ill, because suspicion is the
diversion of an empty mind, she played with it, as one might play with a
dagger, careful only not to let it touch the quick of belief. After a
while she deluded herself into thinking that, to exonerate Maurice, she
must prove the suspicion false! It was only fair to him to do that. So
she must find the woman whom she had seen on the porch with him. If she
wasn't Mrs. Dale, that would "prove" that everything was all right, and
that Maurice's presence there only meant that he was attending to office
business; nothing to be jealous about in _that_! And if the woman _was_
Mrs. Dale? Eleanor's throat contracted so sharply that she gasped. But
again and again she put off the search for the exonerating proof--for
she was ashamed of herself, "I'll do it to-morrow." ... "I'll do it next
week."

It was a scorching, windy July day when she took her first defiling step
and "did it." There had been a breakfast-table discussion of a vacation
at Green Hill, the usual invitation having been received.

"Do go," Maurice had urged. "I'll do what I did last year--hang around
here, and go to the ball games, and come up to Green Hill for Sundays."
He was acutely anxious to have her go.

She was silent. "_Why_ does he want to be alone?" she thought;
"why--unless he goes over to Medfield?" Then, in sudden decision, she
said to herself, "I will find out why, to-day!" But she was afraid that
Maurice would, somehow, guess what she was going to do; so, to throw him
quite off the track, she told him that Donny O'Brien was sick again; "I
must go and see him this morning," she said.

Maurice, reading the sports page of the morning paper, said, "Too bad!"
and went on reading. He had no interest in his wife's movements; the
two-family house on Ash Street was beyond her range!

An hour later, Eleanor, giving Bingo a cooky to console him for being
left at home, started out into the blazing heat, saying to herself:
"I'll recognize her the minute I see her. Of course I _know_ she isn't
the Dale woman, but I want to _prove_ that she isn't!"

Her plan was to ring the bell at every one of the gingerbread houses on
that block on Maple Street, and ask if Mrs. Dale lived there? If she was
not to be found, that would prove that Maurice had not gone to see her.
If she was found, why, then--well, then Eleanor would say that she had
heard that the house was in the market? If Mrs. Dale said it was not,
that would show that it wasn'