"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her young mouth was hard. "Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now--I mean poor Eleanor gone--I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It was Nelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn't any question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily--" "Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any such idea would be nonsense, Maurice." "And I myself don't count," Maurice went on. Again Mrs. Houghton agreed--very gravely: "Compared to the child, dear Maurice, you don't." "You _do_!" Edith said; but nobody heard her. "So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wanted me to have him--legally, you know; wanted it so much that she--" there was a silence in the studio; "that she was glad to die, to make it possible." He paused, and Mary Houghton saw his cheek twitch. "Well, I felt that clinched it. I felt I _must_ carry out her wish, and ask Mrs. Dale to--marry me." "Morbid," said Henry Houghton. Edith, listening, said nothing; but she was ready to spring! "Perhaps it was morbid," Maurice said; "but just at first it seemed that way to me. Then I began to realize that what poor Nelly wanted, wasn't to have me marry Lily--that was only a means to an end; she wanted Jacky taken care of"; (Edith nodded.) "And she thought marrying his mother was the best way to do that." (Edith shook her head.) "Well; I thought it all over ... I kept myself and my own feelings out of it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of which even these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercer was deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it," had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once for all, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body all hampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct which might interfere with a straight answer to a straight question: "What will be best for my boy?" He gave the answer now, in Henry Houghton's studio, while Edith, over in the shadows, at the piano, looked at him. Her face was quite pale.