"Do you mean to tell me," said Brodrick, "that it"s that?"
"I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn"t let me talk about it. Not that I wanted to talk about it when the bare idea of it terrifies me.
It"s awful to have it hanging over me like this."
"Forget it. Forget it," he said.
"I can"t. I"m afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of not being able to finish it--of letting you down."
He turned and looked at her intently.
"That"s why you"ve been killing yourself, is it?"
She did not answer.
"I didn"t know. I didn"t think," he said. "You should have told me."
"It"s my fault. I ought to have known. I ought never to have tried."
"Why did you?" His sulkiness, his ferocity, was gone now; he was gentleness itself.
"Because I wanted to please you."
There was an inarticulate murmur from Brodrick, a happy sound.
"Well," he said, "you shan"t go on."
"But what can we do?"
"We"ll do something. There are plenty of things that can be done."
"But--there"s the magazine."
"I don"t care," said the editor, "if the abominable thing goes smash."
"What? You can contemplate it"s going smash?"
"I can"t contemplate your being worried like this."
"It"s people that worry me," she said--"if I only could have peace!"
She sketched for him as she had sketched for Tanqueray the horrors brought on her by her celebrity.
"That"s London," he said, as Tanqueray had said. "You should live out of it."
"Nothing comes to me in the country."
He pondered a long time upon that saying.
"You wouldn"t call this country, would you?" he said at last.
"Oh dear me, no."
"Well--what would you think of Putney or Wimbledon as a compromise?"
"There can"t be any compromise."
"Why not? It"s what we all have to come to."
"Not I. I can only write if I"m boxed up in my funny little square, with the ash-trees weeping away in the middle."
"I don"t wonder," said Brodrick, "that they weep."
"You think it"s so terrible?"
"Quite terrible."
She laughed. "Do you remember how you came to see me there?"
"Yes. And how you took me for the man come to tune the piano."
He smiled, remembering it. A bell rang, summoning them, and he took no notice. He smiled again; and suddenly a great shyness and a terror overcame her.
"Don"t you really think," said he, "that this sort of thing is nicer?"
"Oh, incomparably nicer. But isn"t it getting rather cold?"
His face darkened. "Do you want to go in?"
"Yes."
They rose and went together into the house.
In the hall, through the open door of the drawing-room, she could see the table laid for tea, and Gertrude sitting at it by herself, waiting for them. His sister and the children had gone. Somehow she knew that he had made them go. They would come back, he explained, with the carriage that was to take her to the station, and they would say good-bye to her before she went.
He evaded the drawing-room door and led the way into his library; and she knew that he meant to have the last hour with her alone.
She paused on the threshold. She knew that if she followed him she would never get away.
"Aren"t we going," said she, "to have tea with Miss Collett?"
"Would you rather?"
"Much rather," said she.
"Very well, just as you like," he said stiffly.