In the weeks before Maisie's coming and after, Anne's happiness was perfect, intense and secret like the bliss of a saint in ecstasy, of genius contemplating its finished work. In giving herself to Jerrold she had found reality. She gave herself without shame and without remorse, or any fear of the dangerous risks they ran. Their passion was too clean for fear or remorse or shame. She thought love was a finer thing going free and in danger than sheltered and safe and bound. The game of love should be played with a high, defiant courage; you were not fit to play it if you fretted and cowered. Both she and Jerrold came to it with an extreme simplicity, taking it for granted. They never vowed or protested or swore not to go back on it or on each other. It was inconceivable that they should go back on it. And as Anne saw no beginning to it, she saw no end. All her past was in her love for Jerrold; there never had been a time when she had ceased to love him. This moment when they embraced was only the meeting point between what had been and what would be. Nothing could have disturbed Anne's conscience but the sense that Jerrold didn't belong to her, that he had no right to love her; and she had never had that sense. They had belonged to each other, always, from the time when they were children playing together. Maisie was the intruder, who had no right, who had taken what didn't belong to her. And Anne could have forgiven even that if Maisie had had the excuse of a great passion; but Maisie didn't care. So Anne, unlike Jerrold, was not troubled by thinking about Maisie. She had never seen Jerrold's wife; she didn't want to see her. So long as she didn't see her it was as if Maisie were not there. And yet she _was_ there. Next to Jerrold she was more there for Anne than the people she saw every day. Maisie's presence made itself felt in all the risks they ran. She was the hindrance, not to perfect bliss, but to a continuous happiness. She was the reason why they could only meet at intervals for one difficult and dangerous hour. Because of Maisie, Jerrold, instead of behaving like himself with a reckless disregard of consequences, had to think out the least revolting ways by which they might evade them. He had to set up some sort of screen for his Sunday visits to the Manor Farm. Thus he made a habit of long walks after dark on week-days and of unpunctuality at meals. To avoid being seen by the cottagers he approached the house from behind, by the bridge over the mill-water and through the orchard to the back door. Luckily the estate provided him with an irreproachable and permanent pretext for seeing Anne.