Since the day when they had first received her, the Brodricks had established a regular cult of Jane Holland. It had become the prescribed event for Jane to spend every possible Sunday at Putney Heath with the editor of the "Monthly Review." Her friendship with his family had advanced from Sunday to Sunday by slow, well-ordered steps. Jane had no illusions as to its foundation. She knew that Brodrick's family had begun by regarding her as part of Brodrick's property, the most eligible, the most valuable part. It was interested in contemporary talent merely as a thing in which Brodrick had a stake. It had hardly been aware of Jane Holland previous to her appearance in the "Monthly Review." After that it had been obliged to recognize her as a power propitious to the editor's ambition and his dream. For though his family regarded the editor of the "Monthly Review" as a dreamer, a fantastic dreamer, it was glad to think that a Brodrick should have ambition, still more to think that it could afford a dream. They had always insisted upon that, there being no end to the things a Brodrick could afford. They had identified Jane Holland with his dream and his ambition, and were glad again to think that he could afford her. As for her dreadful, her conspicuous celebrity, the uncomfortably staring fact that she was Jane Holland, Jane was aware that it struck them chiefly as reflecting splendour upon Brodrick. But she was aware that her unique merit, her supreme claim, was that she had done a great thing for Brodrick. On that account, if she had been the most obscure, the most unremarkable Jane Holland, they would have felt it incumbent on them to cherish her. They had incurred a grave personal obligation, and could only meet it by that grave personal thing, friendship. How grave it was, Jane, who had gone into it so lightly, was only just aware. This family had an immense capacity for disapproval; it was awful, as Eddy had observed, for not liking people. It was bound, in its formidable integrity, to disapprove of her. She had felt that she had disarmed its criticism only by becoming ill and making it sorry for her. She had not been a week in Dr. Brodrick's house before she discovered that these kind people had been sorry for her all the time. They were sorry for her because she had to work hard, because she had no home and no family visible about her. They refused to regard Nina and Laura as a family, or the flat in Kensington Square as in any reasonable sense a home. Jane could see that they were trying to make up to her for the things that she had missed. And in being sorry for Jane Holland they had lost sight of her celebrity. They had not referred to it since the day, three months ago, when she had first come to them, a brilliant, distracting alien. They were still a little perturbed by the brilliance and distraction, and it was as an alien that she moved among them still.