ear, her love for Maisie or Maisie's love for her. And who could
have foreseen the pain of it? When she prayed that she might take the
whole punishment, she had not reckoned on this refinement and precision
of torture. God knew what he was about. With all his resources he
couldn't have hit on anything more delicately calculated to hurt.
Nothing less subtle would have touched her. Not discovery; not the
grossness of exposure; but this intolerable security. What could
discovery and exposure do but set her free in her reality? Anne would
have rejoiced to see her lie go up in one purifying flame of revelation.
But to go safe in her lie, hiding her reality, and yet defenceless under
the sting of Maisie's loving, was more than she could bear. She had
brought all her truth and all her fineness to this passion which
Maisie's innocence made a sin, and she was punished where she had
sinned, wounded by the subtle God in her fineness and her truth. If only
Jerrold could have escaped, but he was vulnerable, too; there was
fineness and truth in him. To suffer really he had to be wounded in his
soul.

If Jerrold was hurt then they must end it.

As yet he had given no sign of feeling; but that was like him. Up to the
last minute he would fight against feeling, and when it came he would
refuse to own that he suffered, that there was any cause for suffering.
It would be like the time when his father was dying, when he refused to
see that he was dying. So he would refuse to see Maisie and then, all at
once, he would see her and he would be beaten and broken down.

vii

And suddenly he did see her.

It was on the first Sunday after Jerrold's return. Maisie had had
another of her heart attacks, by herself, in her bed, the night before;
and she had been lying down all day. The sun had come round on to the
terrace, and she now rested there, wrapped in a fur coat and leaning
back on her cushions in the garden chair.

They were sitting out there, all three, Jerrold and Anne talking
together, and Maisie listening with her sweet, attentive eyes. Suddenly
she shut her eyes and ceased to listen. Jerrold and Anne went on talking
with hushed voices, and in a little while Maisie was asleep.

Her head, rising out of the brown fur, was tilted back on the cushions,
showing her innocent white throat; her white violet eyelids were shut
down on her eyes, the dark lashes lying still; her mouth, utterly
innocent, was half open; her breath came throu