There was a gleam of interest now in Brodrick's face. He was evidently, Jane thought, applying Tanqueray's aphorism to Gertrude. "It doesn't make any difference," he said. "I should have thought," said she, "it would have made _some_." "It doesn't. If anything, you know them rather better." "Oh," said she, "it makes _that_ difference, does it?" Again she thought of Gertrude. "I wonder," she said pensively, "if you really know." "At any rate I know as much as Tanqueray." "Do I bore you with Tanqueray?" He shrugged his shoulders. "You don't deny his genius?" "I don't deny anybody's genius," said Brodrick furiously. Jane looked at him. "I don't think it's nice of you," said she, "to talk that way to me when I've been so ill." "You've no right to be ill," said Brodrick, with undiminished rancour. "I have," said Jane. "A perfect right. I can be as ill as ever I please." She looked at him again and caught him smiling surreptitiously under his heavy gloom. "I mean," he said, "you needn't be. You wouldn't be if you didn't work so hard." She crumpled her eyelids like one who fails to see. "If I didn't what?" "Work so hard." He really wanted to know whether it was that or Prothero. First it had been Tanqueray, and she had got over Tanqueray. Now he could only suppose that it was Prothero. He would have to wait until she had got over Prothero. "I like that," said she, "when it's your serial I'm working on." "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.