“That you wouldn’t have to keep it up?”

“Oh, I’d have kept it up all right if Anne hadn’t been there.  I cared enough for you to want you to be happy.  I wanted you to have a child.  You’d have liked that.  That would have made you happy.”

“Poor Jerrold——­”

“I’d have been all right if I hadn’t seen Anne again.”

“When did you see her again?”

“Last spring.”

“Only last spring?”

“Yes, only.”

“When I was away.”

She remembered.  She remembered how she had first come to Wyck and found Jerrold happy and superbly well.

“But,” she said, “you were happy then.”

He sighed, a long, tearing sigh that hurt her.

“Yes.  We were happy then.”

And in a flash of terrific clarity she remembered her home-coming and the night that followed it and Jerrold’s acquiescence in their separation.

“Then,” she said, “if you were happy——­”

“Do you want to know how far it went?”

“I want to know everything.  I want the truth.  I think you owe me the truth.”

“It went just as far as it could go.”

“Do you mean——­”

He stood silent and she found his words for him.

“You were Anne’s lover?”

“Yes.”

Her face changed before him, as it had changed an hour ago before Eliot, ashen-white and slack, quivering, suddenly old.

Tears came into his eyes, tears of remorse and pity.  She saw them and her heart ached for him.

“It didn’t last long,” he said.

“How long?”

“From March till—­till September.”

“I remember.”

“Maisie—­I can’t ask you to forgive me.  But you must forgive Anne.  It wasn’t her fault.  I made her do it.  And she’s been awfully unhappy about it, because of you.”

“Ah—­that was why——­”

“Won’t you forgive her?”

“I forgive you both.  I don’t know how I should have felt if you’d been happy.  I can’t see anything but your unhappiness.”

“We gave it up because of you.  That was Anne.  She couldn’t bear going on after she knew you, when you were such an angel.  It was your goodness and sweetness broke us down.”

“But if I’d been the most disagreeable person it would have been just as wrong.”

“It wouldn’t, for in that case we shouldn’t have deceived you.  I should have told you straight and left you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Jerrold?  Why didn’t you tell me in the beginning?”

“We were afraid.  We didn’t want to hurt you.”

“As if that mattered.”

“It did matter.  We were going to tell you.  Then you were ill and we couldn’t.  We thought you’d die of it, with your poor little heart in that state.”

“Oh, my dear, did you suppose I’d hurt you that way?”

“That was what we couldn’t bear.  Not being straight about it.  That was why we gave each other up.  It never happened again.  Anne’s going away so that it mayn’t happen....  Maisie—­you do believe me?”