“That’s what Jerrold said.  What would she do?”

“Oh something beautiful, or it wouldn’t be Maisie.  She’d let Jerrold go.”

“Yes.  She’d let him go.  And she’d die of it.”

“Oh no, she wouldn’t.  I told Jerrold just now it might cure her.”

“How could it cure her?”

“By making her face reality.  By making her see that her illness simply means that she hasn’t faced it.  All our neuroses come because we daren’t live with the truth.”

“It’s no good making Maisie well if we make her unhappy.  Besides, I don’t believe it.  If Maisie’s unhappy she’ll be worse, not better.”

“There is just that risk,” he said.  “But it’s you I’m thinking about, not Maisie.  You see, I don’t know what’s happened.”

“Jerrold didn’t tell you?”

“He only told me what I know already.”

“After all, what do you know?”

“I know you were all right, you and he, when I saw you together here in the spring.  So I suppose you were happy then.  Jerrold looked wretchedly ill all the time he was at Taormina.  So I suppose he was unhappy then because he was away from you.  He looks wretchedly ill now.  So do you.  So I suppose you’re both unhappy.”

“Yes, we’re both unhappy.”

“Do you want to tell me about it, Anne?”

“No.  I don’t want to tell you about it.  Only, if I thought you still wanted to marry me——­”

“I do want to marry you.  I shall always want to marry you.  I told you long ago nothing would ever make any difference.

“Even if——?”

“Even if—­Whatever you did or didn’t do I’d still want you.  But I told you—­don’t you remember?—­that you could never do anything dishonourable or cruel.”

“And I told you I wasn’t sure.”

“And I am sure.  That’s enough for me.  I don’t want to know anything more.  I don’t want to know anything you’d rather I didn’t know.”

“Oh, Eliot, you are so good.  You’re good like Maisie.  Don’t worry about Jerry and me.  We’ll see it through somehow.”

“And if you can’t stand the strain of it?”

“But I can.”

“And if he can’t?  If you want to be safe——­”

“I told you I should never want to be safe.”

“If you want him to be safe, then, would you marry me?”

“That’s different.  I don’t know, Eliot, but I don’t think so.”

He went away with a faint hope.  She had said it would be different; what she would never do for him she might do for Jerrold.

She might, after all, marry him to keep Jerrold safe.

Nothing made any difference.  Whatever Anne did she would still be Anne.  And it was Anne he loved.  And, after all, what did he know about her and Jerrold?  Only that if they had been lovers that would account for their strange happiness seven months ago; if they had given each other up this would account for their unhappiness now.  He thought:  How they must have struggled.