As far as she could see through her darkness it was because she knew
that Jerrold had not meant to give himself when he came to her. She had
driven him to it. She had made him betray his secret when she asked for
the truth. At that moment she was the stronger; she had him at a
disadvantage. She couldn't take him like that, through the sudden
movement of his weakness. Before she surrendered she must know first
whether Jerrold's passion for her was his weakness or his strength.
Jerrold didn't know yet. She must give him time to find out.

But before all she had been afraid that if Jerrold hurt Maisie he would
hurt himself. She must know which was going to hurt him more, her
refusal or her surrender. If he wanted "to be good" she must go away and
give him his chance.

And before the ploughing was all over she had gone.

She went down into Essex, to see how her own farm was getting on. The
tenant who had the house wanted to buy it when his three years' lease
was up. Anne had decided that she would let him. The lease would be up
in June. Her agent advised her to sell what was left of the farm land
for building, which was what Anne had meant to do. She wanted to get rid
of the whole place and be free. All this had to be looked into.

She had not been gone from Jerrold a week before the torture of
separation became unbearable. She had said that she could bear it
because she had borne it before, but, as Jerrold had pointed out to her,
it wasn't the same thing now. There was all the difference in the world
between Jerrold's going away from her because he didn't want her, and
her going away from Jerrold because he did. It was the difference
between putting up with a dull continuous pain you had to bear, and
enduring a sharp agony you could end at any minute. Before, she had only
given up what she couldn't get; now, she was giving up what she could
have to-morrow by simply going back to Wyck.

She loathed the flat Essex country and the streets of little white rough
cast and red-tiled houses on the Ilford side where the clear fields had
once lain beyond the tall elm rows. She was haunted by the steep,
many-coloured pattern of the hills round Wyck, and the grey gables of
the Manor. Love-sickness and home-sickness tore at her together till her
heart felt as if it were stretched out to breaking point.

She had only to go back and she would end this pain. Then on the sixth
day Jerrold's wire came: "Colin ill again. Please come b