ore he loved you."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean he used to think of nothing but his own happiness. Now he's
thinking of nothing but Maisie's and yours. He loves you better than
himself. He even loves Maisie better--I mean he thinks more of her--than
he did before he loved you. There are two people that he cares for more
than himself. He cares more for his own honour than he did. And for
yours. And that's your doing. Just think how you'd have wrecked him if
you'd been a different sort of woman."

"No. Because then he wouldn't have cared for me."

"No, I believe he wouldn't. He chose well."

"You were always much too good to me."

"No, Anne. I want you to see this thing straight, and to see yourself as
you really are. Not to go back on yourself."

"I don't go back on myself. That would be going back on Jerrold. I'm
sorry because of Maisie, that's all. If I'd had an ounce of sense I'd
never have known her. I'd have gone off to some place not too far away
where Jerrold could have come to me and where I should never have seen
Maisie. That's what I should have done. We should both have been happy
then."

"Yes, Jerrold would have been happy. And he wouldn't have saved his
soul. And he'd have been deceiving Maisie all the time. You don't really
wish you'd done that, Anne."

"No. Not now. And I'm not unhappy about Maisie now. I'm going away. I'm
giving Jerrold up. I can't do more than that."

"You wouldn't have to go away, Anne, if you'd do what I want and marry
me. You said perhaps you might if you had to save Jerrold."

"Did I? I don't think I did."

"You've forgotten and I haven't. You don't know what an appalling thing
you're doing. You're leaving everything and everybody you ever cared
for. You'll die of sheer unhappiness."

"Nonsense, Eliot. You know perfectly well that people don't die of
unhappiness. They die of accidents and diseases and old age. I shall die
of old age. And I'll be back in twenty years' time if I've seen it
through."

"Twenty years. The best years of your life. You'll be desperately
lonely. You don't know what it'll be like."

"Oh yes, I do. I've been lonely before now. And I've saved myself by
working."

"Yes, in England, where you could see some of us sometimes. But out
there, with people you never saw before--people who may be brutes--"

"They needn't be."

He went on relentlessly. "People you don't care for and never will care
for. You've never really cared for anybody but us