midnight
It was the beginning of the retreat of an ardent and gayly candid boy into the adult sophistications of Secrecy . The next day when he and Eleanor returned to Mercer , he sat in the car watching with unseeing eyes the back of her head , -- her swaying hat , the softly curling tendrils of dark hair in the nape of her neck -- and he saw before him a narrow path , leading -- across quaking bogs of evasions ! -- toward a goal of always menaced safety . Mr. Houghton had indicated the path in that midnight talk , and Maurice 's first step upon it would be his promise to relieve Lily of the support of her child -- '' _ on condition that she would never communicate with him again _ . '' After that , Henry Houghton said , `` the lawyer will clinch things ; and nobody will ever be the wiser ! '' Because Eleanor was the woman she was , he saw no way of escape for Maurice , except through this bog of secrecy , where any careless step might plunge him into a lie . He had not dared to point out that other path , which his Mary thought so much safer than the sucking shakiness of the swamp -- the rough and terrible path of confession , which lies across the firm aridities of Truth , and leads to that orderly freedom of the stars to which Maurice had once aspired !