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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Poor Wise Man
+
+Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+Posting Date: November 3, 2008 [EBook #1970]
+Release Date: November, 1999
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR WISE MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+A POOR WISE MAN
+
+By Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened
+walls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over all
+a gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty.
+Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose above the
+river mist like fairy towers suspended between Heaven and earth. And
+again the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold, while the city
+lay buried in its smoke shroud, and white ghosts of river boats moved
+spectrally along.
+
+Sometimes it was ugly, sometimes beautiful, but always the city was
+powerful, significant, important. It was a vast melting pot. Through its
+gates came alike the hopeful and the hopeless, the dreamers and those
+who would destroy those dreams. From all over the world there came men
+who sought a chance to labor. They came in groups, anxious and dumb,
+carrying with them their pathetic bundles, and shepherded by men with
+cunning eyes.
+
+Raw material, for the crucible of the city, as potentially powerful as
+the iron ore which entered the city by the same gate.
+
+The city took them in, gave them sanctuary, and forgot them. But the
+shepherds with the cunning eyes remembered.
+
+Lily Cardew, standing in the train shed one morning early in March,
+watched such a line go by. She watched it with interest. She had
+developed a new interest in people during the year she had been
+away. She had seen, in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of men,
+transformed in a few hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers, beginning
+already to be actuated by the same motive. These aliens, going by, would
+become citizens. Very soon now they would appear on the streets in new
+American clothes of extraordinary cut and color, their hair cut with
+clippers almost to the crown, and surmounted by derby hats always a size
+too small.
+
+Lily smiled, and looked out for her mother. She was suddenly
+unaccountably glad to be back again. She liked the smoke and the noise,
+the movement, the sense of things doing. And the sight of her mother,
+small, faultlessly tailored, wearing a great bunch of violets, and
+incongruous in that work-a-day atmosphere, set her smiling again.
+
+How familiar it all was! And heavens, how young she looked! The
+limousine was at the curb, and a footman as immaculately turned out as
+her mother stood with a folded rug over his arm. On the seat inside lay
+a purple box. Lily had known it would be there. They would be ostensibly
+from her father, because he had not been able to meet her, but she knew
+quite well that Grace Cardew had stopped at the florist's on her way
+downtown and bought them.
+
+A little surge of affection for her mother warmed the girl's eyes. The
+small attentions which in the Cardew household took the place of loving
+demonstrations had always touched her. As a family the Cardews were
+rather loosely knitted together, but there was something very lovable
+about her mother.
+
+Grace Cardew kissed her, and then held her off and looked at her.
+
+“Mercy, Lily!” she said, “you look as old as I do.”
+
+“Older, I hope,” Lily retorted. “What a marvel you are, Grace dear.” Now
+and then she called her mother “Grace.” It was by way of being a small
+joke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old Anthony,
+her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a row
+about it.
+
+“I feel horribly old, but I didn't think I looked it.”
+
+They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her. “From your
+father, dear. He wanted so to come, but things are dreadful at the mill.
+I suppose you've seen the papers.” Lily opened the box, and smiled at
+her mother.
+
+“Yes, I know. But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear?
+Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them? But never mind about
+that; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it. Have you broken
+the news to grandfather that the last of the Cardews is coming home?”
+
+“He sent you all sorts of messages, and he'll see you at dinner.”
+
+Lily laughed out at that.
+
+“You darling!” she said. “You know perfectly well that I am nothing in
+grandfather's young life, but the Cardew women all have what he likes
+to call savoir faire. What would they do, father and grandfather, if you
+didn't go through life smoothing things for them?”
+
+Grace looked rather stiffly ahead. This young daughter of hers, with her
+directness and her smiling ignoring of the small subterfuges of life,
+rather frightened her. The terrible honesty of youth! All these years of
+ironing the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the difficulties between
+old Anthony and Howard, and now a third generation to contend with. A
+pitilessly frank and unconsciously cruel generation. She turned and eyed
+Lily uneasily.
+
+“You look tired,” she said, “and you need attention. I wish you had let
+me send Castle to you.”
+
+But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered her.
+Lovely rather than beautiful, perhaps. Her face was less childish than
+when she had gone away; there was, in certain of her expressions, an
+almost alarming maturity. But perhaps that was fatigue.
+
+“I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I've been
+very happy, really, and very busy.”
+
+“You have been very vague lately about your work.”
+
+Lily faced her mother squarely.
+
+“I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it would
+drive grandfather crazy.”
+
+“I thought you were in a canteen.”
+
+“Not lately. I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers to
+camps. Some of them were going to have babies, too. It was rather awful.
+We married quite a lot of them, however.”
+
+The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter
+held Grace Cardew dumb. She nodded, but her eyes had slightly hardened.
+So this was what war had done to her. She had had no son, and had
+thanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had hated
+her all her married life for it. But she had given her daughter, her
+clear-eyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs of life.
+
+Her thoughts went back over the years. To Lily as a child, with
+Mademoiselle always at her elbow, and life painted as a thing of beauty.
+Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents. Death was a quiet sleep,
+with heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to age, which had
+wearied and would rest. Then she remembered the day when Elinor Cardew,
+poor unhappy Elinor, had fled back to Anthony's roof to have a baby, and
+after a few rapturous weeks for Lily the baby had died.
+
+“But the baby isn't old,” Lily had persisted, standing in front of her
+mother with angry, accusing eyes.
+
+Grace was not an imaginative woman, but she turned it rather neatly, as
+she told Howard later.
+
+“It was such a nice baby,” she said, feeling for an idea. “I think
+probably God was lonely without it, and sent an angel for it again.”
+
+“But it is still upstairs,” Lily had insisted. She had had a curious
+instinct for truth, even then. But there Grace's imagination had failed
+her, and she sent for Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle was a good Catholic,
+and very clear in her own mind, but what she left in Lily's brain was
+a confused conviction that every person was two persons, a body and a
+soul. Death was simply a split-up, then. One part of you, the part that
+bathed every morning and had its toe-nails cut, and went to dancing
+school in a white frock and thin black silk stockings and carriage boots
+over pumps, that part was buried and would only came up again at the
+Resurrection. But the other part was all the time very happy, and mostly
+singing.
+
+Lily did not like to sing.
+
+Then there was the matter of tears. People only cried when they hurt
+themselves. She had been told that again and again when she threatened
+tears over her music lesson. But when Aunt Elinor had gone away she had
+found Mademoiselle, the deadly antagonist of tears, weeping. And here
+again Grace remembered the child's wide, insistent eyes.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“She is sorry for Aunt Elinor.”
+
+“Because her baby's gone to God? She ought to be glad, oughtn't she?”
+
+“Not that;” said Grace, and had brought a box of chocolates and given
+her one, although they were not permitted save one after each meal.
+
+Then Lily had gone away to school. How carefully the school had been
+selected! When she came back, however, there had been no more questions,
+and Grace had sighed with relief. That bad time was over, anyhow. But
+Lily was rather difficult those days. She seemed, in some vague
+way, resentful. Her mother found her, now and then, in a frowning,
+half-defiant mood. And once, when Mademoiselle had ventured some jesting
+remark about young Alston Denslow, she was stupefied to see the girl
+march out of the room, her chin high, not to be seen again for hours.
+
+Grace's mind was sub-consciously remembering those things even when she
+spoke.
+
+“I didn't know you were having to learn about that side of life,” she
+said, after a brief silence.
+
+“That side of life is life, mother,” Lily said gravely. But Grace did
+not reply to that. It was characteristic of her to follow her own line
+of thought.
+
+“I wish you wouldn't tell your grandfather. You know he feels strongly
+about some things. And he hasn't forgiven me yet for letting you go.”
+
+Rather diffidently Lily put her hand on her mother's. She gave her rare
+caresses shyly, with averted eyes, and she was always more diffident
+with her mother than with her father. Such spontaneous bursts of
+affection as she sometimes showed had been lavished on Mademoiselle.
+It was Mademoiselle she had hugged rapturously on her small feast days,
+Mademoiselle who never demanded affection, and so received it.
+
+“Poor mother!” she said, “I have made it hard for you, haven't I? Is he
+as bad as ever?”
+
+She had not pinned on the violets, but sat holding them in her hands,
+now and then taking a luxurious sniff. She did not seem to expect
+a reply. Between Grace and herself it was quite understood that old
+Anthony Cardew was always as bad as could be.
+
+“There is some sort of trouble at the mill. Your father is worried.”
+
+And this time it was Lily who did not reply. She said,
+inconsequentially:
+
+“We're saved, and it's all over. But sometimes I wonder if we were worth
+saving. It all seems such a mess, doesn't it?” She glanced out.
+They were drawing up before the house, and she looked at her mother
+whimsically.
+
+“The last of the Cardews returning from the wars!” she said. “Only she
+is unfortunately a she, and she hasn't been any nearer the war than the
+State of Ohio.”
+
+Her voice was gay enough, but she had a quick vision of the grim
+old house had she been the son they had wanted to carry on the name,
+returning from France.
+
+The Cardews had fighting traditions. They had fought in every war from
+the Revolution on. There had been a Cardew in Mexico in '48, and in that
+upper suite of rooms to which her grandfather had retired in wrath on
+his son's marriage, she remembered her sense of awe as a child on seeing
+on the wall the sword he had worn in the Civil War. He was a small man,
+and the scabbard was badly worn at the end, mute testimony to the long
+forced marches of his youth. Her father had gone to Cuba in '98, and
+had almost died of typhoid fever there, contracted in the marshes of
+Florida.
+
+Yes, they had been a fighting family. And now--
+
+Her mother was determinedly gay. There were flowers in the dark old
+hall, and Grayson, the butler, evidently waiting inside the door,
+greeted her with the familiarity of the old servant who had slipped her
+sweets from the pantry after dinner parties in her little-girl years.
+
+“Welcome home, Miss Lily,” he said.
+
+Mademoiselle was lurking on the stairway, in a new lace collar over her
+old black dress. Lily recognized in the collar a great occasion, for
+Mademoiselle was French and thrifty. Suddenly a wave of warmth and
+gladness flooded her. This was home. Dear, familiar home. She had come
+back. She was the only young thing in the house. She would bring them
+gladness and youth. She would try to make them happy. Always before she
+had taken, but now she meant to give.
+
+Not that she formulated such a thought. It was an emotion, rather. She
+ran up the stairs and hugged Mademoiselle wildly.
+
+“You darling old thing!” she cried. She lapsed into French. “I saw the
+collar at once. And think, it is over! It is finished. And all your nice
+French relatives are sitting on the boulevards in the sun, and sipping
+their little glasses of wine, and rising and bowing when a pretty girl
+passes. Is it not so?”
+
+“It is so, God and the saints be praised!” said Mademoiselle, huskily.
+
+Grace Cardew followed them up the staircase. Her French was negligible,
+and she felt again, as in days gone by, shut from the little world of
+two which held her daughter and governess. Old Anthony's doing, that.
+He had never forgiven his son his plebeian marriage, and an early
+conversation returned to her. It was on Lily's first birthday and he had
+made one of his rare visits to the nursery. He had brought with him a
+pearl in a velvet case.
+
+“All our women have their own pearls,” he had said. “She will have her
+grandmother's also when she marries. I shall give her one the first
+year, two the second, and so on.” He had stood looking down at the child
+critically. “She's a Cardew,” he said at last. “Which means that she
+will be obstinate and self-willed.” He had paused there, but Grace had
+not refuted the statement. He had grinned. “As you know,” he added. “Is
+she talking yet?”
+
+“A word or two,” Grace had said, with no more warmth in her tone than
+was in his.
+
+“Very well. Get her a French governess. She ought to speak French before
+she does English. It is one of the accomplishments of a lady. Get a good
+woman, and for heaven's sake arrange to serve her breakfast in her room.
