"I suppose," said he, "it must run its course."
"You talk like my brother, as if it were an illness."
"Well—isn't it?"
"How should I know? I haven't got it."
He rose and went to the window that looked out on to the garden and the lawn and Jane's seat under the lime-tree. He remembered how one summer, three years ago, before he married her, she had lain there recovering from the malady of her genius. A passion of revolt surged up in him.
"I suppose, anyhow, it's incurable," he said, more to himself than to Gertrude.
She had risen from her place and followed him.
"Whatever it is," she said, "it's the thing we've got most to think of. It's the thing that means most to her."
"To her?" he repeated vaguely.
"To her," she insisted. "I didn't understand it at first; I can't say I understand it now; it's altogether beyond me. But I do say it's the great thing."