Not a word about his wife.

At first the omission did not strike her as significant. It was so like Tanqueray, to fling you the bare body of a fact while he cherished the secret soul of it himself. He must have wondered how she would take it.

She took it as she would have taken a telegram from a stranger, telling her that Tanqueray was dead. She took it, as she would have taken the stranger's telegram, standing very stiff and very still. She faced, as it were, an invisible crowd of such strangers, ignorant of the intimacy of her loss, not recognizing her right to suffer, people whose presence constrained her to all the observances of decency.

She crushed the note in her hand vindictively, as she would have crushed that telegram; she pushed it from her, hating the thing that had made her suffer. Then she drew it to her again; she smoothed it; she examined it, as she might have examined the telegram, to verify the hour and the place of the decease, to establish the fact which seemed incredible.

Verification brought the first live pangs that stabbed her. She was aware of the existence of the woman. There had been a woman all the time. But she couldn't realize her. She only knew that she meant finality, separation.

An hour passed. She went to bed. Her footsteps and her movements in undressing were hushed and slow. She was still like some one who knows that there has been a death in the house and that the body lies in the next room. Stretched in her bed, turning her face to the wall to hide herself, she had that sense of awful contact and of separation, of there being only a wall between the living and the dead.

The best thing that could have happened to her would have been to lie awake all night, and let her heart and brain hammer as they would, till they hammered her to stupefaction. Unfortunately, towards morning she fell into a sound sleep.

She woke from it with nerves re-charged to the point of torture and a brain intolerably acute. She saw now all the vivid, poignant things which last night she had overlooked. She realized the woman. She divined her secret, her significance, all that she stood for and all that she portended. In the light of that woman (for she spread round her an unbearable illumination) Jane saw transparently what she had been to Tanqueray. She had had no power and no splendour for him of her own. But she had been the reflection of the woman's splendour and her power. So much so that, when he looked at her as he had looked the other evening, he, George Tanqueray, had grown tender as if in the presence of the other. He had suffered a sentimental, a sensuous hallucination, and had made her suffer.

But never, never for a moment had he cared for her, or seen in her any power or splendour of her own.

She wondered why he had not told her about that woman then. It had been just two days before he married her. Perhaps it had been only his shyness, or, more likely, his perversity.

But he had said nothing about her now. He had not said, as men say so fatuously in this circumstance, that he believed they would like each other and that he hoped they would be friends.

It was borne in on her that he had said nothing because he knew it was the end. There were no fatuous beliefs and hopes in Tanqueray. And if there was perversity, there was also an incorruptible, an almost violent honesty. His honesty was, as it were, part of his perversity.

He was not going to keep up any absurd pretences, to let her imagine for one moment that it was not the end. It was to mean, not only that Tanqueray would no longer exist for her, but that she would no longer exist for Tanqueray. In her attitude to him, there had always been, though Tanqueray did not know it, an immense simplicity and humbleness. She felt herself wiped out by this woman who wore for him (she saw her wearing) all the powers and all the splendours. Tanqueray's wife must make an end of her and of everything. There was nothing, not the smallest, most pitiful, cast-up fragment that she could save from the wreck. A simple, ordinary friendship might have survived it, but not theirs. There had been in it a disastrous though vague element of excess. She could not see it continuing in the face of Tanqueray's wife. As for enlarging it so as to embrace Tanqueray's wife as well as Tanqueray, Jane simply couldn't. There was something virile in her that forbade it. She could no more have taken Tanqueray's wife into her heart than Tanqueray, if their cases had been reversed, could have taken into his Jane's husband. She might have expected Tanqueray to meet her husband, to shake hands with him, to dine with him, but not to feel or to profess affection for him. So Tanqueray would probably expect her to call upon his wife, to receive her, to dine with her, perhaps, but it would end there.

It would end there, in hand-shakings and in frigid ceremony, this friendship to which Tanqueray had lent himself with a precipitance that resembled passion and a fervour that suggested fire.

Looking back, she wondered at what moment the real thing had begun. She was certain that two months ago, on that evening in May after he had dined with her, the moment, which was his moment, had been hers. She had been divided from him by no more than a hair's-breadth. And she had let him go for a scruple finer than a hair.

