y. It was impossible for Nicky to
banish altogether from his manner the delicate reproach he felt,
impossible not to be alive to the atrocious irony that brought him here
to be, as Jane said, an angel, to sit and listen to this fellow
Prothero. He understood that they were all there to do something for
Prothero. Brodrick had been brought solely for that purpose. Tanqueray,
too, and Miss Bickersteth and Miss Gunning, and he. Jane Holland was
always asking him to do things, and she had never done anything for him.
There was Brodrick's magazine that he had never got into. Jane Holland
had only got to speak to Brodrick, only got to say to him that Arnott
Nicholson was a rather fine poet and the thing was done. It was a small
thing and an easy thing for her to do.

It was not so much that he wanted her to do things. He even now shrank,
in his delicacy, from the bare idea of her doing them. For all his
little palpitating ambition, Nicky shrank. What hurt him was the
unavoidable inference he drew. When a woman cares for a man she does
not doom him to obscurity by her silence, and Jane least of all women.
He knew her. He knew what she had done for Tanqueray because she cared.

And now she was going to do things for Owen Prothero. Nicky sat dejected
in the sorrow of this thought.

Brodrick also was oppressed. He was thinking of his magazine. It had
been saved by Jane Holland, but he was aware that at this rate it could
also be ruined by her. He knew what he was there for. He could see, with
the terrible foreknowledge of the editor, that Prothero was to be
pressed on him. He was to take him up as he had taken up Tanqueray. And
from all that he had heard of Prothero he very much doubted whether he
could afford to take him up. It was becoming a serious problem what he
could afford. Levine was worrying him. Levine was insisting on
concessions to the public, on popular articles, on politics. He had
threatened, if his views were disregarded, to withdraw his financial
co-operation, and Brodrick realized that he could not as yet afford to
do without Levine. He might have to refuse to take Prothero up, and he
hated to refuse Jane Holland anything.

As for Laura, she continued in her sullenness, anticipating with
resentment the assault about to be made upon her soul.

And Jane, who knew what passed in Brodrick's mind, was downcast in her
turn. She did not want Brodrick to think that she was making use of him,
that she was always tryi