Part 114

"Why did you?" His sulkiness, his ferocity, was gone now; he was gentleness itself.

"Because I wanted to please you."

There was an inarticulate murmur from Brodrick, a happy sound.

"Well," he said, "you shan't go on."

"But what can we do?"

"We'll do something. There are plenty of things that can be done."

"But--there's the magazine."

"I don't care," said the editor, "if the abominable thing goes smash."

"What? You can contemplate it's going smash?"

"I can't contemplate your being worried like this."

"It's people that worry me," she said--"if I only could have peace!"

She sketched for him as she had sketched for Tanqueray the horrors brought on her by her celebrity.

"That's London," he said, as Tanqueray had said. "You should live out of it."

"Nothing comes to me in the country."

He pondered a long time upon that saying.

"You wouldn't call this country, would you?" he said at last.

"Oh dear me, no."

"Well--what would you think of Putney or Wimbledon as a compromise?"

"There can't be any compromise."

"Why not? It's what we all have to come to."

"Not I. I can only write if I'm boxed up in my funny little square, with the ash-trees weeping away in the middle."

"I don't wonder," said Brodrick, "that they weep."

"You think it's so terrible?"

"Quite terrible."

She laughed. "Do you remember how you came to see me there?"

"Yes. And how you took me for the man come to tune the piano."

He smiled, remembering it. A bell rang, summoning them, and he took no notice. He smiled again; and suddenly a great shyness and a terror overcame her.

"Don't you really think," said he, "that this sort of thing is nicer?"