"Why not?" he said lightly.
"Because Nicky'll never be in love with any woman as she is; and nobody could be in love with Laura as she isn't."
She faced him in her courage. He might take it, if he liked, that she knew Nicky was in love with her as she was not; that she knew Tanqueray would never, like Nicky, see her as she was not, to be in love with that.
"Oh, you're too subtle," he said. But he understood her subtlety.
He must tell her about Rose. Before the others could come up with them he must tell her. And then he must tell Nicky.
"Jane," he said, "will you forgive me for never coming to see you? I simply couldn't come."
"I know, George, I know."
"You don't. You don't know what I felt like."
"Perhaps not. And yet, I think, you might——"
But what she thought he might have done she would not tell him.