“I’m going to fetch the lamp.”

She left him standing there.

A few minutes later she came back carrying the lighted lamp.  He took it from her and set it on the table.

“And now?”

“Now you’re going back to Colin.  And we’re both going to be good...You do want to be good—­don’t you?”

“Yes.  But I don’t see how we’re going to manage it.”

“We could manage it if we didn’t see each other.  If I went away.”

“Anne, you wouldn’t.  You can’t mean that.  I couldn’t stand not seeing you.  You couldn’t stand it, either.”

“I have stood it.  I can stand it again.”

“You can’t.  Not now.  It’s all different.  I swear I’ll be decent.  I won’t say another word if only you won’t go.”

“I don’t see how I can very well.  There’s the land...  No.  Colin must look after that.  I’ll go when the ploughing’s done.  And some day you’ll be glad I went.”

“Go.  Go.  You’ll find out then.”

Their tenderness was over.  Something hard and defiant had come in to them with the light.  He was at the door now.

“And you’ll come back,” he said.  “You’ll see you’ll come back.”

XIII

ANNE AND JERROLD

i

When he was gone she turned on herself in fury.  What had she done it for?  Why had she let him go?  She didn’t want to be good.  She wanted nothing in the world but Jerrold.

She hadn’t done it for Maisie.  Maisie was nothing to her.  A woman she had never seen and didn’t want to see.  She knew nothing of her but her name, and that was sweet and vague like a perfume coming from some place unknown.  She had no sweet image of Maisie in her mind.  Maisie might never have existed for all that Anne thought about her.

What did she do it for, then?  Why didn’t she take him when he gave himself?  When she knew that in the end it must come to that?

As far as she could see through her darkness it was because she knew that Jerrold had not meant to give himself when he came to her.  She had driven him to it.  She had made him betray his secret when she asked for the truth.  At that moment she was the stronger; she had him at a disadvantage.  She couldn’t take him like that, through the sudden movement of his weakness.  Before she surrendered she must know first whether Jerrold’s passion for her was his weakness or his strength.  Jerrold didn’t know yet.  She must give him time to find out.

But before all she had been afraid that if Jerrold hurt Maisie he would hurt himself.  She must know which was going to hurt him more, her refusal or her surrender.  If he wanted “to be good” she must go away and give him his chance.

And before the ploughing was all over she had gone.

She went down into Essex, to see how her own farm was getting on.  The tenant who had the house wanted to buy it when his three years’ lease was up.  Anne had decided that she would let him.  The lease would be up in June.  Her agent advised her to sell what was left of the farm land for building, which was what Anne had meant to do.  She wanted to get rid of the whole place and be free.  All this had to be looked into.