the solid little son they had called John
Henry Brodrick.

The child justified the double name. The blood of the Brodricks ran in
him pure. He flattered the racial and paternal pride. He grew more and
more the image of what Brodrick had been at his age. It was good to
think that there would be more like him. Brodrick's pride in beholding
him was such that he had almost forgotten that in this question of race
there would be Jane to reckon with.

In December, in the last night of nineteen-seven, a second son was born.
A son so excessively small and feeble that the wonder was how he had
contrived to be born at all. Brodrick when he first looked at him had a
terrible misgiving. Supposing he had to face the chances of
degeneration? There could be only one opinion, of course, as to the
cause and the responsibility. He did not require Henry to tell him that.

Not that he could think of it just then. He could think of nothing but
Jinny pausing again, uncertain, though for a shorter time, before the
dreadful open door.

Nineteen-eight was the year when everything happened. Jinny was hardly
out of danger when there was a crisis in the affairs of the "Monthly
Review." Levine who had been pestering his brother-in-law for the last
eighteen months, was pressing him hard now. The Review was passing out
of Brodrick's hands. When it came to the point he realized how unwilling
he was to let it go. He could only save it by buying Levine out. And he
couldn't do that. As the father of a family he had no business to risk
more money on his unprofitable dream.

It was impossible to conceal from Jane the fact that he was worried. She
saw it in his face. She lay awake, retarded somewhat in her recovery by
the thought that she was responsible for that and all his worries. He
had lost money over the Review and now he was going to lose the Review
itself, owing, she could perfectly well see, to her high-handed
editorship. It would go to his heart, she knew, to give it up; he had
been so attached to his dream. It would go to her heart, too. It was in
his dream, so to speak, that he had first met her; it had held them;
they had always been happy together in his dream. It was his link with
the otherwise inaccessible and intangible elements in her, the elements
that made for separation. She was determined that, whatever went, his
dream should not go. She could not forget that it had been she who had
all but wrecked it in its first precarious year w