She had occasional high moments of saying, “I won’t think he has secrets from me; I’ll trust him.”  But still, because suspicion is the diversion of an empty mind, she played with it, as one might play with a dagger, careful only not to let it touch the quick of belief.  After a while she deluded herself into thinking that, to exonerate Maurice, she must prove the suspicion false!  It was only fair to him to do that.  So she must find the woman whom she had seen on the porch with him.  If she wasn’t Mrs. Dale, that would “prove” that everything was all right, and that Maurice’s presence there only meant that he was attending to office business; nothing to be jealous about in that!  And if the woman was Mrs. Dale?  Eleanor’s throat contracted so sharply that she gasped.  But again and again she put off the search for the exonerating proof—­for she was ashamed of herself, “I’ll do it to-morrow.” ...  “I’ll do it next week.”

It was a scorching, windy July day when she took her first defiling step and “did it.”  There had been a breakfast-table discussion of a vacation at Green Hill, the usual invitation having been received.

“Do go,” Maurice had urged.  “I’ll do what I did last year—­hang around here, and go to the ball games, and come up to Green Hill for Sundays.”  He was acutely anxious to have her go.

She was silent. “Why does he want to be alone?” she thought; “why—­unless he goes over to Medfield?” Then, in sudden decision, she said to herself, “I will find out why, to-day!” But she was afraid that Maurice would, somehow, guess what she was going to do; so, to throw him quite off the track, she told him that Donny O’Brien was sick again; “I must go and see him this morning,” she said.

Maurice, reading the sports page of the morning paper, said, “Too bad!” and went on reading.  He had no interest in his wife’s movements; the two-family house on Ash Street was beyond her range!

An hour later, Eleanor, giving Bingo a cooky to console him for being left at home, started out into the blazing heat, saying to herself:  “I’ll recognize her the minute I see her.  Of course I know she isn’t the Dale woman, but I want to prove that she isn’t!”

Her plan was to ring the bell at every one of the gingerbread houses on that block on Maple Street, and ask if Mrs. Dale lived there?  If she was not to be found, that would prove that Maurice had not gone to see her.  If she was found, why, then—­well, then Eleanor would say that she had heard that the house was in the market?  If Mrs. Dale said it was not, that would show that it wasn’t “office business” which had brought Maurice to that porch!

On Maple Street the heat blazed up from the untidy pavement, and a harsh wind was whirling little spirals of dust up and down the dry gutter.  Eleanor’s heart was beating so smotheringly that when her first ring was answered she could scarcely speak:  “Does Mrs. Dale live here?”