"Maisie—if it is so what will you do?"
"Do? There's only one thing I can do."
She turned to him, and her milk-white face was grey-white, ashen; the skin had a slack, pitted look, suddenly old. The soft flesh trembled. But her mouth and eyes were still. In this moment of her agony no base emotion defaced their sweetness, so that she seemed to him utterly composed. She had seen what she could do. Something hard and terrible.
"I can set him free."
ii
That was the end she had seen before her, vaguely, as something not only hard and terrible, but beautiful and supreme. To leave off clinging to the illusion of her happiness. To let go. And with that letting go she was aware that an obscure horror had been hanging over her for three days and three nights and was now gone. She stood free of herself, in a great light and peace, so that presently when Jerrold came to her she met him with an incomparable tranquillity.
"Jerrold—"
The slight throbbing of her voice startled him coming out of her stillness.
They stood up, facing each other, in attitudes that had no permanence, as if what must pass between them now would be sudden and soon over.
"Do you care for Anne?"