and competence, she was now
established as Brodrick's secretary for good. She owed her position to
Jane, a position from which, Addy exultantly declared, not even
earthquakes could remove her.

You would have said nothing short of an earthquake could remove the
"Monthly Review." It looked as if Brodrick's magazine, for all its
dangerous splendour, had come to stay, as if Brodrick, by sheer fixity
and the power he had of getting what he wanted, would yet force the
world to accept his preposterous dream. He had gone straight on, deaf to
his brother-in-law's warning and remonstrance; he had not checked for
one moment the flight of his fantasy, nor changed by one nervous
movement his high attitude. Month after month, the appearance of the
magazine was punctual, inalterable as the courses of the moon.

Bold as Brodrick was, there was no vulgar audacity about his venture.
The magazine was not hurled at people's heads; it was not thrust on
them. It was barely offered. By the restraint and dignity of his
advertisements the editor seemed to be saying to his public, "There it
is. You take it or you leave it. In either case it is there; and it will
remain there."

And strangely, inconceivably, it did remain. In nineteen-six Brodrick
found himself planted with apparent security on the summit of his
ambition. He had a unique position, a reputation for caring, caring with
the candid purity of high passion, only for the best. He counted as a
power unapproachable, implacable to mediocrity. Authors believed in him,
adored, feared, detested him, according to their quality. Other editors
admired him cautiously; they praised him to his face; in secret they
judged him preposterous, but not absurd. They all prophesied his
failure; they gave him a year, or at the most three years.

Some wondered that a man like Brodrick, solid, if you like, but after
all, well, of no more than ordinary brilliance, should have gone so far.
It was said among them that Jane Holland was the power behind Brodrick
and his ordinary brilliance and his most extraordinary magazine. The
imagination he displayed, the fine, the infallible discernment, the
secret for the perfect thing, were hers, they could not by any
possibility be Brodrick's.

Caro Bickersteth, who gathered these impressions in her continuous
intercourse with the right people, met them with one invariable
argument. If Brodrick wasn't fine, if he wasn't perceptive, if he hadn't
got the scent, Caro