The Creators Part 129

"I hated doing it for some things," she said. "It looks too like a concession to this detestable British public. But I can't rest, Jinny, till we've made him known. They'll see that he didn't s.h.i.+rk, that he could beat the practical men--the men they wors.h.i.+p--at their own game, that he did something for the Empire. Then they'll accept the rest.

There's an awful irony in it, but I'm convinced that's the way his immortality will come."

"It'll come anyway," said Jane.

"It'll come soonest this way. They'll believe in him to-morrow, because of the things he did with his hands. His hands were wonderful. Ah, Jinny, how could I ever want to write again?"

"What will you _do_, dear child? How will you live?"

"I'll live as he did." She said it fiercely. "I'll live by journalism.

It doesn't matter how I live."

"There are so many things," she said, "that don't matter, after all."

Nicky and Nina pa.s.sed.

"Do you think," said he, "she's happy?"

"Who? Jane? Or Laura?"

"You can't think of Laura," said Nicky, gravely, "without _him_."

"That's it. She isn't without him. She never will be. He has given her his certainty."

"Of immortality?" Nicky's tone was tentative.

"Of the thing he saw. That _is_ immortality. Of course she's happy."

"But I was thinking," Nicky said, "of Jane."