Instantly Edith's arms were around her. "Eleanor, dear! Don't—don't! He does love you—he does! I'd perfectly hate him if he didn't! Oh, Eleanor, poor Eleanor! Don't cry; Maurice does love you. He doesn't care a copper for me!" The tears were running down her face. She bent and kissed Eleanor's hands, clenched on the table, and then tried to draw the gray head against her tender young breast.
Eleanor put out frantic hands, as if to push away some suffocating pressure. Both of these women—Lily, with her car fare and her handkerchief; Edith, with her impudent "advice" to Maurice not to have secrets from his wife—pitied her! She would not be pitied by them!
"Don't touch me!" she said, furiously; "you love my husband."
Edith heard her own blood pounding in her ears.
"Don't you?" said Eleanor; her face was furrowed with pain; "Don't you?"
It was a moment of naked truth. "I have loved Maurice," Edith said, steadily, "ever since I was a child. I always shall. I would like to love you, too, Eleanor, if you would let me. But nothing—nothing! shall ever break up my ... affection for Maurice."
"You might as well call it love."
Edith, rising, said, very low: "Well, I will call it love. I am not ashamed. I am not wronging you. You have no need to be jealous of me, Eleanor. He cares nothing for me."
Eleanor struck the table with her clenched fists. "You shall never have him!" she said.
Edith turned, silently, and went up the veranda stairs and out of the house.