elt that there was nothing in
common between her and her husband's friends, was being gradually drawn
to them. Jane's baby had been the link with Jane; Mr. Gunning had been
the link with Laura; she shared with Laura and Prothero the rare genius
of devotion to a person. Rose was shocked and bewildered by many of the
little ways of the creators, but she understood _their_ way. They loved
each other more than they loved anything they created. They loved each
other as she loved Tanqueray, but with a perfect comprehension.

Their happiness was ominously perfect. And as time went on Rose shook
her wise head over them. They had been married six months, and Rose was
beginning to think what a difference it would make if Laura was to have
a little baby, and she could come in sometimes and take care of it. But
Laura hadn't a little baby, and wasn't going, she said, to have a little
baby. She didn't want one. Laura was elated because she had had a book.
She had thought she was never going to have another, and it was the best
book she had ever had. Perfection, within her limits, had come to her,
now that she had left off thinking about it.

She couldn't have believed that so many perfect things could come to her
at once. For Laura, in spite of her happiness, remained a sceptic at
heart. She went cautiously, dreading the irony of the jealous gods.

Tanqueray had bullied his publishers into giving a decent price for
Laura's book. And, to the utter overthrow of Laura's scepticism, the
book went well. It had a levity and charm that provoked and captured and
never held you for a minute too long. A demand rose for more of the
same kind from the same author, and for her earlier books, the ones that
she had got out of bed to write, and that didn't and wouldn't sell.

For her husband's poems there had been no demand at all. He was not
unknown, far from it. He fell conspicuously, illustriously, between the
reviewers who reviled him, and the public who would have none of him. If
they had only let him alone. But they didn't. There was no poet more
pursued and persecuted than Owen Prothero. He trailed bleeding feet,
like a scapegoat on all the high mountains. He brought reproach and
ridicule on the friends who defended him, on Jane Holland, and on Nina
Lempriere and Tanqueray, which was what he minded most of all.

He was beginning to wonder whether, at this rate, there would be any
continued demand for his paragraphs, or for any of the work