It was as if Anne’s consciousness were transferred to him, day after day, when they sat together in Maisie’s room, one on each side of her bed, while Maisie lay between them, sleeping her helpless and reproachful sleep, and he saw Anne’s piteous face, white with pain.  His pity for Maisie and his pity for Anne, their pity for each other were mixed together and held them, close as passion, in an unbearable communion.

They looked at each other, and their wounded eyes said, day after day, the same thing:  “Yes, it hurts.  But I could bear it if it were not for you.”  Their pity took the place of passion.  It was as if a part of each other passed into them with their suffering as it had passed into them with their joy.

ii

And through it all their passion itself still lived its inextinguishable and tortured life.  Pity, so far from destroying it, only made it stronger, pouring in its own emotion, wave after wave, swelling the flood that carried them towards the warm darkness where will and thought would cease.

And as Jerrold’s soul had once stirred in the warm darkness under the first stinging of remorse, so now it pushed and struggled to be born; all his will fought against the darkness to deliver his soul.  His soul knew that Anne saved it.  If her will had been weaker his would not have been so strong.  At this moment an unscrupulous Anne might have damned him to the sensual hell by clinging to his pity.  He would have sinned because he was sorry for her.

But Anne’s will refused his pity.  When he showed it she was angry.  Yet it was there, waiting for her always, against her will.

One day in October (Maisie’s illness lasting on into the autumn) they had gone out into the garden to breathe the cold, clean air while Maisie slept.

“Jerrold,” she said, suddenly, “do you think she knows?”

“No.  I’m certain she doesn’t.”

“I’m not.  I’ve an awful feeling that she knows and that’s why she doesn’t get better.”

“I don’t think so.  If she knew she’d have said something or done something.”

“She mightn’t.  She mightn’t do anything.  Perhaps she’s just being angelically good to us.”

“She is angelically good.  But she doesn’t know.  You forget her illness began before there was anything to know.  It isn’t the sort of thing she’d think of.  If somebody told her she wouldn’t believe it.  She trusts us absolutely....  That’s bad enough, Anne, without her knowing.”

“Yes.  It’s bad enough.  It’s worse, really.”

“I know it is....  Anne—­I’m awfully sorry to have let you in for all this misery.”

“You mustn’t be sorry.  You haven’t let me in for it.  Nobody could have known it would have happened.  It wouldn’t, if Maisie had been different.  We wouldn’t have bothered then.  Nothing would have mattered.  Think how gloriously happy we were.  All my life all my happiness has come through you or because of you.  We’d be happy still if it wasn’t for Maisie.”