Three weeks later, one afternoon in October, Jane found herself going at a terrific pace through Kensington Gardens. Brodrick had sent word that he would see her at five o'clock, and it wanted but a few minutes of that hour.

When Tanqueray sounded his warning, he did not measure the effect of the illumination that it wrought. The passion he divined in her had had a chance to sleep as long as it was kept in the dark. Now it was wide awake, and superbly aware of itself and of its hour.

After she had parted from him Jane saw clearly how she had been drawn, and why. There was no doubt that the folly had come upon her; the folly that Tanqueray told her she would think divine. She not only thought it divine, she felt it to be divine with a certainty that Tanqueray himself could not take away from her.

Very swiftly the divine folly had come upon her. She could not say precisely at what moment, unless it were three weeks ago, when she had stood dumb before the wise women, smitten by a mortal pang, invaded by an inexplicable helplessness and tenderness. It was then that she had been caught in the toils of life, the snares of the folly.

For all its swiftness, she must have had a premonition of it. That was why she had tried so desperately to build the house of life for Brodrick and Miss Collett. She had laboured at the fantastic, monstrous fabrication, as if in that way only she could save herself.

She had been afraid of it. She had fought it desperately. In the teeth of it she had sat down to write, to perfect a phrase, to finish a paragraph abandoned the night before; and she had found herself meditating on Brodrick's moral beauty.

She knew it for the divine folly by the way it dealt with her. It made her the victim of preposterous illusions. The entire district round about Putney became for her a land of magic and of splendour. She could not see the word Putney posted on a hoarding without a stirring of the spirit and a beating of the heart. When she closed her eyes she saw in a vision the green grass plots and sinuous gravel walks of Brodrick's garden, she heard as in a vision the silver chiming of the clock, an unearthly clock, measuring immortal hours.

The great wonder of this folly was that it took the place of the creative impulse. Not only did it possess her to the exclusion of all other interests, but the rapture of it was marvellously akin to the creative ecstasy.

It drove her now at a furious pace through the Gardens and along the High Street. It caused her to exult in the face of the great golden October sunset piled high in the west. It made her see Brodrick everywhere. The Gardens were a green paradise with the spirit of Brodrick moving in them like a god. The High Street was a golden road with Brodrick at the end of it. The whole world built itself into a golden shrine for Brodrick. He was coming to see her at five o'clock.

He was not there, in her room, when she arrived. But he had been there so often that he pervaded and dominated the place, as Tanqueray had once dominated and pervaded it. He had created such a habit, such a superstition of himself that his bodily presence was no longer necessary to its support. There was a chair by the fireplace, next the window. She could not see it now without seeing Brodrick, without seeing a look he had, when, as he sat there silent, his eyes had held her, covered her, caressed her. There were times when he had the gestures and the manner of a man sitting by his own fireside, taking her and all that she signified for granted, establishing between them a communion in which the poignant, ultimate things were not said because they were so profoundly felt.

She caught herself smiling now at the things she was going to say to him.

Her bell rang with the dreadful, startling noise that made her heart leap in her breast.

He came in slowly like a man preoccupied with grave business of his own. And at the sight of him Jane's heart, which had leaped so madly, dragged in her breast and drew the tide of her blood after it.

He took her hand, but not with any eagerness. His face was more than ever sombre, as if with some inward darkness and concern. He turned from her and became interested in finding a suitable place for his hat. (Jane noticed that it was a new one.) Then he sat down and remained seated.

He let her get up and cross the room and ring the bell for herself, so fixed was he in his dream. Only, as her gown brushed him in her passing back, he was aware of it and shrank. She heard him draw in a hard breath, and when she looked at him again she saw the sweat standing on his forehead.

"You've hurried," she said.

"I haven't," said Brodrick. "I never hurry."

"Of course not. You never do anything undignified."

That was not one of the things that she had meant to say.

"Never," said Brodrick, "if I can help it." And he wiped his forehead.

Jane caught herself smiling at Brodrick's hat. She felt a sudden melting, enervating tenderness for Brodrick's hat. The passion which, in the circumstances, she could not permit herself to feel for Brodrick, she felt, ridiculously, for Brodrick's hat.

It was, of course, ridiculous, that she, Jane Holland, should feel a passion for a man's hat, a passion that brought her heart into her mouth, so that she could not say any of the things that she had thought of.

Brodrick's hat on an arm-chair beside him was shining in the firelight. On his uncomfortable seat Brodrick lowered and darkened, an incarnate gloom.

"How happy your hat looks," said Jane, smiling at it again.

"I'm glad it amuses you," said Brodrick.

Jane made tea.

He rose, wrapped in his dream, and took his cup from her. He sat down again, in his dream, and put his cup on the arm-chair and left it there as an offering to the hat. Then, with an immense, sustained politeness, he began to talk.

