's
shrinking from some harsh finger. He looked at her tenderly. "Star, you
don't know the world! And I don't want you to."

"I'd like to help her," Eleanor said, simply.

"You?" he said; "I wouldn't have you under the same roof with one of
those creatures!"

His sense of her purity pleased her; the harem idea is, at bottom,
pleasing to women; they may resent it with their intellect, but they all
of them like to feel they are too precious for the wind of evil
realities to blow upon. So, honestly enough, and with the childlike joy
of the woman in love, she played up to the harem instinct, shrinking a
little and asking timid questions, and making innocent eyes; and was
kissed, and assured she was a lovely goose; for Maurice played up to his
part, too, with equal honesty (and youth)--the part of the worldly-wise
protector. It was the fundamental instinct of the human male; he resents
with his intellect the idea that his woman is a fool; but the more
foolish she is (on certain lines) the more important he feels himself to
be! So they were both very contented, until Maurice happened to say
again that he was sorry to have disappointed Edith about the ice cream.

"She's a greedy little thing," Eleanor said from her pillows; her voice
was irritated.

"What nonsense!" Maurice said; "as for ice cream, all youngsters like
it. I know I do!"

"I saw her hang on to your arm as you went down the street," Eleanor
said. "Mrs. Houghton ought to tell her that nice girls don't paw men!"

"Eleanor! She's nothing but a child, and I'm her brother--"

"You are _not_ her brother."

"Oh, Eleanor, don't be so--" he paused; oh, that dreadful word which
must not be spoken!--"so unreasonable," he ended, wearily. He lay down
beside her in the darkness, and by and by he heard her crying, very
softly. "_Oh_, lord!" he said; and turned over and went to sleep.

Thus do the clouds return after rain. Yet each day the sun rises
again....

At breakfast Eleanor, with a pitying word for the "poor thing," reminded
her husband that he must go and get his coat.

He said, "Gosh! I'd forgotten it!" and added that he liked his eggs
softer. He would have "played up" again, and smiled at her innocence, if
he had thought of it, but he was really concerned about his eggs,
"Hannah seems to think I like brickbats," he said, good-naturedly.

Eleanor winced; "Poor Hannah is so stupid! But she's getting deafer
every day, so I _can't_ send her away!" Added to h