"I suppose," said she, "if they liked, they could marry now." "Now?" repeated poor Nicky vaguely. "Now that one of them has got an income." "I didn't think he was a marrying man." "No. And you wouldn't think, would you, she was a marrying woman?" "I--I don't know. I haven't thought about it. He _said_ he wasn't going to marry." "Oh." Two small eyes looked at him, two liquid, luminous spots in the pinkness of Miss Bickersteth's face. "It's got as far as that, has it? That shows he's been thinking of it." "I should have thought it showed he wasn't." Miss Bickersteth's mouth was decided in its set, and vague in its outline and its colouring. Her smile now appeared as a mere quiver of her face. "How have you managed to preserve your beautiful innocence? Do you always go about with your head among the stars?" "My head----?" He felt it. It was going round and round. "Yes. Is a poet not supposed ever to see anything under his exquisite nose?" "I am not," said Nicky solemnly, "always a poet. And when a person tells me he isn't going to do a thing, I naturally think he isn't." "And I naturally think he is. Whatever you think about George Tanqueray, _he's_ sure to do the other thing." "Come--if you can calculate on that." "You can't calculate on anything. Least of all with George Tanqueray. Except that he'll never achieve anything that isn't a masterpiece. If it's a masterpiece of folly." "Mind you," she added, "I don't say he will marry Jane Holland, and I don't say it would be a masterpiece of folly if he did." "What do you say?" "That if he ever cares for any woman enough to marry her, it will be Jane." "I see," said Nicky, after some reflection. "You think he's that sort?" "I think he's a genius. What more do you want?" "Oh, _I_ don't want anything more," said Nicky, plunging head-first into a desperate ambiguity. He emerged. "What I mean is, when we've got Him, and when we've got Her--creators----" He paused before the immensity of his vision of Them. "What business have we----" "To go putting one and one together so as to make two?" "Well--it doesn't seem quite reverent." "You think them gods, then, your creators?" "I think I--worship them." "Ah, Mr. Nicholson, _you're_ adorable. And I'm atrocious." "I believe," said Nicky, "tea is in the garden." "Let us go into the garden," said Miss Bickersteth. And they went. Tea was served in a green recess shut in from the lawn by high yew hedges. Nicky at his tea-table was more charming than ever, surrounded by old silver and fine linen, making tea delicately, and pouring it into fragile cups and offering it, doing everything with an almost feminine dexterity and grace.