“Somehow I don’t think I’m going to be happy.”

“Then,” he said, “you’re going to be brave.”

She thought:  He knows.  He’s known all the time, only he won’t give them away.

“Yes,” she said, “I’ll ask him.”

“Maisie—­if it is so what will you do?”

“Do?  There’s only one thing I can do.”

She turned to him, and her milk-white face was grey-white, ashen; the skin had a slack, pitted look, suddenly old.  The soft flesh trembled.  But her mouth and eyes were still.  In this moment of her agony no base emotion defaced their sweetness, so that she seemed to him utterly composed.  She had seen what she could do.  Something hard and terrible.

“I can set him free.”

ii

That was the end she had seen before her, vaguely, as something not only hard and terrible, but beautiful and supreme.  To leave off clinging to the illusion of her happiness.  To let go.  And with that letting go she was aware that an obscure horror had been hanging over her for three days and three nights and was now gone.  She stood free of herself, in a great light and peace, so that presently when Jerrold came to her she met him with an incomparable tranquillity.

“Jerrold—­”

The slight throbbing of her voice startled him coming out of her stillness.

They stood up, facing each other, in attitudes that had no permanence, as if what must pass between them now would be sudden and soon over.

“Do you care for Anne?”

The words dropped clear through her stillness, vibrating.  His eyes went from her, evading the issue.  Her voice came with a sharper stress.

“I must know. Do you care for her?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why she’s going?”

“Yes.  That’s why she’s going.  Did Eliot say anything?”

“No.  He only told me to ask you.  He said you’d tell me the truth.”

“I have told you the truth.  I’m sorry, Maisie.”

“I know you’re sorry.  So am I.”

“But, you see, it isn’t as if I’d begun after I married you.  I’ve cared for her all my life.”

“Then why didn’t you marry her?”

“Because, first of all, I didn’t know I cared.  And afterwards I thought she cared for Colin.”

“You never asked her?”

“No.  I thought—­I thought they were lovers.”

“You thought that of her?”

“Well, yes.  I thought it would be just like her to give everything.  I knew if she cared enough she’d stick at nothing.  She wouldn’t do it for herself.”

“That was—­when?”

“The time I came home on leave three years ago.”

“The time you married me.  Why did you marry me, if you didn’t care for me?”

“I would have cared for you if I hadn’t cared for her.”

“But, when you cared for her——?”

“I thought we should find something in it.  I wanted you to be happy.  More than anything I wanted you to be happy.  I thought I’d be killed in my next action and that nothing would matter.”