hat his wife's genius was
his dangerous rival, standing between them, separating them, slackening
the tie; lest he should know how much she knew; lest he should consider
her obtuse, as if she thought that he grudged his sacrifices, she faced
him with her supreme sincerity.

"You know that you are glad to make them."

She smiled, clear-eyed, shining with her own inspiration. She was the
woman who was there to serve him, who knew his need. She came to him in
his hour of danger, in his dark, sensual hour, and held his light for
him. She held him to himself high.

He was so helpless that he turned to her as if she indeed knew.

"Do you think," he said, "it does mean most to her?"

"You know best," she said, "what it means."

It sank into him. And, as it sank, he said to himself that of course it
was so; that he might have known it. Gertrude left it sinking.

He never for a moment suspected that she had rubbed it in.

XLVI

They were saying now that Jane left her husband too much to Gertrude
Collett, and that it was hard on Hugh.

They supposed, in their unastonished acceptance of the facts, that
things would have to go on like this indefinitely. It was partly Hugh's
own fault. That was John Brodrick's view of it. Hugh had given her her
head and she was off. And when Jane was off (Sophy declared) nothing
could stop her.

And yet she was stopped.

Suddenly, in the full fury of it, she stopped dead.

She had given herself ten months. She had asked for ten months; not a
day more. But she had not allowed for friction or disturbance from the
outside. And the check--it was a clutch at the heart that brought her
brain up staggering--came entirely from the outside, from the uttermost
rim of her circle, from Mabel Brodrick.

In January, the last but three of the ten months, Mabel became ill. All
autumn John Brodrick's wife had grown slenderer and redder-eyed, her
little high-nosed, distinguished face thinned and drooped, till she was
more than ever like a delicate bird.

Jane heard from Frances vague rumours of the source of Mabel's malady.
The powers of life had been cruel to the lady whom John Brodrick had so
indiscreetly married.

It was incredible to all of them that poor Mabel should have the power
to stay Jinny in her course. But it was so. Mabel had became attached to
Jinny. She clung, she adhered; she drew her life through Jinny. It was
because she felt that Jane understood, that she was the only o