She held out her hands to her. Anne knelt down, crouching on the floor
beside her, with her face hidden against Maisie's body. Maisie put her
arm round her.

"But why are you crying about it, Anne? You never cry. I can't bear it.
It's like seeing Jerrold cry."

"It's because you're so good, so good, and I'm such a brute. You don't
know what a brute I am."

"Oh yes, I know."

"Do you?" she said, sharply. For one moment she thought that Maisie did
indeed know, know and understand so perfectly that she forgave. This was
forgiveness.

"Of course I do. And so does Jerrold. _He_ knows what a brute you are."

It was not forgiveness. It was Maisie's innocence again, her trust--the
punishment. Anne knelt there and took the pain of it.

vi

She lay awake, alone in her shelter. She had given the excuse of a
racking headache to keep Jerrold from coming to her. For that she had
had to lie. But what was her whole existence but a lie? A lie told by
her silence under Maisie's trust in her, by her acceptance of Maisie's
friendship, by her acquiescence in Maisie's preposterous belief. Every
minute that she let Maisie go on loving and trusting and believing in
her she lied. And the appalling thing was that she couldn't be alone in
her lying. So long as Maisie trusted him Jerrold lied, too--Jerrold, who
was truth itself. One moment she thought: That's what I've brought him
to. That's how I've dragged him down. The next she saw that reproach as
the very madness of her conscience. She had not dragged Jerrold down;
she had raised him to his highest intensity of loving, she had brought
him, out of the illusion of his life with Maisie, to reality and kept
him there in an immaculate faithfulness. Not even for one insane moment
did Anne admit that there was anything wrong or shameful in their
passion itself. It was Maisie's innocence that made them liars, Maisie's
goodness that put them in the wrong and brought shame on them, her truth
that falsified them.

No woman less exquisite in goodness could have moved her to this
incredible remorse. It took the whole of Maisie, in her unique
perfection, to beat her and break her down. Her first instinct in
refusing to know Maisie had been profoundly right. It was as if she had
foreseen, even then, that knowing Maisie would mean loving her, and
that, loving her, she would be beaten and broken down. The awful thing
was that she did love Maisie; and she couldn't tell which was the worse
to b