But it did not come.

Late in the afternoon Jerrold went down to the Barrow Farm and saw Anne. 
He came back with a message from her.  Anne wanted to see Maisie, if
Maisie would let her.

“But she thinks you won’t,” he said.

“Why should I?”

“She’s desperately unhappy.”

She turned from him as if she would have left him, and then stayed.

“You want me to see her?”

“If you wouldn’t hate it too much.”

“I shall hate it.  But I’ll see her.  Go and bring her.”

She dreaded more than anything the sight of Anne.  Her new knowledge of her made Anne strange and terrible.  She felt that she would be somehow different.  She would see something in her that she had never seen before, that she couldn’t bear to see.  Anne’s face would show her that Jerrold was her lover.

Yet, if she had never seen that look, if she had never seen anything in Anne’s face that was not beautiful, what did that mean but that Anne’s love for him was beautiful?  Before it had touched her body it had lived a long time in her soul.  Either Anne’s soul was beautiful because of it, or it was beautiful because of Anne’s soul; and Maisie knew that if she too was to be beautiful she must keep safe the beauty of their passion as she had kept safe the beauty of their friendship.  It was clear and hard, unbreakable as crystal. She had been the one flaw in it, the thing that had damaged its perfection.  Now that she had let Jerrold go it would be perfect.

Anne stood in the doorway of the library, looking at her and not speaking.  She was the same that she had been yesterday, and before that, and before that; dressed in the farm clothes that were the queer rough setting of her charm.  The same, except that she was still more broken, still more beaten, and still more beautiful in her defeat.

“Anne—­”

Maisie got up and waited, as Anne shut the door and stood there with her back to it.

“Maisie—­I don’t know why I’ve come.  There were things I wanted to say to you, but I can’t say them.”

“You want to say you’re sorry you took Jerrold from me.”

“I’m bitterly sorry.”

She came forward with a slender, awkward grace.  Her eyes were fixed on Maisie, thrown open, expecting pain; but she didn’t shrink or cower.

Maisie’s voice came with its old sweetness.

“You didn’t take him from me.  You couldn’t take what I haven’t got.”

“I gave him up, Maisie.  I couldn’t bear it.”

“And I’ve given him up. I couldn’t bear it, either.  But,” she said, “it was harder for you.  You had him.  I’m only giving up what I’ve never really had.  Don’t be too unhappy about it.”

“I shall always be unhappy when I think of you.  You’ve been such an angel to me.  If we could only have told you.”

“Yes.  If only you’d told me.  That was where you went wrong, Anne.”