Eliot had always gone his own queer way, keeping himself apart.

And now Eliot was nearer to him than anything in the world, except Anne.

"I'm sorry, Jerrold."

"You're pretty decent, Eliot, to be sorry--I believe you honestly want
me to have Anne."

"I wouldn't go so far as that, old man. But I believe I honestly want
Anne to have you.... I say, she hasn't gone yet, has she?"

"No. Maisie's keeping her for dinner in your honour. You'll probably
find her in the drawing-room now."

"Where's Maisie?"

"She won't worry you. She's gone to lie down."

Eliot went into the drawing-room and found Anne there.

She looked at him. "You've been talking to Jerrold," she said.

"Yes, Anne. I'm worried about him."

"So am I."

"And I'm worried about you."

"And he's worried about Maisie."

"Yes. I suppose he began by not seeing she was ill, and now he does see
it he thinks she's going to die. I've been trying to explain to him that
she isn't."

"Can you explain why she's got into this state? It's not as if she
wasn't happy. She _is_ happy."

"She wasn't always happy. Jerrold must have made her suffer damnably."

"When?"

"Oh, long before he married her."

"But _how_ did he make her suffer?"

"Oh, by just not marrying her. She found out he didn't care for her. Her
people took her out to India, I believe, with the idea that he would
marry her. And when they saw that Jerry wasn't on in that act they sent
her back again. Poor Maisie got it well rammed into her then that he
didn't care for her, and the idea's stuck. It's left a sort of wound in
her memory."

"But she must have thought he cared for her when he did marry her. She
thinks he cares now."

"Of course she thinks it. I don't suppose he's ever let her see."

"I know he hasn't."

"But the wound's there, all the same. She's never got over it, though
she isn't conscious of it now. The fact remains that Maisie's marriage
is incomplete because Jerry doesn't care for her. Part of Maisie, the
adorable part we know, isn't aware of any incompleteness; it lives in a
perpetual illusion. But the part we don't know, the hidden, secret part
of her, is aware of nothing else.... Well, her illness is simply
camouflage for that. Maisie's mind couldn't bear the reality, so it
escaped into a neurosis. Maisie's behaving as though she wasn't married,
so that her mind can say to itself that her marriage is incomplete
because she's ill, not because Jerry doesn't care for h