"She doesn't know it."
"Maurice! You haven't a secret from Eleanor?"
Her dismay was like a stab. "Edith, I can't help it! It was a long time ago—but it would upset her to know that I'd—well, failed her in any way." His face was so wrung that Edith could have cried; but she said what she thought:
"Secrets are horrid, Maurice. You've made a mistake."
"A 'mistake'?" He almost laughed at the devilish humor of that little word 'mistake,' as applied to his ruined life. "Well, yes, Edith; I made a 'mistake,' all right."
"Oh, I don't mean a 'mistake' as to this thing you say that Eleanor wouldn't like," Edith said. "I mean not telling her."
He shook his head; with that nagging thought of Jacky in the back of his mind, it was impossible not to smile at her dogmatic ignorance.
"Because," Edith explained, "secrets trip you into fibbing."
"You bet they do! I'm quite an accomplished liar."
Edith did not smile; she spoke with impatient earnestness: "That's perfectly silly; you are not a liar! You couldn't lie to save your life, and you know it." Maurice laughed. "Why, Maurice, don't you suppose I know you, through and through? I know what you are!—a 'perfec' gentil knight.'"