she's with
Eleanor." And again he heard that strange voice: "You like to talk to a
_child_."

Maurice, pounding away on Edith's roof, grew hot with misery, not
because it was so terrible to have Eleanor angry with him; not even
because he had finally got mad, and answered back, and said, "Don't be
silly!" The real misery was something far deeper than this half-amused
remorse. It was that those harmless, scolding words of his held a
perfectly new idea: he had said, "Don't be silly." _Was Eleanor silly?_

Now, to a man whose feeling about his wife has been a sort of awe, this
question is terrifying. Maurice, in his boy's heart, had worshiped in
Eleanor, not just the god of Love, but the love of God. And was
she--_silly_? No! Of course not! He pounded violently, hit his thumb,
put it into his mouth, then proceeded, mumblingly, to bring his god back
from the lower shrine of a pitying heart, to the high alter of a
justifying mind: Eleanor was ill.... She was nervous.... She was an
exquisite being of mist and music and courage and love! So of course she
was sensitive to things ordinary people did not feel. Saying this, and
fitting the shingles into place, suddenly the warm and happy wave of
confident idealism began to flood in upon him, and immediately his mind
as well as his heart was satisfied. He reproached himself for having
been scared lest his star was just a common candle, like himself. He had
been cruel to judge her, as he might have judged her had she been
well--or a gump like Edith! For had she been well, she would not have
been "silly"! Had she been well--instead of lying there in her bed,
white and strained and trembling, all because she had saved his life,
harnessing herself to that wagon, and bringing him, in the darkness,
through a thousand terrors--nonexistent, to be sure, but none the less
real--to safety and life! Oh, how could he have even thought the word
"silly"? He was ashamed and humble; never again would he be cross to
her! "Silly? I'm the silly one! I'm an ass. I'll tell her so! I don't
suppose she'll ever forgive me. She said I 'didn't understand her';
well, I didn't! But she'll never have cause to say it again! I
understand her now," Then, once more, he thought, frowning, "But why is
she so down on Edith?"

That Eleanor's irritation was jealousy--not of Edith, but of Edith's
years--never occurred to him. So all he said was, "She oughtn't to be
down on Edith; _she_ has always appreciated her!" Ed