ver be square with the
game he played with Eleanor; and as for his own "game," his steadily
pursued secretiveness was a denial of his own standards which
permanently crippled his self-respect. Though, curiously enough, these
years of careful lying had made him, on every subject except those
connected with the household in Medfield, of a most scrupulous
truthfulness. Indeed, the office still called him "G. Washington."

Jacky was six that winter--a handsome, spoiled little boy. He looked
like Maurice--the same friendly, eager, very bright blue eyes and the
same shock of blond hair. Lily's ideas of discipline were, of course,
ruining him, to which fact Maurice was entirely indifferent; his feeling
about Jacky was nothing but a sort of spiritual nausea; Jacky was not
only an economic nuisance, but he had made him a liar! He said to
himself that of course he didn't want anything to happen to the brat
("that would break Lily's heart!"), but--

Then in March, something did happen to him. It was on a Sunday that the
child came down with scarlet fever, and Lily, in her terror, did the one
thing that she had never done, and that Maurice, in his certainty of her
"whiteness," felt sure she never would or could do: she sent a
telegram--_to his house_!

It had been a cold, sunny day. Just before luncheon Eleanor had been
summoned to Mrs. O'Brien's: "_Donny is kind of pining; do please come
and sing to him, Miss Eleanor_," the worried grandmother wrote, and
Eleanor hadn't the heart to refuse. "I suppose," she thought, looking at
Maurice and Edith, "they'll be glad to get rid of me!" They were
squabbling happily as to whether altruism was not merely a form of
selfishness; Edith had flung, "_Idiot!_" at Maurice; and Maurice had
retorted, "I never expect a woman to reason!" It was the kind of
squabbling which is the hall mark of friendship and humor, and it would
have been impossible between Eleanor and her husband.... She left them,
burning with impatience to get down to Mrs. O'Brien's and back again in
the shortest possible time. As soon as she was out of the house Maurice
disposed of altruism by a brief laying down of the law:

"There's no such thing as disinterestedness. You never do anything for
anybody, except for what you get out of it for yourself.... Let's go
skating?"

The suggestion was not the result of premeditation; Maurice, politely
opening the front door for his wife, had realized, as he stood on the
threshold and