was looking for. "Edith tried to make him notice them, that first
summer at Green Hill," she thought.

At eleven she went to the window and watched, her eyes straining into
the darkness. When, far down the street, a man's figure came in range,
she held her breath until it walked into and out of the circling glare
of the arc light--not Maurice! It was after twelve when she saw him
coming--and instantly she flew back to her bed. When he entered the
faintly lighted room, Eleanor was, apparently, sound asleep.

"Star?"

No answer.

He leaned over, saw the droop of her lip and the puffed eyelids--and
drew back. Perhaps, if he had kissed her, the soft lead pencil might not
have acted as Destiny; she might have melted under the forlorn story he
was so eager to tell her. But her tear-stained face did not suggest a
kiss.

In the morning Eleanor had what she called a "bilious headache," and
when Maurice skirted the subject of the "_flower_," she was too
physically miserable to be interested. When she was well again, the
opportunity--if it was an opportunity!--was lost; her interest in Lily
was not needed, because a call at the apartment house showed Maurice
that Batty was forgiven. So he forgot his desire to lift the fallen, in
more of those arid moments with Eleanor; reproaches--and
reconciliations! Tears--and fire! But fires gradually die down under
tears, no matter how one spends one's breath blowing loving words on the
wet embers! Enough tears will put out any fire.

Lily, too, was shedding angry tears in those days, and they probably had
their effect in cooling Batty's heart; for his unpleasantness finally
culminated in his leaving her, and by October she was living in the
yellow-brick apartment house alone, and very economically--yet not so
economically that she did not buy hyacinth bulbs for the blue and purple
glasses on her sunny window sill.

Once Maurice, remembering with vague amusement his reformatory impulse,
went to see her; but he did not talk to Eleanor about the call. By this
time there were days when he talked as little as possible to Eleanor
about anything,--not because he was secretive--he hated secrecy! "It's
next door to lying," he thought, faintly disgusted at himself,--but
because she seemed to feel hurt if he was interested in anyone except
herself. Maurice had passed the point which had seemed so terrible at
Green Hill, where he had called his wife "silly." He never called her
silly now. He mer