Jane gave an excited cry at this unexpected flashing forth of her friend's name.
"What, Nina? Has she——?"
Brodrick answered, almost with anger, that she had. And Levine had put his silly foot down. He had complained that the tale was gruesome (they had set it up; it was quite a short thing); Nina's tales usually were gruesome; and Nina's price was stiff. He didn't know about the price; perhaps it was a trifle stiff; you might even say it crackled; but the tale——! Brodrick went on in the soft, even voice that was a sign with him of profound excitement—the tale was a corker. He didn't care if it was gruesome. It was magnificent.
"More so than her last?" Jane murmured.
"Oh, miles more." He rummaged among his papers for the proofs. He'd be eternally disgraced, he said, if he didn't publish it. He wished she'd look at the thing and tell him if he wouldn't be.
She looked and admired his judgment. The tale was everything that he had said. Nina had more than found herself.
"Of course," she said, "you'll publish it."
"Of course I shall. I'm not going to knuckle under to Louis and his beastly Jews—with a chance like that. I don't care if the price is stiff. It's a little masterpiece, the sort of thing you don't get once in a hundred years. It'll send up the standard. That's of course why he funks it."
He pondered. "There's something queer about it. Whenever that woman gets away and hides herself in some savage lair she invariably does a thing like this."
Jane admitted half-audibly that it was queer.