Instantly her dark eyes opened in startled joy; his tenderness lifted her into indifference to that throbbing in her temples. "I don't mind anything," she said, "if you love me."
"Can't I do something for your head?"
"Just kiss me, darling," she said.
He kissed her, for he was sorry for her. But he was thinking of himself. "I was Johnny Bennett's age, when ... And I wanted to kiss her! My God! I may have to keep up this kissing business for—for forty years!" And whenever he was kissing her, he would have to think how he was deceiving her; he would have to think of Lily. Yes; he had been a "kid," like Johnny! How could she have done it! Pity sharpened into anger: How could she have taken advantage of a boy? Well; he had had his fling. To be sure, he was paying for it now, not only in anxiety about money, but in shame, and furtiveness, and the corroding consciousness of being a liar, and in the complete shipwreck of every purpose and ambition that a young man ought to have. "And that day, in the field, I called it love!" He would have been amused at the cynical memory, if he had not been so bitter. "Love? Rot! Still, I ought to be kinder to her;—but I can't bear to look at her. She's an old woman."
Eleanor put out her hot, trembling hand and groped for his. "Good night, darling," she said; "my head's better."
"So glad," he said.
The next morning, as Eleanor, rather white and shaky, was dressing, she said, "Edith doesn't seem to realize that she is too old to be so free and easy with Johnny Bennett—and you."
"She's getting mighty good looking," Maurice said.
"She has too much color," Eleanor said, quickly.
Maurice was right. During Edith's second winter in Mercer she grew prettier all the time; poor, speechless Johnny, looking at her through his spectacles, was quite miserable. He told some of his intimate friends that life was a bad joke.