But Maisie's sweetness hated to refuse and frustrate; it couldn't bear to hurt him. She held him tighter. "Jerrold—if it is—if you can't stand it, you mustn't mind about me. You must forget I ever said anything. It's nothing but nerves."
"I shall be all right. Don't worry."
"You are a darling."
Her grasp slackened. "Please—please go. At once. Quick."
As he went she put her hand to her heart. She could feel the pain coming. It filled her with an indescribable dread. Every time it came she thought she should die of it. If only she didn't get so excited; excitement always brought it on. She held her breath tight to keep it back.
Ah, it had come. Splinters of glass, sharp splinters of glass, first pricking, then piercing, then tearing her heart. Her heart closed down on the splinters of glass, cutting itself at every beat.
She looked under the pillow for the little silver box that held her pearls of nitrate of amyl. She always had it with her, ready. She crushed a pearl in her pocket handkerchief and held it to her nostrils. The pain left her. She lay still.
iii
And every Sunday at six in the evening, or nine (he varied the hour to escape suspicion), Jerrold came to Anne.
In the weeks before Maisie's coming and after, Anne's happiness was perfect, intense and secret like the bliss of a saint in ecstasy, of genius contemplating its finished work. In giving herself to Jerrold she had found reality. She gave herself without shame and without remorse, or any fear of the dangerous risks they ran. Their passion was too clean for fear or remorse or shame. She thought love was a finer thing going free and in danger than sheltered and safe and bound. The game of love should be played with a high, defiant courage; you were not fit to play it if you fretted and cowered. Both she and Jerrold came to it with an extreme simplicity, taking it for granted. They never vowed or protested or swore not to go back on it or on each other. It was inconceivable that they should go back on it. And as Anne saw no beginning to it, she saw no end. All her past was in her love for Jerrold; there never had been a time when she had ceased to love him. This moment when they embraced was only the meeting point between what had been and what would be. Nothing could have disturbed Anne's conscience but the sense that Jerrold didn't belong to her, that he had no right to love her; and she had never had that sense. They had belonged to each other, always, from the time when they were children playing together. Maisie was the intruder, who had no right, who had taken what didn't belong to her. And Anne could have forgiven even that if Maisie had had the excuse of a great passion; but Maisie didn't care.