Maurice went downstairs and called Mrs. Houghton out of the parlor; in the hall he said:  “I think Eleanor’s sort of mixed up.  She is talking about ‘Lily’s car fare’!  What do you suppose she means?  Is she—­delirious?  And then she says she ‘wants to see Jacky.’  What must I do?”

“Go and get him,” she said.

For a bewildered minute he hesitated.  If Mrs. Newbolt should see Jacky, she ... would know!  And Edith ... would she suspect?  Still he went—­like a man in a dream.  As he got off the car, a block from Lily’s door, a glimpse of the far-off end of the route where “Eleanor’s meadow” lay, made his purpose still more dreamlike.  But he was abruptly direct with Lily:  he had come, he said, to tell her that his wife wanted—­

“My soul and body!” she broke in; “if she’s sent you—­” They were in the dining room, Maurice so pale that Lily, in real alarm, had put her hand on his arm and made him sit down.  But she was angry.  “Has she got on to that again?”

His questioning bewilderment brought her explanation.

“She didn’t tell you she’d been here?  Well, I promised her I wouldn’t give her away to you, and I wouldn’t,—­but so long as she’s sent you, now, there’s no harm, I guess, telling you?” So she told him.  “What possessed you to let on to her?” she ended.  She was puzzled at his folly, but she was sympathetic, too.  “I suppose she ragged it out of you?”

Maurice had listened, silently, his elbow on his knee, his fist hard against his mouth; he did not try to tell her why he had “let on”; he could not say that he wanted to defend his son from such a mother; still less could he make clear to her that Eleanor had not “ragged it out of him,” but that, to his famished passion for truth, confession had been the Bread of Life.  He looked at her once or twice as she talked; pretty, yet; kindly, coarse, honest—­and Eleanor had supposed that he would marry her!  Then, sharply, his mind pictured that scene:  his wife, his poor, frightened old Eleanor, pleading for the gift of Jacky!  And Lily—­young, arrogant, kind....  The pain of it made his passion of pity so like love that the tears stood in his eyes.  “Oh, she mustn’t die,” he thought; “I won’t let her die!”

When Lily had finished her story he told her his, very briefly:  his wife’s forgiveness of his unfaithfulness; her desire to do all she could for Jacky:  “Help me—­I mean help you—­to make a man of him, because she loves me.  Heaven knows I’m not worthy of it.”

Lily gulped.  “She ain’t young; but, my God, she’s some woman!” She threw her apron over her face and cried hard; then stopped and wiped her eyes.  “She wants to see him, does she?  Well, you bet she shall see him!  I’ll get him; he’s playing in at Mr. Dennett’s—­he’s all on being an undertaker now.  Mr. Dennett’s a Funeral Pomps Director.  But he’s got to put on his new suit.”  She ran out on to the porch, and Maurice could hear the colloquy across the fence:  “You come in the house, quick!”