And yet it seemed to her that her scruple had not really counted. It might have worked, somehow, at the moment; but she could not think of it as containing all the calamitous weight of destiny. Her failure (it was so pre-eminently her failure) came of feeling and of understanding at every moment far too much. It came of having eyes at the back of your head and nerves that extended, prodigiously, beyond the confines of your body. It was as if she understood with her body and felt with her brain, passion and insight in her running disastrously together.

It came back to her that Tanqueray had always regarded her with interest and uncertainty, as if he had wondered whether she were really like other women. In his moment he had searched her for their secret, and her scruple had worked so far that he judged her lacking in the instinct of response.

Her heart, of course, he must have heard. It had positively screamed at him. But her heart was not what had concerned him at any moment. She remembered how she had said to him that night, "Mayn't I be a woman?" and he had answered her brutally. What had concerned him was her genius. If there had been twenty women in her he would have made her sacrifice them all to that. He had cared for it to the point of tenderness, of passion. She had scores of his letters in a drawer, there; love-letters written to her genius. She knew one of them, the last, by heart. It was written at Hampstead.

"Jinny," it had said, "I'm on my knees, with my hat off, at your feet. I'm in the dust, Jinny, kissing your feet. Shivers of exquisite adoration are going up and down my spine. Do you know what you've done to me, you unspeakably divine person? I've worn out the knees, the knees of my trousers; I've got dust in my hair, Jinny, kissing your feet."

That letter (there was a great deal more of it) had tided her over Tanqueray's worst absence; it had carried her on, so to speak, to Wendover. As she thought of it her heart was filled with hatred and jealousy of her genius.

It was odd, but she had no jealousy and no hatred for Tanqueray's wife.

She hated and was jealous of her genius, not only because it had forced Tanqueray to care for it, but because, being the thing that had made her different from other women, it had kept Tanqueray from caring about her.

And she had got to live alone with it.

Her solitude had become unbearable. The room was unbearable; it was so pervaded, so dominated by her genius and by Tanqueray. Most of all by Tanqueray. There were things in it which he had given to her, things which she had given to him, as it were; a cup he drank out of, a tray he used for his cigar-ash; things which would remain vivid for ever with the illusion of his presence. She could not bear to see them about. She suffered in all ways, secretly, as if Tanqueray were dead.

A bell rang. It was four o'clock. Somebody was calling.

As to one preoccupied with a bereavement, it seemed to her incredible that anybody could call so soon. She was then reminded that she had a large acquaintance who would be interested in seeing how she took it. She had got to meet all these people as if nothing had happened. She remembered now that she had promised Caroline Bickersteth to go to tea with her to-day. If she wanted to present an appearance of nothing having happened, she couldn't do better than go to Caro's for tea. Caro expected her and would draw conclusions from her absence.

So might her caller if she declared herself not at home.

It was Nicky, come, he said, to know if she were going to Miss Bickersteth's, and if he might have the pleasure of taking her there. That was all he cared to go for, the pleasure of taking her.

Jane had never thought of Nicky being there. He was a barrister and he had chambers, charming chambers, in the Temple, where he gave little tea-parties and (less frequently) looked up little cases. But on Sundays he was always a little poet down at Wendover.

They needn't start at once, he said, almost as if he knew that Jane was dreading it. He sat and talked; he talked straight on end; talked, not literature, but humble, innocent banalities, so unlike Nicky who cared for nothing that had not the literary taint.

It was a sign of supreme embarrassment, the only one he gave. He did not mention Tanqueray, and for a moment she wondered if he had heard. Then she remembered. Of course, it was Nicky who had seen Tanqueray through.

Nicky was crowning his unlikelihood by refraining from the slightest allusion to the event. He was, she saw with dreadful lucidity, afraid of hurting her. And yet, he was (in his exquisite delicacy) behaving as if nothing had happened. They were going together to Miss Bickersteth's as if nothing had happened. His manner suggested that they were moving together in a world where nothing could happen; a world of delightful and amicable superficialities. She was not to be afraid of him; he was, as it were, looking another way; he wasn't even aware of any depths. The sheer beauty and gentleness of him showed her that he had seen and understood thoroughly what depths there were.

