Jerrold was not a coward. He was not afraid—well, only afraid of the people he loved getting ill and dying; and she was not going to get ill and die.
She would have to tell him. She would go to him in the fields and tell him.
But before she did that she must make the thing irrevocable. So Anne wrote to the steamship company, booking her passage in two weeks' time; she wrote to Eliot, asking him to call at the company's office and see if he could get her a decent cabin. She went to Wyck and posted her letters, and then to the Far Acres field where Jerrold was watching the ploughing.
They met at the "headland." They would be safe there on the ploughed land, in the open air.
"What is it, Anne?" he said.
"Nothing. I want to talk to you."
"All right."
Her set face, her hard voice gave him a premonition of disaster.
"It's simply this," she said. "What happened yesterday mustn't happen again."
"It shan't. I swear it shan't. I was a beast. I lost my head."