+I don't want to have to be pleasant to any chattering French woman at
+eight in the morning.”
+
+“No, you wouldn't,” Grace had said.
+
+Anthony had stamped out, but in the hall he smiled grimly. He did not
+like Howard's wife, but she was not afraid of him. He respected her for
+that. He took good care to see that the Frenchwoman was found, and at
+dinner, the only meal he took with the family, he would now and then
+send for the governess and Lily to come in for dessert. That, of
+course, was later on, when the child was nearly ten. Then would follow
+a three-cornered conversation in rapid French, Howard and Anthony and
+Lily, with Mademoiselle joining in timidly, and with Grace, at the side
+of the table, pretending to eat and feeling cut off, in a middle-class
+world of her own, at the side of the table. Anthony Cardew had retained
+the head of his table, and he had never asked her to take his dead
+wife's place.
+
+After a time Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours, the
+fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared to
+see her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made
+desperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was
+atrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh in
+childish, unthinking mirth. She gave it up at last.
+
+She never told Howard about it. He had his own difficulties with his
+father, and she would not add to them. She managed the house, checked
+over the bills and sent them to the office, put up a cheerful and
+courageous front, and after a time sheathed herself in an armor of
+smiling indifference. But she thanked heaven when the time came to
+send Lily away to school. The effort of concealing the armed neutrality
+between Anthony and herself was growing more wearing. The girl was
+observant. And Anthony had been right, she was a Cardew. She would have
+fought her grandfather out on it, defied him, accused him, hated him.
+And Grace wanted peace.
+
+Once again as she followed Lily and Mademoiselle up the stairs she felt
+the barrier of language, and back of it the Cardew pride and traditions
+that somehow cut her off.
+
+But in Lily's rooms she was her sane and cheerful self again. Inside the
+doorway the girl was standing, her eyes traveling over her little domain
+ecstatically.
+
+“How lovely of you not to change a thing, mother!” she said. “I was
+so afraid--I know how you hate my stuff. But I might have known you
+wouldn't. All the time I've been away, sleeping in a dormitory, and
+taking turns at the bath, I have thought of my own little place.” She
+wandered around, touching her familiar possessions with caressing hands.
+“I've a good notion,” she declared, “to go to bed immediately, just for
+the pleasure of lying in linen sheets again.” Suddenly she turned to her
+mother. “I'm afraid you'll find I've made some queer friends, mother.”
+
+“What do you mean by 'queer'?”
+
+“People no proper Cardew would care to know.” She smiled. “Where's
+Ellen? I want to tell her I met somebody she knows out there, the nicest
+sort of a boy.” She went to the doorway and called lustily: “Ellen!
+Ellen!” The rustling of starched skirts answered her from down the
+corridor.
+
+“I wish you wouldn't call, dear.” Grace looked anxious. “You know how
+your grandfather--there's a bell for Ellen.”
+
+“What we need around here,” said Lily, cheerfully, “is a little more
+calling. And if grandfather thinks it is unbefitting the family dignity
+he can put cotton in his ears. Come in, Ellen. Ellen, do you know that I
+met Willy Cameron in the camp?”
+
+“Willy!” squealed Ellen. “You met Willy? Isn't he a fine boy, Miss
+Lily?”
+
+“He's wonderful,” said Lily. “I went to the movies with him every
+Friday night.” She turned to her mother. “You would like him, mother. He
+couldn't get into the army. He is a little bit lame. And--” she surveyed
+Grace with amused eyes, “you needn't think what you are thinking. He is
+tall and thin and not at all good-looking. Is he, Ellen?”
+
+“He is a very fine young man,” Ellen said rather stiffly. “He's very
+highly thought of in the town I come from. His father was a doctor, and
+his buggy used to go around day, and night. When he found they wouldn't
+take him as a soldier he was like to break his heart.”
+
+“Lame?” Grace repeated, ignoring Ellen.
+
+“Just a little. You forget all about it when you know him. Don't you,
+Ellen?”
+
+But at Grace's tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and became
+again a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing,
+rubber-heeled, pink-uniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew,
+whose eyebrows were slightly raised.
+
+“Thank you, miss,” she said. And went out, leaving Lily rather chilled
+and openly perplexed.
+
+“Well!” she said. Then she glanced at her mother. “I do believe you are
+a little shocked, mother, because Ellen and I have a mutual friend
+in Mr. William Wallace Cameron! Well, if you want the exact truth, he
+hadn't an atom of use for me until he heard about Ellen.” She put an arm
+around Grace's shoulders. “Brace up, dear,” she said, smilingly. “Don't
+you cry. I'll be a Cardew bye-and-bye.”
+
+“Did you really go to the moving pictures with him?” Grace asked, rather
+unhappily. She had never been inside a moving picture theater. To her
+they meant something a step above the corner saloon, and a degree below
+the burlesque houses. They were constituted of bad air and unchaperoned
+young women accompanied by youths who dangled cigarettes from a lower
+lip, all obviously of the lower class, including the cigarette; and of
+other women, sometimes drab, dragged of breast and carrying children
+who should have been in bed hours before; or still others, wandering
+in pairs, young, painted and predatory. She was not imaginative, or she
+could not have lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house. She never saw,
+in the long line waiting outside even the meanest of the little theaters
+that had invaded the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cry
+of every human heart for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance,
+the call of adventure and the open road.
+
+“I can't believe it,” she added.
+
+Lily made a little gesture of half-amused despair.
+
+“Dearest,” she said, “I did. And I liked it. Mother, things have changed
+a lot in twenty years. Sometimes I think that here, in this house, you
+don't realize that--” she struggled for a phrase--“that things have
+changed,” she ended, lamely. “The social order, and that sort of thing.
+You know. Caste.” She hesitated. She was young and inarticulate, and
+when she saw Grace's face, somewhat frightened. But she was not old
+Anthony's granddaughter for nothing. “This idea of being a Cardew,” she
+went on, “that's ridiculous, you know. I'm only half Cardew, anyhow. The
+rest is you, dear, and it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot.”
+
+Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she paused
+now and turned. It was to Grace that she spoke, however.
+
+“They come home like that, all of them,” she said. “In France also. But
+in time they see the wisdom of the old order, and return. It is one of
+the fruits of war.”
+
+Grace hardly heard her.
+
+“Lily,” she asked, “you are not in love with this Cameron person, are
+you?”
+
+But Lily's easy laugh reassured her.
+
+“No, indeed,” she said. “I am not. I shall probably marry beneath me,
+as you would call it, but not William Wallace Cameron. For one thing, he
+wouldn't have grandfather in his family.”
+
+Some time later Mademoiselle tapped at Grace's door, and entered. Grace
+was reclining on a chaise longue, towels tucked about her neck and over
+her pillows, while Castle, her elderly English maid, was applying ice
+in a soft cloth to her face. Grace sat up. The towel, pinned around her
+hair like a coif, gave a placid, almost nun-like appearance to her still
+lovely face.
+
+“Well?” she demanded. “Go out for a minute, Castle.”
+
+Mademoiselle waited until the maid had gone.
+
+“I have spoken to Ellen,” she said, her voice cautious. “A young man who
+does not care for women, a clerk in a country pharmacy. What is that,
+Mrs. Cardew?”
+
+“It would be so dreadful, Mademoiselle. Her grandfather--”
+
+“But not handsome,” insisted Mademoiselle, “and lame! Also, I know the
+child. She is not in love. When that comes to her we shall know it.”
+
+Grace lay back, relieved, but not entirely comforted.
+
+“She is changed, isn't she, Mademoiselle?”
+
+Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“A phase,” she said. She had got the word from old Anthony, who regarded
+any mental attitude that did not conform with his own as a condition
+that would pass. “A phase, only. Now that she is back among familiar
+things, she will become again a daughter of the house.”
+
+“Then you think this talk about marrying beneath her--”
+
+“She 'as had liberty,” said Mademoiselle, who sometimes lost an
+aspirate. “It is like wine to the young. It intoxicates. But it, too,
+passes. In my country--”
+
+But Grace had, for a number of years, heard a great deal of
+Mademoiselle's country. She settled herself on her pillows.
+
+“Call Castle, please,” she said. “And--do warn her not to voice those
+ideas of hers to her grandfather. In a country pharmacy, you say?”
+
+“And lame, and not fond of women,” corroborated Mademoiselle. “Ca ne
+pourrait pas etre mieux, n'est-ce pas?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Shortly after the Civil War Anthony Cardew had left Pittsburgh and spent
+a year in finding a location for the investment of his small capital.
+That was in the very beginning of the epoch of steel. The iron business
+had already laid the foundations of its future greatness, but steel was
+still in its infancy.
+
+Anthony's father had been an iron-master in a small way, with a monthly
+pay-roll of a few hundred dollars, and an abiding faith in the future of
+iron. But he had never dreamed of steel. But “sixty-five” saw the first
+steel rail rolled in America, and Anthony Cardew began to dream. He
+went to Chicago first, and from there to Michigan, to see the first
+successful Bessemer converter. When he started east again he knew what
+he was to make his life work.
+
+He was very young and his capital was small. But he had an abiding
+faith in the new industry. Not that he dreamed then of floating steel
+battleships. But he did foresee steel in new and various uses. Later on
+he was experimenting with steel cable at the very time Roebling made it
+a commercial possibility, and with it the modern suspension bridge and
+the elevator. He never quite forgave Roebling. That failure of his, the
+difference only of a month or so, was one of the few disappointments
+of his prosperous, self-centered, orderly life. That, and Howard's
+marriage. And, at the height of his prosperity, the realization that
+Howard's middle-class wife would never bear a son.
+
+The city he chose was a small city then, yet it already showed signs of
+approaching greatness. On the east side, across the river, he built his
+first plant, a small one, with the blast heated by passing through cast
+iron pipes, with the furnaceman testing the temperature with strips of
+lead and zinc, and the skip hoist a patient mule.
+
+He had ore within easy hauling distance, and he had fuel, and he had,
+as time went on, a rapidly increasing market. Labor was cheap and
+plentiful, too, and being American-born, was willing and intelligent.
+Perhaps Anthony Cardew's sins of later years were due to a vast
+impatience that the labor of the early seventies was no longer to be
+had.
+
+The Cardew fortune began in the seventies. Up to that time there was
+a struggle, but in the seventies Anthony did two things. He went to
+England to see the furnaces there, and brought home a wife, a timid,
+tall Englishwoman of irreproachable birth, who remained always an alien
+in the crude, busy new city. And he built himself a house, a brick house
+in lower East Avenue, a house rather like his tall, quiet wife, and run
+on English lines. He soon became the leading citizen. He was one of the
+committee to welcome the Prince of Wales to the city, and from the very
+beginning he took his place in the social life.
+
+He found it very raw at times, crude and new. He himself lived with
+dignity and elegant simplicity. He gave now and then lengthy, ponderous
+dinners, making out the lists himself, and handing them over to his
+timid English wife in much the manner in which he gave the wine list and
+the key to the wine cellar to the butler. And, at the head of his
+table, he let other men talk and listened. They talked, those industrial
+pioneers, especially after the women had gone. They saw the city the
+center of great business and great railroads. They talked of its coal,
+its river, and the great oil fields not far away which were then in
+their infancy. All of them dreamed a dream, saw a vision. But not all of
+them lived to see their dream come true.
+
+Old Anthony lived to see it.
+
+In the late eighties, his wife having been by that time decorously
+interred in one of the first great mausoleums west of the mountains,
+Anthony Cardew found himself already wealthy. He owned oil wells and
+coal mines. His mines supplied his coke ovens with coal, and his own
+river boats, as well as railroads in which he was a director, carried
+his steel.
+
+He labored ably and well, and not for wealth alone. He was one of a
+group of big-visioned men who saw that a nation was only as great as its
+industries. It was only in his later years that he loved power for
+the sake of power, and when, having outlived his generation, he had
+developed a rigidity of mind that made him view the forced compromises
+of the new regime as pusillanimous.
