He did not seek her out after their first greeting. He preferred to stand aside and watch her. He had arrived later and he was staying late. Jane felt that it would become her not to stay. But Brodrick would not let her go. He took possession of her. He paraded her as his possession under Tanqueray's eyes; eyes that were fixed always upon Jane, vigilantly, anxiously, as if he saw her caught in the toils. An hour passed. The party dwindled and dissolved around them. The strangers were gone. The hordes of Levines had scattered to their houses in Fitzjohn's Avenue. The little Levines had been gathered away by their nurses from the scene. Only Brodrick and his family remained, and Jane with them, and Tanqueray who kept on looking at the two while he talked vaguely to Levine. Brodrick's family was not less interested or less observant. It had accepted without surprise what it now recognized as inevitable. It could no longer hope that Hugh would cease from his insane pursuit of Jane Holland, after making the thing thus public, flourishing his intentions in the face of his family. With a dexterity in man[oe]uvre, an audacity, an obstinacy that was all his own, Hugh had resisted every attempt to separate him from Miss Holland. He only let go his hold when Sophy Levine, approaching with an admirable air of innocence in guile, announced that Baby was being put to bed. She suggested that Jane might like to see him in his--well, in his perfection. It was impossible, Sophy maintained, for anybody not to desire above all things to see him. Up-stairs in the nursery, Winny and Mrs. Heron were worshipping Baby as he lay on the nurse's lap, in his perfection, naked from his bath. Sophy could not wait till he was given up to her. She seized him, in the impatience of maternal passion. She bent over him, hiding her face with his soft body. Presently her eyes, Sophy's beautiful, loving eyes, looked up at Jane over the child's shoulder, and their gaze had guile as well as love in it. Jane stood before it motionless, impassive, impenetrable. Winny fell on her knees in a rapture. "Oh, Miss Holland!" she cried. "Don't you love him?" Jane admitted that she rather liked him. "She's a wretch," said Sophy. "Baby duckums, she says she rather likes you." Baby chuckled as if he appreciated the absurdity of Jane's moderation. "Oh, don't you want," said Winny, "don't you want to kiss his little feet? Wouldn't you love to have him for your very own?" "No, Winny, I shouldn't know what to do with him." "Wouldn't you?" said Mrs. Heron. "Feel," said Winny, "how soft he is. He's got teeny, teeny hairs, like down, golden down, just there, on his little back." Jane stooped and stroked the golden down. And at the touch of the child's body, a fine pain ran from her finger-tips to her heart, and she drew back, as one who feels, for the first time, the touch of life, terrible and tender. "Oh, Jane," said Sophy, "what are you made of?" "I wonder----" said Mrs. Heron.