“There’s me.”

“You don’t know anything about farming, Jerry dear.  You don’t know a teg from a wether.”

“I suppose I can learn if Colin’s learnt.  Or I can get another Barker.”

“Not so easy.  Don’t you like my looking after your land, then?  Aren’t you pleased with me?  I haven’t done so badly, you know.  Seven hundred acres.”

“You’ve been simply splendid.  I shall never forget what you’ve done.  And I shall never forgive myself for letting you do it.  I’d no idea what it meant.”

“It’s only meant that Colin’s better and I’ve been happier than I ever thought I could have been.”

“Happier?  Weren’t you happy then?”

She didn’t answer.  They were on dangerous ground.  If they began talking about happiness—­

“If I gave it up to-morrow,” she said, “I should only go and work on another farm.”

“Would you?”

“Jerrold—­do you want me to go?”

“Want you?”

“Yes.  You did once.  At least, you wanted to get away from me.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing.  If I had known I shouldn’t have done it.  I can’t talk about that, Anne.  It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“No.  But, Jerrold—­tell me the truth.  Do you want me to go because of Colin?”

“Colin?”

“Yes.  Because of what your mother told you?”

“How do you know what she told me?”

“She told Eliot.”

“And he told you?  Good God! what was he thinking of?”

“He thought it better for me to know it.  It was better.”

“How could it be?”

“I can’t tell you...Jerrold, it isn’t true.”

“I know it isn’t.”

“But you thought it was.”

“When did I think?”

“Then; when you came to see me.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.  And you’re not going to lie about it now.”

“Well, if I did I’ve paid for it.”

(What did he mean?  Paid for it?  It was she who had paid.)

“When did you know it wasn’t true?” she said.

“Three months after, when Eliot wrote and told me.  It was too late then....  If only you’d told me at the time.  Why didn’t you?”

“But I didn’t know you thought it.  How could I know?”

“No.  How could you?  Who would have believed that things could have happened so damnably as that?”

“But it’s all right now.  Why did you say it was too late?”

“Because it was too late.  I was married.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I lied when I told you it made no difference.  It made that difference.  If I hadn’t thought that you and Colin were...if I hadn’t thought that, I wouldn’t have married Maisie.  I’d have married you.”

“Don’t say that, Jerrold.”

“Well—­you asked for the truth, and there it is.”

She got up and walked away from him to the window.  He followed her there.  She spread out her hands to the cold rain.