+
+He considered his son Howard's quiet strength weakness. “You have no
+stamina,” he would say. “You have no moral fiber. For God's sake, make a
+stand, you fellows, and stick to it.”
+
+He had not mellowed with age. He viewed with endless bitterness the
+passing of his own day and generation, and the rise to power of younger
+men; with their “shilly-shallying,” he would say. He was an aristocrat,
+an autocrat, and a survival. He tied Howard's hands in the management of
+the now vast mills, and then blamed him for the results.
+
+But he had been a great man.
+
+He had had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl had been the tragedy
+of his middle years, and Howard had been his hope.
+
+On the heights outside the city and overlooking the river he owned a
+farm, and now and then, on Sunday afternoons in the eighties, he drove
+out there, with Howard sitting beside him, a rangy boy in his teens,
+in the victoria which Anthony considered the proper vehicle for
+Sunday afternoons. The farmhouse was in a hollow, but always on those
+excursions Anthony, fastidiously dressed, picking his way half-irritably
+through briars and cornfields, would go to the edge of the cliffs and
+stand there, looking down. Below was the muddy river, sluggish always,
+but a thing of terror in spring freshets. And across was the east side,
+already a sordid place, its steel mills belching black smoke that killed
+the green of the hillsides, its furnaces dwarfed by distance and height,
+its rows of unpainted wooden structures which housed the mill laborers.
+
+Howard would go with him, but Howard dreamed no dreams. He was a sturdy,
+dependable, unimaginative boy, watching the squirrels or flinging stones
+over the palisades. Life for Howard was already a thing determined. He
+would go to college, and then he would come back and go into the mill
+offices. In time, he would take his father's place. He meant to do it
+well and honestly. He had but to follow. Anthony had broken the trail,
+only by that time it was no longer a trail, but a broad and easy way.
+
+Only once or twice did Anthony Cardew give voice to his dreams. Once he
+said: “I'll build a house out here some of these days. Good location.
+Growth of the city is bound to be in this direction.”
+
+What he did not say was that to be there, on that hill, overlooking his
+activities, his very own, the things he had builded with such labor,
+gave him a sense of power. “This below,” he felt, with more of pride
+than arrogance, “this is mine. I have done it. I, Anthony Cardew.”
+
+He felt, looking down, the pride of an artist in his picture, of a
+sculptor who, secure from curious eyes, draws the sheet from the still
+moist clay of his modeling, and now from this angle, now from that,
+studies, criticizes, and exults.
+
+But Anthony Cardew never built his house on the cliff. Time was to come
+when great houses stood there, like vast forts, overlooking, almost
+menacing, the valley beneath. For, until the nineties, although the city
+distended in all directions, huge, ugly, powerful, infinitely rich, and
+while in the direction of Anthony's farm the growth was real and rapid,
+it was the plain people who lined its rapidly extending avenues with
+their two-story brick houses; little homes of infinite tenderness
+and quiet, along tree-lined streets, where the children played on the
+cobble-stones, and at night the horse cars, and later the cable system,
+brought home tired clerks and storekeepers to small havens, already
+growing dingy from the smoke of the distant mills.
+
+Anthony Cardew did not like the plain people. Yet in the end, it was the
+plain people, those who neither labored with their hands nor lived
+by the labor of others--it was the plain people who vanquished him.
+Vanquished him and tried to protect him. But could not. A smallish man,
+hard and wiry, he neither saved himself nor saved others. He had one
+fetish, power. And one pride, his line. The Cardews were iron masters.
+Howard would be an iron master, and Howard's son.
+
+But Howard never had a son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+All through her teens Lily had wondered about the mystery concerning her
+Aunt Elinor. There was an oil portrait of her in the library, and one of
+the first things she had been taught was not to speak of it.
+
+Now and then, at intervals of years, Aunt Elinor came back. Her mother
+and father would look worried, and Aunt Elinor herself would stay in her
+rooms, and seldom appeared at meals. Never at dinner. As a child Lily
+used to think she had two Aunt Elinors, one the young girl in the gilt
+frame, and the other the quiet, soft-voiced person who slipped around
+the upper corridors like a ghost.
+
+But she was not to speak of either of them to her grandfather.
+
+Lily was not born in the house on lower East Avenue.
+
+In the late eighties Anthony built himself a home, not on the farm, but
+in a new residence portion of the city. The old common, grazing ground
+of family cows, dump and general eye-sore, had become a park by that
+time, still only a potentially beautiful thing, with the trees that were
+to be its later glory only thin young shoots, and on the streets that
+faced it the wealthy of the city built their homes, brick houses of
+square solidity, flush with brick pavements, which were carefully
+reddened on Saturday mornings. Beyond the pavements were cobble-stoned
+streets. Anthony Cardew was the first man in the city to have a
+rubber-tired carriage. The story of Anthony Cardew's new home is the
+story of Elinor's tragedy. Nor did it stop there. It carried on to the
+third generation, to Lily Cardew, and in the end it involved the city
+itself. Because of the ruin of one small home all homes were threatened.
+One small house, and one undying hatred.
+
+Yet the matter was small in itself. An Irishman named Doyle owned the
+site Anthony coveted. After years of struggle his small grocery had
+begun to put him on his feet, and now the new development of the
+neighborhood added to his prosperity. He was a dried-up, sentimental
+little man, with two loves, his wife's memory and his wife's garden,
+which he still tended religiously between customers; and one ambition,
+his son. With the change from common to park, and the improvement in the
+neighborhood, he began to flourish, and he, too, like Anthony, dreamed
+a dream. He would make his son a gentleman, and he would get a shop
+assistant and a horse and wagon. Poverty was still his lot, but there
+were good times coming. He saved carefully, and sent Jim Doyle away to
+college.
+
+He would not sell to Anthony. When he said he could not sell his wife's
+garden, Anthony's agents reported him either mad or deeply scheming.
+They kept after him, offering much more than the land was worth. Doyle
+began by being pugnacious, but in the end he took to brooding.
+
+“He'll get me yet,” he would mutter, standing among the white phlox of
+his little back garden. “He'll get me. He never quits.”
+
+Anthony Cardew waited a year. Then he had the frame building condemned
+as unsafe, and Doyle gave in. Anthony built his house. He put a brick
+stable where the garden had been, and the night watchman for the
+property complained that a little man, with wild eyes, often spent half
+the night standing across the street, quite still, staring over. If
+Anthony gave Doyle a thought, it was that progress and growth had their
+inevitable victims. But on the first night of Anthony's occupancy of his
+new house Doyle shot himself beside the stable, where a few stalks of
+white phlox had survived the building operations.
+
+It never reached the newspapers, nor did a stable-boy's story of hearing
+the dying man curse Anthony and all his works. But nevertheless the
+story of the Doyle curse on Anthony Cardew spread. Anthony heard it, and
+forgot it. But two days later he was dragged from his carriage by young
+Jim Doyle, returned for the older Doyle's funeral, and beaten insensible
+with the stick of his own carriage whip.
+
+Young Doyle did not run away. He stood by, a defiant figure full of
+hatred, watching Anthony on the cobbles, as though he wanted to see him
+revive and suffer.
+
+“I didn't do it to revenge my father,” he said at the trial. “He was
+nothing to me--I did it to show old Cardew that he couldn't get away
+with it. I'd do it again, too.”
+
+Any sentiment in his favor died at that, and he was given five years
+in the penitentiary. He was a demoralizing influence there, already a
+socialist with anarchical tendencies, and with the gift of influencing
+men. A fluent, sneering youth, who lashed the guards to fury with his
+unctuous, diabolical tongue.
+
+The penitentiary had not been moved then. It stood in the park, a grim
+gray thing of stone. Elinor Cardew, a lonely girl always, used to stand
+in a window of the new house and watch the walls. Inside there were men
+who were shut away from all that greenery around them. Men who could
+look up at the sky, or down at the ground, but never out and across, as
+she could.
+
+She was always hoping some of them would get away. She hated the
+sentries, rifle on shoulder, who walked their monotonous beats, back and
+forward, along the top of the wall.
+
+Anthony's house was square and substantial, with high ceilings. It was
+paneled with walnut and furnished in walnut, in those days. Its tables
+and bureaus were of walnut, with cold white marble tops. And in the
+parlor was a square walnut piano, which Elinor hated because she had
+to sit there three hours each day, slipping on the top of the
+horsehair-covered stool, to practice. In cold weather her German
+governess sat in the frigid room, with a shawl and mittens, waiting
+until the onyx clock on the mantel-piece showed that the three hours
+were over.
+
+Elinor had never heard the story of old Michael Doyle, or of his son
+Jim. But one night--she was seventeen then, and Jim Doyle had served
+three years of his sentence--sitting at dinner with her father, she
+said:
+
+“Some convicts escaped from the penitentiary today, father.”
+
+“Don't believe it,” said Anthony Cardew. “Nothing about it in the
+newspapers.”
+
+“Fraulein saw the hole.”
+
+Elinor had had an Alsatian governess. That was one reason why Elinor's
+niece had a French one.
+
+“Hole? What do you mean by hole?”
+
+Elinor shrank back a little. She had not minded dining with her father
+when Howard was at home, but Howard was at college. Howard had a way
+of good-naturedly ignoring his father's asperities, but Elinor was a
+suppressed, shy little thing, romantic, aloof, and filled with undesired
+affections. “She said a hole,” she affirmed, diffidently. “She says they
+dug a tunnel and got out. Last night.”
+
+“Very probably,” said Anthony Cardew. And he repeated, thoughtfully,
+“Very probably.”
+
+He did not hear Elinor when she quietly pushed back her chair and said
+“good-night.” He was sitting at the table, tapping on the cloth with
+finger-tips that were slightly cold. That evening Anthony Cardew had
+a visit from the police, and considerable fiery talk took place in his
+library. As a result there was a shake-up in city politics, and a change
+in the penitentiary management, for Anthony Cardew had a heavy hand
+and a bitter memory. And a little cloud on his horizon grew and finally
+settled down over his life, turning it gray. Jim Doyle was among those
+who had escaped. For three months Anthony was followed wherever he went
+by detectives, and his house was watched at night. But he was a brave
+man, and the espionage grew hateful. Besides, each day added to his
+sense of security. There came a time when he impatiently dismissed the
+police, and took up life again as before.
+
+Then one day he received a note, in a plain white envelope. It said:
+“There are worse things than death.” And it was signed: “J. Doyle.”
+
+Doyle was not recaptured. Anthony had iron gratings put on the lower
+windows of his house after that, and he hired a special watchman. But
+nothing happened, and at last he began to forget. He was building the
+new furnaces up the river by that time. The era of structural steel for
+tall buildings was beginning, and he bought the rights of a process for
+making cement out of his furnace slag. He was achieving great wealth,
+although he did not change his scale of living.
+
+Now and then Fraulein braved the terrors of the library, small
+neatly-written lists in her hands. Miss Elinor needed this or that. He
+would check up the lists, sign his name to them, and Elinor and Fraulein
+would have a shopping excursion. He never gave Elinor money.
+
+On one of the lists one day he found the word, added in Elinor's hand:
+“Horse.”
+
+“Horse?” he said, scowling up at Fraulein. “There are six horses in the
+stable now.”
+
+“Miss Elinor thought--a riding horse--”
+
+“Nonsense!” Then he thought a moment. There came back to him a picture
+of those English gentlewomen from among whom he had selected his wife,
+quiet-voiced, hard-riding, high-colored girls, who could hunt all day
+and dance all night. Elinor was a pale little thing. Besides, every
+gentlewoman should ride.
+
+“She can't ride around here.”
+
+“Miss Elinor thought--there are bridle paths near the riding academy.”
+
+It was odd, but at that moment Anthony Cardew had an odd sort of vision.
