hall I talk about something
else?" But she could not talk of anything else; she could only speak her
swift, honest thought: "Eleanor, why do you dislike me? Maurice and I
have been friends--we have been like brother and sister--ever since I
can remember. Oh, Eleanor, I want _you_ to like me, too! Please don't
keep me away from you and Maurice!"

Eleanor said, rapidly: "He's not your brother; and it would be difficult
to keep you away from him. You go to his office to find him."

There was a dead silence. Edith grew very pale. At last she understood.
Eleanor was jealous ... Of her! They looked at each other, the angry
woman and the dumfounded girl. "Jealous? Of _me_?" Edith thought. "Why
_me_? Maurice only cares for me as if I was his sister! ... And I don't
do Eleanor any harm by--loving him." ... Eleanor was gasping out a
torrent of assailing words:

"Girls are different from what they were in my day. Then, they didn't
openly run after men! Now, apparently, they do. Certainly _you_ do. You
always have. I'm not blind, Edith. I have known what was going on; when
you were living with us and I had a headache, you used to talk to him,
and try and be clever--to make him think I was dull, when it was only
that--I was too ill to talk! And you kept him down in the garden until
midnight, when he might have been sitting with me on the porch. And you
made him go skating. And now you _look_ at him! I know what that means.
A girl doesn't look that way at a man, unless--"

There was dead silence.

"Unless she's in love with him. But don't think that, though you are in
love with him, he cares for _you_! He does not. He cares for no one but
me. He told me so."

Silence.

"Can you deny that you care for my husband?" Edith opened her lips--and
closed them again. "You don't deny it," Eleanor said; "you _can't_." She
put her head down on her arms on the table; her fifty years engulfed
her. She said, in a whisper, "He doesn't love me."

Instantly Edith's arms were around her. "Eleanor, dear! Don't--don't! He
does love you--he does! I'd perfectly hate him if he didn't! Oh,
Eleanor, poor Eleanor! Don't cry; Maurice _does_ love you. He doesn't
care a copper for me!" The tears were running down her face. She bent
and kissed Eleanor's hands, clenched on the table, and then tried to
draw the gray head against her tender young breast.

Eleanor put out frantic hands, as if to push away some suffocating
pressure. Both of these women--Lily