It was her certainty of Nicky's vision that drove her to the supreme act of courage.

"Why aren't we talking," she said, "about George Tanqueray?"

Nicky blushed in a violent distress. Even so, in the house of mourning, he would have blushed at some sudden, unsoftened reference to the deceased.

"I didn't know," he said, "whether he had told you."

"Why shouldn't he?"

Poor Nicky, she had made him blunder, so upset was he by the spectacle of her desperate pluck. He really was like a person calling after a bereavement. He had called on account of it, and yet it was the last thing he was going to talk about. He had come, not to condole, but to see if there was any way in which he could be of use.

"Well," said Nicky, "he seemed to have kept it so carefully from all his friends——"

"He told you——Why, you were there, weren't you?"

It was as if she had said, "You were there—you saw him die."

"Yes." Nicky's face expressed a tender relief. If she could talk about it——"But it was only at the last minute."

"I wonder," said she, "why he didn't tell us."

"Well, you know, I think it was because she—the lady——"

He hesitated. He knew what would hurt most; and he shrank almost visibly from mentioning Her.

"Yes—you've forgotten the lady."

She smiled, and he took courage. "There it is. The lady, you see, isn't altogether a lady."

"Oh, Nicky——"

He did not look at her. He seemed to be a partaker in what he felt to be her suffering and Tanqueray's shame.

"Has he known her long?" she said.

"About two months."

She was right then. It had been since that night. It had been her own doing. She had driven him to her.

"Since he went to Hampstead then?"

"Yes."

"Who was she?"

"His landlady's daughter, I think, or a niece. She waited on him and—she nursed him when he was ill."

Jane drew in her breath with an almost audible sound. Nicky had sunk into his chair in his attitude of vicarious, shamefaced misery.

It made her rally. "Nicky," she said, "why do you look like that? I don't think it's nice of you to sit there, giving him away by making gloomy faces, in a chair. Why shouldn't he marry his landlady's daughter if he likes? You ought to stand up for him and say she's charming. She is. She must be; or he wouldn't have done it."

"He ought not to have done it."

"But he has. It had to happen. Nothing else could have happened."

"You think so? It seems to me the most unpredestined, the most horribly, fantastically fortuitous occurrence."

"It was what he wanted. Wouldn't you have given him what he wanted?"

"No," said Nicky, "not if it wasn't good for him."

"Oh, Nicky, how do you know what's good for him? You're not George Tanqueray."

"No. If I were I'd have——" He stopped. His passion, growing suddenly, recklessly, had brought him to the verge of the depth they were trying to avoid.

"If you were," said she, with amazing gaiety, "you'd have married this lady who isn't a lady. And then where would you have been?"

"Where indeed?" said Nicky bitterly.

Jane's face, so gay, became suddenly tragic. She looked away, staring steadily, dumbly, at something that she saw. Then he knew that he had raised a vision of the abyss, and of Tanqueray, their Tanqueray, sinking in it. He must keep her from contemplating that, or she would betray herself, she would break down.

He searched his heart for some consoling inspiration, and found none. It was his head which suggested that irrelevance was best.

"When," said he, by way of being irrelevant, "are you going to give us another big book?"

"I don't know," she said. "Never, I think."

He looked up. Her eyes shone perilously over trembling pools of tears. He had not been irrelevant at all.

"You don't think anything of the sort," he said, with a sharp tenderness.

"No. I feel it. There isn't another book in me. I'm done for, Nicky."

Her tears were hanging now on the curve of her eyelashes. They shook and fell.

She sat there silent, fronting the abyss. Nicky was horrified and looked it. If that was how she took it——

"You've overworked yourself. That's all," he said presently.

"Yes. That's all."

She rose. "Nicky," she said, "it's half-past four. If we're going we must go."

"Are you sure you want to?"

"Of course I want to." She said it in a tone that for Nicky pointed to another blunder.

"I only thought," said he simply, "it might bore you."

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