Maurice, followed by telegrams that never quite overtook him, did, some forty-eight hours later, get the news that Eleanor had "had an accident," and was at Mrs. Newbolt's, who thought he had "better return immediately." His business was not quite finished, but it did not need Mr. Weston's laconic wire, "Drop Greenleaf matters and come back," to start him on the next train for Mercer. He had been away nearly two weeks--two terrible weeks, of facing himself; two weeks of rebellion, and submission; of tumultuous despair and quiet acceptance. He had looked faithfully--and very shrewdly--into the "Greenleaf matters"; he had turned one or two sharp corners, with entirely honest cleverness, and he was taking back to Mercer some concessions which old Weston had slipped up on! Yes, he had done a darned good job, he told himself, lounging in the smoking compartment of one parlor car or another, or strolling up and down station platforms for a breath of air. And all the while that he was on the Greenleaf job--in Pullmans, sitting in hotel lobbies writing letters, looking through title and probate records--his own affairs raced and raged in his thoughts; they were summed up in one word: "Edith." He could not get away from Edith! He tripped a Greenleaf trustee into an admission (and he thought, "so long as she never suspects that I love her, there's no harm in going along as we always have"). Then he conceded a point to the Greenleaf interests (and said to himself, "her hair on her shoulders that day on the lawn was like a nimbus around the head of a saint. How she'd hate that word 'saint'!"). His chuckle made one of the Greenleaf heirs think that Weston's representative was a good sort;--"pleasant fellow!" But Maurice, looking "pleasant," was thinking: "I'd about sell my soul to kiss her hair ... Oh, I _must_ stop this kind of thing! I swear it's worse than the Lily and Jacky business...." Then he signed a deed, and the Greenleaf people felt they had made a good thing of it--but Maurice's telegram that the deed was signed, caused rejoicing in the Weston office! "Curtis got ahead of 'em!" said Mr. Weston. While he was writing that triumphant telegram Maurice was wondering: "Was John Bennett a complete idiot? ... If things had been different would Edith have ... cared?" For himself, he, personally, didn't care "a damn," whether Weston got ahead of Greenleaf or Greenleaf beat Weston. His own affairs engrossed him: "my job," he was telling himself, "is to see that Eleanor doesn't suffer any more, poor girl! And Edith shall never know. And I'll make a decent man of Jacky--not a fool, like his father." So he wrote his victorious dispatch, and the Weston office congratulated itself.