+He saw the little grocer lying stark and huddled among the phlox by the
+stable, and the group of men that stooped over him.
+
+“I'll think about it,” was his answer.
+
+But within a few days Elinor was the owner of a quiet mare, stabled at
+the academy, and was riding each day in the tan bark ring between its
+white-washed fences, while a mechanical piano gave an air of festivity
+to what was otherwise rather a solemn business.
+
+Within a week of that time the riding academy had a new instructor, a
+tall, thin young man, looking older than he was, with heavy dark hair
+and a manner of repressed insolence. A man, the grooms said among
+themselves, of furious temper and cold eyes.
+
+And in less than four months Elinor Cardew ran away from home and was
+married to Jim Doyle. Anthony received two letters from a distant city,
+a long, ecstatic but terrified one from his daughter, and one line on
+a slip of paper from her husband. The one line read: “I always pay my
+debts.”
+
+Anthony made a new will, leaving Howard everything, and had Elinor's
+rooms closed. Fraulein went away, weeping bitterly, and time went on.
+Now and then Anthony heard indirectly from Doyle. He taught in a boys'
+school for a time, and was dismissed for his radical views. He did
+brilliant editorial work on a Chicago newspaper, but now and then he
+intruded his slant-eyed personal views, and in the end he lost his
+position. Then he joined the Socialist party, and was making speeches
+containing radical statements that made the police of various cities
+watchful. But he managed to keep within the letter of the law.
+
+Howard Cardew married when Elinor had been gone less than a year.
+Married the daughter of a small hotel-keeper in his college town, a
+pretty, soft-voiced girl, intelligent and gentle, and because Howard was
+all old Anthony had left, he took her into his home. But for many years
+he did not forgive her. He had one hope, that she would give Howard a
+son to carry on the line. Perhaps the happiest months of Grace Cardew's
+married life were those before Lily was born, when her delicate health
+was safeguarded in every way by her grim father-in-law. But Grace bore
+a girl child, and very nearly died in the bearing. Anthony Cardew would
+never have a grandson.
+
+He was deeply resentful. The proud fabric of his own weaving would
+descend in the fullness of time to a woman. And Howard himself--old
+Anthony was pitilessly hard in his judgments--Howard was not a strong
+man. A good man. A good son, better than he deserved. But amiable,
+kindly, without force.
+
+Once the cloud had lifted, and only once. Elinor had come home to have a
+child. She came at night, a shabby, worn young woman, with great eyes in
+a chalk-white face, and Grayson had not recognized her at first. He
+got her some port from the dining-room before he let her go into the
+library, and stood outside the door, his usually impassive face working,
+during the interview which followed. Probably that was Grayson's big
+hour, for if Anthony turned her out he intended to go in himself, and
+fight for the woman he had petted as a child.
+
+But Anthony had not turned her out. He took one comprehensive glance at
+her thin face and distorted figure. Then he said:
+
+“So this is the way you come back.”
+
+“He drove me out,” she said dully. “He sent me here. He knew I had no
+place else to go. He knew you wouldn't want me. It's revenge, I suppose.
+I'm so tired, father.”
+
+Yes, it was revenge, surely. To send back to him this soiled and broken
+woman, bearing the mark he had put upon her--that was deviltry, thought
+out and shrewdly executed. During the next hour Anthony Cardew suffered,
+and made Elinor suffer, too. But at the end of that time he found
+himself confronting a curious situation. Elinor, ashamed, humbled, was
+not contrite. It began to dawn on Anthony that Jim Doyle's revenge was
+not finished. For--Elinor loved the man.
+
+She both hated him and loved him. And that leering Irish devil knew it.
+
+He sent for Grace, finally, and Elinor was established in the house.
+Grace and little Lily's governess had themselves bathed her and put
+her to bed, and Mademoiselle had smuggled out of the house the garments
+Elinor had worn into it. Grace had gone in the motor--one of the first
+in the city--and had sent back all sorts of lovely garments for Elinor
+to wear, and quantities of fine materials to be made into tiny garments.
+Grace was a practical woman, and she disliked the brooding look in
+Elinor's eyes.
+
+“Do you know,” she said to Howard that night, “I believe she is quite
+mad about him still.”
+
+“He ought to be drawn and quartered,” said Howard, savagely.
+
+Anthony Cardew gave Elinor sanctuary, but he refused to see her again.
+Except once.
+
+“Then, if it is a boy, you want me to leave him with you?” she asked,
+bending over her sewing.
+
+“Leave him with me! Do you mean that you intend to go back to that
+blackguard?”
+
+“He is my husband. He isn't always cruel.”
+
+“Good God!” shouted Anthony. “How did I ever happen to have such a
+craven creature for a daughter?”
+
+“Anyhow,” said Elinor, “it will be his child, father.”
+
+“When he turned you out, like any drab of the streets!” bellowed old
+Anthony. “He never cared for you. He married you to revenge himself on
+me. He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child,
+and break its spirit and ruin its body, for the same reason. The man's a
+maniac.”
+
+But again, as on the night she came, he found himself helpless against
+Elinor's quiet impassivity. He knew that, let Jim Doyle so much as raise
+a beckoning finger, and she would go to him. He did not realize that
+Elinor had inherited from her quiet mother the dog-like quality of
+love in spite of cruelty. To Howard he stormed. He considered Elinor's
+infatuation indecent. She was not a Cardew. The Cardew women had some
+pride. And Howard, his handsome figure draped negligently against the
+library mantel, would puzzle over it, too.
+
+“I'm blessed if I understand it,” he would say.
+
+Elinor's child had been a boy, and old Anthony found some balm in
+Gilead. Jim Doyle had not raised a finger to beckon, and if he knew of
+his son, he made no sign. Anthony still ignored Elinor, but he saw in
+her child the third generation of Cardews. Lily he had never counted. He
+took steps to give the child the Cardew name, and the fact was announced
+in the newspapers. Then one day Elinor went out, and did not come back.
+It was something Anthony Cardew had not counted on, that a woman could
+love a man more than her child.
+
+“I simply had to do it, father,” she wrote. “You won't understand, of
+course. I love him, father. Terribly. And he loves me in his way, even
+when he is unfaithful to me. I know he has been that. Perhaps if you had
+wanted me at home it would have been different. But it kills me to leave
+the baby. The only reason I can bring myself to do it is that, the way
+things are, I cannot give him the things he ought to have. And Jim does
+not seem to want him. He has never seen him, for one thing. Besides--I
+am being honest--I don't think the atmosphere of the way we live would
+be good for a boy.”
+
+There was a letter to Grace, too, a wild hysterical document, filled
+with instructions for the baby's care. A wet nurse, for one thing. Grace
+read it with tears in her eyes, but Anthony saw in it only the ravings
+of a weak and unbalanced woman.
+
+He never forgave Elinor, and once more the little grocer's curse
+thwarted his ambitions. For, deprived of its mother's milk, the baby
+died. Old Anthony sometimes wondered if that, too, had been calculated,
+a part of the Doyle revenge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+While Grace rested that afternoon of Lily's return, Lily ranged over
+the house. In twenty odd years the neighborhood had changed, and only
+a handful of the old families remained. Many of the other large houses
+were prostituted to base uses. Dingy curtains hung at their windows,
+dingy because of the smoke from the great furnaces and railroads. The
+old Osgood residence, nearby, had been turned into apartments, with
+bottles of milk and paper bags on its fire-escapes, and a pharmacy on
+the street floor. The Methodist Church, following its congregation to
+the vicinity of old Anthony's farm, which was now cut up into city lots,
+had abandoned the building, and it had become a garage. The penitentiary
+had been moved outside the city limits, and near its old site was a
+small cement-lined lake, the cheerful rendezvous in summer of bathing
+children and thirsty dogs.
+
+Lily was idle, for the first time in months. She wandered about, even
+penetrating to those upper rooms sacred to her grandfather, to which he
+had retired on Howard's marriage. How strangely commonplace they were
+now, in the full light of day, and yet, when he was in them, the doors
+closed and only Burton, his valet, in attendance, how mysterious they
+became!
+
+Increasingly, in later years, Lily had felt and resented the domination
+of the old man. She resented her father's acquiescence in that
+domination, her mother's good-humored tolerance of it. She herself had
+accepted it, although unwillingly, but she knew, rather vaguely, that
+the Lily Cardew who had gone away to the camp and the Lily Cardew who
+stood that day before her grandfather's throne-like chair under its
+lamp, were two entirely different people.
+
+She was uneasy rather than defiant. She meant to keep the peace. She
+had been brought up to the theory that no price was too great to pay for
+peace. But she wondered, as she stood there, if that were entirely true.
+She remembered something Willy Cameron had said about that very thing.
+
+“What's wrong with your grandfather,” he had said, truculently, and
+waving his pipe, “is that everybody gets down and lets him walk on them.
+If everybody lets a man use them as doormats, you can't blame him for
+wiping his feet on them. Tell him that sometime, and see what happens.”
+
+“Tell him yourself!” said Lily.
+
+He had smiled cheerfully. He had an engaging sort of smile.
+
+“Maybe I will,” he said. “I am a rising young man, and my voice may some
+day be heard in the land. Sometimes I feel the elements of greatness in
+me, sweet child. You haven't happened to notice it yourself, have you?”
+
+He had gazed at her with solemn anxiety through the smoke of his pipe,
+and had grinned when she remained silent.
+
+Lily drew a long breath. All that delightful fooling was over; the hard
+work was over. The nights were gone when they would wander like children
+across the parade grounds, or past the bayonet school, with its rows of
+tripods upholding imitation enemies made of sacks stuffed with hay, and
+showing signs of mortal injury with their greasy entrails protruding.
+Gone, too, were the hours when Willy sank into the lowest abyss of
+depression over his failure to be a fighting man.
+
+“But you are doing your best for your country,” she would say.
+
+“I'm not fighting for it, or getting smashed up for it. I don't want
+to be a hero, but I'd like to have had one good bang at them before I
+quit.”
+
+Once she had found him in the hut, with his head on a table. He said he
+had a toothache.
+
+Well, that was all over. She was back in her grandfather's house, and--
+
+“He'll get me too, probably,” she reflected, as she went down the
+stairs, “just as he's got all the others.”
+
+Mademoiselle was in Lily's small sitting room, while Castle was
+unpacking under her supervision. The sight of her uniforms made Lily
+suddenly restless.
+
+“How you could wear these things!” cried Mademoiselle. “You, who have
+always dressed like a princess!”
+
+“I liked them,” said Lily, briefly. “Mademoiselle, what am I going to do
+with myself, now?”
+
+“Do?” Mademoiselle smiled. “Play, as you deserve, Cherie. Dance, and
+meet nice young men. You are to make your debut this fall. Then a very
+charming young man, and marriage.”
+
+“Oh!” said Lily, rather blankly. “I've got to come out, have I? I'd
+forgotten people did such things. Please run along and do something
+else, Castle. I'll unpack.”
+
+“That is very bad for discipline,” Mademoiselle objected when the
+maid had gone. “And it is not necessary for Mr. Anthony Cardew's
+granddaughter.”
+
+“It's awfully necessary for her,” Lily observed, cheerfully. “I've been
+buttoning my own shoes for some time, and I haven't developed a spinal
+curvature yet.” She kissed Mademoiselle's perplexed face lightly. “Don't
+get to worrying about me,” she added. “I'll shake down in time, and be
+just as useless as ever. But I wish you'd lend me your sewing basket.”
+
+“Why?” asked Mademoiselle, suspiciously.
+
+“Because I am possessed with a mad desire to sew on some buttons.”
+
+A little later Lily looked up from her rather awkward but industrious
+labors with a needle, and fixed her keen young eyes on Mademoiselle.
+
+“Is there any news about Aunt Elinor?” she asked.
