“I couldn’t tell you.  You were so ill.  I thought it would kill you.”

“Well, what if it had?  You shouldn’t have thought of me, you should have thought of Jerrold.”

“I did think of him.  I didn’t want him to have agonies of remorse.  It’s been bad enough as it is.”

“I know what it’s been, Anne.”

“That’s what I really came for now.  To see if you’d had that pain again.”

“You needn’t be afraid.  I shall never have that pain again.  Eliot told me all about it last night.”

“What did he say?”

“He showed me how it all happened.  I was ill because I couldn’t face the truth.  The truth was that Jerrold didn’t care for me.  It seems my mind knew it all the time when I didn’t.  I did know it once, and part of me went on feeling the shock of it, while the other part was living like a fool in an illusion, thinking he cared.  And now I’ve been dragged out of it into reality.  I’m facing it. This is real.  And whatever I may be I shan’t be ill again, not with that illness.  I couldn’t help it, but in a way it was as false as if I’d made it up on purpose to hide the truth.  And the truth’s cured me.”

“Eliot told me it might.  And I wouldn’t believe him.”

“You can believe him now.  He said you and Jerrold were all right because you’d faced the truth about yourselves and each other.  You held on to reality.”

“Eliot said that?”

“Yes.  He said it was the test of everybody, how they took reality, and that Jerrold had had to learn how, but that you had always known.  You were so true that your worst punishment was not being able to tell me the truth.  I was to think of you like that.”

“How can you bear to think of me at all?”

“How can I bear to live?  But I shall live.”

Maisie’s voice dropped, note by note, like clear, rounded tears, pressed out and shaped by pain.

Anne’s voice came thick and quivering out of her dark secret anguish, like a voice from behind shut doors.

“Jerrold said you’d forgiven me.  Have you?”

“It would be easier for you if I didn’t.  But I can’t help forgiving you when you’re so unhappy.  I wouldn’t have forgiven you if you hadn’t told me the truth, if I’d had to find it out that time when you were happy.  Then I’d have hated you.”

“You don’t now?”

“No.  I don’t want to see you again, or Jerrold, either, for a long time.  But that’s because I love you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you too, Anne.”

“How can you love me?”

“Because I’m like you, Anne; I’m faithful.”

“I wasn’t faithful to you, Maisie.”

“You were to Jerrold.”

Anne still stood there, silent, taking in silence the pain of Maisie’s goodness, Maisie’s love.

Then Maisie ended it.

“He’s waiting for you,” she said, “to take you home.”

Anne went to him where he stood by the terrace steps, illuminated by the light from the windows.  In there she could hear Colin playing, a loud, tempestuous music.  Jerrold waited.