Now that Hambleby had become a classic; he supposed that her ambition was almost satisfied.

It was so much so, Jane said, that she was tired of hearing about Hambleby. Whereupon Brodrick inquired with positively formidable politeness, how the new serial was getting on.

"Very well," said Jane. "How's the 'Monthly Review'?"

Brodrick intimated that the state of the "Monthly Review" was prosperity itself, and he asked her if she had heard lately from Mr. Prothero?

Jane said that she had had a long letter from Mr. Prothero the other day, and she wished that a suitable appointment could be found for Mr. Prothero at home. Brodrick replied, that, at the moment, he could not think of any appointment more suitable for Mr. Prothero than the one he had already got for him.

Then there was a silence, and when Jane with competitive urbanity inquired after Brodrick's sisters, Brodrick's manner gave her to understand that she had touched on a subject by far too intimate and personal. And while she was wondering what she could say next Brodrick took up his hat and said good-bye and went out hurriedly, he who never hurried.

Jane stood for a moment looking at the seat he had left and the place where his hat had been. And her heart drew its doors together and shut them against Brodrick.

She had heard the sound of him going down her stairs, and the click of the latch at the bottom, and the slamming of the front door; and then, under her windows, his feet on the pavement of the Square. She went to the window, and stared at the weeping ash-trees in the garden and thought of how Brodrick had said that it was no wonder that they wept. And at the memory of his voice she felt a little pricking, wounding pain under her eyelids, the birth-pang of unwilling tears.

There were feet, hurrying feet on the pavement again, and again the bell cried out with its nervous electric scream. Her staircase door was opened quickly and shut again, but Jane heard nothing until Brodrick stood still in the room and spoke her name.

She turned, and he came forward, and she met him, holding her head high to keep back her tears. She came slowly, with shy feet and with fear in her eyes, and the desire of her heart on her lips, lifting them like wings.

He took her two hands, surrendered to his, and raised and kissed them. For a moment they stood so, held together, without any movement or any speech.

"Jinny," he said thickly, and she looked down and saw her own tears, dreadful drops, rolling off Brodrick's hands.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to do that."

Her hands struggled in his, and for pity he let them go.

"You can't be more surprised at me than I am myself," said she.

"But I'm not surprised," said Brodrick. "I never am."

And still she doubted.

"What did you come back for?"

"This, of course."

He had drawn her to the long seat by the fireplace.

"Why did you go away," she said, "and make me cry?"

"Because, for the first time in my life, I was uncertain."

"Of yourself?" Doubt, dying hard, stabbed her.

"I am never uncertain of myself," said Brodrick.

"Of what, then?"

"Of you."

"But you never told me."

"I've been trying to tell you the whole time."

Yet even in his arms her doubt stirred.

"What are you going to do now?" she whispered.

"You're going to marry me," he said.

He had been certain of it the whole time.

"I thought," she said an hour later, "that you were going to marry Gertrude."

"Oh, so that was it, was it? You were afraid——"

"I wasn't afraid. I knew it was the best thing you could do."

"The best thing I could do? To marry Gertrude?"

"My dear—it would be far, far better than marrying me."

"But I don't want," said he, "to marry Gertrude."

"Of course, she doesn't want to marry you."

"I never supposed for a moment that she did."

"All the same, I thought it was going to happen."

"If it was going to happen," he said, "it would have happened long ago."

She insisted. "It would have been nicer for you, dear, if it had."

"And when I'd met you afterwards—you think that would have been nicer—for all three of us?"

His voice was low, shaken, surcharged and crushed with passion. But he could see things plainly. It was with the certainty, the terrible lucidity of passion that he saw himself. The vision was disastrous to all ideas of integrity, of propriety and honour; it destroyed the long tradition of the Brodricks. But he saw true.

Jane's eyes were searching his while her mouth smiled at him.

"And is it really," she said, "as bad as that?"

"It always is as bad as that, when you're determined to get the thing you want. Luckily for me I've only really wanted one thing."

"One thing?"

"You—or a woman like you. Only there never was a woman like you."

"I see. That's why you care for me?"

"Does it matter why?"

"Not a bit. I only wondered."

He looked at her almost as if he also wondered. Then they were silent. Jane was content to let her wonder die, but Brodrick's mind was still groping in obscurity. At last he seemed to have got hold of something, and he spoke.

"Of course, there's your genius, Jinny. If I don't say much about it, you mustn't think I don't care."

"Do you? There are moments when I hate it."

Her face was set to the mood of hatred.

"Hugh dear, you're a brave man to marry it."

"I wouldn't marry it, if I didn't think I could look after it."

"You needn't bother. It can look after itself."

She paused, looking down where her finger traced and traced again the pattern of the sofa-cover.

"Did you think I cared for it so frightfully?" she said.

"I know you did."

"I care for it still." She turned to him with her set face. "But I could kill it if it came between you and me."