The appeal was like a bugle note. Maurice--discouraged, thwarted, hopeless--heard it, and his heart quickened. This inverted idea of recompense--of making up to Eleanor for having secretly robbed her, by telling her she had been robbed!--stirred some hope in him. He did not love his wife; he was profoundly tired of her; but suppose, now, he did throw himself upon her generosity and give her a chance to prove that love which was a daily fatigue to him? Mere _Truth_ would, as Mrs. Houghton said, go far toward saving Jacky. He was silent for a long time. Then Mary Houghton said:
"I ought to tell you, Maurice, that Henry--who is the very best man in the world, as well as the wisest!--doesn't agree with me about this matter of confession. He doesn't understand women! He thinks you ought not to tell Eleanor."
"I know. He said so. That first night, when I told him the whole hideous business, he said so. And I thought he was right. I'm afraid I still think so."
"He was wrong. Maurice, save the child! Tell Eleanor."
"Oh, not about this. I only mean Edith said once, 'Don't have a secret from Eleanor.'"
"She was right," Edith's mother said, getting her breath.
Then they were silent again. A distant measure of ragtime floated up from the lobby; once, as a heavy team passed down in the street, the chandelier swayed, and little lights flickered among the faintly clicking prisms. Mrs. Houghton looked at him--and looked away. Maurice was thirty-one; his face was patient and melancholy; the old crinkling laughter rarely made gay wrinkles about his eyes, yet wrinkles were there, and his lips were cynical. Suddenly, he turned and struck his hand on hers:
Late that night Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's story of this talk, looked almost frightened. "Mary, it's an awful risk--Eleanor will never stand up to it!"
"My dear, when it comes to children, you--with your stars!--get down to the elemental straighter than I do; I know that! And I admit that it is terrible for Maurice's child to be scrapped, as he will be if he is brought up by this impossible person. But as for Eleanor's helping Maurice to save him from the scrap heap, you overlook the fact that to tell a jealous woman that she has cause for jealousy is about as safe as to take a lighted match into a powder magazine. There'll be an explosion."