And he would have to work for her, doing dreadful things down in Fleet Street. Every day she would see him go down the green walk, and out through the postern gate, into the alien and terrible places of the incarnate. She felt that she had brought mortality upon an immortal thing. She had bound this winged and radiant spirit with the weight of her sad star. But there came to her a wonderful day when he brought her home, through the little humble door in the wall of the garden; when, shut in their room, he took her to himself. He laid his hands on her shoulders, and she closed her eyes. He bowed his head over her and his breath was on her mouth and she gave her face to him. His hands trembled holding her, and she felt upon her their power and their passion. And she knew that it was not her body alone that he sought for and held, but the soul that was her womanhood. It stood before him, a new-born Eve, naked and unafraid on the green plots of Eden. It looked at him, and its eyes were tender with desire and pity. It was tremulous as a body inhabited by leaping light and flame. She knew that in them both the flame burned singly. XLI She was aware how wonderful the thing was that had happened to her, how it stood solitary in the world. It was not so, she knew, with any of the others. It was not so with Nina or with Tanqueray. It was not so even with Jane. Jane had taken into her life an element of tumult and division. The Lord her God (as Tanqueray had once told her) was a consuming fire. Married she served a double and divided flame. For Laura and Prothero the plots of Eden lay green for ever inside the iron gate, and all heaven was held within the four walls of a room. They had established themselves, strictly speaking, in three rooms, two for work and one for sleep. From the standpoint of tangible requirements, three rooms on a silent upper floor was their idea of a perfect lodging. It was Nina's, it had been Tanqueray's and Jane's. A house, Laura declared, was all very well for a poet like poor Nicky (what would poor Nicky be without his house?); but Jinny's house was a curse to her, and Tanks did not regard his as an unmixed blessing, though she would have died rather than say so to Tank's wife.