way she looked at Colin, the way she spoke to
him; in her kindness to him, her tender, quiet absorption. In the way
Colin's face turned after her as she came and went; in his restlessness
when she was not there; in the peace, the sudden smoothing of his vexed
brows, when having gone she came back again.

Supposing it were true that they--

He couldn't bear it to be true; his mind struggled against the truth of
it, but if it _were_ true he didn't blame them. So far from being untrue
or even improbable, it seemed to Jerrold the most likely thing in the
world to have happened. It had happened to so many people since the war
that he couldn't deny its likelihood. There was only one thing that
could have made it impossible--if Anne had cared for him. And what
reason had he to suppose she cared? After six years? After he had told
her he was trying to get away from her? He had got away; and he saw a
sort of dreadful justice in the event that made it useless for him to
come back. If anybody was to blame it was himself. Himself and Queenie,
that horrible girl Colin had married.

When he asked himself whether it was the sort of thing that Anne would
be likely to do he thought: Why not, if she loved him, if she wanted to
make him happy? How could he tell what Anne would or would not do? She
had said long ago that he couldn't, that she might do anything.

They spent the evening talking, by fits and starts, with long silences
in between. They talked about the things that happened before the war,
before Colin's marriage, the things they had done together. They talked
about the farm and Anne's work, about Barker and Curtis and Ballinger,
about Mrs. Sutton who watched them from her house across the road.

Mrs. Sutton had once been Colin's nurse up at the Manor: she had married
old Sutton after his first wife's death; old Sutton who wouldn't die and
let Anne have his farm. And now she watched them as if she were afraid
of what they might do next.

"Poor old Nanna," Jerrold said.

"Goodness knows what she thinks of us," said Anne.

"It doesn't matter what she thinks," said Colin.

And they laughed; they laughed; and Jerrold was not quite sure, yet.

But before the night was over he thought he was.

They had given him the little room in the gable. It led out of Colin's
room. And there on the chimneypiece he saw an old photograph of himself
at the age of thirteen, holding a puppy in his arms. He had given it to
Anne on the last