"Oh, up in heaven you won't see anything of Nicky except his heart."
"I suppose he'll be stuck somewhere near you, too. It won't be heaven
for him if he isn't. The first thing he'll ask is, 'Where's Jane?'"
"And then they'll break it to him very gently--'Jane's in the other
place, Nicky, where Mr. Tanqueray is. We had to send her down, because
if she wasn't there it wouldn't be hell for Mr. Tanqueray.'"
"But why am _I_ down there?"
"Because you didn't see what Nicky was."
"If you don't take care, Jinny, he'll 'have' you like the rest. You're
laying up sorrow for yourself in the day when Nicky publishes his
poems."
"It's you he'll turn to."
"No. I'm not celebrated," said he grimly. "There, do you see the full
horror of it?"
"I do," she moaned.
Tanqueray's devil came back to him.
"Do you think he'll fall in love with Laura?"
"No, I don't." She said it coolly, though his gaze was upon her, and
they were both of them aware of Nicky's high infatuation.
"Why not?" he said lightly.
"Because Nicky'll never be in love with any woman as she is; and nobody
could be in love with Laura as she isn't."
She faced him in her courage. He might take it, if he liked, that she
knew Nicky was in love with her as she was not; that she knew Tanqueray
would never, like Nicky, see her as she was not, to be in love with
that.
"Oh, you're too subtle," he said. But he understood her subtlety.
He must tell her about Rose. Before the others could come up with them
he must tell her. And then he must tell Nicky.
"Jane," he said, "will you forgive me for never coming to see you? I
simply couldn't come."
"I know, George, I know."
"You don't. You don't know what I felt like."
"Perhaps not. And yet, I think, you might----"
But what she thought he might have done she would not tell him.
"At any rate," said he, "you'll let me come and see you now? Often; I
want to come often."
He meant to tell her that his marriage was to make no difference.
"Come as often as you want. Come as often as you used to."
"Was it so very often?"
"Not too often."
"I say, those were glorious times we had. We'll have them again, Jinny.
There are things we've got to talk about. Things we've got to do. Why,
we're hardly beginning."
"Do you remember saying, 'When you've made yourself an absolutely clear
medium, then you can begin'?"
"I remember."
He was content now to join her in singing the duet of remembrance.
She dismissed herself. "What have _you_ been doing?"
"Not much. It looks as if I couldn't do things without you."
A look of heavenly happiness came upon her face, and passed.
"That isn't so, George. There never was anybody less dependent on other
people. That's why nothing has ever stopped you. Nothing ever will.
Whereas--you're right about me. Anything might stop me."
"Could _I_ stop you?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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