"About me?" he said, laughing; "well, no doubt I deserved 'em!"
"No!" she said, passionately; "no—you didn't! I know you didn't. But I—" With the melody of that old name in her ears, her thoughts were too shameful to be confessed. She wouldn't tell him how she had wronged him in her mind; she would just say: "Don't keep things from me, darling! Be frank with me, Maurice. And—" she stopped and tried to laugh, but her mournful eyes dredged his to find an indorsement of her own certainties—"and tell me you don't love anybody else?"
She held her breath for his answer:
"You bet I don't!"
The humor of such a question almost made him laugh. In his own mind he was saying, "Lily, and Love? Good Lord!"
Eleanor, putting her hand on his, said, in a whisper, "But we have no children. Do you mind—very much?"
"Great Scott! no. Don't worry about that. That's the last thing I think of! Now, when do you think you can start?" He spoke with wearied but determined gentleness.
She did not detect the weariness,—the gentleness made her so happy; he called her "Star"! He said he didn't love anyone else! He said he didn't mind because they had no children.... Oh, how dreadful for her to have had those shameful fears—and out in "their meadow," too! It was sacrilege.... Aloud, she said she could be ready by the first of the week; "And you'll stay with me? Can't you take two weeks?" she entreated.
"Oh, I can't afford that" he said; "but I guess I can manage one...."
Later that day, when she told Mrs. Newbolt—who had come home for a fortnight—what Maurice had planned for her, Eleanor's happiness ebbed a little in the realization that he would be in town all by himself, "for a whole week! He'll go off with the Mortons, I suppose," she said, uneasily.