ely
happy with you."

She laughed. "Oh, would you!"

"_That_ was the heaven-appointed scheme. And there we were, all five of
us, bent on frustrating the divine will--I beg Gertrude's
pardon--Gertrude's will was entirely in accord."

"It sounds delightfully simple, but I doubt if it would have worked out
so. We've all got as much of each other as we want."

"That's what we haven't got. Very large, important pieces of each of us
have been taken and given to the wrong person. Look at you--look at me."

She looked at him. "My dear, the largest and most important part of you
is kept well out of the reach of Rose's little fingers. You and I have
quite as much of each other as is good for us. If _we_ were to tear each
other to pieces there'd be nothing left of us."

Thus lightly they handled it, setting out in the morning.

Their pace slackened. They had begun to think.

She had always been a little hard on him about Rose, Tanqueray thought.
It was as if she accused him, or rather his genius, of a monstrous
egoism. Surely that only meant that it was indomitably sound and sane. A
reckless sanity it had, a soundness capable of any risks. There never
was any man who so defied the forces of dissolution, who had so profound
an instinct of self-preservation.

Such a nature was bound to be inhospitable to parasites. By the very
ease with which it assimilated all food of earth and heaven, it starved
them at the roots.

It was not that he deliberately cast off any tender thing that clung to
him. It was that the sheer impulse of growth in him was so tremendous
that it burst through and out-soared the embracing and aspiring bonds.
His cruelty (for it _was_ cruelty from the poor parasite's point of
view) was like Nature's, unconscious and impersonal.

It was not his fault, therefore, if Rose's arms, try as she would, could
never hold him. It was not that he was indifferent to Rose or to her
suffering, or that he shrank in moral cowardice from dealing with it as
a man should deal. It was that the voice of implacably wise, and
indubitably sane instincts warned him that he would accomplish no great
thing if he turned to contemplate her tragedy, still less if he
accepted it as his own. Incorruptible impulses urged him to evasion. And
it was thus that in the seven years of his marriage he had achieved
almost complete oblivion of her.

But Jane--Jane was a creature of like impulses and of the same stature
as he. Her dependence on