"Is it all right?" he said.
"Perfectly all right, George."
They talked all evening and far into the night. She parted from him at the gate of the lane under the ash-trees. Under the ash-trees her Idea showed in its immense and luminous perfection. It trembled into life. It drew her, palpitating, into the lamp-light of the room.
She had found what she had come for.
That was the effect he always had on her.
LXI
Brodrick had been alone in the first fortnight that followed Jane's extraordinary departure. Instead of settling down to be comfortable with Gertrude, he had packed her off to the seaside with the children and their nurse. He had often wondered what he should do without Gertrude. Now he knew. He knew by incontrovertible experiment that he could not do without her at all. Everything, even the silver-chiming clock, went wrong in her absence.
If, before that fortnight, Brodrick had been asked suddenly with what feelings he regarded Gertrude Collett, he would have replied that he was unaware of regarding the lady with any feelings, or indeed of regarding her intimately at all. And he would have told the simple truth; for Brodrick was of all men the most profoundly unaware.
Of course, there was gratitude. He had always been aware of that. But in that fortnight his gratitude took on immense proportions, it became a monstrous and indestructible indebtedness. He would have said that such a feeling, so far from making him comfortable with Gertrude, would have made him very uncomfortable, much more uncomfortable than he cared to be. But curiously it was not so. In his renewed intercourse with Gertrude he found a vague, exquisite satisfaction. The idea of not paying Gertrude back in any way would have been intolerable; but what he felt now was so very like affection that it counted as in some measure a return. It was as if he had settled it in his own mind that he could now meet the innocent demands which the angelic woman seemed to make. Goodness knew it wasn't much to ask, a little attention, a little display of the feeling so very like affection, after all that she had done.