+
+“She is with him,” said Mademoiselle, shortly. “They are here now, in
+the city. How he dared to come back!”
+
+“Does mother see her?”
+
+“No. Certainly not.”
+
+“Why 'certainly' not? He is Aunt Elinor's husband. She isn't doing
+anything wicked.”
+
+“A woman who would leave a home like this,” said Mademoiselle, “and a
+distinguished family. Position. Wealth. For a brute who beats her. And
+desert her child also!”
+
+“Does he really beat her? I don't quite believe that, Mademoiselle.”
+
+“It is not a subject for a young girl.”
+
+“Because really,” Lily went on, “there is something awfully big about a
+woman who will stick to one man like that. I am quite sure I would bite
+a man who struck me, but--suppose I loved him terribly--” her voice
+trailed off. “You see, dear, I have seen a lot of brutality lately. An
+army camp isn't a Sunday school picnic. And I like strong men, even if
+they are brutal sometimes.”
+
+Mademoiselle carefully cut a thread.
+
+“This--you were speaking to Ellen of a young man. Is he a--what you term
+brutal?”
+
+Suddenly Lily laughed.
+
+“You poor dear!” she said. “And mother, too, of course! You're afraid
+I'm in love with Willy Cameron. Don't you know that if I were, I'd
+probably never even mention his name?”
+
+“But is he brutal?” persisted Mademoiselle.
+
+“I'll tell you about him. He is a thin, blond young man, tall and a bit
+lame. He has curly hair, and he puts pomade on it to take the curl out.
+He is frightfully sensitive about not getting in the army, and he is
+perfectly sweet and kind, and as brutal as a June breeze. You'd better
+tell mother. And you can tell her he isn't in love with me, or I with
+him. You see, I represent what he would call the monied aristocracy of
+America, and he has the most fearful ideas about us.”
+
+“An anarchist, then?” asked. Mademoiselle, extremely comforted.
+
+“Not at all. He says he belongs to the plain people. The people in
+between. He is rather oratorical about them. He calls them the backbone
+of the country.”
+
+Mademoiselle relaxed. She had been too long in old Anthony's house
+to consider very seriously the plain people. Her world, like Anthony
+Cardew's, consisted of the financial aristocracy, which invested money
+in industries and drew out rich returns, while providing employment for
+the many; and of the employees of the magnates, who had recently shown
+strong tendencies toward upsetting the peace of the land, and had given
+old Anthony one or two attacks of irritability when it was better to go
+up a rear staircase if he were coming down the main one.
+
+“Wait a moment,” said Lily, suddenly. “I have a picture of him
+somewhere.”
+
+She disappeared, and Mademoiselle heard her rummaging through the
+drawers of her dressing table. She came back with a small photograph in
+her hand.
+
+It showed a young man, in a large apron over a Red Cross uniform,
+bending over a low field range with a long-handled fork in his hand.
+
+“Frying doughnuts,” Lily explained. “I was in this hut at first, and I
+mixed them and cut them, and he fried them. We made thousands of them.
+We used to talk about opening a shop somewhere, Cardew and Cameron. He
+said my name would be fine for business. He'd fry them in the window,
+and I'd sell them. And a coffee machine--coffee and doughnuts, you
+know.”
+
+“Not--seriously?”
+
+At the expression on Mademoiselle's face Lily laughed joyously.
+
+“Why not?” she demanded. “And you could be the cashier, like the ones in
+France, and sit behind a high desk and count money all day. I'd rather
+do that than come out,” she added.
+
+“You are going to be a good girl, Lily, aren't you?”
+
+“If that means letting grandfather use me for a doormat, I don't know.”
+
+“Lily!”
+
+“He's old, and I intend to be careful. But he doesn't own me, body and
+soul. And it may be hard to make him understand that.”
+
+Many times in the next few months Mademoiselle was to remember that
+conversation, and turn it over in her shrewd, troubled mind. Was there
+anything she could have done, outside of warning old Anthony himself?
+Suppose she had gone to Mr. Howard Cardew?
+
+“And how,” said Mademoiselle, trying to smile, “do you propose to assert
+this new independence of spirit?”
+
+“I am going to see Aunt Elinor,” observed Lily. “There, that's eleven
+buttons on, and I feel I've earned my dinner. And I'm going to ask Willy
+Cameron to come here to see me. To dinner. And as he is sure not to have
+any evening clothes, for one night in their lives the Cardew men are
+going to dine in mufti. Which is military, you dear old thing, for
+the everyday clothing that the plain people eat in, without apparent
+suffering!”
+
+Mademoiselle got up. She felt that Grace should be warned at once. And
+there was a look in Lily's face when she mentioned this Cameron creature
+that made Mademoiselle nervous.
+
+“I thought he lived in the country.”
+
+“Then prepare yourself for a blow,” said Lily Cardew, cheerfully. “He
+is here in the city, earning twenty-five dollars a week in the Eagle
+Pharmacy, and serving the plain people perfectly preposterous patent
+potions--which is his own alliteration, and pretty good, I say.”
+
+Mademoiselle went out into the hall. Over the house, always silent,
+there had come a death-like hush. In the lower hall the footman was
+hanging up his master's hat and overcoat. Anthony Cardew had come home
+for dinner.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily's return, took a walk.
+From his boarding house near the Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew residence
+was a half-hour's walk. There were a number of things he had meant to do
+that evening, with a view to improving his mind, but instead he took a
+walk. He had made up a schedule for those evenings when he was off
+duty, thinking it out very carefully on the train to the city. And the
+schedule ran something like this:
+
+Monday: 8-11. Read History. Wednesday: 8-11. Read Politics and
+Economics. Friday: 8-9:30. Travel. 9:30-11. French. Sunday: Hear various
+prominent divines.
+
+He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because travel was with
+him an indulgence rather than a study. The longest journey he had ever
+taken in his life was to Washington. That was early in the war, when
+it did not seem possible that his country would not use him, a boy who
+could tramp incredible miles in spite of his lameness and who could
+shoot a frightened rabbit at almost any distance, by allowing for a
+slight deflection to the right in the barrel of his old rifle.
+
+But they had refused him.
+
+“They won't use me, mother,” he had said when he got home, home being
+a small neat house on a tidy street of a little country town. “I tried
+every branch, but the only training I've had--well, some smart kid said
+they weren't planning to serve soda water to the army. They didn't want
+cripples, you see.”
+
+“I wish you wouldn't, Willy.”
+
+He had been frightfully sorry then and had comforted her at some length,
+but the fact remained.
+
+“And you the very best they've ever had for mixing prescriptions!” she
+had said at last. “And a graduate in chemistry!”
+
+“Well,” he said, “that's that, and we won't worry about it. There's more
+than one way of killing a cat.”
+
+“What do you mean, Willy? More than one way?”
+
+There was no light of prophecy in William Wallace Cameron's gray eyes,
+however, when he replied: “More than one way of serving my country.
+Don't you worry. I'll find something.”
+
+So he had, and he had come out of his Red Cross work in the camp with
+one or two things in his heart that had not been there before. One was
+a knowledge of men. He could not have put into words what he felt about
+men. It was something about the fundamental simplicity of them, for one
+thing. You got pretty close to them at night sometimes, especially when
+the homesick ones had gone to bed, and the phonograph was playing in a
+corner of the long, dim room. There were some shame-faced tears hidden
+under army blankets those nights, and Willy Cameron did some blinking on
+his own account.
+
+Then, under all the blasphemy, the talk about women, the surface
+sordidness of their daily lives and thoughts, there was one instinct
+common to all, one love, one hidden purity. And the keyword to those
+depths was “home.”
+
+“Home,” he said one day to Lily Cardew. “Mostly it's the home they've
+left, and maybe they didn't think so much of it then. But they do now.
+And if it isn't that, it's the home they want to have some day.” He
+looked at Lily. Sometimes she smiled at things he said, and if she had
+not been grave he would not have gone on. “You know,” he continued,
+“there's mostly a girl some place. All this talk about the nation,
+now--” He settled himself on the edge of the pine table where old
+Anthony Cardew's granddaughter had been figuring up her week's accounts,
+and lighted his pipe, “the nation's too big for us to understand. But
+what is the nation, but a bunch of homes?”
+
+“Willy dear,” said Lily Cardew, “did you take any money out of the cigar
+box for anything this week?”
+
+“Dollar sixty-five for lard,” replied Willy dear. “As I was saying,
+we've got to think of this country in terms of homes. Not palaces like
+yours--”
+
+“Good gracious!” said Lily, “I don't live in a palace. Get my
+pocket-book, will you? I'm out three dollars somehow, and I'd rather
+make it up myself than add these figures over again. Go on and talk,
+Willy. I love hearing you.”
+
+“Not palaces like yours,” repeated Mr. Cameron, “and not hovels. But
+mostly self-respecting houses, the homes of the plain people. The middle
+class, Miss Cardew. My class. The people who never say anything, but
+are squeezed between capital, represented by your grandfather, with its
+parasites, represented by you, and--”
+
+“You represent the people who never say anything,” observed the slightly
+flushed parasite of capital, “about as adequately as I represent the
+idle rich.”
+
+Yet not even old Anthony could have resented the actual relationship
+between them. Lily Cardew, working alone in her hut among hundreds of
+men, was as without sex consciousness as a child. Even then her flaming
+interest was in the private soldiers. The officers were able to amuse
+themselves; they had money and opportunity. It was the doughboys she
+loved and mothered. For them she organized her little entertainments.
+For them she played and sang in the evenings, when the field range in
+the kitchen was cold, and her blistered fingers stumbled sometimes over
+the keys of the jingling camp piano.
+
+Gradually, out of the chaos of her early impressions, she began to
+divide the men in the army into three parts. There were the American
+born; they took the war and their part in it as a job to be done, with
+as few words as possible. And there were the foreigners to whom America
+was a religion, a dream come true, whose flaming love for their new
+mother inspired them to stuttering eloquence and awkward gestures. And
+then there was a third division, small and mostly foreign born, but
+with a certain percentage of native malcontents, who hated the war and
+sneered among themselves at the other dupes who believed that it was a
+war for freedom. It was a capitalists' war. They considered the state as
+an instrument of oppression, as a bungling interference with liberty
+and labor; they felt that wealth inevitably brought depravity. They
+committed both open and overt acts against discipline, and found in
+their arrest and imprisonment renewed grievances, additional oppression,
+tyranny. And one day a handful of them, having learned Lily's identity,
+came into her hut and attempted to bait her.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said one of them, “we have here an example of one of the
+idle rich, sacrificing herself to make us happy. Now, boys, be happy.
+Are we all happy?” He surveyed the group. “Here, you,” he addressed a
+sullen-eyed squat Hungarian. “Smile when I tell you. You're a slave in
+one of old Cardew's mills, aren't you? Well, aren't you grateful to him?
+Here he goes and sends his granddaughter--”
+
+Willy Cameron had entered the room with a platter of doughnuts in his
+hand, and stood watching, his face going pale. Quite suddenly there
+was a crash, and the gang leader went down in a welter of porcelain and
+fried pastry. Willy Cameron was badly beaten up, in the end, and the
+beaters were court-martialed. But something of Lily's fine faith in
+humanity was gone.
+
+“But,” she said to him, visiting him one day in the base hospital, where
+he was still an aching, mass of bruises, “there must be something behind
+it. They didn't hate me. They only hated my--well, my family.”
+
+“My dear child,” said Willy Cameron, feeling very old and experienced,
+and, it must be confessed, extremely happy, “of course there's something
+behind it. But the most that's behind it is a lot of fellows who want
+without working what the other fellow's worked to get.”
+
+It was about that time that Lily was exchanged into the town near the
+camp, and Willy Cameron suddenly found life a stale thing, and ashes in
+the mouth. He finally decided that he had not been such a hopeless fool
+as to fall in love with her, but that it would be as well not to see her
+too much.
