ndkerchief and held it to her nostrils.
The pain left her. She lay still.

iii

And every Sunday at six in the evening, or nine (he varied the hour to
escape suspicion), Jerrold came to Anne.

In the weeks before Maisie's coming and after, Anne's happiness was
perfect, intense and secret like the bliss of a saint in ecstasy, of
genius contemplating its finished work. In giving herself to Jerrold she
had found reality. She gave herself without shame and without remorse,
or any fear of the dangerous risks they ran. Their passion was too clean
for fear or remorse or shame. She thought love was a finer thing going
free and in danger than sheltered and safe and bound. The game of love
should be played with a high, defiant courage; you were not fit to play
it if you fretted and cowered. Both she and Jerrold came to it with an
extreme simplicity, taking it for granted. They never vowed or protested
or swore not to go back on it or on each other. It was inconceivable
that they should go back on it. And as Anne saw no beginning to it, she
saw no end. All her past was in her love for Jerrold; there never had
been a time when she had ceased to love him. This moment when they
embraced was only the meeting point between what had been and what would
be. Nothing could have disturbed Anne's conscience but the sense that
Jerrold didn't belong to her, that he had no right to love her; and she
had never had that sense. They had belonged to each other, always, from
the time when they were children playing together. Maisie was the
intruder, who had no right, who had taken what didn't belong to her. And
Anne could have forgiven even that if Maisie had had the excuse of a
great passion; but Maisie didn't care.

So Anne, unlike Jerrold, was not troubled by thinking about Maisie. She
had never seen Jerrold's wife; she didn't want to see her. So long as
she didn't see her it was as if Maisie were not there.

And yet she _was_ there. Next to Jerrold she was more there for Anne
than the people she saw every day. Maisie's presence made itself felt in
all the risks they ran. She was the hindrance, not to perfect bliss, but
to a continuous happiness. She was the reason why they could only meet
at intervals for one difficult and dangerous hour. Because of Maisie,
Jerrold, instead of behaving like himself with a reckless disregard of
consequences, had to think out the least revolting ways by which they
might evade them. He had to set up some sor