you. So does Jerrold. It won't be the same thing at
all without you. I want to see you enjoying yourself for once. You'd do
it so well. I believe I want to see that more than Taormina and the
Italian Lakes. Do say you'll come."

"Maisie--why are you such an angel to me?"

"I'm not. I want you to come because--oh _because_ I want you. Because I
like you. I'm happy when you're there. So's Jerrold. Don't go and say
you care more for the land than Jerrold and me."

"I don't. I--It isn't the land altogether. It's Colin. I want him to get
away from me for a time and do without me. It's frightfully important
that he should get away."

"We could send Colin to another part of the island with Eliot. Only that
wouldn't be very kind to Eliot."

"No. It won't do, Maisie. I'll go off somewhere when you've come back."

"But that's no good to _us_. Jerrold will be here for the haying, if
you're thinking of that."

"I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of Colin."

As she said it she knew that she was lying. Lying to Maisie. Lying for
the first time. That came of knowing Maisie; it came of Maisie's
sweetness. She would have to lie and lie. She was not thinking of Colin
now; she was thinking that if Jerrold came back for the hay harvest and
Maisie went on with Colin to the Italian Lakes, she would have her lover
to herself; they would be alone together all June. She would lie in his
arms, not for their short, reckless hour of Sunday, but night after
night, from long before midnight till the dawn.

For last year, when the warm weather came, Anne and Colin had slept out
of doors in wooden shelters set up in the Manor fields, away from the
noises of the farm. A low stone wall separated Anne's field from
Colin's. This year, when Jerrold came home, Colin's shelter had been
moved up from the field to the Manor garden. In the summer Anne would
sleep again in her shelter. The path to her field from the Manor garden
lay through three pastures and two strips of fir plantation with a green
drive between.

Jerrold would come to her there. He would have his bed in Colin's
shelter in the garden, and when the night was quiet he would get up and
go down the Manor fields and through the fir plantation to her shelter
at the bottom. They would lie there in each other's arms, utterly safe,
hidden from passing feet and listening ears, and eyes that watched
behind window panes.

And as she thought of his coming to her, and heard her own voice ly