As for his going away with Mrs. Brodrick, she "looked at it sensible." She understood. She saw the excuses that could be made for him. She couldn't understand _her_; she couldn't find one excuse for _her_ behaviour, a married woman, leaving her husband--such a good man, and her children--her little helpless children, and going off for weeks together with a married man, let him be who he might be. Still, if it hadn't been her, it might have been somebody else, somebody much worse. It might have been that Miss Lempriere. If _she_'d had a hold on him, _she_'d not have let him go. For deep-bedded in Rose's obscure misery was the conviction that Jane Brodrick had let him go. Her theory of Jane's guilt had not gone much farther than the charge of deserting her little helpless children. It was as if Rose's imagination could not conceive of guilt beyond that monstrous crime. And Jane had gone back to her husband and children, after all. If it had been Miss Lempriere she would have been bound to have stuck, she having nothing, so to speak, to go back to. The question was, what was George coming back to? If it was to her, Rose, he must know pretty well what. He must know, she kept repeating to herself; he must know. Her line, the sensible line that she had been so long considering, was somehow to surprise and defeat his miserable foreknowledge. By Sunday morning she had decided on her line. Nothing would turn her. She did not intend to ask anybody's advice, nor to take it were it offered. The line itself required the co-operation and, in a measure, the consent of Aunt and Uncle; and on the practical head they were consulted. She managed that on Sunday afternoon. Then she remembered that she would have to tell Mr. and Mrs. Prothero. It was on Sunday evening that she told them. She told them, very shortly and simply, that she had made up her mind to separate from Tanqueray and live with her uncle. "Uncle'll be glad to 'ave me," she said. She explained. "_He_'ll think more of me if he's not with me." Prothero admitted that it might be likely. "It's not," she said, "as if I was afraid of 'is taking up with another woman--serious." (They wondered had she heard?) "I can trust him with Mrs. Brodrick." (They thought it strange that she should not consider Mrs. Brodrick serious. They said nothing, and in a moment Rose explained.) "She's like all these writin' people. _I_ know 'em." "Yes," said Prothero. "We're a poor lot, aren't we?" (It was a mercy that she didn't take it seriously.) "Oh you--you're different." She had always had a very clear perception of his freedom from the literary taint. "But Mrs. Brodrick now--she doesn't care for 'im. She's not likely to. She'll never care for anybody but herself." "What makes you think so?" "Well--a woman who could walk off like that and leave 'er little children--to say nothing of 'er husband----" "Isn't it," said Prothero, "what you're proposing to do yourself?"