+
+“The thing to do,” he reasoned to himself, “is, first of all, not to
+see her. Or only on Friday nights, because she likes the movies, and it
+would look queer to stop.” Thus Willy Cameron speciously to himself, and
+deliberately ignoring the fact that some twenty-odd officers stood ready
+to seize those Friday nights. “And then to work hard, so I'll sleep
+better, and not lie awake making a fool of myself. And when I get a bit
+of idiocy in the daytime, I'd better just walk it off. Because I've got
+to live with myself a long time, probably, and I'm no love-sick Romeo.”
+
+Which excellent practical advice had cost him considerable shoe-leather
+at first. In a month or two, however, he considered himself quite cured,
+and pretended to himself that he was surprised to find it Friday again.
+But when, after retreat, the band marched back again to its quarters
+playing, for instance, “There's a Long, Long Trail,” there was something
+inside him that insisted on seeing the years ahead as a long, long
+trail, and that the trail did not lead to the lands of his dreams.
+
+He got to know that very well indeed during the winter that followed the
+armistice. Because there was work to do he stayed and finished up, as
+did Lily Cardew. But the hut was closed and she was working in the town,
+and although they kept up their Friday evenings, the old intimacy was
+gone. And one night she said:
+
+“Isn't it amazing, when you are busy, how soon Friday night comes
+along?”
+
+And on each day of the preceding week he had wakened and said to
+himself: “This is Monday--“--or whatever it might be--“and in four more
+days it will be Friday.”
+
+In February he was sent home. Lily stayed on until the end of March. He
+went back to his little village of plain people, and took up life again
+as best he could. But sometimes it seemed to him that from behind every
+fire-lit window in the evenings--he was still wearing out shoe-leather,
+particularly at nights--somebody with a mandolin was wailing about the
+long, long trail.
+
+His mother watched him anxiously. He was thinner than ever, and oddly
+older, and there was a hollow look about his eyes that hurt her.
+
+“Why don't you bring home a bottle of tonic from the store, Willy,” she
+said, one evening when he had been feverishly running through the city
+newspaper. He put the paper aside hastily.
+
+“Tonic!” he said. “Why, I'm all right, mother. Anyhow, I wouldn't take
+any of that stuff.” He caught her eye and looked away. “It takes a
+little time to get settled again, that's all, mother.”
+
+“The Young People's Society is having an entertainment at the church
+to-night, Willy.”
+
+“Well, maybe I'll go,” he agreed to her unspoken suggestion. “If you
+insist on making me a society man--”
+
+But some time later he came downstairs with a book.
+
+“Thought I'd rather read,” he explained. “Got a book here on the history
+of steel. Talk about romances! Let me read some of it to you. You sit
+there and close your eyes and just listen to this: 'The first Cardew
+furnace was built in 1868. At that time--'”
+
+Some time later he glanced up. His mother was quietly sleeping, her
+hands folded in her lap. He closed the book and sat there, fighting
+again his patient battle with himself. The book on his knee seemed to
+symbolize the gulf between Lily Cardew and himself. But the real gulf,
+the unbridgeable chasm, between Lily and himself, was neither social nor
+financial.
+
+“As if that counted, in America,” he reflected scornfully.
+
+No. It was not that. The war had temporarily broken down the old social
+barriers. Some of them would never be erected again, although it was the
+tendency of civilization for men to divide themselves, rather than to
+be divided, into the high, the middle and the low. But in his generation
+young Cameron knew that there would be no uncrossable bridge between old
+Anthony's granddaughter and himself, were it not for one thing.
+
+She did not love him. It hurt his pride to realize that she had never
+thought of him in any terms but that of a pleasant comradeship. Hardly
+even as a man. Men fought, in war time. They did not fry doughnuts and
+write letters home for the illiterate. Any one of those boys in the
+ranks was a better man than he was. All this talk about a man's soul
+being greater than his body, that was rot. A man was as good as the
+weakest part of him, and no more.
+
+His sensitive face in the lamplight was etched with lines of tragedy.
+He put the book on the table, and suddenly flinging his arms across it,
+dropped his head on them. The slight movement wakened his mother.
+
+“Why, Willy!” she said.
+
+After a moment he looked up. “I was almost asleep,” he explained, more
+to protect her than himself. “I--I wish that fool Nelson kid would break
+his mandolin--or his neck,” he said irritably. He kissed her and went
+upstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive,
+occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the long, long trail.
+
+There was the blood of Covenanters in Willy Cameron's mother, a high
+courage of sacrifice, and an exceedingly shrewd brain. She lay awake
+that night, carefully planning, and when everything was arranged in
+orderly fashion in her mind, she lighted her lamp and carried it to the
+door of Willy's room. He lay diagonally across his golden-oak bed, for
+he was very long, and sleep had rubbed away the tragic lines about his
+mouth. She closed his door and went back to her bed.
+
+“I've seen too much of it,” she reflected, without bitterness. She
+stared around the room. “Too much of it,” she repeated. And crawled
+heavily back into bed, a determined little figure, rather chilled.
+
+The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with her
+brother in California.
+
+“I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu,” she explained, “and
+James has been wanting me this long time. I don't want to leave you,
+that's all, Willy. If you were in the city it would be different.”
+
+He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth. He no
+more suspected her of design than of crime.
+
+“Of course you are going,” he said, heartily. “It's the very thing. But
+I like the way you desert your little son!”
+
+“I've been thinking about that, too,” she said, pouring his coffee.
+“I--if you were in the city, now, there would always be something to
+do.”
+
+He shot her a suspicious glance, but her face was without evidence of
+guile.
+
+“What would I do in the city?”
+
+“They use chemists in the mills, don't they?”
+
+“A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job,” he scoffed. “No city for
+me, mother.”
+
+But she knew. She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous pause
+of the bird whose cage door is suddenly opened. He would go.
+
+“I'd think about it, anyhow, Willy.”
+
+But for a long time after he had gone she sat quietly rocking in her
+rocking chair in the bay window of the sitting room. It was a familiar
+attitude of hers, homely, middle-class, and in a way symbolic. Had old
+Anthony Cardew ever visualized so imaginative a thing as a Nemesis,
+he would probably have summoned a vision of a huddled figure in his
+stable-yard, dying, and cursing him as he died. Had Jim Doyle, cunningly
+plotting the overthrow of law and order, been able in his arrogance
+to conceive of such a thing, it might have been Anthony Cardew he
+saw. Neither of them, for a moment, dreamed of it as an elderly Scotch
+Covenanter, a plain little womanly figure, rocking in a cane-seated
+rocking chair, and making the great sacrifice of her life.
+
+All of which simply explains how, on a March Wednesday evening of the
+great year of peace after much tribulation, Mr. William Wallace Cameron,
+now a clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy, after an hour of Politics, and no
+Economics at all, happened to be taking a walk toward the Cardew
+house. Such pilgrimages has love taken for many years, small uncertain
+ramblings where the fancy leads the feet and far outstrips them, and
+where heart-hunger hides under various flimsy pretexts; a fine night, a
+paper to be bought, a dog to be exercised.
+
+Not that Willy Cameron made any excuses to himself. He had a sort of
+idea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would through
+her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself
+with a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he
+addressed it now and then.
+
+“Even a cat can look at a king,” he said once. And again, following some
+vague train of thought, on a crowded street: “The People's voice is
+a queer thing. 'It is, and it is not, the voice of God.' The people's
+voice, old man. Only the ones that count haven't got a voice.”
+
+There were, he felt, two Lily Cardews. One lived in an army camp,
+and wore plain clothes, and got a bath by means of calculation and
+persistency, and went to the movies on Friday nights, and was quite
+apt to eat peanuts at those times, carefully putting the shells in her
+pocket.
+
+And another one lived inside this great pile of brick,--he was standing
+across from it, by the park railing, by that time--where motor cars drew
+up, and a footman with an umbrella against a light rain ushered to their
+limousines draped women and men in evening clothes, their strong blacks
+and whites revealed in the light of the street door. And this Lily
+Cardew lived in state, bowed to by flunkeys in livery, dressed and
+undressed--his Scotch sense of decorum resented this--by serving women.
+This Lily Cardew would wear frivolous ball-gowns, such things as he saw
+in the shop windows, considered money only as a thing of exchange, and
+had traveled all over Europe a number of times.
+
+He took his station against the park railings and reflected that it was
+a good thing he had come, after all. Because it was the first Lily whom
+he loved, and she was gone, with the camp and the rest, including war.
+What had he in common with those lighted windows, with their heavy laces
+and draperies?
+
+“Nothing at all, old man,” he said cheerfully to the dog, “nothing at
+all.”
+
+But although the ache was gone when he turned homeward, the dog still at
+his heels, he felt strangely lonely without it. He considered that very
+definitely he had put love out of his life. Hereafter he would travel
+the trail alone. Or accompanied only by History, Politics, Economics,
+and various divines on Sunday evenings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+“Well, grandfather,” said Lily Cardew, “the last of the Cardews is home
+from the wars.”
+
+“So I presume,” observed old Anthony. “Owing, however, to your mother's
+determination to shroud this room in impenetrable gloom, I can only
+presume. I cannot see you.”
+
+His tone was less unpleasant than his words, however. He was in one of
+the rare moods of what passed with him for geniality. For one thing, he
+had won at the club that afternoon, where every day from four to six he
+played bridge with his own little group, reactionaries like himself,
+men who viewed the difficulties of the younger employers of labor with
+amused contempt. For another, he and Howard had had a difference of
+opinion, and he had, for a wonder, made Howard angry.
+
+“Well, Lily,” he inquired, “how does it seem to be at home?”
+
+Lily eyed him almost warily. He was sometimes most dangerous in these
+moods.
+
+“I'm not sure, grandfather.”
+
+“Not sure about what?”
+
+“Well, I am glad to see everybody, of course. But what am I to do with
+myself?”
+
+“Tut.” He had an air of benignantly forgiving her. “You'll find plenty.
+What did you do before you went away?”
+
+“That was different, grandfather.”
+
+“I'm blessed,” said old Anthony, truculently, “if I understand what
+has come over this country, anyhow. What is different? We've had a war.
+We've had other wars, and we didn't think it necessary to change the
+Constitution after them. But everything that was right before this
+war is wrong after it. Lot of young idiots coming back and refusing to
+settle down. Set of young Bolshevists!”
+
+He had always managed to arouse a controversial spirit in the girl.
+
+“Maybe, if it isn't right now, it wasn't right before.” Having said it,
+Lily immediately believed it. She felt suddenly fired with an intense
+dislike of anything that her grandfather advocated.
+
+“Meaning what?” He fixed her with cold but attentive eyes.
+
+“Oh--conditions,” she said vaguely. She was not at all sure what she
+meant. And old Anthony realized it, and gave a sardonic chuckle.
+
+“I advise you to get a few arguments from your father, Lily. He is full
+of them. If he had his way I'd have a board of my workmen running my
+mills, while I played golf in Florida.”
+
+Dinner was a relatively pleasant meal. In her gradual rehabilitation
+of the house Grace had finally succeeded in doing over the dining room.
+Over the old walnut paneling she had hung loose folds of faded blue
+Italian velvet, with old silver candle sconces at irregular intervals
+along the walls. The great table and high-backed chairs were likewise
+Italian, and the old-fashioned white marble fireplace had been given an
+over-mantel, also white, enclosing an old tapestry. For warmth of color
+there were always flowers, and that night there were red roses.
