"I'm almost glad," he said, "to have lost you—that way."
"Which way?" said she.
At that moment a servant of the house brought in tea. She announced that Mr. Nicholson was down-stairs and would like to see Miss Holland.
"Very well. You'll stay?" Jane said to Brodrick.
He did. He was, Jane reflected, the sort of man who stayed.
"Here's Mr. Brodrick," said she, as Nicky entered. "He's going to make all our fortunes."
"His own, too, I hope," said Brodrick. But he looked sulky, as if he resented Nicholson's coming in.
"Of course," he said, "they tell me the whole thing's a dream, a delusion, that it won't pay. But I know how to make it pay. The reason why magazines go smash is because they're owned by men with no business connections, no business organization, no business capacity. I couldn't do it if I hadn't the 'Telegraph' at my back. Practically I make the paper pay for the magazine."
And he went into it, in his quick, quiet voice, expounding and expanding his scheme, laying it down fairly and squarely, with lucidity but no apparent ardour.
It was Nicky who was excited. Jane could see cupidity in Nicky's eyes as Brodrick talked about his magazine. Brodrick dwelt now on the commercial side of it which had no interest for Nicky. Yet Nicky was excited. He wanted badly to get into Brodrick's magazine, and Brodrick wanted, Brodrick was determined to keep him out. There was a brief struggle between Nicky's decency and his desire; and then Nicky's desire and Brodrick's determination fairly skirmished together in the open. Brodrick tried heavily to keep Nicky off it. But Nicky hovered airily, intangibly about it. He fanned it as with wings; when Brodrick dropped it he picked it up, he sustained it, he kept it flying high. Every movement intimated in Nicky's most exquisite manner that if Brodrick really meant it, if he had positively surrendered to the expensive dream, if he wanted, in short, to keep it up and keep it high, he couldn't be off letting Nicky in.