He drew himself up abruptly, and she felt the sudden start and check of his hurt mind. "You haven't told her?" he said. "No. It's something she told me. She doesn't want you to know. But you've got to know it. You think she doesn't care for you, and she does; she cares awfully. But--she's ill." "Ill? She isn't, Anne. She only thinks she is. I know Maisie." "You don't know that she gets heart attacks. Frightful pain, Jerrold, pain that terrifies her." "My God--you don't mean she's got _angina_?" "Not the real kind. If it was that she'd be dead. But pain so bad that she thinks she's dying every time. It's what they call false angina. That's why she doesn't want you to sleep with her, for fear it'll come on and you'll see her." Through the darkness she could feel the vibration of his shock; it came to her in his stillness. "You said she didn't feel. She's afraid to feel because feeling brings it on." He spoke at last. "Why on earth couldn't she tell me that?" "Because she loves you so awfully. The poor darling didn't want you to be unhappy about her." "As if that mattered." "It matters more than anything to her." "Do you really mean that she's got that hellish thing? Who told her what it was?" "Some London doctor and a man at Torquay." "I shall take her up to-morrow and make her see a specialist." "If you do you mustn't let her know I told you, or she'll never tell me anything again." "What am I to say?" "Say you've been worried about her." "God knows I ought to have been." "You're worried about her, and you think there's something wrong. If she says there isn't, you'll say that's what you want to be sure of." "Look here; how do those fellows know it isn't the real thing?" "Oh, they can tell that by the state of her heart. I don't suppose for a moment it's the real thing. She wouldn't be alive if it was. And you don't die of false angina. It's all nerves, though it hurts like sin." He was silent for a second. "Anne--she's beaten us. We can't tell her now." "No. And we can't go on. If we can't be straight about it we've got to give each other up." "I know. We can't go on. There's nothing more to be said." His voice dropped on her aching heart with the toneless weight of finality. "We've got to end it now, this minute," she said. "Don't come any farther." "Let me go to the bottom of the field." "No. I'm not going that way." He had come close to her now, close, as though he would have taken her in his arms for the last night, the last time. He wanted to touch her, to hold her back from the swallowing darkness. But she moved out of his reach and he did not follow her. His passion was ready to flame up if he touched her, and he was afraid. They must end it clean, without a word or a touch.