It was not so much that he wanted her to do things. He even now shrank, in his delicacy, from the bare idea of her doing them. For all his little palpitating ambition, Nicky shrank. What hurt him was the unavoidable inference he drew. When a woman cares for a man she does not doom him to obscurity by her silence, and Jane least of all women. He knew her. He knew what she had done for Tanqueray because she cared.
And now she was going to do things for Owen Prothero. Nicky sat dejected in the sorrow of this thought.
Brodrick also was oppressed. He was thinking of his magazine. It had been saved by Jane Holland, but he was aware that at this rate it could also be ruined by her. He knew what he was there for. He could see, with the terrible foreknowledge of the editor, that Prothero was to be pressed on him. He was to take him up as he had taken up Tanqueray. And from all that he had heard of Prothero he very much doubted whether he could afford to take him up. It was becoming a serious problem what he could afford. Levine was worrying him. Levine was insisting on concessions to the public, on popular articles, on politics. He had threatened, if his views were disregarded, to withdraw his financial co-operation, and Brodrick realized that he could not as yet afford to do without Levine. He might have to refuse to take Prothero up, and he hated to refuse Jane Holland anything.
As for Laura, she continued in her sullenness, anticipating with resentment the assault about to be made upon her soul.
And Jane, who knew what passed in Brodrick's mind, was downcast in her turn. She did not want Brodrick to think that she was making use of him, that she was always trying to get at him.
Tanqueray, a transformed, oblivious Tanqueray, had unrolled the manuscript. They grouped themselves for the reading, Nina on a corner of the sofa; Jane lying back in the other corner; Laura looking at Tanqueray over Nina's shoulder, with her chair drawn close beside her; Nicholson and Brodrick on other chairs, opposite the sofa, where they could look at Jane.
It was to this audience that Tanqueray first read young Prothero's poems of the Vision of God; to Laura, who didn't believe in God; to Jane, absorbed in her embarrassments; to Nina, tortured by many passions; to Hugh Brodrick, bearing visibly the financial burden of his magazine; to Caro Bickersteth, dubious and critical; to Nicky, struggling with the mean hope that Prothero might not prove so very good.
They heard of the haunting of the divine Lover; of the soul's mortal terror; of the divine pursuit, of the flight and the hiding of the soul, of its crying out in its terror; of its finding; of the divine consummation; of its eternal vision and possession of God.
Nicky's admirable judgment told him that as a competitive poet he was dished by Prothero. He maintained his attitude of extreme depression. His eyes, fixed on Jane, were now startled out of their agony into a sudden wonder at Prothero, now clouded again as Nicky manifestly said to himself, "Dished, dished, dished." He was dished by Prothero, dished by Tanqueray, reduced to sitting there, like an angel, conquering his desire, sublimely renouncing.
Brodrick's head was bowed forward on his chest. His eyes, under his lowering brows, looked up at Jane's, gathering from them her judgment of Owen Prothero. Prothero's case defied all rule and precedent, and Brodrick was not prepared with a judgment of his own. Now and then a gleam of comprehension, caught from Jane, illuminated his face and troubled it. He showed, not as a happy creature of the flesh, but as a creature of the flesh made uncontent, divinely pierced by the sharp flame of the spirit.