They went out of the henhouse together in silence.  Maurice was saying to himself, “I might not be able to get a job in New York...  I’ll fight.”  Yet certain traditional decencies, slowly emerging from the welter of his rage and terror, made him add, “If it was mine, I’d have to give her something...  But it isn’t.  I’ll fight.”

He was so absorbed that before he knew it he had followed Edith to the studio, where, in the twilight.  Mr. and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on the sofa together, hand in hand, and Eleanor was at the piano singing, softly, old songs that her hosts loved.

“If,” said Henry Houghton, listening, “heaven is any better than this, I shall consider it needless extravagance on the part of the Almighty,”—­and he held his wife’s hand against his lips.  Maurice, at the door, turned away and would have gone upstairs, but Mr. Houghton called out:  “Sit down, man!  If I had the luck to have a wife who could sing, I’d keep her at it!  Sit down!” Eleanor’s voice, lovely and noble and serene, went on: 

“To add to golden numbers, golden numbers! 0 sweet content!  O sweet, O sweet content!”

Maurice sat down; it was as if, after beating against crashing seas with a cargo of shame and fear, he had turned suddenly into a still harbor:  the faintly lighted studio, the stillness of the summer evening, the lovely voice—­the peace and dignity and safety of it all gave him a strange sense of unreality...  Then, suddenly, he heard them all laughing and telling Eleanor they were sorry for her, to have such an unappreciative husband!—­and he realized that the fatigue of terror had made him fall asleep.  Later, when he came to the supper table, he was still dazed.  He said he had a headache, and could not eat; instantly Eleanor’s anxiety was alert.  She suggested hot-water bags and mustard plasters, until Mr. Houghton said to himself:  “How does he stand it?  Mary must tell her not to be a mother to him—­or a grandmother.”

All that hot evening, out on the porch, Maurice was silent—­so silent that, as they separated for the night, his guardian put a hand on his shoulder, “Come into the studio,” he said; “I want to show you a thing I’ve been muddling over.”

Maurice followed him into the vast, shadowy, untidy room ("No females with dusters allowed on the premises!” Henry Houghton used to say), glanced at a half-finished canvas, said, “Fine!” and turned away.

“Anything out of kilter?  I mean, besides your headache?”

“Well ... yes.”

("He’s going to say he’s hard up—­the extravagant cuss!” Henry Houghton thought, with the old provoked affection.)

“I’m bothered about ... something,” Maurice began.

("He’s squabbled with Eleanor.  I wish I was asleep!”)

“Uncle Henry,” Maurice said, “if you were going to see a lawyer, who would you see?”

“I wouldn’t see him.  Lawyers make their cake by cooking up other people’s troubles.  Sit down.  Let’s talk it out.”  He settled himself in a corner of the ragged old horsehair sofa which faced the empty fireplace and motioned Maurice to a chair.  “I thought it wasn’t all headache; what’s the matter, boy?”