Eliot saw it.
He thought: "It doesn't matter. She's so utterly good that nothing can touch her. All the same, if she marries me she'll be safe from this sort of thing."
They had come to the dip of the valley and the Manor Farm water.
"Let's go up the beech walk," he said.
They went up and sat in the beech ring where Anne had sat with Jerrold three months ago. Eliot never realised how repeatedly Jerrold had been before him.
"Anne," he said, "it's more than five years since I asked you to marry me."
"Is it, Eliot?"
"Do you remember I said then I'd never give you up?"
"I remember. Unless Jerrold got me, you said. Well, he hasn't got me."
"I wouldn't want you to tie yourself up with me if there was the remotest chance of Jerrold; but, as there isn't, don't you think—"