endly trickle of funny
stories; Maurice, smoking, too, thought how comfortable he was, and how
pleasant it was to have a girl like Lily to talk to. Once or twice he
laughed uproariously at some giggling joke. "She has lots of fun in
her," he reflected; "and she's a bully cook; and her hair is mighty
pretty.... Say, Lily, don't you want to trim my cuff? It's scratching me
to death."

"You bet I do!" Lily said, and got her little shiny scissors and trimmed
the broken edge of a worn-out cuff that Eleanor had never noticed.

He felt her small, warm fingers on his hand, and had a sense of comfort
that made him almost forget Eleanor. "It would serve her right if I took
Lily on," he thought. But he had not the remotest intention of taking
Lily on! He only played with the idea, because the impossible reality
would serve Eleanor right.

It was a month or two later, on the rebound of another dreariness with
Eleanor, that the reality came, and he did "take Lily on." When he did
so, no one could have been more astonished--under his dismay and
horror--than Maurice.

Unless it was Lily? She had been so certain that he had no ulterior
purpose, and so completely satisfied with her own way of living, that
her rather snuggling friendliness with him was as honest as a boy's. Her
surprise at her own mistake showed how genuine her intention of
straightness really was. When he came, once or twice to see her, he
called her Lily, and she called him "Curt," and they joked together like
two playfellows,--except when he was too gloomy to joke. But it was his
gloominess that made her feel sure there was nothing but friendliness in
his calls. She was not curious about him; she knew he was married, but
she never guessed that his preoccupation--during the spring Maurice was
very preoccupied with his own wretchedness and given to those cynical
fancies about "theater fires";--was due to the fact that he and his wife
didn't get along. She merely supposed that, like most of her "gentlemen
friends," "Curt" didn't talk about his wife. But, unlike the gentlemen
of her world he was, apparently, a husband whose acquaintance with her
had its limits. So they were both astonished....

But when Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks,
the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame.
Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping
instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go
h