"She wasn't always happy. Jerrold must have made her suffer damnably." "When?" "Oh, long before he married her." "But _how_ did he make her suffer?" "Oh, by just not marrying her. She found out he didn't care for her. Her people took her out to India, I believe, with the idea that he would marry her. And when they saw that Jerry wasn't on in that act they sent her back again. Poor Maisie got it well rammed into her then that he didn't care for her, and the idea's stuck. It's left a sort of wound in her memory." "But she must have thought he cared for her when he did marry her. She thinks he cares now." "Of course she thinks it. I don't suppose he's ever let her see." "I know he hasn't." "But the wound's there, all the same. She's never got over it, though she isn't conscious of it now. The fact remains that Maisie's marriage is incomplete because Jerry doesn't care for her. Part of Maisie, the adorable part we know, isn't aware of any incompleteness; it lives in a perpetual illusion. But the part we don't know, the hidden, secret part of her, is aware of nothing else.... Well, her illness is simply camouflage for that. Maisie's mind couldn't bear the reality, so it escaped into a neurosis. Maisie's behaving as though she wasn't married, so that her mind can say to itself that her marriage is incomplete because she's ill, not because Jerry doesn't care for her. It's substituted a bearable situation for an unbearable one." "Then, you don't think she _knows_?" "That Jerrold doesn't care for her? No. Only in that unconscious way. Her mind remembers and _she_ doesn't." "I mean, she doesn't know about Jerrold and me?" "I'm sure she doesn't. If she did she'd do something." "That's what Jerrold said. What would she do?" "Oh something beautiful, or it wouldn't be Maisie. She'd let Jerrold go." "Yes. She'd let him go. And she'd die of it." "Oh no, she wouldn't. I told Jerrold just now it might cure her." "How _could_ it cure her?" "By making her face reality. By making her see that her illness simply means that she hasn't faced it. All our neuroses come because we daren't live with the truth." "It's no good making Maisie well if we make her unhappy. Besides, I don't believe it. If Maisie's unhappy she'll be worse, not better." "There _is_ just that risk," he said. "But it's you I'm thinking about, not Maisie. You see, I don't know what's happened." "Jerrold didn't tell you?" "He only told me what I know already." "After all, what _do_ you know?" "I know you were all right, you and he, when I saw you together here in the spring. So I suppose you were happy then. Jerrold looked wretchedly ill all the time he was at Taormina. So I suppose he was unhappy then because he was away from you. He looks wretchedly ill now. So do you. So I suppose you're both unhappy." "Yes, we're both unhappy." "Do you want to tell me about it, Anne?" "No. I don't want to tell you about it. Only, if I thought you still wanted to marry me----"