e time," said Gertrude. She was
examining the inner cover. "Besides, she has sent it on unopened."

"Excellent Miss Ranger!"

He said it with a certain levity. But even as he said it his brain
accepted the inference she forced on it. If Tanqueray had not sent his
manuscript to Camden Town for corrections, he had sent it there for
another reason. The parcel was registered. There was no letter inside
it.

Brodrick's hand trembled as he turned over the pages of the manuscript.
Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon its trembling.

A few savage ink-scratches in Tanqueray's handwriting told where Miss
Ranger had blundered; otherwise the manuscript was clean. Tanqueray had
at last satisfied his passion for perfection.

All this Brodrick's brain took in while his eyes, feverish and intent,
searched the blank spaces of the manuscript. He knew what he was looking
for. It would be there, on the wide margin left for her, that he would
find the evidence that his wife and Tanqueray were together. He knew the
signs of her. Not a manuscript of Tanqueray's, not one of his last great
books, but bore them, the queer, delicate, nervous pencil-markings that
Tanqueray, with all his furious erasures, left untouched. Sometimes
(Brodrick had noticed) he would enclose them in a sort of holy circle of
red ink, to show that they were not for incorporation in the text. But
it was not in him to destroy a word that she had written.

But he could find no trace of her. He merely made out some humble
queryings of Miss Ranger, automatically erased.

The manuscript was in three Parts. As he laid down each, Gertrude put
forth a quiet hand and drew it to herself. He was too much preoccupied
to notice how minutely and with what intent and passionate anxiety she
examined it.

He was arranging the manuscript in order. Gertrude was absorbed in Part
Three. He had reached out for it when he remembered that the original
draft of Part Two had contained a passage as to which he had endeavoured
to exercise an ancient editorial right. He looked to see whether
Tanqueray had removed it.

He had not. The passage stood, naked and immense, tremendous as some
monument of primeval nature, alone in literature, simple, superb,
immortal; irremovable by any prayer. Brodrick looked at it now with a
clearer vision. He acknowledged its grandeur and bowed his head to the
power that was Tanqueray. Had he not been first to recognize it? It was
as if his suspicion of the man urged