No. He could not give her up. There was no tie between them but their sin, yet he could not break it. Degraded as it was, it saved him from deeper degradation. He loved Anne with his whole soul, with his heart and with his body, and he had given his body to Maggie, with as much heart as went with it. In the world's sight he loved Maggie and was bound to Anne. In his own sight he loved Anne and was bound to Maggie. It had come to that. He did not care to look back upon the steps by which it had come. He only knew that, seven years ago, he had been sound and whole, a man with one aim and one passion and one life. Now he and his life were divided, cut clean in two by a line not to be passed or touched upon by either sundered half. All of him that Anne had rejected he had given to Maggie. As far as he could judge he had acted, not grossly, not recklessly, but with a kind of passionate deliberation. He knew he would have to pay for it. He had not stopped to haggle with his conscience or to ask: how much? But he was prepared to pay. Up to this moment his conscience had not dunned him. But now he foresaw a season when the bills would be falling due. Maggie had torn the veil of illusion, and he looked for the first time upon his sin. Even his conscience admitted that he had not meant it to come to that. He had had no ancient private tendency to sin. He wanted nothing but to live at home, happy with the wife he loved, and with his child, his children. And poor Maggie, she too would have asked no more than to be a good wife to the man she loved, and to be the mother of his children. This life with Maggie, hidden away in Three Elms Farm, in the wilds of Holderness, it could not be called dissipation, but it was division. Where once he had been whole he was now divided. The sane, strong affection that should have knit body and soul together was itself broken in two. And it was she, the helpmate, she who should have kept him whole, who had caused him to be thus sundered from himself and her. They were all wrong, all frustrated, all incomplete. Anne, in her sublime infidelity to earth; Maggie, turned from her own sweet use that she might give him what Anne could not give; and he, who between them had severed his body from his soul. Thus he brooded. And Maggie, with her face hidden against his knee, brooded too, piercing the illusion. He tried to win her from her sad thoughts by talking again of the house and garden. But Maggie was tired of the house and garden now. "And do the Pearsons look after you well still?" he asked. "Yes. Very well." "And Steve--is he as good to you as ever?" Maggie brightened and became more communicative. "Yes, very good. He was all day mending my bicycle, Sunday, and he takes me out in the boat sometimes; and he's made such a dear little house for the old Angora rabbit." "Do you like going out in the boat?" "Yes, very much." "Do you like going out with him?"