"When did you know it wasn't true?" she said.
"Three months after, when Eliot wrote and told me. It was too late then…. If only you'd told me at the time. Why didn't you?"
"But I didn't know you thought it. How could I know?"
"No. How could you? Who would have believed that things could have happened so damnably as that?"
"But it's all right now. Why did you say it was too late?"
"Because it was too late. I was married."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I lied when I told you it made no difference. It made that difference. If I hadn't thought that you and Colin were…if I hadn't thought that, I wouldn't have married Maisie. I'd have married you."
"Don't say that, Jerrold."
"Well—you asked for the truth, and there it is."