"Anne," he said, "it's more than five years since I asked you to marry
me."
"Is it, Eliot?"
"Do you remember I said then I'd never give you up?"
"I remember. Unless Jerrold got me, you said. Well, he hasn't got me."
"I wouldn't want you to tie yourself up with me if there was the
remotest chance of Jerrold; but, as there isn't, don't you think--"
"No, Eliot, I don't."
"But you do care for me, Anne, a little. I know you do."
"I care for you a great deal; but not in that sort of way."
"I'm not asking you to care for me in the way you care for Jerrold. You
may care for me any way you please if you'll only marry me. You don't
know how awfully little I'd be content to take."
"I shouldn't be content to give it, though. You oughtn't to have
anything but the best."
"It would be the best for me, you see."
"Oh no, Eliot, it wouldn't. You only think it would because you're an
angel. It would be awful of me to give so little when I take such a lot.
I know what your loving would be."
"If you know you must have thought of it. And if you've thought of it--"
"I've only thought of it to see how impossible it is. It mightn't be if
I could leave off loving Jerrold. But I can't...Eliot, I've got the
queerest feeling about him. I know you'll think me mad, when he's gone
and married somebody else, but I feel all the time as if he hadn't, as
if he belonged to me and always had; and I to him. Whoever Maisie's
married it isn't Jerrold. Not the real Jerrold."
"The fact remains that she's married him."
"No. Not him. Only a bit of him. Some bit that doesn't matter."
"Anne darling, I'd try not to think that."
"I don't think it. I feel it. Down there, deep inside me. I've always
felt that Jerrold would come back to me and he came back. Then there was
Colin. He'll come back again."
"Then there'll be Maisie."
"No, then there won't be Maisie. There won't be anything if he really
comes...Now you see how mad I am. Now you see how awful it would be to
marry me."
"No, Anne. I see it's the only way to keep you safe."
"Safe from what? Safe from Jerrold? I don't want to be safe from him.
Eliot, I'm telling you this because you trust me. I want you to see me
as I really am, so that you won't want to marry me any more."
"Ah, that's not the way to make me. Nothing you say makes any
difference. Nothing you could do would make any difference."