e whole house had a strange feminine
atmosphere, a warm look as if a woman's hand had passed over it. Yet it
was Nicky who was the soul of his house, a slender soul, three parts
feminine.

Nicky was looking at Jane as she stooped over the roses. "Do you know,"
he said, "that you've come home? Come and see yourself."

He led the way into his library where her portrait looked down from its
high place.

"You bought it?" said she.

"Rather. Gisborne painted it for me."

"Oh, Nicky!"

"It's your genius brooding over mine--I mean over me."

He looked at her again. When he looked at you Nicky's perfect clothes,
his long chin, his nose that seemed all bridge, his fine little black
moustache, Nicky himself retreated into insignificance beneath his
enormous, prominent black eyes.

"I put you there," he said, "to inspire me."

Nicky's eyes gazed at you with a terrible solemnity whenever he talked
about his inspiration.

"Do I?"

She did. They had caught him in the high act of creation. He'd been at
it since ten o'clock; sitting there, with the blood, he said, beating so
furiously in his brain that if he'd gone on like that he'd have
destroyed himself. His head was burning now.

"We'll drag you, Nicky, to the top of Wendover Hill, and air you
thoroughly. You reek," said Tanqueray.

His idea always was that they took Nicky out of doors to air him; he had
so strongly the literary taint.

Nicky declared that he would have been willing to be dragged with them
anywhere. Only, as it happened, he had to be at home. He was expecting
Miss Bickersteth. They knew Miss Bickersteth?

They knew her. Nicky, for purposes of his own, was in the habit of
cultivating, assiduously, the right people; and Miss Bickersteth was
eminently right.

The lady, he said, might be upon them any minute.

"In that case," said Tanqueray, "we'll clear out."

"_You_ clear out? But you're the very people he wants to see."

"He?"

Hugh Brodrick. Miss Bickersteth was bringing Hugh Brodrick.

They smiled. Miss Bickersteth was always bringing somebody or being
brought.

Brodrick was the right man to bring. He implored them to stay and meet
Brodrick.

"Who _is_ Brodrick?"

Brodrick, said Nicky, was a man to be cultivated, to be cherished, to be
clung to and never to be let go. Brodrick was on the "Morning
Telegraph," and at the back of it, and everywhere about it. And the Jews
were at the back of Brodrick. So much so that he was starting a