nsulted. He said, "By all means. Capital idea." In a week's
time, staying in bed for breakfast had made such a difference to Jane
that Gertrude was held once more to have solved the problem. Brodrick
even said that if Jane always did what Gertrude wanted she wouldn't go
far wrong.

The Brodricks all knew that Jane was staying in bed for breakfast. The
news went the round of the family in three days. It travelled from Henry
to Frances, from Frances to Mabel, from Mabel to John, and from John to
Levine and Sophy. They received it unsurprised, with melancholy
comprehension, as if they had always known it. And they said it was very
sad for Hugh.

Gertrude said it was very sad for everybody. She said it to Brodrick one
Sunday morning, looking at him across the table, where she sat in Jane's
place. At first he had not liked to see her there, but he was getting
used to it. She soothed him with her stillness, her smile, and the soft
deepening of her shallow eyes.

"It's very sad, isn't it," said she, "without Mrs. Brodrick?"

"Very," he said. He wondered ironically, brutally, what Gertrude would
say if she really know how sad it was. There had been another night like
that which had seemed to him the beginning of it all.

"May I give you some more tea?"

"No, thank you. I wonder," said he, "how long it's going to last."

"I suppose," said he, "it must run its course."

"You talk like my brother, as if it were an illness."

"Well--isn't it?"

"How should I know? I haven't got it."

He rose and went to the window that looked out on to the garden and the
lawn and Jane's seat under the lime-tree. He remembered how one summer,
three years ago, before he married her, she had lain there recovering
from the malady of her genius. A passion of revolt surged up in him.

"I suppose, anyhow, it's incurable," he said, more to himself than to
Gertrude.

She had risen from her place and followed him.

"Whatever it is," she said, "it's the thing we've got most to think of.
It's the thing that means most to her."

"To her?" he repeated vaguely.

"To her," she insisted. "I didn't understand it at first; I can't say I
understand it now; it's altogether beyond me. But I do say it's the
great thing."

"Yes," he assented, "it's the great thing."

"The thing" (she pressed it) "for which sacrifices must be made."

Then, lest he should think that she pressed it too hard, that she rubbed
it into him, the fact that stung, the fact t