"That's the argument of all the humbugs, all the consecrated hypocrites that have ever been. All the lazy, long-haired, rickety freaks and loafers who go nourishing their damned spirituality at some woman's physical expense. The thing's indecent, it's unspeakable. Those Brodricks are perfectly right." Laura raised her head. "They? What have they got to do with you and me?" "A good deal. They supply me with work, which they don't want me to do, in order to keep me from sponging on my wife. They are admirable men. They represent the sanity and decency of the world pronouncing judgment on the fact. No Brodrick ever blinked a fact. When people ask the Brodricks, What does that fellow Prothero do? they shrug their shoulders and say, 'He has visions, and his wife pays for them.'" "But I don't. It's the public that pays for them. And your wife has a savage joy in making it pay. If it wasn't for that I should loathe my celebrity more than Jinny ever loathed hers. It makes me feel sillier." "Poor little thing," said Prothero. "Well--it's hard that _I_ should have to entertain imbeciles who wouldn't read _you_ if they were paid." He knew that that was the sting of it for her. "They're all right," he said. "It's your funny little humour that they like. I like it, too." But Laura snapped her teeth and said, "Damn! Damn my humour! Well--when they use it as a brickbat to hurl at your head." She quoted furiously, "'While her husband still sings to deaf ears, Mrs. Prothero has found the secret of capturing her public. She has made her way straight to its heart. And the heart of Mrs. Prothero's public is unmistakably in the right place.' Oh--if Mrs. Prothero's public knew what Mrs. Prothero thinks of it. I give them what they want, do I? As if I gave it them because they want it. If they only knew why I give it, and how I'm fooling them all the time! How I make them pay--for _you_! Just think, Owen, of the splendid, the diabolical irony of it!" "So very small," he murmured, "and yet so fierce." "Just think," she went on, "how I'm enjoying myself." "Just think," said Prothero, "how I am not." "Then" (she returned it triumphantly), "you're paying for my enjoyment, which is what you want." The clock struck six. She went out of the room, and returned, bringing an overcoat which she said had grown miles too big for him. She warmed it at the fire and helped him on with it, and disappeared for a moment under its flapping wings, so large was that overcoat. All the way to Fleet Street, Prothero, wrapped in his warm overcoat, meditated tenderly on his wife's humour. LVI Nothing, Tanqueray said, could be more pathetic than the Kiddy spreading her diminutive skirts before Prothero, to shelter that colossal figure.