That lapse of certainty marked a difference in their relations. He chose to put it down to the strange circumstance of her celebrity; and, though he hesitated, he stayed. To stay was, after all, the thing which at the moment he most wanted to do. And the thing which Tanqueray most wanted to do at the moment that he invariably did. This temper of his had but one drawback, that it left him at the moment's mercy. That was what he felt now when he found himself alone with her for the first time in many weeks. She wondered how far he had seen through her. She had made the others go that he might stay with her, a palpable man[oe]uvre. Of course she would not have lent herself to it for any ordinary man. His genius justified her. Six weeks ago she would not have had to retreat behind his genius. Six weeks ago she had never thought of his genius as a thing apart from him. There was her own genius, if it came to that. It had its rights. Six weeks ago she would not have had to apologize to herself for keeping him. "I didn't know you could change your mind so quickly," he said. "If you had my mind, George, you'd want to change it." "What's wrong with your mind, Jinny?" "It won't work." "Ah, it's come to that, has it? I knew it would." She led the way into another room, the room she wrote in. Jane lived alone. Sometimes he had wondered how she liked it. There was defiance in her choice of that top floor in the old house in Kensington Square. To make sure her splendid isolation, she had cut herself off by a boarded, a barricaded staircase, closed with a door at the foot. Tanqueray knew well that consecrated, book-lined room, and the place of everything it held. He had his own place there, the place of honour and affection. His portrait (a mere photograph) was on her writing-table. His "Works"--five novels--were on a shelf by themselves at the head of her chair, where she could lay her hands on them.