In all these things her genius had no part. It was as if they had agreed to ignore it. But people were beginning to talk now of the Event of nineteen-five, the appearance of Hambleby's successor, said to be greater than Hambleby.
She was conscious then of a misgiving, almost a dread. Still, it hardly concerned her. This book was the work of some one unfamiliar, unrecognizable, forgotten by the happy woman that she was. So immense was the separation between Jane Holland and Jane Brodrick.
She was aware of the imminence of her loss without deploring it. She spoke of it to Brodrick.
They were sitting together, one night in June, under the lime-tree on the lawn, only half visible to each other in the falling darkness.
"Would you mind very much," she said, "if I never wrote anything again?"
He turned to her. "What makes you think you can't write? (He too had a misgiving.) You've plenty of time. You've all day, in fact."
"Yes, all day long."
"It's not as if I bothered you—I say, they don't bother you, do they?"
She understood him as referring to the frequent, the very frequent incursions of his family.
"You mustn't let them. You must harden your heart."