Mrs. Houghton put her hand on his knee.  “The only way to escape from the fear of being found out, Maurice, is to be found out.  Get rid of the millstone.  Tell Eleanor.”

“You don’t know Eleanor,” he said, dryly.

“Yes, I do.  She loves you so much that she would forgive you.  And with forgiveness would come helpfulness with the little boy.  The child is the important one—­not you, nor Eleanor, nor the woman.  Oh, Maurice, a child is the most precious thing in the world!  You must save him!”

“Don’t you suppose I want to?  But, good God!  I’m helpless.”

“If you tell Eleanor, you won’t be ‘helpless.’”

“You don’t understand.  She’s jealous of—­of everybody.”

“Telling her will prove to her she needn’t be jealous of—­this person.  And the chance to do something for you would mean so much to her.  She will forgive you—­Eleanor can always do a big thing!  Remember the mountain?  Maurice!  Let her do another great thing for you.  Let her help you save your child, by making it possible for you to be open and aboveboard, and see him all you want to—­all you ought to.  Oh, Maurice dear, it would have been better, of course, if you had told Eleanor at first.  You wouldn’t have had to carry this awful load for all these years.  But tell her now!  Give her the chance to be generous.  Let her help you to do your duty to the little boy.  Maurice, his character, and his happiness, are your job!  Just as much your job as if he had been Eleanor’s child, instead of the child of this woman.  Perhaps more so, for that reason.  Don’t you see that? Tell Eleanor, so that you can save him!”

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.”

“That is what Edith said.”

“Edith!” Mary Houghton was stupefied.

“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.