ing her to stay.
Brodrick wrote (at rather longer intervals) saying how happy the
children were, and how entirely comfortable he was with Gertrude. His
letters contained little besides praise of Gertrude. There was no
reason, he reiterated, why she should not stay.

She stayed, and in her fifth week she received the reward of her
staying. Walking back to the farm late one evening, the moors veiled
from her passion by the half-darkness, her Idea came back to her. It
came, not yet with the vividness of flesh and blood, but like a ghost.
It had ghostly hands and feet, and like a ghost it walked the road with
her. But through its presence she felt in herself again that nascent
ecstasy which foretold, infallibly, the onset of the incredible act and
labour of creation.

When she reached the farm she found George Tanqueray sitting in the
porch. The lamp-light through the open door revealed him.

"Whatever brought you here?" she said.

"What always brings me."

She understood him to mean that he also had been driven forth, and was
in subjection to the Idea.

"Have you come to turn me out?" she said.

"No, Jinny."

He explained that he was staying in the village, at the Three Crowns. He
had arrived that evening and had walked over.

He followed her into the deep kitchen. At the supper-table his place had
been laid for him already. He had ordered it so.

He looked at her, smiling an apology.

"Is it all right?" he said.

"Perfectly all right, George."

They talked all evening and far into the night. She parted from him at
the gate of the lane under the ash-trees. Under the ash-trees her Idea
showed in its immense and luminous perfection. It trembled into life. It
drew her, palpitating, into the lamp-light of the room.

She had found what she had come for.

That was the effect he always had on her.

LXI

Brodrick had been alone in the first fortnight that followed Jane's
extraordinary departure. Instead of settling down to be comfortable with
Gertrude, he had packed her off to the seaside with the children and
their nurse. He had often wondered what he should do without Gertrude.
Now he knew. He knew by incontrovertible experiment that he could not do
without her at all. Everything, even the silver-chiming clock, went
wrong in her absence.

If, before that fortnight, Brodrick had been asked suddenly with what
feelings he regarded Gertrude Collett, he would have replied that he was
unaware of regard