ome and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never
would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of all. But oh, if he
only could tell her! As he couldn't, remorse, with no outlet of words,
smoldered on his consciousness, as some hidden and infected wound might
smolder in his flesh. Yet he knew there would be no further
unfaithfulness. He would never, he told himself, see Lily again! _That_
was easy! He was done with all "Lilys." If he could only shed the
self-knowledge which he was unable to share with Eleanor, as easily as
he could shed Lily, how thankful he would be! If he could but forget
Lily by keeping away from her! But of course he could not forget. And
with memory, and its redeeming pain of shame, was also the stabbing
mortification of knowing that he had made a fool of himself, _again_!
First Eleanor; then--Lily. Sometimes, with this realization of his
idiocy, he would feel an almost physical nausea. It was so horrible to
him, that when, a month later, the anniversary which marked his first
folly came around again, he made an excuse of having to be away on
business. It seemed to Maurice that to go out to their field, with this
loathsome secrecy (which was, of course, an inarticulate lie) buried in
his soul, would be like carrying actual corruption in his hands! So he
went out of town on some trumped-up engagement, and Eleanor, left to
herself, took little pining Bingo for a walk. In a lonely; place in the
park, holding the dog on her knee, she looked into his passionately
loving liquid eyes and wiped her own; eyes on his silky ears....

Those were aging months for Maurice; and though, of course, the
poignancy of shame lessened after a while, it left its imprint on his
face, as well as on his mind. They speculated about it at the office:
"'G. Washington's' got a grouch on," one clerk said; "probably told the
truth and lost a transfer! Let's give him another hatchet."

And the friendly people at the boarding house noticed the change in him.
He had almost nothing to say, now, at dinner--no more jokes with the
school-teacher, no more eager talks with the gray-haired woman....

"Has she forbidden conversation, do you suppose?" Miss Moore asked,
giggling; but the widow said, soberly, that she was afraid Mr. Curtis
was troubled about something. Mrs. Newbolt saw that there was something
wrong with him, and talked of it to Eleanor, without a pause, for an
hour. And of course Eleanor felt a difference