Sometimes Henry was with her. He made John's house the last point of his round that he might sit with Mabel. He had never sat with her before; he had never paid very much attention to her. It was the change in Henry that made Jane alive to the change in Mabel; for the long, lean, unhappy man, this man of obstinate distastes and disapprovals, had an extreme tenderness for all physical suffering. Since Mabel's illness he had dropped his disapproving attitude to Jane. She could almost have believed that Henry liked her. One day as they turned together into the deep avenue of Augustus Road, she saw kind grey eyes looking down at her from Henry's height. "You're very good to poor Mabel, Jinny," he said. "I can't do much." "Do what you can. We shan't have her with us very long." "Henry----" "She doesn't know it. John doesn't know it. But I thought I'd tell you." "I'm glad you've told me." "It's a kindness," he went on, "to go and see her. It takes her mind off herself." "She doesn't complain." "No. She doesn't complain. But her mind turns in on itself. It preys on her. And of course it's terrible for John." She agreed. "Of course, it's terrible--for John." But she was thinking how terrible it was for Mabel. She wondered, did they say of her and of _her_ malady, how terrible it was for Hugh? "This is a great interruption to your work," he said presently, with the peculiar solemnity he accorded to the obvious. Her pace quickened. The frosty air stung her cheeks and the blood mounted there. "It won't hurt you," he said. "You're better when you're not working." "Am I?" said she in a voice that irritated Henry. XLVII In February the interruption ceased. Mabel was better. She was well enough for John to take her to the Riviera. Jane was, as they said, "off" again. But not all at once; not without suffering, for the seventh time, the supreme agony of the creator--that going down into the void darkness, to recall the offended Power, to endure the tortures that propitiate the revolted Will. Her book was finished in March and appeared in April. Her terror of the published thing was softened to her by the great apathy and fatigue which now came upon her; a fatigue and an apathy in which Henry recognized the beginning of the illness he had prophesied. He reminded her that he had prophesied it long ago; and he watched her, sad and unsurprised, but like the angel he invariably was in the presence of physical suffering. She was thus spared the ordeal of the birthday celebration. It was understood that she would give audience in her study to her friends, to Arnott Nicholson, to the Protheros and Tanqueray. Instead of all going in at once, they were to take it in turns. She lay there on her couch, waiting for Tanqueray to come and tell her whether this time it was life or death. Nicky's turn came first. Nicky was unspeakably moved at the sight of her. He bent over her hand and kissed it; and her fear misread his mood.