seemed as if her own ardent,
innocent body felt the recoil of Maurice's youth from Eleanor's age!
She thought of that dark place in his past, which she had accepted
with pain, but always with defending excuses; she excused him again,
now, in her thoughts: "Eleanor was _impossible_! That's why somebody
else ... caught him. And it was long ago. And Eleanor's old enough to be
his mother. He never could have loved her!" Suddenly she had a fleeting,
but real, pity for Eleanor: "Poor thing!" Aloud she said, huskily, over
her shoulder, "If she had really loved him, she wouldn't have done such
a terrible thing as marry him."

Mrs. Houghton, reading the evening paper, said, briefly, "She loves him
_now_, my dear."

"Oh!" Edith said, passionately, "sometimes I am sorry for Eleanor--and
then the next minute I perfectly hate her!"

"She was only forty when she married him," Mary Houghton said; "that
isn't old at all! And I have always been sorry for her." She looked up
over her spectacles at the tense young figure by the window, outlined
against the yellow sunset; saw those clenched hands, heard the impetuous
voice break on a word,--and forgot Eleanor in a more intimate anxiety:
"Of course," she said, "such a difference in age as there is between
Maurice and Eleanor is a pity. But Maurice is devoted to her, and with
reason. She has been generous when he has been unkind. I happen to know
that."

"Maurice couldn't be unkind!"

Her mother ignored this. "And remember another thing, Edith: It isn't
years that decide whether a marriage is a failure. One of the happiest
marriages I ever knew was between a woman of fifty and a man of thirty.
You see--" she paused, and took off her spectacles, and tapped the arm
of her chair, thoughtfully: "You see, Edith, you don't understand. You
are so appallingly young! You think Love speaks only through the senses.
My dear, Love's highest speech is in the Spirit; the language of the
senses is only it's pretty, stammering, divine baby-talk!" Edith was
silent. Her mother went on: "Yes, it isn't age that decides things. It's
selfishness or unselfishness. At present Eleanor is extraordinarily
unselfish, so I believe they may yet be very happy."

"Oh, I hope so, of course," Edith said--and put up a furtive finger to
wipe first one cheek, and then the other.... "Poor Maurice!" she said.

CHAPTER XXX

When Maurice got back to the firelit library, he said, filling his pipe
with rather elabora