In his despairing confusion, he sat down on the little bowlegged sofa and looked at her; Lily, sitting beside him, put her hand on his—which quivered at the touch. "Don't you worry! I'd never play you any mean trick. You treated me good, and I'll never treat you mean; I 'ain't forgot the way you handed it out to Batty! I'll never let on to anybody. Say—I believe you're afraid I'll try a hold-up on you some day? Why, Mr. Curtis, I wouldn't do a thing like that—no, not for a million dollars! Look here; if it will make you easy in your mind, I'll put it down in writing; I'll say it ain't yours! Will that make you easy in your mind?" Her kind eyes were full of anxious pity for him. "I'll do anything for you, but I won't give up my baby."
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!"
He was dumb.
"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."