nd Laura at Owen's side lay awake in her
fear.

LVIII

There was one thing that Prothero, in his journalism, drew the line at.
He would not, if they paid him more than they had ever paid him, more
than they had ever dreamed of paying anybody, he would not review
another poet's work. For some day, he said, Nicky will bring out a
volume of his poems, and in that day he will infallibly turn to me. If,
in that day, I can lay my hand upon my heart and swear that I never
review poetry, that I never have reviewed it and never shall, I can look
Nicky in his innocent face with a clean soul.

But when Nicky actually did it (in the spring of nineteen-nine) Prothero
applied to Brodrick for a holiday. He wanted badly to get out of town.
He could not--when it came to the agonizing point--he could not face
Nicky.

At least that was the account of the matter which Tanqueray gave to
Brodrick when the question of Prothero's impossibility came up again at
Moor Grange. Brodrick was indignant at Prothero's wanting a holiday, and
a month's holiday. It was preposterous. But Jane had implored him to let
him have it.

Jinny would give a good deal, Tanqueray imagined, to get out of town
too. It was more terrible for her to face Nicky than for any of them.
Tanqueray himself was hiding from him at that moment in Brodrick's
study. But Jinny, with that superb and incomprehensible courage that
women have, was facing him down there in the drawing-room.

It was in the drawing-room, later on in the afternoon, that Brodrick
found his wife, shrunk into a corner of the sofa and mopping her face
with a pocket-handkerchief. Tanqueray had one knee on the sofa and one
arm flung tenderly round Jinny's shoulder. He met, smiling, the
husband's standstill of imperturbable inquiry.

"It's all right, Brodrick," he said. "I've revived her. I've been
talking to her like a father."

He stood looking down at her, and commented--

"Nicky brought a book of poems out and Jinny cried."

"It was th--th--the last straw," sobbed Jinny.

Brodrick left them together, just to show how imperturbable he was.

"George," she said, "it was horrible. Poor Nicky stood there where you
are, waiting for me to say things. And I couldn't, I couldn't, and he
saw it. He saw it and turned white----"

"He _is_ white," said Tanqueray.

"He turned whiter. And he burst out into a dreadful perspiration. And
then--oh, don't laugh--it was so awful--he took my hand and wrung i