He didn't answer; at that moment he was not aware of her existence,
still less Johnny's, for a frightful thought had stabbed him: Suppose it
wasn't blackmail? _Suppose Lily had told the truth_? Suppose "it" was
his? "She can't prove it--she can't prove it!" he said, aloud.

"Prove what? Who can't?" Edith said, interested.

Maurice didn't hear her. Suddenly he felt too sick to follow his own
thought, and go to the bottom of things; he was afraid to touch the
bottom! He made a desperate effort to keep on the surface of his terror
by saying: "It's all Eleanor's fault. Damnation! Her idiotic jealousy
drove me out of the house that Sunday afternoon!"

At this moment Johnny Bennett and Edith broke into shrieks of laughter.
"Say, Maurice," Johnny began--

"Can't you children be quiet for five minutes?" Maurice said. Johnny
whistled and, behind his spectacles, made big eyes at Edith. "What's
_he_ got on his little chest?" Johnny inquired. But Maurice was deaf to
sarcasm.... "It all goes back to Eleanor!"

Under the chatter of the other two, it was easier to say this than to
say, "Is Lily telling the truth?" It was easier to hate Eleanor than to
think about Lily. And, hating, he said again, aloud, the single agonized
word.

Edith stood stock-still with amazement; she could not believe her ears.
_Maurice_ had said--? As for Maurice, his head bent as if he were
walking in a high wind he strode on, leaving her in the road staring
after him.

"Johnny!" said Edith; "did you hear?"

"That's nothing," Johnny said; "I say it often, when mother ain't
round. At least I say the first part."

"Oh, _Johnny_!" Edith said, dismayed.

To Maurice, rushing on alone, the relief of hating Eleanor was lost in
the uprush of that ghastly possibility: "If it _is_ mine?"

Something in him struggled to say: "If it _is_, why, then, I must--But
it isn't!" Maurice was, for the moment, a horribly scared boy; his
instinct was to run to cover at any cost. He forgot Edith, coming home
by herself after Johnny should turn in at his own gate; he was conscious
only of his need to be alone to think this thing out and decide what he
must do. There was no possible privacy in the house. "If I go up to our
room," he thought, frantically, "Eleanor'll burst in on me, and then
she'll get on to it that there's something the matter!" Suddenly he
remembered the chicken coop. "It's late. Edith won't be coming in." So
he skulked around behind the house and the