The Creators

"There was her own genius, if it came to that. It had its rights. Six weeks ago she would not have had to apologize to herself for keeping him. "I didn't know you could change your mind so quickly," he said. "If you had my mind, George, you'd want to change it." "What's wrong with your mind, Jinny?" "It won't work." "Ah, it's come to that, has it? I knew it would." She led the way into another room, the room she wrote in. Jane lived alone. Sometimes he had wondered how she liked it. There was defiance in her choice of that top floor in the old house in Kensington Square. To make sure her splendid isolation, she had cut herself off by a boarded, a barricaded staircase, closed with a door at the foot. Tanqueray knew well that consecrated, book-lined room, and the place of everything it held. He had his own place there, the place of honour and affection. His portrait (a mere photograph) was on her writing-table. His "Works"-five novels-were on a shelf by themselves at the head of her chair, where she could lay her hands on them. For they had found each other before the world had found her. That was the charm which had drawn them together, which, more than any of her charms, had held him until now. She had preserved the incomparable [...]."