"There's one awful fear I have with Owen. I shan't be ready in time when he's all nicely disembodied and on his way to heaven. I see him stopped at some uninteresting station, and sitting there waiting--patiently waiting--for me to disembody myself and come on. It'll take me ages." "It always was difficult to get you off," Jane murmured. "I know. And I shall feel as if I were keeping him back when he was trying to catch a train." "I imagine he's pretty sure of his train." "The truth is Owen doesn't really wait. He's always in his train and out of it, so to speak." "And your disembodying yourself, darling, is only a question of time." "And time," said Laura, "doesn't exist for Owen." But time was beginning to exist for Owen. He felt the pressure of the heavy days that divided him from Laura. He revolted against this tyranny of time. And Brodrick, the lord of time, remained inexorable for two months. Long before they were ended, little Laura, with a determination as inexorable as Brodrick's, had left Brodrick's house. To the great disgust and scandal of the Brodricks she had gone back to her rooms in Camden Town, where Prothero was living in the next house with only a wall between them. Then (it was in the middle of October, when Henry was telling them that Jane must on no account be agitated) Brodrick and Jane nearly quarrelled about Prothero. She said that he was cruel, and that if Owen went into a consumption and Laura died of hunger it would be all his fault. And when he tried to reason gently with her she went off into a violent fit of hysterics. The next day Brodrick had a son born to him, a whole month before Henry had expected anything of the kind. At first Brodrick was more than ever enraged with Prothero for tampering with other people's families like that. Jane had to go very near to death before his will was broken. It broke, though, at the touch of her weak arms round his neck, at the sight of her tortured body, and at her voice, sounding from the doors of death and birth, imploring him to do something for Owen Prothero. Jane had hardly had time to recover before Prothero got work again on Brodrick's paper. Laura said they owed that to Jinny's baby. They were married in November before Jinny's baby could be christened. It was a rather sad and strange little wedding, in the parish church of Camden Town, with Brodrick to give away the bride, and Caro Bickersteth for bridesmaid, and Tanqueray for best man. Nina was not there. She had sent Laura a cheque for two hundred pounds two months ago--the half of her savings--and told her to go and marry Owen with it at once, and she had torn it up in a fury when Laura sent it back. She could do all that; but she could not go and see Laura and Owen getting married.