When Maurice reached the camp he stood for a while looking about him.  The shack had not wintered well:  the door sagged on a broken hinge, and the stovepipe had blown over and lay rusting on the roof.  In the blackened circle of stones were some charred logs, which made him think of the camp fire on that night of Eleanor’s courage and love and terror.  He even reverted to those first excuses for her:  “She nearly killed herself for me.  Nervous prostration, Doctor Bennett said.  I suppose a woman never gets over that.  Poor Eleanor!” he said, softening; “it would kill her ... if she knew.”  He sat down and looked off across the valley ...  “What am I going to do?” he said to himself.  “I can’t make her happy; I’d like to, but you can’t reason with her any more than if she was a child.  Edith has ten times her sense!  How absurd she is about Edith.  Lord! what would she do if she knew about Lily!”

He reflected, playing with the mere horror of the thought, upon just how complete the “bust-up” would be if she knew!  He realized that he had undeserved good luck with Lily; she hadn’t fastened herself on him.  She was decent about that; if she’d been a different sort, he might have had a nasty time.  But Lily was a sport—­he’d say that for her; she hadn’t clawed at him!  And she had protested that she didn’t want any money, and wouldn’t take it!  And she hadn’t taken it.  He had made some occasional presents, but nothing of any value.  He had given her nothing, hardly even a thought (except the thought that he was an ass), since last May.  Thinking of her now, he had another of those pangs of shame which had stabbed him so at first, but to which of late he had grown callous.  The shame of having been the one—­after all his goody-goody talk!—­to pull her off the track; still, she was straight again now.  He was quite sure of that.  “You can tell when they’re straight,” he thought, heavily.  Perhaps, in the winter, he would send her some flowers.  He thought of the bulbs on the window sill of Lily’s parlor, and tried to remember a verse; something about—­about—­what was it?

“If of thy store there be
  But left two loaves,
Sell one, and with the dole
  Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”

He laughed; Lily, feeding her “soul”!  “Well, she has more ‘soul,’ with her flower pots and her good cooking, than some women who wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole!  Still, I’m done with her!” he thought.  But he had no purpose of “uplift”; the desire to reform Lily had evaporated.  “Queer; I don’t care a hoot,” he told himself, watching with lazy eyes the smoke from his pipe drift blue between himself and the valley drowsing in the heat.  “I’d like to see the little thing do well for herself—­but really I don’t give a damn.”  His moral listlessness, in view of the acuteness of that first remorse, and especially of that moment among the stars, when he had stretched out hands passionately eager for the agonizing sacrament of confession, faintly surprised