fe wasn't worth living if you were a coward and afraid. And under
all her misery Anne had still the sense that life was somehow worth
living even if it made you miserable. Life was either your friend or
your enemy. If it was your friend you served it; if it was your enemy
you stood up to it and refused to let it beat you, and your enemy became
your servant. Whatever happened, your work remained. Still there would
be ploughing and sowing, and reaping and ploughing again. Still the
earth waited. She thought of the unknown Canadian earth that waited for
her tilling.

Jerrold was not a coward. He was not afraid--well, only afraid of the
people he loved getting ill and dying; and she was not going to get ill
and die.

She would have to tell him. She would go to him in the fields and tell
him.

But before she did that she must make the thing irrevocable. So Anne
wrote to the steamship company, booking her passage in two weeks' time;
she wrote to Eliot, asking him to call at the company's office and see
if he could get her a decent cabin. She went to Wyck and posted her
letters, and then to the Far Acres field where Jerrold was watching the
ploughing.

They met at the "headland." They would be safe there on the ploughed
land, in the open air.

"What is it, Anne?" he said.

"Nothing. I want to talk to you."

"All right."

Her set face, her hard voice gave him a premonition of disaster.

"It's simply this," she said. "What happened yesterday mustn't happen
again."

"It shan't. I swear it shan't. I was a beast. I lost my head."

"Yes, but it may happen again. We can't go on like this, Jerry. The
strain's too awful."

"You mean you can't trust me."

"I can't trust myself. And it isn't fair to you."

"Oh, me. That doesn't matter."

"Well, then, say _I_ matter. It's the same for me. I'm never going to
let that happen again. I'm going away."

"Going away--"

"Yes. And I'm not coming back this time."

His voice struggled in his throat. Something choked him. He couldn't
speak.

"I'm going to Canada in a fortnight."

"Good God! You can't go to Canada."

"I can. I've booked my passage."

His face was suddenly sallow white, ghastly. His heart heaved and he
felt sick.

"Nothing on earth will stop me."

"Won't Maisie stop you? If you do this she'll know. Can't you see how it
gives us away?"

"No. It'll only give _me_ away. If Maisie asks me why I'm going I shall
tell her I'm in love with you, and that I