he said, that did you
harm. He wanted to hold on to what he'd got. It was tricky; it came and
went; it was all he could do to hold on to it; and if he got mixed up
with women he was done for. Of course he was profoundly grateful.

Nina assured Jane that Mr. Prothero was profoundly grateful. But he was,
she said, a youth of an untamable shyness. He was happy in an Indian
jungle or an African swamp, but civilized interiors seemed to sadden
him. She therefore proposed that Tanqueray, who had the manuscript,
should read it to an audience, chosen with absolute discretion. Two or
three people, not a horrid crowd. For the poems, she warned her fairly,
were all about God; and nowadays people didn't care about God. Owen
Prothero didn't seem to care much about anything else. It was bound, she
said, to handicap him.

Jane consented. After all, the poems were the thing. For audience she
proposed Hugh Brodrick, Caro Bickersteth, Laura, and Arnott Nicholson.
Dear Nicky, who really was an angel, could appreciate people who were
very far from appreciating him. He knew a multitude of little men on
papers, men who write you up if they take a fancy to you and go about
singing your praises everywhere. Nicky himself, if strongly moved to it,
might sing. Nicky was a good idea, and there was Laura who also wrote
for the papers.

The reading was fixed for Friday at four o'clock. Tanqueray, who
detested readings, had overcome his repugnance for Prothero's sake. His
letter to Jane was one fiery eulogy of the poet. Brodrick and the
others had accepted the unique invitation, Laura Gunning provisionally.
She would come like a shot, if she could get off, she said, but things
were going badly at the moment.

Laura, however, was the first to arrive.

"Who is this man of Nina's?" said she.

"I don't know, my dear. I never heard of him till the other day."

She showed her Nina's letter.

Laura's face was sullen. It indicated that things were going very badly
indeed; that Laura was at the end of her tether.

"But why God?" was her profane comment.

"Because, I imagine, he believes in him."

Laura declared that it was more than she did. She preferred not to
believe in him, after the things that had been done to Papa. Her
arraignment of the cosmic order was cut short by the arrival of George
Tanqueray.

Nina appeared next. She was followed by Hugh Brodrick and by Caro
Bickersteth. Nicky came last of all.

He greeted Jane a little mournfull