re than you."

"I know what she knows--I was born knowing. But if I were married, if I
had children, I should know nothing, nothing any more."

Frances was silent.

"They--they'd press up so close to me that I should see nothing--not
even them."

"Don't you want them to press?"

"It doesn't matter what I want. It's what I see. And they wouldn't let
me see."

"They'd make you feel," said Frances.

"Feel? I should think they would. I should feel _them_, I should feel
for them, I should feel nothing else besides."

"But," persisted Frances, "you would feel."

"Do you think I don't?" said Jane.

"Well, there are some things--I don't see how you can--without
experience."

"Experience? Experience is no good--the experience you mean--if you're
an artist. It spoils you. It ties you hand and foot. It perverts you,
twists you, blinds you to everything but yourself and it. I know
women--artists--who have never got over their experience, women who'll
never do anything again because of it."

"Then, my dear," said Frances, "you would say that geniuses would do
very much better not to marry?" Her voice was sweet, but there was a
light of sword-play in her eyes.

"I do say it--if they're thinking of their genius."

"Would you say it to Hugh?"

The thrust flashed sharp and straight.

"Why not?" said Jane, lightly parrying the thrust.

Sophy appeared again at that moment and said good-bye. They held her at
parting with a gaze that still searched her and found her impenetrable.
Their very embrace dismissed her and disapproved.

Tanqueray was waiting for her at the gate. He was going to see her home,
he said. He wanted to talk to her. They could walk through Regent's Park
towards Baker Street.

They had left the Levines' some way behind them when he turned to her.

"Jinny," he said, "what are you doing in that galley?"

"What are you doing in it yourself, George?"

"I? I came to see you. I was told you would be there. You know, you _do_
let yourself in for people."

"Do I?"

"You do. And these Brodricks aren't your sort. No good can come of your
being mixed up with them. Why do you do these things?" he persisted.

"They're kind to me," she pleaded.

"Kind? Queer sort of kindness, when you're working yourself to death for
that fellow and his magazine."

"I'm not. He'll let me off any day. He said he'd rather his magazine
smashed than I did."

"And you believed him?"

"I believed him."

"Then," said