though he had seen through her, he had never
at any time admitted that she was dreadful. He had spoken rather as if,
seeing _through_ her, he had seen things she could not see, fine things
which he declared to be the innermost truth of her.

He must have known all the time that she would feel like that when she
could bring herself to see Laura.

She saw through _him_ now. That was why he had insisted on her coming.
It was as if he had said to her, "I'm not thinking so tremendously of
her. What I mean is that it'll be all right for you if you'll trust
yourself to me; if you'll only come." He seemed to say frankly, "That
beast of yours is really dreadful. It must be a great affliction to have
to carry it about with you. I'll show you how to get rid of it
altogether. You've only got to see her, Nina, in her heartrending
innocence, wearing, if you would believe it, a mouse-coloured velvet
gown."

That night Laura stood silent and thoughtful while Prothero's hands
fumbled gently over the many little hooks and fastenings of the gown.
She let it slide with the soft fall of its velvet from her shoulders to
her feet.

"I wish," she said, "I hadn't put it on."

He stooped and kissed her where the silk down of her hair sprang from
her white neck.

"Does it think," he said, "that it crushed poor Nina with its beauty?"

She shook her head. She would not tell him what she thought. But the
tears in her eyes betrayed her.

LI

It was April in a week of warm weather, of blue sky, of white clouds,
and a stormy south-west wind. Brodrick's garden was sweet with dense
odours of earth and sunken rain, of young grass and wallflowers thick in
the borders, and with the pure smells of virgin green, of buds and
branches and of lime-leaves fallen open to the sun. Outside, among the
birch-trees, there was a flashing of silver stems, a shaking of green
veils, and a triumphing of bright grass over the blown dust of the
suburb, as the spring gave back its wildness to the Heath.

Brodrick was coming back. He had been away a fortnight, on his holiday.
He was to have taken Jane with him but at the last moment she had been
kept at home by some ailment of the child's. They had been married more
than three years now, and they had not been separated for as many nights
and days. In all his letters Brodrick had stated that he was enjoying
himself immensely and could do with three months of it; and at the end
of a fortnight he had sent Jane