isie got her truth in first.

It was on the Wednesday, a fine bright day in September, and Jerrold was
to have driven Maisie and Anne over to Oxford in the car. And, ten
minutes before starting, Maisie had declared herself too tired to go.
Anne wouldn't go without her, and Jerrold, rather sulky, had set off by
himself. He couldn't understand Maisie's sudden fits of fatigue when
there was nothing the matter with her. He thought her capricious and
hysterical. She was acquiring his mother's perverse habit of upsetting
your engagements at the last moment; and lately she had been
particularly tiresome about motoring. Either they were going too fast or
too far, or the wind was too strong; and he would have to turn back, or
hold himself in and go slowly. And the next time she would refuse to go
at all for fear of spoiling their pleasure. She liked it better when
Anne drove her.

And today Jerrold was annoyed with Maisie because of Anne. If it hadn't
been for Maisie, Anne would have been with him, enjoying a day's holiday
for once. Really, Maisie might have thought of Anne and Anne's pleasure.
It wasn't like her not to think of other people. Yet he owned that she
hadn't wanted Anne to stay with her. He could hear her pathetic voice
imploring Anne to go "because Jerry won't like it if you don't." Also he
knew that if Anne was determined not to do a thing nothing you could say
would make her do it.

He had had time to think about it as he sat in the lounge of the hotel
at Oxford waiting for the friends who were to lunch with him. And
suddenly his annoyance had turned to pity.

It was no wonder if Maisie was hysterical. His life with her was all
wrong, all horribly unnatural. She ought to have had children. Or he
ought never to have married her. It had been all wrong from the
beginning. Perhaps she had been aware that there was something missing.
Perhaps not. Maisie had seemed always singularly unaware. That was
because she didn't care for him. Perhaps, if he had loved her
passionately she would have cared more. Perhaps not. Maisie was
incurably cold. She shrank from the slightest gesture of approach; she
was afraid of any emotion. She was one of those unhappy women who are
born with an aversion from warm contacts, who cannot give themselves.
What puzzled him was the union of such a temperament with Maisie's
sweetness and her charm He had noticed that other men adored her. He
knew that if it had not been for Anne he might have