All the time, while thus tormenting him, she seemed profoundly occupied with the hand she held, caressing it with swift, nervous, tender touches. "After all," she said, "I haven't turned out so badly; even from Henry's point of view, have I?" He laughed. "What is Henry's point of view?" She looked up at him quickly. "You know, and I know that Henry didn't want you to marry me." The uncaptured hand closed over hers, holding it tighter than she herself could hold. "No," she said. "I'm not the sort of woman Henry _would_ want you to marry. To please Henry----" "I didn't marry to please Henry." "To please Henry you should have married placable flesh and blood, very large and handsome, without a nerve in her body. The sort of woman who has any amount of large and handsome flesh-and-blood children, and lives to have them, thrives on them. That's Henry's idea of the right woman." He admitted that it had once been his. He had seen his wife that was to be, placable, as Jinny said, sane flesh and blood, the mother of perfect children. "And so, of course," said Jinny, "you go and marry me." "Of course," said Brodrick. He said it in the voice she loved. "Why didn't you marry her? _She_ wouldn't have bothered your life out." She paused. "On the other hand, she wouldn't have cared for you as I do. That sort of woman only cares for her children." "Won't you care for them, Jinny?" "Not as I care for you," said Jinny. And to his uttermost amazement she bowed her head over his hands and cried. XXXVI Tanqueray's book was out. Times and seasons mattered little in a case so hopeless. There was no rivalry between George Tanqueray and his contemporaries; therefore, his publishers had not scrupled to produce him in the same month as Jane Holland. They handled any work of his with the apathy of despair. He himself had put from him all financial anxiety when he banked the modest sum, "on account," which was all that he could look for. The perturbing question for him was, not whether his sales would be small or great, but whether this time the greatness of his work would or would not be recognized. He did not suppose for a moment that it would be. _His_ tide would never turn. His first intimation that it was turning came from Jane, in a pencil note enclosed with a newspaper cutting, his first favourable review. "Poor George," she wrote, "you thought you could escape it. But it's coming--it's come. You needn't think you're going to be so very posthumous, after all." He marvelled that Jinny should attach so much importance to the printed word.