Her smile, more than ever ironic, lashed Nicky's shocked recoil.
"Creators are a brutal crew, Mr. Nicholson. We're all the same. You needn't be sorry for us."
She looked, over Nicky's head as it were, at Jane and Laura. It was as if with a sweep of her stormy wing she gathered them, George Tanqueray and Jane and Laura, into the spaces where they ran the superb course of the creators.
The movement struck Arnott Nicholson aside into his place among the multitudes of the uncreative. Who was he to judge George Tanqueray? If she arraigned him she had a right to. She was of his race, his kind. She could see through Nicky as if he had been an innocent pane of glass. And at the moment Nicky's soul with its chivalry and delicacy enraged her. Caroline Bickersteth enraged her, everybody enraged her except Jane and little Laura.
She stood beside Jane, who had risen and was about to say good-bye.
Caro would have kept them with her distressed, emphatic "Must you go?" She was expecting, she said, Mr. Brodrick.
Jane was not interested in Mr. Brodrick. She could not stay and did not, and, going, she took Nina with her.
Laura would have followed, but Miss Bickersteth held her with a hand upon her arm. Nicholson left them, though Laura's eyes almost implored him not to go.
"My dear," said Miss Bickersteth. "Tell me. Have you any idea how much she cares for him?"
"She?"