Edith, talking animatedly of primroses, had her absorbing thoughts, too; they were nothing but furious denial! "Maurice--horrid? Never!" Then, on the very breath of "Never," came again the insistent reminder: "But he could tell _me_ anything, except--" So, thinking of just one thing, and talking of many other things, she walked up and down the primrose path with Maurice. They neither of them wanted to go back to the three older people: the father and mother--and wife.
Eleanor, on the porch, strained her eyes into the dusk; now and then she caught a glimmer of the dim whiteness of Edith's skirt, or heard Maurice's voice. She was suffering so that by and by she said, briefly, to her hosts--her trembling with unshed tears--"Good night," and went upstairs, alone--an old, crying woman. Eleanor had been unreasonable many times; but this time she was not unreasonable! That night anyone could have seen that she was, to Maurice, as nonexistent as any other elderly woman might have been. The Houghtons saw it, and when she went into the house Mary Houghton said, with distress:
Her husband nodded, and said he wished he was asleep. "Why," he demanded, "are women greater fools about this business than men? Poor Maurice ventures to talk to Edith of 'shoes and ships and sealing wax,'--and Eleanor weeps! Why are there more jealous women than men?"
"Because," Mary Houghton said, dryly, "more men give cause for jealousy than women."
"_Touché! Touché!_" he conceded; then added, quickly, "But Maurice isn't giving any cause."
Up in her own room, Eleanor, sitting in the dark by the open window, stared out into the leafy silence of the night. Once, down in the garden, Maurice laughed;--and she struck her clenched hand on her forehead:
"I can't bear it!" she said, gaspingly, aloud; "I can't bear it--_she interests him_!" His pleasure in Edith's mind was a more scorching pain to her than the thought of Lily's body....
Later, when Maurice and Edith came up from the garden darkness, they found a deserted porch. "Let's talk," he said, eagerly.
Edith shook her head. "Too sleepy," she said, and ran upstairs. He called after her, "Quitter!" But it provoked no retort, and he would have gone back to walk up and down alone, by the primroses, and worry over Jacky's future, if a melancholy voice had not come from the window of their room: "Maurice.... It's twelve o'clock." And he followed Edith indoors....