on
was impatient with it. Edith, who could not understand fear in any form,
tried, in her friendly little way, to reason Eleanor out of one panic or
another. The servants joked among themselves at the foolishness of "Mrs.
Maurice"; and the monosyllabic Johnny Bennett, when told of some of
Eleanor's scares, was bored. "Let's play Indian," said Johnny.

It was only Maurice who found all the scares--just as he found the
silences and small jealousies--adorable! The silences meant unspeakable
depths of thought; the jealousies were a sign of love. The terrors
called for his protecting strength! One of the unfair irrationalities
of love is that it may, at first, be attracted by the defects of the
beloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for her
defects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed her
garden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitter
of coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Her
wonderful mind: "She doesn't talk, because she is always thinking; her
ideas are way over _my_ head!" Her funny timidity: "She wants me to
take care of her!" Her love: "She's--it sounds absurd!--but she's
jealous, because she's so--well, fond of me, don't you know, that she
sort of objects to having people round. Did you ever hear of anything so
absurd?"

"I certainly never did," his old friend said, dryly.

"Well, but"--Maurice defended his wife--"it's because she cares about
me, don't you know? She--well, this is in confidence--she said once that
she'd like to live on a desert island, just with me!"

"So would I," said Edith. Her mother laughed:

"Tell her desert islands have to have a 'man Friday'--to say nothing of
a few 'women Thursdays'!"

Eleanor was, Maurice said, like music heard far off, through mists and
moonlight in a dark garden, "full of--of--what are those sweet-smelling
things, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton looked fatigued.)
"Well, anyway, what I mean is that she isn't like ordinary people, like
me--"

"Or Johnny," Edith broke in, earnestly.

"Johnny? Gosh! Why, Mrs. Houghton, things that don't touch most human
beings, affect her terribly. The dark, or thunderstorms, or--or
anything, makes her nervous. You understand?"

Mrs. Houghton said yes, she understood, but she would leave the rest of
the weeding to her assistants ... In the studio, dropping her dusty
garden gloves on a fresh canvas lying on the table, she almost wep