He looked at her with a sudden tenderness of pity.  She was visibly happy.  He remembered that her charm for him had been her habit of enjoyment.  And as he looked at her he saw nothing but sadness in her happiness and in her sweetness and her beauty.  But the sadness was not in her, it was in his own soul.  Women like Maisie were made for men to be faithful to them.  And he had not been faithful to her.  She was made for love and he had not loved her.  She was nothing to him.  Looking at her he was filled with pity for the beauty and sweetness that were nothing to him.  And in that pity and that sadness he felt for the first time the uneasy stirring of his soul.

If only he could have broken the physical tie that had bound him to her until now; if only they could give it all up and fall back on some innocent, immaterial relationship that meant no unfaithfulness to Anne.

When he thought of Anne he didn’t know for the life of him how he was going through with it.

ii

Maisie had been talking to him for some seconds before he understood.  At last he saw that, for reasons which she was unable to make clear to him, she was letting him off.  He wouldn’t have to go through with it.

As Jerrold’s mind never foresaw anything he didn’t want to see, so in this matter of Maisie he had had no plan.  Not that he trusted to the inspiration of the moment; in its very nature the moment wouldn’t have an inspiration.  He had simply refused to think about it at all.  It was too unpleasant.  But Maisie’s presence forced the problem on him with some violence.  He had given himself to Anne without a scruple, but when it came to giving himself to Maisie his conscience developed a sudden sense of guiltiness.  For Jerrold was essentially faithful; only his fidelity was all for Anne.  His marrying Maisie had been a sin against Anne, its sinfulness disguised because he had had no pleasure in it.  The thought of going back to Maisie after Anne revolted him; the thought of Anne having to share him with Maisie revolted him.  Nobody, he said to himself, was ever less polygamous than he.

At the same time he was sorry for Maisie.  He didn’t want her to suffer, and if she was not to suffer she must not know, and if she was not to know they must go on as they had begun.  He was haunted by the fear of Maisie’s knowing and suffering.  The pity he felt for her was poignant and accusing, as if somehow she did know and suffer.  She must at least be aware that something was wanting.  He would have to make up to her somehow for what she had missed; he would have to give her all the other things she wanted for that one thing.  Maisie’s coldness might have made it easy for him.  Nothing could move Jerrold from his conviction that Maisie was cold, that she was incapable of caring for him as Anne cared.  His peace of mind and the freedom of his conscience depended on this belief.  But, in spite of her coldness, Maisie wanted children.  He knew that.