increased their danger. But he couldn't
go. He felt that, after all they might have done and hadn't done, heaven
had some scheme of compensation in which it owed them this moment.

She turned from him coughing, and that sign of her weakness, the sight
of her thin shoulders shaking filled him with pity that was passion
itself. He thought of the injustice life had heaped on Anne's innocence;
of the cruelty that had tracked her and hunted her down; of his own
complicity with her suffering. He thought of his pity for Maisie as
treachery to Anne, of his honour as cowardice. Instead of piling up wall
after wall, he ought never to have let anything come between him and
Anne. Not even Maisie. Not even his honour. His honour belonged to Anne
far more than to Maisie. The rest had been his own blundering folly, and
he had no right to let Anne be punished for it.

An hour ago the walls had stood solid between them. Now a furious
impulse seized him to tear them down and get through to her. This time
he would hold her and never let her go.

His thoughts went the way his passion went. Then suddenly she turned and
they looked at each other and he thought no more. All his thoughts went
down in the hot rushing darkness of his blood.

"Anne," he said, "Anne"--His voice sounded like a cry.

They stood up suddenly and were swept together; he held her tight, shut
in his arms, his body straining to her. They clung to each other as if
only by clinging they could stand against the hot darkness that drowned
them; and the more they clung the more it came over them, wave after
wave.

Then in the darkness he heard her crying to him to let her go.

"Don't make me, Jerrold, don't make me."

"Yes. Yes."

"No. Oh, why did we ever come here?"

He pressed her closer and she tried to push him off with weak hands that
had once been strong. He felt her breakable in his arms, and utterly
defenceless.

"I can't," she cried. "I should feel as if Maisie were there and looking
at us.... Don't make me."

Suddenly he let her go.

He was beaten by the sheer weakness of her struggle. He couldn't fight
for his flesh, like a brute, against that helplessness.

"If I go, you'll stay here till the rain stops?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, Jerry. You'll get so wet."

That made him laugh. And, laughing, he left her. Then tears came,
cutting through his eyelids like blood from a dry wound. They mixed with
the rain and blinded him.

And Anne sat on the little gre