“When I’m singing and playing I shall pretend I’m not.”

“You needn’t.  You won’t ever be him.”

“I—­shall.”

“Col-Col, I don’t want you to be like him.  I don’t want anybody else to be like Jerrold in the whole world.”

“But,” said Colin, “I shall be like him.”

xiv

Every night Adeline still came to see Anne in bed.  The little thing had left off pretending to be asleep.  She lay with eyes wide open, yielding sweetly to the embrace.

To-night her eyelids lay shut, slack on her eyes, and Adeline thought
“She’s really asleep, the little lamb.  Better not touch her.”

She was going away when a sound stopped her.  A sound of sobbing.

“Anne—­Anne—­are you crying?”

A tremulous drawing-in of breath, a shaking under the bed-clothes.  On Anne’s white cheek the black eyelashes were parted and pointed with her tears.  She had been crying a long time.

Adeline knelt down, her face against Anne’s face.

“What is it darling?  Tell me.”

Anne shivered.

“Oh Anne, I wish you loved me.  You don’t, ducky, a little bit.”

“I do.  I do.  Really and truly.”

“Then give me a kiss.  The proper kind.”

Anne gave her the tight, deep kiss that was the proper kind.

“Now—­tell me what it is.”  She knew by Anne’s surrender that, this time, it was not her mother.

“I don’t know.”

“You do know.  Is it Jerry?  Do you want Jerry?”

At the name Anne’s crying broke out again, savage, violent.

Adeline held her close and let the storm beat itself out against her heart.

“You can’t want him more than I do, little Anne.”

“You’ll have him when he comes back.  And I shan’t.  I shall be gone.”

“You’ll come again, darling.  You’ll come again.”

II

ADOLESCENTS

i

For the next two years Anne came again and again, staying four months at Wyck and four months in London with Grandmamma Severn and Aunt Emily, and four months with Grandpapa Everitt at the Essex Farm.

When she was twelve they sent her to school in Switzerland for three years.  Then back to Wyck, after eight months of London and Essex in between.

Only the times at Wyck counted for Anne.  Her calendar showed them clear with all their incidents recorded; thick black lines blotted out the other days, as she told them off, one by one.  Three years and eight months were scored through in this manner.

Anne at fifteen was a tall girl with long hair tied in a big black bow at the cape of her neck.  Her vague nose had settled into the forward-raking line that made her the dark likeness of her father.  Her body was slender but solid; the strong white neck carried her head high with the poise of a runner.  She looked at least seventeen in her clean-cut coat and skirt.  Probably she wouldn’t look much older for another fifteen years.