nt me mixed up with it.
Well--I've been mixed up, that's all."

"Still, Anne, I'm certain he'd have cared--if that's any comfort to you.
You didn't make it up out of your dear little head. We all thought it.
Father thought it. I believe he wanted it. If he'd only known!"

She thought: If he'd only known how he had hurt her, he who had never
hurt anybody in all his beautiful life.

"Dear Uncle Robert. There's no good talking about it. I knew, the minute
Jerry said he didn't want me to go to India with him."

"Is that why you didn't go?"

"Yes."

"That was a mistake, Anne. You should have gone."

"How could I, after that? And if I had, he'd only have kept away."

"You should have let him go first and then gone after him. You should
have turned up suddenly, in wonderful clothes, looking cheerful and
beautiful. So that you wiped out the memory he funked. As it is you've
left him nothing else to think of."

"I daresay that's what I should have done. But it's too late. I can't do
it now."

"I'm not so sure."

"What, go _after_ Jerrold? Hunt him down? Dress up and scheme to make
him marry me?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes."

"Eliot, you know I couldn't."

"You said once you'd commit a crime for anybody you cared about."

"A crime, yes. But not that. I'd rather die."

"You're too fastidious. It's only the unscrupulous people who get what
they want in this world. They know what they want and go for it. They
stamp on everything and everybody that gets in their way."

"Oh, Eliot dear, I know what I want, and I'd go for it. If only Jerrold
knew, too."

"He would know if you showed him."

"And that's just what I can't do."

"Well, don't say I didn't give you the best possible advice, against my
own interests, too."

"It was sweet of you. But you see how impossible it is."

"I see how adorable you are. You always were."

iv

For the first time in her life Adeline was furious.

She had asked Eliot whether he was or was not going to marry Anne
Severn, and was told that he had asked her to marry him that afternoon
and that she wouldn't have him.

"Wouldn't have you? What's she thinking of?"

"You'd better ask her," said Eliot, never dreaming that she would.

But that was what Adeline did. She came that night to Anne's room just
as Anne was getting into bed. Unappeased by her defenseless attitude,
she attacked with violence.

"What's all this about Eliot asking you to marry him?"

Anne uncurled herself and s