+
+Lily liked the luxury of it. She liked the immaculate dinner dress of
+the two men; she liked her mother's beautiful neck and arms; she liked
+the quiet service once more; she even liked herself, moderately, in a
+light frock and slippers. But she watched it all with a new interest and
+a certain detachment. She felt strange and aloof, not entirely one of
+them. She felt very keenly that no one of them was vitally interested
+in this wonder-year of hers. They asked her perfunctory questions, but
+Grace's watchful eyes were on the service, Anthony was engrossed with
+his food, and her father--
+
+Her father was changed. He looked older and care-worn. For the first
+time she began to wonder about her father. What was he, really, under
+that calm, fastidiously dressed, handsome exterior? Did he mind the
+little man with the sardonic smile and the swift unpleasant humor, whose
+glance reduced the men who served into terrified menials? Her big,
+blond father, with his rather slow speech, his honest eyes, his slight
+hesitation before he grasped some of the finer nuances of his father's
+wit. No, he was not brilliant, but he was real, real and kindly. Perhaps
+he was strong, too. He looked strong.
+
+With the same pitiless judgment she watched her mother. Either Grace
+was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's tongue.
+Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly.
+Like Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had
+loved her child. Quite calmly Lily decided that, as between her husband
+and herself, her mother loved her husband. Perhaps that was as it should
+be, but it added to her sense of aloofness. And she wondered, too, about
+these great loves that seemed to feed on sacrifice.
+
+Anthony, who had a most unpleasant faculty of remembering things,
+suddenly bent forward and observed to her, across the table:
+
+“I should be interested to know, since you regard present conditions as
+wrong, and, I inferred, wrong because of my mishandling of them, just
+what you would propose to do to right them.”
+
+“But I didn't say they were wrong, did I?”
+
+“Don't answer a question with a question. It's a feminine form of
+evasion, because you have no answer and no remedy. Yet, heaven save the
+country, women are going to vote!” He pushed his plate away and glanced
+at Grace. “Is that the new chef's work?”
+
+“Yes. Isn't it right?”
+
+“Right? The food is impossible.”
+
+“He came from the club.”
+
+“Send him back,” ordered Anthony. And when Grace observed that it was
+difficult to get servants, he broke into a cold fury. What had come over
+the world, anyhow? Time was when a gentleman's servants stayed with
+the family until they became pensioners, and their children took their
+places. Now--!
+
+Grace said nothing. Her eyes sought Howard's, and seemed to find some
+comfort there. And Lily, sorry for her mother, said the first thing that
+came into her head.
+
+“The old days of caste are gone, grandfather. And service, in your sense
+of the word, went with them.”
+
+“Really?” he eyed her. “Who said that? Because I daresay it is not
+original.”
+
+“A man I knew at camp.”
+
+“What man?”
+
+“His name was Willy Cameron.”
+
+“Willy Cameron! Was this--er--person qualified to speak? Does he know
+anything about what he chooses to call caste?”
+
+“He thinks a lot about things.”
+
+“A little less thinking and more working wouldn't hurt the country any,”
+ observed old Anthony. He bent forward. “As my granddaughter, and the
+last of the Cardews,” he said, “I have a certain interest in the sources
+of your political opinions. They will probably, like your father's,
+differ from mine. You may not know that your father has not only
+opinions, but ambitions.” She saw Grace stiffen, and Howard's warning
+glance at her. But she saw, too, the look in her mother's eyes,
+infinitely loving and compassionate. “Dear little mother,” she thought,
+“he is her baby, really. Not I.”
+
+She felt a vague stirring of what married love at its best must be for a
+woman, its strange complex of passion and maternity. She wondered if
+it would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also
+conscious of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's
+tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared shoulders, and across
+from her her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass and
+faintly smiling.
+
+“It's time somebody went into city politics for some purpose other than
+graft,” said Howard. “I am going to run for mayor, Lily. I probably
+won't get it.”
+
+“You can see,” said old Anthony, “why I am interested in your views, or
+perhaps I should say, in Willy Cameron's. Does your father's passion for
+uplift, for instance, extend to you?”
+
+“Why won't you be elected, father?”
+
+“Partly because my name is Cardew.”
+
+Old Anthony chuckled.
+
+“What!” he exclaimed, “after the bath-house and gymnasium you have built
+at the mill? And the laundries for the women--which I believe they
+do not use. Surely, Howard, you would not accuse the dear people of
+ingratitude?”
+
+“They are beginning to use them, sir.” Howard, in his forties, still
+addressed his father as “Sir!”
+
+“Then you admit your defeat beforehand.”
+
+“You are rather a formidable antagonist.”
+
+“Antagonist!” Anthony repeated in mock protest. “I am a quiet onlooker
+at the game. I am amused, naturally. You must understand,” he said
+to Lily, “that this is a matter of a principle with your father. He
+believes that he should serve. My whole contention is that the people
+don't want to be served. They want to be bossed. They like it; it's all
+they know. And they're suspicious of a man who puts his hand into his
+own pocket instead of into theirs.”
+
+He smiled and sipped his wine.
+
+“Good wine, this,” he observed. “I'm buying all I can lay my hands on,
+against the approaching drought.”
+
+Lily's old distrust of her grandfather revived. Why did people sharpen
+like that with age? Age should be mellow, like old wine. And--what was
+she going to do with herself? Already the atmosphere of the house began
+to depress and worry her; she felt a new, almost violent impatience with
+it. It was so unnecessary.
+
+She went to the pipe organ which filled the space behind the staircase,
+and played a little, but she had never been very proficient, and her
+own awkwardness annoyed her. In the dining room she could hear the men
+talking, Howard quietly, his father in short staccato barks. She left
+the organ and wandered into her mother's morning room, behind the
+drawing room, where Grace sat with the coffee tray before her.
+
+“I'm afraid I'm going to be terribly on your hands, mother,” she said,
+“I don't know what to do with myself, so how can you know what to do
+with me?”
+
+“It is going to be rather stupid for you at first, of course,” Grace
+said. “Lent, and then so many of the men are not at home. Would you like
+to go South?”
+
+“Why, I've just come home!”
+
+“We can have some luncheons, of course. Just informal ones. And there
+will be small dinners. You'll have to get some clothes. I saw Suzette
+yesterday. She has some adorable things.”
+
+“I'd love them. Mother, why doesn't he want father to go into politics?”
+
+Grace hesitated.
+
+“He doesn't like change, for one thing. But I don't know anything about
+politics. Suzette says--”
+
+“Will he try to keep him from being elected?”
+
+“He won't support him. Of course I hardly think he would oppose him. I
+really don't understand about those things.”
+
+“You mean you don't understand him. Well, I do, mother. He has run
+everything, including father, for so long--”
+
+“Lily!”
+
+“I must, mother. Why, out at the camp--” She checked herself. “All the
+papers say the city is badly governed, and that he is responsible. And
+now he is going to fight his own son! The more I think about it, the
+more I understand about Aunt Elinor. Mother, where do they live?”
+
+Grace looked apprehensively toward the door. “You are not allowed to
+visit her.”
+
+“You do.”
+
+“That's different. And I only go once or twice a year.”
+
+“Just because she married a poor man, a man whose father--”
+
+“Not at all. That is all dead and buried. He is a very dangerous man. He
+is running a Socialist newspaper, and now he is inciting the mill men
+to strike. He is preaching terrible things. I haven't been there for
+months.”
+
+“What do you mean by terrible things, mother?”
+
+“Your father says it amounts to a revolution. I believe he calls it a
+general strike. I don't really know much about it.”
+
+Lily pondered that.
+
+“Socialism isn't revolution, mother, is it? But even then--is all this
+because grandfather drove his father to--”
+
+“I wish you wouldn't, Lily. Of course it is not that. I daresay he
+believes what he preaches. He ought to be put into jail. Why the country
+lets such men go around, preaching sedition, I don't understand.”
+
+Lily remembered something else Willy Cameron had said, and promptly
+repeated it.
+
+“We had a muzzled press during the war,” she said, “and now we've got
+free speech. And one's as bad as the other. She must love him terribly,
+mother,” she added.
+
+But Grace harked back to Suzette, and the last of the Cardews harked
+with her. Later on people dropped in, and Lily made a real attempt to
+get back into her old groove, but that night, when she went upstairs
+to her bedroom, with its bright fire, its bed neatly turned down, her
+dressing gown and slippers laid out, the shaded lamps shining on the
+gold and ivory of her dressing table, she was conscious of a sudden
+homesickness. Homesickness for her bare little room in the camp
+barracks, for other young lives, noisy, chattering, often rather silly,
+occasionally unpleasant, but young. Radiantly, vitally young. The great
+house, with its stillness and decorum, oppressed her. There was no youth
+in it, save hers.
+
+She went to her window and looked out. Years ago, like Elinor, she had
+watched the penitentiary walls from that window, with their endlessly
+pacing sentries, and had grieved for those men who might look up at the
+sky, or down at the earth, but never out and across, to see the
+spring trees, for instance, or the children playing on the grass.
+She remembered the story about Jim Doyle's escape, too. He had dug
+a perilous way to freedom. Vaguely she wondered if he were not again
+digging a perilous way to freedom.
+
+Men seemed always to be wanting freedom, only they had so many different
+ideas of what freedom was. At the camp it had meant breaking bounds,
+balking the Military Police, doing forbidden things generally. Was that,
+after all, what freedom meant, to do the forbidden thing? Those people
+in Russia, for instance, who stole and burned and appropriated women,
+in the name of freedom. Were law and order, then, irreconcilable with
+freedom?
+
+After she had undressed she rang her bell, and Castle answered it.
+
+“Please find out if Ellen has gone to bed,” she said. “If she has not, I
+would like to talk to her.”
+
+The maid looked slightly surprised.
+
+“If it's your hair, Miss Lily, Mrs. Cardew has asked me to look after
+you until she has engaged a maid for you.”
+
+“Not my hair,” said Lily, cheerfully. “I rather like doing it myself. I
+just want to talk to Ellen.”
+
+It was a bewildered and rather scandalized Castle who conveyed the
+message to Ellen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+“I wish you'd stop whistling that thing,” said Miss Boyd, irritably. “It
+makes me low in my mind.”
+
+“Sorry,” said Willy Cameron. “I do it because I'm low in my mind.”
+
+“What are you low about?” Miss Boyd had turned toward the rear of the
+counter, where a mirror was pasted to a card above a box of chewing gum,
+and was carefully adjusting her hair net. “Lady friend turned you down?”
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at her.
+
+“I'm low because I haven't got a lady friend, Miss Boyd.” He held up
+a sheet of prescription paper and squinted at it. “Also because
+the medical profession writes with its feet, apparently. I've done
+everything to this but dip it in acid. I've had it pinned to the wall,
+and tried glancing at it as I went past. Sometimes you can surprise them
+that way. But it does no good. I'm going to take it home and dream on
+it, like bride's cake.”
+
+“They're awful, aren't they?”
+
+“When I get into the Legislature,” said Willy Cameron, “I'm going to
+have a bill passed compelling doctors to use typewriters. Take this now.
+Read upside down, its horse liniment. Read right side up, it's poison.
+And it's for internal use.”
+
+“What d'you mean you haven't got a lady friend?”
+
+“The exact and cruel truth.” He smiled at her, and had Miss Boyd been
+more discerning she might have seen that the smile was slightly forced.
+Also that his eyes were somewhat sunken in his head. Which might, of
+course, have been due to too much political economy and history, and
+the eminent divines on Sunday evenings. Miss Boyd, however, was not
+discerning, and moreover, she was summoning her courage to a certain
+point.
+
+“Why don't you ask me to go to the movies some night?” she said. “I like
+the movies, and I get sick of going alone.”
+
+“My dear child,” observed Willy Cameron, “if that young man in the sack
+suit who comes in to see you every day were three inches shorter and
+twenty pounds lighter, I'd ask you this minute.”
+
+“Oh, him!” said Miss Boyd, with a self-conscious smile. “I'm through
+with him. He's a Bolshevik!”
+
+“He has the Bolshevist possessive eye,” agreed Willy Cameron, readily.
+“Does he know you are through with him? Because that's important, too.
