"And I am not to read any more proofs?" she said. "Do you like reading them?" She smiled. "It's not because I like it. I simply wanted to save you." "You do save me most things." "I try," she said sweetly, "to save you all." He smiled now. "There are limits," he said, "even to your power of saving me. And to my capacity for being saved." The words were charged with a significance that Brodrick himself was not aware of; as if the powers that worked in him obscurely had used him for the utterance of a divination not his own. His secretary understood him better than he did himself. She had spent three years in understanding him. And now, for the first time in three years, her lucidity was painful. She could not contemplate serenely the thing she thought she had seen. Therefore she drew a veil over it and refused to believe that it was there. "He did not mean anything," said Gertrude to herself. "He is not the sort of man who means things." Which was true. XX Brodrick, living on Putney Heath, was surrounded by his family. It was only fifteen minutes' walk from his front door to his brother John's house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon; only five minutes from his back door to Henry's house in Roehampton Lane. You went by a narrow foot-track down the slope to get to Henry. You crossed the Heath by Wimbledon Common to get to John. If John and Henry wanted to get to each other, they had to pass by Brodrick's house. Moor Grange was a half-way house, the great meeting-place of all the Brodricks. One fine warm Sunday in mid-May, about four o'clock, all the Brodricks except Hugh were assembled on Hugh's lawn. There was Mr. John Brodrick, the eldest brother, the head of the firm of Brodrick and Brodrick, Electrical Engineers. There was Dr. Henry Brodrick, who came next to John. He had brought Mrs. Heron, their sister (Mrs. Heron lived with Henry, because Mr. Heron had run away with the governess, to the unspeakable scandal of the Brodricks). There was Mrs. Louis Levine, who came next to Mrs. Heron. There was Mrs. John Brodrick, not to be separated from her husband, who, in a decorous dumbness and secrecy, adored her; and Mr. Louis Levine, who owed his position among the Brodricks to the very properly apparent devotion of his wife. And there were children about. Eddy and Winny Heron, restless, irrepressible in their young teens, sprawled at their mother's feet and hung over her in attitudes of affection. One very small Levine trotted to and fro on fat legs over the lawn. The other, too small to run, could be seen in the background, standing in Gertrude Collett's lap and trampling on her. The Levines had come over from St. John's Wood, packed tight in their commodious brand-new motor-car, the symbol of Levine's prosperity. So that all Brodrick's family were at Putney this afternoon.