been with
Anne, when she had told him that she was going away. He had never been
the same since. He had neither slept nor eaten.

Maisie had all the pieces of the puzzle loose before her, and at first
sight not one of them looked as if it would fit. But this piece under
her hand fitted. Jerrold's illness joined on to Anne's going. With a
terrible dread in her heart Maisie put the two things together and saw
the third thing. Jerrold was ill because Anne was going away. He
wouldn't be ill unless he cared for her. And another thing. Anne was
going away, not because she cared, but because Jerrold cared. Therefore
she knew that he cared for her. Therefore he had told her. That was what
had happened.

When she had put all the pieces into their places she would have the
whole story.

But Maisie didn't want to know any more. She had enough to make her
heart break. She still clung to her belief in their goodness. They were
unhappy because they had given each other up. And under all her
thinking, like a quick-running pain, there went her premonition of its
end. She remembered that they had been happy once when she first knew
them. If they were unhappy now because they had given each other up, had
they been happy then because they hadn't? For a moment she asked
herself, "Were they--?" and was afraid to finish and answer her own
question. It was enough that they were all unhappy now and that none of
them would ever be happy again. Not Anne. Not Jerrold. _Their_
unhappiness didn't bear thinking of, and in thinking of it Maisie forgot
her own.

Her heart shook her breast with its beating, and for a moment she
wondered whether her pain were beginning again. Then the thought of Anne
and Jerrold and herself and of their threefold undivided misery came
upon her, annihilating every other thought. As if all that was physical
in Maisie were subdued by the intensity of her suffering, with the
coming of the supreme emotion her body had no pain.

XX

MAISIE, JERROLD, AND ANNE

i

She got up and dressed for dinner as if nothing had happened, or,
rather, as if everything were about to happen and she were going through
with it magnificently, with no sign that she was beaten. She didn't know
yet what she would do; she didn't see clearly what there was to be done.
She might not have to do anything; and yet again, vaguely,
half-fascinated, half-frightened, she foresaw that she might be called
on to do something, something that was