Tanqueray had said. "You should live out of
it."

"Nothing comes to me in the country."

He pondered a long time upon that saying.

"You wouldn't call this country, would you?" he said at last.

"Oh dear me, no."

"Well--what would you think of Putney or Wimbledon as a compromise?"

"There can't be any compromise."

"Why not? It's what we all have to come to."

"Not I. I can only write if I'm boxed up in my funny little square, with
the ash-trees weeping away in the middle."

"I don't wonder," said Brodrick, "that they weep."

"You think it's so terrible?"

"Quite terrible."

She laughed. "Do you remember how you came to see me there?"

"Yes. And how you took me for the man come to tune the piano."

He smiled, remembering it. A bell rang, summoning them, and he took no
notice. He smiled again; and suddenly a great shyness and a terror
overcame her.

"Don't you really think," said he, "that this sort of thing is nicer?"

"Oh, incomparably nicer. But isn't it getting rather cold?"

His face darkened. "Do you want to go in?"

"Yes."

They rose and went together into the house.

In the hall, through the open door of the drawing-room, she could see
the table laid for tea, and Gertrude sitting at it by herself, waiting
for them. His sister and the children had gone. Somehow she knew that he
had made them go. They would come back, he explained, with the carriage
that was to take her to the station, and they would say good-bye to her
before she went.

He evaded the drawing-room door and led the way into his library; and
she knew that he meant to have the last hour with her alone.

She paused on the threshold. She knew that if she followed him she would
never get away.

"Aren't we going," said she, "to have tea with Miss Collett?"

"Would you rather?"

"Much rather," said she.

"Very well, just as you like," he said stiffly.

He was annoyed again. All through tea-time he sulked, while Jane
sustained a difficult conversation with Miss Collett.

Miss Collett had lost much of her beautiful serenity. She was still a
charming hostess, but there was a palpable effort about her charm. She
looked as if she were beginning to suffer from the strain of Brodrick in
his present mood.

What Brodrick's mood was, or was beginning to be, Jane could no longer
profess to be unaware. While she talked thin talk to Gertrude about the
superiority of Putney Heath to Wimbledon Park, and of Brodrick's house
to the