"it was harder for you. You had him. I'm only giving up what I've never
really had. Don't be too unhappy about it."
"I shall always be unhappy when I think of you. You've been such an
angel to me. If we could only have told you."
"Yes. If only you'd told me. That was where you went wrong, Anne."
"I couldn't tell you. You were so ill. I thought it would kill you."
"Well, what if it had? You shouldn't have thought of me, you should have
thought of Jerrold."
"I did think of him. I didn't want him to have agonies of remorse. It's
been bad enough as it is."
"I know what it's been, Anne."
"That's what I really came for now. To see if you'd had that pain
again."
"You needn't be afraid. I shall never have that pain again. Eliot told
me all about it last night."
"What did he say?"
"He showed me how it all happened. I was ill because I couldn't face the
truth. The truth was that Jerrold didn't care for me. It seems my mind
knew it all the time when I didn't. I did know it once, and part of me
went on feeling the shock of it, while the other part was living like a
fool in an illusion, thinking he cared. And now I've been dragged out of
it into reality. I'm facing it. _This_ is real. And whatever I may be I
shan't be ill again, not with that illness. I couldn't help it, but in a
way it was as false as if I'd made it up on purpose to hide the truth.
And the truth's cured me."
"Eliot told me it might. And I wouldn't believe him."
"You can believe him now. He said you and Jerrold were all right because
you'd faced the truth about yourselves and each other. You held on to
reality."
"Eliot said that?"
"Yes. He said it was the test of everybody, how they took reality, and
that Jerrold had had to learn how, but that you had always known. You
were so true that your worst punishment was not being able to tell me
the truth. I was to think of you like that."
"How can you bear to think of me at all?"
"How can I bear to live? But I shall live."
Maisie's voice dropped, note by note, like clear, rounded tears, pressed
out and shaped by pain.
Anne's voice came thick and quivering out of her dark secret anguish,
like a voice from behind shut doors.
"Jerrold said you'd forgiven me. Have you?"
"It would be easier for you if I didn't. But I can't help forgiving you
when you're so unhappy. I wouldn't have forgiven you if you hadn't told
me the truth, if I'd had to find it out that time when you were happy.
Then I'd have hated you."
"You don't now?"
"No. I don't want to see you again, or Jerrold, either, for a long time.
But that's because I love you."
"_Me_?"
"Yes, you too, Anne."
"How _can_ you love me?"
"Because I'm like you, Anne; I'm faithful."
"I wasn't faithful to you, Maisie."
"You were to Jerrold."
Anne still stood there, silent, taking in silence the pain of Maisie's
goodness, Maisie's love.
Then Maisie ended it.
"He's waiting for you," she said, "to take you home."
Anne went to him where he stood by the terrace steps, illuminated by the
light from the windows. In there she could hear Colin playing, a loud,
tempestuous music. Jerrold waited.
She went past him down the steps without a word, and he followed her
through the garden.
"Anne--" he said.
Under the blackness of the yew hedge she turned to him, and their hands
met.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "Next week I'll take you away somewhere till
it's over."
"Where?"
"Oh, somewhere a long way off, where you'll be happy."
Somewhere a long way off, beyond this pain, beyond this day and this
night, their joy waited.
"And Maisie?" she said.
"Maisie wants you to be happy."
He held her by the hand as he used to hold her when they were children,
to keep her safe. And hand in hand, like children, they went down
through the twilight of the fields, together.
End of Project Gutenberg's Anne Severn and the Fieldings, by May Sinclair