She was trying to help him! He was so angry and so frightened that he felt sick at his stomach; but he knew that she was trying to help him!
"You see," she explained, "the first one died; now I'm going to have another, and you bet I'm going to have things nice for her! I'm going to buy a parlor organ. And I'll have her learned to play. It's going to be a girl. Oh, won't I dress her pretty! But I'll never come down on you about her. Now, don't you worry."
The generosity of her! She'd "put it down in writing"! "I _told_ Uncle Henry she was white," he thought. But in spite of her whiteness his blue eyes were wide with horror; all those plans, of Lily in another city, and an unacknowledged child, in still another city--for of course _it_ could not be in Mercer any more than Lily could!--all these safe arrangements faded into a swift vision of Lily, in this apartment, with _it_! Lily, meeting him on the street!--a flash of imagination showed him Lily, pushing a baby carriage! For just a moment sheer terror made that dead Youth of his stir.
"You can't keep it!" he said again, hoarsely; "I tell you, I won't allow it! I'll look after it. _But I won't have it here!_ And I won't ever see you."
"You needn't," she said, reassuringly; "and I'll never bother you. That ain't me!"
"An' look," she said, cheerfully; "honest, it's better for you. What would you do, looking after a little girl? Why, you couldn't even curl her hair in the mornings!" Maurice shuddered. "And I'll never ask you for a cent, if you can just make it convenient to help me in February?"
"Of course I'll help you," he said; then, suddenly, his anger fell into despair. "Oh, what a damned fool I was!"
"All gentlemen are," she tried to comfort him. Her generosity made him blush. Added to his shame because of what he had done to Eleanor, was a new shame at his own thoughts about this little, kind, bad, honest woman! "Look here," Lily said; "if you're strapped, never mind about helping me. They'll take you at the Maternity free, if you _can't_ pay. So I'll go there; and I'll say I'm married; I'll say my husband was Mr. George Dale, and he's dead; I'll never peep your name. Now, don't you worry! I'll keep on at Marston's for four months, anyway. Yes; I'll buy me a ring and call myself Mrs. Dale; I guess I'll say Mrs. Robert Dale; Robert's a classier name than George. And nobody can say anything to my baby."