e came to help her--except her little
dog, scrabbling stiffly out of his basket, and coming to crouch,
whining, against her shoulder. It was only a minute before her eyelids
flickered open;--closed--opened again. After a while she tried to rise,
clutching with one hand at the rung of a chair, and with the other
trying to prop herself up; but her head swam, and she sank back. She lay
still for a minute; then realized that if Maurice came in and found her
there on the floor, he would know that she had read the telegram.... So
again she tried to pull herself up; caught at the edge of his desk,
turned sick, saw everything black; tried again; then, slowly, the room
whirling about her, got into a chair and lay back, crumpled up, blindly
dizzy, and conscious of only one thing: she must get upstairs to her own
room before Edith and Maurice came home! She didn't know why she wanted
to do this; she was even a little surprised at herself, as she had been
surprised when, that night on the mountain, "to save Maurice," she had,
instinctively, done one sensible thing after another. So now she knew
that, when he came home with Edith, Maurice must be saved "a scene." He
must not discover, yet, that ... _she knew_.

For of course now, it was knowledge, not suspicion: Maurice was summoned
to see a sick boy called Jacky; Jacky was the child of L. D.; and L. D.
was the Dale woman, who had lived in the house on Maple Street. Her
shameful suspicion had not been shameful! It had been the recognition of
a fact.... Clutching at supporting chairs, Eleanor, somehow, got out of
the library; saw that brown envelope in the hall, stopped (holding with
one hand to the table), to make sure it was sealed. Bingo, following
her, whimpered to be lifted and carried upstairs, but she didn't notice
him. She just clung to the banisters and toiled up to her room. She
pushed open her door and looked at her bed, desiring it so passionately
that it seemed to her she couldn't live to reach it--to fall into it, as
one might fall into the grave, enamored with death. Down in the hall the
little dog cried. She didn't faint again. She just lay there, without
feeling, or suffering. After a while she heard the front door open and
close; heard Edith's voice: "Hullo, Eleanor! Where are you? We've had a
bully time!" Heard Maurice: "Headache, Nelly? Too ba--" Then silence; he
must have seen the envelope--picked it up--read it.... That was why he
didn't finish that word--so hide