, his wife]

His watching face was lowered as he brooded over the marvel and the
mystery of her. It was Jinny who lay there, Jinny, his wife, whose face
had been so tender to him, whose body utterly tender, utterly
compassionate. He tried to realize the marvel and mystery of her genius.
He knew it to be an immortal thing, hidden behind the veil of mortal
flesh that for the moment was so supremely dear to him. He wondered once
whether she still cared for Tanqueray. But the thought passed from him;
it could not endure beside the memory of her tenderness.

She woke and found his eyes fixed on her. They drew her from sleep, as
they had so often drawn her from some dark corner where she had sat
removed. She woke, as if at the urgence of a trouble that kept watch in
her under her sleep. In a moment she was wide-eyed, alert; she gazed at
him with a lucid comprehension of his state. She held out to him an arm
drowsier than her thought.

"I'm a brute to you," she said, "but I can't help it."

She sat up and gathered together the strayed masses of her hair.

"Do you think," she said, "you could get me a cup of tea from the
servant's breakfast?"

He brought the tea, and as they drank together their mutual memories
revived.

"I have," said she, "the most awful recollection of having been a brute
to you."

"Never mind, Jinny," he said, and flushed with the sting of it.

"I don't. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't feel sorry when I want
to. I can't feel anything at all."

She closed her eyes helplessly against his.

"It isn't my fault. It isn't really me. It's It."

He smiled at this reference to the dreadful Power.

"The horrible and brutal thing about it is that it stops you feeling. It
would, you know."

"Would it? I shouldn't have thought it would have made _that_
difference."

"That's just the difference it does make."

He moved impatiently. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I wouldn't talk about it--only--it's much better that you should know
what it is, than that you should think it's what it isn't."

She looked at him. His forehead still displayed a lowering incredulity.

"If you don't believe me, ask George Tanqueray."

"George Tanqueray?"

His nerves felt the shock of the thought that had come to him, just now
when he watched her sleep. He had not expected to meet Tanqueray again
so soon and in the open.

"How much do you think he cares for poor Rose when he's in the state I'm