s took him there. Why should he _not_ tell her? And
when she said that, the inevitable answer came: He didn't tell her,
because he didn't want her to know! Perhaps he had friends there? No. No
friends of Maurice's could live in such a locality. Well, perhaps there
was some woman? Even as she said this, she was ashamed. She knew she
didn't believe it. Of course there wasn't any woman!... But, at any
rate, he had interests in Medfield that he did not tell her about. She
hinted this to him at breakfast the next morning. She had not meant to
speak of it; she knew she would be sorry if she did. Eleanor was
incapable of analysis, but she was, in her pitiful way, aware that
jealousy, _when articulate_, is almost always vulgar--perhaps because
the decorums of breeding (which insist that, for the sake of others,
one's own pain must be hidden) are not propped up by the reserves of
pride. At any rate, she was not often publicly bitter to Maurice. This
time, however, she was.

"Apparently," she said, "Maurice has acquaintances on Maple Street whom
I don't know."

"The elite," Edith remarked, facetiously; "his lovely Mrs. Dale lives
there."

Maurice's start was perceptible.

"Perhaps it was Mrs. Dale you went to see?" Eleanor said.

Maurice, trained in these years of furtiveness to self-control, said,
"Does she live on Maple Street, Edith?"

"I guess so. The time I rescued her little boy and her flower pot, ages
ago, she was going into a house on Maple Street."

"I saw Maurice in Medfield on Thursday," said Eleanor; "and he doesn't
seem to want to say what he was doing there!"

"I am perfectly willing to tell you what I was doing," he retorted; "I
went from our office to see the woman who rents the house."

Eleanor's slow mind accepted this entirely true and successfully false
remark with only the wonder of wounded love. "Why didn't he say that at
first?" she thought; "why does he hide things from me?"

Maurice, however, made sure of that "hiding." Eleanor's attack upon him
frightened him so badly that that very afternoon, after office hours
(Eleanor being safe in bed with a headache), he went to see Lily. Her
astonishment at another visit so soon was obvious; she was still further
astonished when he told her why he had come. He hated to tell her. To
speak of Eleanor offended his taste--but it had to be done. So,
stammering, he began--but broke off:

"Send that child away!"

"Run out in the yard, Sweety," Lily command