really,
Henry did exaggerate. She could see nothing in the least abnormal about
Jane. Jane, when you took her the right way, was just like anybody else.

Gertrude was out. She had gone over to Roehampton to see Frances. Sophy
judged the hour propitious.

"It works," said Jane in answer to her question; "it works beautifully.
You don't know, Sophy, what a hand that woman has. Just go indoors and
look about you. You can see it working."

"I couldn't stand another woman's hand in my house," said Sophy,
"however beautifully it worked."

"Is it my house? In a sense it's hers. There's no doubt that she made it
about as perfect as a house could be. It was like a beautiful machine
that she had invented and kept going. Nobody but Gertrude could have
kept it going like that. It was her thing and she loved it."

Sophy's face betrayed her demure understanding of Gertrude's love.

"Gertrude," said Jane, "couldn't do my work, and it's been demonstrated
that I can't do hers. I don't believe in turning people out of their
heaven-appointed places and setting them down to each other's jobs."

"If you could convince me that Gertrude's heaven-appointed place is in
your husband's house----"

"She's proved it."

"He wasn't your husband then."

"Don't you see that his being my husband robs the situation of its
charm, the vagueness that might have been its danger?"

"Jinny--it never answers--a double arrangement."

"Why not? Why not a quadruple arrangement if necessary?"

"That would be safe. It's the double thing that isn't. You've got to
think of Hugh."

"Poor darling, as if I didn't."

"I mean--of him and her."

"Together? Is that your----Oh, I can't. It's unthinkable."