uality of the nervous temperament, the power of rising
high-strung to an emergency. He intimated that he rejoiced to see her on
the right track, substituting for the unhealthy excesses of the brain
the normal, wholesome life of motherhood. He was not sure now that he
pitied her. He was sorrier, ten times sorrier, for his brother Hugh.

Gertrude Collett agreed with the Doctor. She insisted that it was
Brodrick and not Jane who suffered. Gertrude was in a position to know.
She hinted that nobody but she really did know. She saw more of him than
any of his family. She saw more of him than Jane. Brodrick's suffering
was Gertrude's opportunity, the open, consecrated door where she entered
soft-footed, angelic, with a barely perceptible motion of her ministrant
wings. Circumstances restored the old intimate relation. Brodrick was
worried about his digestion; he was afraid he was breaking up
altogether, and Gertrude's solicitude confirmed him in his fear. Under
its influence and Gertrude's the editor spent less and less of his time
in Fleet Street. He found, as he had found before, that a great part of
his work could be done more comfortably at home. He found, too, that he
required more than ever the co-operation of a secretary. The increased
efficiency of Addy Ranger made her permanent and invaluable in Fleet
Street. Jane's preoccupation had removed her altogether from the affairs
of the "Monthly Review." Inevitably Gertrude slid into her former place.

She had more of Brodrick now than she had ever had; she had more of the
best of him. She was associated with his ambition and his dream. Now
that Jane's hand was not there to support it, Brodrick's dream had begun
to sink a little, it was lowering itself almost to Gertrude's reach. She
could touch it on tiptoe, straining. She commiserated Jane on her
exclusion from the editor's adventures and excitements, his untiring
pursuit of the young talents (his scent for them was not quite so
infallible as it had been), his curious or glorious finds. Jane smiled
at her under her tired eyes. She was glad that he was not alone in his
dream, that he had some one, if it was only Gertrude.

For, by an irony that no Brodrick could possibly have foreseen, Jane's
child separated her from her husband more than her genius had ever done.
Her motherhood had the fierce ardour and concentration of the disastrous
power. It was as if her genius had changed its channel and direction,
and had its impuls