nce, and Laura helped her. "It's his
pleasure, isn't it?"

"He'd no right to take his pleasure this way."

Jane raised her head.

"He had. A perfect right."

"To throw himself away? My dear--on a little servant-girl without an
aitch in her?"

"On anybody he pleases."

"Can you imagine George Tanqueray," said Nina, "throwing himself away on
anybody?"

"_I_ can--easily," said Nicholson.

"Whatever he throws away," said Nina, "it won't be himself."

"My dear Nina, look at him," said Miss Bickersteth. "He's done for
himself--socially, at any rate."

"Not he. It's men like George Tanqueray who can afford to do these
things. Do you suppose anybody who cares for him will care a rap whom he
marries?"

"I care," said Nicky. "I care immensely."

"You needn't. Marriage is not--it really is not--the fearfully important
thing you think it."

Nicholson looked at his boots, his perfect boots.

"It's _the_ most important act of a man's life," he said. "An ordinary
man's--a curate's--a grocer's. And for Tanqueray--for any one who
creates----"

"For any one who creates," said Nina, "nothing's important outside his
blessed creation."

"And this lady, I imagine," said Miss Bickersteth, "will be very much
outside it."

Nicky raised his dark eyes and gazed upon them. "Good heavens! But a man
wants a woman to inspire him."

"George doesn't," said Jane. "You may trust him to inspire himself."

"You may," said Nina. "In six months it won't matter whether George is
married or not. At least, not to George."

She rose, turning on Nicky as if something in his ineffectual presence
maddened her. "Do you suppose," she said, "that woman counts? No woman
counts with men like George Tanqueray."

"She can hold you back," said Nicky.

"You think so? You haven't got a hundred horse-power genius pulling you
along. When he's off, fifty women hanging on to him couldn't hold him
back."

She smiled. "You don't know him. The first time that wife of his gets in
his way he'll shove her out of it. If she does it again he'll knock her
down and trample her under his feet."

Her smile, more than ever ironic, lashed Nicky's shocked recoil.

"Creators are a brutal crew, Mr. Nicholson. We're all the same. You
needn't be sorry for us."

She looked, over Nicky's head as it were, at Jane and Laura. It was as
if with a sweep of her stormy wing she gathered them, George Tanqueray
and Jane and Laura, into the spaces where they ran the superb