"You know it hasn't."
"Oh, Anne, you are beautiful."
"I'm anything but, if you only knew."
She had got beyond the pain of Maisie's goodness, Maisie's trust. No possible blow from Maisie's mind could hurt her now. Nothing mattered. Maisie's trust and goodness didn't matter, since she had done all she knew; since she was going away; since she would never see Jerrold again, never till their youth was gone and they had ceased to feel.
iv
That afternoon Eliot arrived at Wyck Manor. His coming was his answer to
Anne's letter.
He went over to the Barrow Farm about five o'clock when Anne's work would be done. Anne was still out, and he waited till she should come back.
As he waited he looked round her room. This, he thought, was the place that Anne had set her heart on having for her own; it was the home they had made for her. Something terrible must have happened before she could bring herself to leave it. She must have been driven to the breaking-point. She was broken. Jerrold must have driven and broken her.
He heard her feet on the flagged path, on the threshold of the house; she stood in the doorway of the room, looking at him, startled.
"Eliot, what are you doing there?"