ing the lady with any feelings, or indeed of regarding
her intimately at all. And he would have told the simple truth; for
Brodrick was of all men the most profoundly unaware.

Of course, there was gratitude. He had always been aware of that. But in
that fortnight his gratitude took on immense proportions, it became a
monstrous and indestructible indebtedness. He would have said that such
a feeling, so far from making him comfortable with Gertrude, would have
made him very uncomfortable, much more uncomfortable than he cared to
be. But curiously it was not so. In his renewed intercourse with
Gertrude he found a vague, exquisite satisfaction. The idea of not
paying Gertrude back in any way would have been intolerable; but what he
felt now was so very like affection that it counted as in some measure a
return. It was as if he had settled it in his own mind that he could now
meet the innocent demands which the angelic woman seemed to make.
Goodness knew it wasn't much to ask, a little attention, a little
display of the feeling so very like affection, after all that she had
done.

It pleased him now when he came, mooning drearily, into the
drawing-room, to find Gertrude in possession. He was almost always
tired now, and he was glad to lie back in an easy-chair and have his tea
handed to him by Gertrude. He looked forward, in fancy, to the
children's hour that followed tea-time, and he had made a great point at
first of having them to himself. But as a matter of fact, being almost
always tired, he enjoyed their society far more sincerely when Gertrude
was there to keep them in order.

That was her gift. She had been the genius of order ever since she had
come into his house--good gracious, was it ten years ago? Her gift made
her the most admirable secretary an editor could have. But she was more
than that now. She was a perfect companion to a physically fatigued and
intellectually slightly deteriorated man. He owned to the deterioration.
Jane had once told him that his intellect was a "lazy, powerful beast."
It seemed to him now, humbly regarding it, that the beast was and always
had been much more lazy than powerful. It required constant stimulus to
keep it going. His young ambition and his young passion for Jane Holland
had converged to whip it up. It flagged with the dying down of passion
and ambition. Things latterly had come a bit too late. His dream had
been realized too late. And he hadn't realized it, either. Jane