“Anne?  Do you think Anne’s ill?”

“I think she will be, and so will you if...  What have you been doing?”

“We’ve been doing nothing.”

“That’s it.  You’ve got to do something and do it pretty quick if it’s to be any good.”

Jerrold started and looked up.  He wondered whether Eliot knew.  He had a way of getting at things, you couldn’t tell how.

“What d’you mean?  What are you talking about?” His words came with a sudden sharp rapidity.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know how you know anything.  And, as a matter of fact, you don’t.”

“I don’t know much.  But I know enough to see that you two can’t go on like this.”

“Maisie and me?”

“No.  You and Anne.  It’s Anne I’m talking about.  I suppose you can make a mess of your own life if you like.  You’ve no business to make a mess of hers.”

“My God! as if I didn’t know it.  What the devil am I to do?”

“Leave her alone, Jerrold, if you can’t have her.”

“Leave her alone?  I am leaving her alone.  I’ve got to leave her alone, if we both die of it.”

“She ought to go away,” Eliot said.

“She shan’t go away unless I go with her.  And I can’t."’

“Well, then, it’s an impossible situation.”

“It’s a damnable situation, but it’s the only decent one.  You forget there’s Maisie.”

“No, I don’t.  Maisie doesn’t know?”

“Oh Lord, no.  And she never will.”

“You ought to tell her.”

Jerrold was silent.

“My dear Jerrold, it’s the only sensible thing.  Tell her straight and get her to divorce you.”

“I was going to.  Then she got ill and I couldn’t.”

“She isn’t ill now.”

“She will be if I tell her.  It’ll simply kill her.”

“It won’t.  It may—­even—­cure her.”

“It’ll make her frightfully unhappy.  And it’ll bring back that infernal pain.  If you’d seen her, Eliot, you’d know how impossible it is.  We simply can’t be swine.  And if I could, Anne couldn’t....  No.  We’ve got to stick it somehow, Anne and I.”

“It’s all wrong, Jerrold.”

“I know it’s all wrong.  But it’s the best we can do.  You don’t suppose Anne would be happy if we did Maisie down.”

“No.  No.  She wouldn’t.  You’re right there.  But it’s a damnable business.”

“Oh, damnable, yes.”

Jerrold laughed in his agony.  Yet he saw, as if he had never seen it before, Eliot’s goodness and the sadness and beauty of his love for Anne.  He had borne for years what Jerrold was bearing now, and Anne had not loved him.  He had never known for one moment the bliss of love or any joy.  He had had nothing.  And Jerrold remembered with a pang of contrition that he had never cared enough for Eliot.  It had always been Colin, the young, breakable Colin, who had clung to him and followed him.  Eliot had always gone his own queer way, keeping himself apart.