“We know now.”

There was a long silence.  Now and again she felt him stirring uneasily.  Once he sighed and her heart tightened.  At last he bent over her and lifted her up and set her on his knee.  She lay back gathered in his arms, with her head on his breast, satisfied, like a child.

“Jerrold, do you remember how you used to hold me to keep me from falling in the goldfish pond?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve loved you ever since then.”

“Do you remember how I kissed you when I went to school?”

“Yes.”

“And the night that Nicky died?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been sleeping in that room, because it was yours.”

“Have you?  Did you love me then, that night?”

“Yes.  But I didn’t know I did.  And then Father’s death came and stopped it.”

“I know.  I know.”

“Anne, what a brute I was to you.  Can you ever forgive me?”

“I forgave you long ago.”

“Talk of punishments—­”

“Don’t talk of punishments.”

Presently they left off talking, and he kissed her.  He kissed her again and again, with light kisses brushing her face for its sweetness, with quick, hard kisses that hurt, with slow, deep kisses that stayed where they fell; kisses remembered and unremembered, longed for, imagined and unimaginable.

The church bell began ringing for service, short notes first, tinkling and tinkling; then a hurrying and scattering of sounds, sounds falling together, running into each other, covering each other; one long throbbing and clanging sound; and then hard, slow strokes, measuring out the seconds like a clock.  They waited till the bell ceased.

The dusk gathered.  It spread from the corners to the middle of the room. 
The tall white arch of the chimney-piece jutted out through the dusk.

Anne stirred slightly.

“I say, how dark it’s getting.”

“Yes.  I like it.  Don’t get the lamp.”

They sat clinging together, waiting for the dark.

The window panes were a black glimmer in the grey.  He got up and drew the curtains, shutting out the black glimmer of the panes.  He came to her and lifted her in his arms and carried her to the couch and laid her on it.

She shut her eyes and waited.

XIV

MAISIE

i

He didn’t know what he was going to do about Maisie.

On a fine, warm day in April Maisie had come home.  He had motored her up from the station, and now the door of the drawing-room had closed on them and they were alone together in there.

“Oh, Jerrold—­it is nice—­to see you—­again.”

She panted a little, a way she had when she was excited.

“Awfully nice,” he said, and wondered what on earth he was going to do next.

He had been all right on the station platform where their greetings had been public and perfunctory, but now he would have to do something intimate and, above all, spontaneous, not to stand there like a stick.