Part 130

"To the Book!" they said. "To the Book!" Tanqueray found himself gazing in agony at his glass where the bubbles danced and glittered, calling him to the toast. For the life of him he could not rise.

Brodrick was drinking now, his eyes fixed upon his wife. And Tanqueray, for the life of him, could not help looking at Jane, to see how she would take it.

She took it well. She faced the torture smiling, with a courage that was proof, if he had wanted proof, of her loyalty to Brodrick. Her smile trembled as it met Brodrick's eyes across the table, and the tenderness of it went to Tanqueray's heart. She held out her glass; and as she raised it she turned and looked full in Tanqueray's face, and smiled again, steadily.

"To the Book!" she said. "To Nina Lempriere's book! You can drink now, George."

He met her look.

"Here's to you. You immortal Jinny."

Lucid and comprehending, over the tilted glass his eyes approved her, adored her. She flushed under the unveiled, deliberate gaze.

"Didn't I get you out of that nicely?" she said, an hour later, outside in the darkening garden, as she paced the terrace with him alone. The others, at Brodrick's suggestion, had left them to their communion. Brodrick's idea evidently was that the novelist would break silence only under cover of the night.

"Yes," he said. "It was like your sweetness."

"You can't say," she continued, "that I'm not appreciated in my family."

Through the dark, as her face flashed towards him, he saw the little devil that sat laughing in her eyes.

"You needn't be afraid to talk about it," she said. "And you needn't lie to me. I know it's a tragedy."

He had never lied to her. It was not in him to fashion for her any tender lie.

"It's worse than a tragedy. It's a sin, Jinny. And that's what I would have saved you from. Other people can sin and not suffer. You can't. There's your tragedy."

She raised her head.

"There shall be no more tragedies."

He went on as if he had not heard her. "It wouldn't have mattered if it had been bad all through. But neither you nor I, Jinny, have ever written, probably we never shall write, anything to compare with the beginning of that book. My God! To think that there were only six months--six months--between that beginning and that end."

She smiled, saying to herself, "Only six months. Yes. But what months!"

"You've killed a masterpiece," he said, "between you."

"Do you mean Hugh?" she said. "What had he to do with it?"

"He married you."

"My crime was committed before he married me."

"Exactly." She was aware of the queer, nervous, upward jerk of his moustache, precluding the impermissible--"When you were in love with him."

Her face darkened as she turned to him.

"Let's talk about Nina's book. George--there isn't anybody like her. And I knew, I knew she'd do it."

"Did you know that she did it before she saw Prothero."

"I know."

"And that she's never written a line since?"