+You may know it, and I may know it, but if he doesn't know it--”
+
+“Why don't you say right out you don't want to take me?” Willy Cameron's
+chivalrous soul was suddenly shocked. To his horror he saw tears in Miss
+Boyd's eyes.
+
+“I'm just a plain idiot, Miss Edith,” he said. “I was only fooling. It
+will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the movies, or
+anywhere else. We'll make it to-night, if that suits you, and I'll take
+a look through the neighborhood at noon and see what's worth while.”
+
+The Eagle Pharmacy was a small one in a quiet neighborhood. During the
+entire day, and for three evenings a week, Mr. William Wallace Cameron
+ran it almost single-handed, having only the preoccupied assistance of
+Miss Boyd in the candy and fancy goods. At the noon and dinner hours,
+and four evenings a week, he was relieved by the owner, Mr. Davis, a
+tired little man with large projecting ears and worried, child-like
+eyes, who was nursing an invalid wife at home. A pathetic little man,
+carrying home with unbounded faith day after day bottles of liquid foods
+and beef capsules, and making wistful comments on them when he returned.
+
+“She couldn't seem to keep that last stuff down, Mr. Cameron,” he would
+say. “I'll try something else.”
+
+And he would stand before his shelves, eyes upturned, searching,
+eliminating, choosing.
+
+Miss Boyd attended to the general merchandise, sold stationery and
+perfumes, candy and fancy soaps, and in the intervals surveyed the world
+that lay beyond the plate glass windows with shrewd, sophisticated young
+eyes.
+
+“That new doctor across the street is getting busier,” she would say.
+Or, “The people in 42 have got a Ford. They haven't got room for a
+garage, either. Probably have to leave it out at nights.”
+
+Her sophistication was kindly in the main. She combined it with an easy
+tolerance of weakness, and an invincible and cheery romanticism, as
+Willy Cameron discovered the night they first went to a moving picture
+theater together. She frankly wept and joyously laughed, and now and
+then, delighted at catching some film subtlety and fearful that he would
+miss it, she would nudge him with her elbow.
+
+“What d'you think of that?” she would say. “D'you get it? He thinks he's
+getting her--Alice Joyce, you know--on the telephone, and it's a private
+wire to the gang.” She was rather quiet after that particular speech.
+Then she added: “I know a place that's got a secret telephone.” But he
+was absorbed in the picture, and made no comment on that. She seemed
+rather relieved.
+
+Once or twice she placed an excited hand on his knee. He was very
+uncomfortable until she removed it, because he had a helpless sort of
+impression that she was not quite so unconscious of it as she appeared.
+Time had been, and not so long ago, when he might have reciprocated her
+little advance in the spirit in which it was offered, might have taken
+the hand and held it, out of the sheer joy of youth and proximity. But
+there was nothing of the philanderer in the Willy Cameron who sat beside
+Edith Boyd that night in body, while in spirit he was in another state,
+walking with his slight limp over crisp snow and sodden mud, but through
+magic lands, to the little moving picture theater at the camp.
+
+Would he ever see her again? Ever again? And if he did, what good would
+it be? He roused himself when they started toward her home. The girl was
+chattering happily. She adored Douglas Fairbanks. She knew a girl who
+had written for his picture but who didn't get one. She wouldn't do
+a thing like that. “Did they really say things when they moved their
+lips?”
+
+“I think they do,” said Willy Cameron. “When that chap was talking over
+the telephone I could tell what he was saying by--Look here, what did
+you mean when you said you knew of a place that has a secret telephone?”
+
+“I was only talking.”
+
+“No house has any business with a secret telephone,” he said virtuously.
+
+“Oh, forget it. I say a lot of things I don't mean.” He was a little
+puzzled and rather curious, but not at all disturbed.
+
+“Well, how did you get to know about it?”
+
+“I tell you I was only talking.”
+
+He let it drop at that. The street crowds held and interested him. He
+liked to speculate about them; what life meant to them, in work and love
+and play; to what they were going on such hurrying feet. A country boy,
+the haste of the city impressed him.
+
+“Why do they hurry so?” he demanded, almost irritably.
+
+“Hurrying home, most of them, because they've got to get up in the
+morning and go to work.”
+
+“Do you ever wonder about the homes they are hurrying to?”
+
+“Me? I don't wonder. I know. Most of them have to move fast to keep up
+with the rent.”
+
+“I don't mean houses,” he explained, patiently. “I mean--A house isn't a
+home.”
+
+“You bet it isn't.”
+
+“It's the families I'm talking about. In a small town you know all about
+people, who they live with, and all that.” He was laboriously talking
+down to her. “But here--”
+
+He saw that she was not interested. Something he had said started an
+unpleasant train of thought in her mind. She was walking faster, and
+frowning slightly. To cheer her he said:
+
+“I am keeping an eye out for the large young man in the sack suit, you
+know. If he jumps me, just yell for the police, will you? Because I'll
+probably not be able to.”
+
+“I wish you'd let me forget him.”
+
+“I will. The question is, will he?” But he saw that the subject was
+unpleasant.
+
+“We'll have to do this again. It's been mighty nice of you to come.”
+
+“You'll have to ask me, the next time.”
+
+“I certainly will. But I think I'd better let your family look me over
+first, just so they'll know that I don't customarily steal the silver
+spoons when I'm asked out to dinner. Or anything like that.”
+
+“We're just--folks.”
+
+“So am I, awfully--folks! And pretty lonely folks at that. Something
+like that pup that has adopted me, only worse. He's got me, but I
+haven't anybody.”
+
+“You'll not be lonely long.” She glanced up at him.
+
+“That's cheering. Why?”
+
+“Well, you are the sort that makes friends,” she said, rather
+vaguely. “That crowd that drops into the shop on the evenings you're
+there--they're crazy about you. They like to hear you talk.”
+
+“Great Scott! I suppose I've been orating all over the place!”
+
+“No, but you've got ideas. You give them something to think about when
+they go home. I wish I had a mind like yours.”
+
+He was so astonished that he stopped dead on the pavement. “My Scottish
+blood,” he said despondently. “A Scot is always a reformer and a
+preacher, in his heart. I used to orate to my mother, but she liked
+it. She is a Scot, too. Besides, it put her to sleep. But I thought I'd
+outgrown it.”
+
+“You don't make speeches. I didn't mean that.”
+
+But he was very crestfallen during the remainder of the way, and rather
+silent. He wondered, that night before he went to bed, if he had been
+didactic to Lily Cardew. He had aired his opinions to her at length, he
+knew. He groaned as he took off his coat in his cold little room at the
+boarding house which lodged and fed him, both indifferently, for the sum
+of twelve dollars per week.
+
+Jinx, the little hybrid dog, occupied the seat of his one comfortable
+chair. He eyed the animal somberly.
+
+“Hereafter, old man,” he said, “when I feel a spell of oratory coming
+on, you will have to be the audience.” He took his dressing gown from
+a nail behind the door, and commenced to put it on. Then he took it off
+again and wrapped the dog in it.
+
+“I can read in bed, which you can't,” he observed. “Only, I can't help
+thinking, with all this town to pick from, you might have chosen a
+fellow with two dressing gowns and two chairs.”
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+He was extremely quiet all the next day. Miss Boyd could hear him,
+behind the partition with its “Please Keep Out” sign, fussing with
+bottles and occasionally whistling to himself. Once it was the “Long,
+Long Trail,” and a moment later he appeared in his doorway, grinning.
+
+“Sorry,” he said. “I've got in the habit of thinking to the fool thing.
+Won't do it again.”
+
+“You must be thinking hard.”
+
+“I am,” he replied, grimly, and disappeared. She could hear the slight
+unevenness of his steps as he moved about, but there was no more
+whistling. Edith Boyd leaned both elbows on the top of a showcase and
+fell into a profound and troubled thought. Mostly her thoughts were of
+Willy Cameron, but some of them were for herself. Up dreary and sordid
+by-paths her mind wandered; she was facing ugly facts for the first
+time, and a little shudder of disgust shook her. He wanted to meet her
+family. He was a gentleman and he wanted to meet her family. Well, he
+could meet them all right, and maybe he would understand then that she
+had never had a chance. In all her young life no man had ever proposed
+letting her family look him over. Hardly ever had they visited her at
+home, and when they did they seemed always glad to get away. She had met
+them on street corners, and slipped back alone, fearful of every creak
+of the old staircase, and her mother's querulous voice calling to her:
+
+“Edie, where've you been all this time?” And she had lied. How she had
+lied!
+
+“I'm through with all that,” she resolved. “It wasn't any fun anyhow.
+I'm sick of hating myself.”
+
+
+Some time later Willy Cameron heard the telephone ring, and taking
+pad and pencil started forward. But Miss Boyd was at the telephone,
+conducting a personal conversation.
+
+“No.... No, I think not.... Look here, Lou, I've said no twice.”
+
+There was a rather lengthy silence while she listened. Then: “You might
+as well have it straight, Lou. I'm through.... No, I'm not sick. I'm
+just through.... I wouldn't.... What's the use?”
+
+Willy Cameron, retreating into his lair, was unhappily conscious that
+the girl was on the verge of tears. He puzzled over the situation for
+some time. His immediate instinct was to help any troubled creature,
+and it had dawned on him that this composed young lady who manicured her
+nails out of a pasteboard box during the slack portion of every day was
+troubled. In his abstraction he commenced again his melancholy refrain,
+and a moment later she appeared in the doorway:
+
+“Oh, for mercy's sake, stop,” she said. She was very pale.
+
+“Look here, Miss Edith, you come in here and tell me what's wrong.
+Here's a chair. Now sit down and talk it out. It helps a lot to get
+things off your chest.”
+
+“There's nothing the matter with me. And if the boss comes in here and
+finds me--”
+
+Quite suddenly she put her head down on the back of the chair and began
+to cry. He was frightfully distressed. He poured some aromatic ammonia
+into a medicine glass and picking up her limp hand, closed her fingers
+around it.
+
+“Drink that,” he ordered.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“I'm not sick,” she said. “I'm only a fool.”
+
+“If that fellow said anything over the telephone--!”
+
+She looked up drearily.
+
+“It wasn't him. He doesn't matter. It's just--I got to hating myself.”
+ She stood up and carefully dabbed her eyes. “Heavens, I must be a sight.
+Now don't you get to thinking things, Mr. Cameron. Girls can't go out
+and fight off a temper, or get full and sleep it off. So they cry.”
+
+Some time later he glanced out at her. She was standing before the
+little mirror above the chewing gum, carefully rubbing her cheeks with a
+small red pad. After that she reached into the show case, got out a lip
+pencil and touched her lips.
+
+“You're pretty enough without all that, Miss Edith.”
+
+“You mind your own business,” she retorted acidly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life. The children of that
+group of families which formed the monied aristocracy of the city
+knew only their own small circle. They met at dancing classes, where
+governesses and occasionally mothers sat around the walls, while the
+little girls, in handmade white frocks of exquisite simplicity, their
+shining hair drawn back and held by ribbon bows, made their prim little
+dip at the door before entering, and the boys, in white Eton collars and
+gleaming pumps, bowed from the waist and then dived for the masculine
+corner of the long room.
+
+No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although now and then a
+brave spirit among the boys would wander, with assumed unconsciousness
+but ears rather pink, to the opposite corner where the little girls were
+grouped like white butterflies milling in the sun.
+
+The pianist struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on one
+side, the boys on the other, a long line, with Mrs. Van Buren in the
+center. Another chord, rather a long one. Mrs. Van Buren curtsied to
+the girls. The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself. Mrs. Van Buren
+turned. Another chord. The boys bent, rather too much, from the waist,
+while Mrs. Van Buren swept another deep curtsey. The music now, very
+definite as to time. Glide and short step to the right. Glide and short
+step to the left. Dancing school had commenced. Outside were long lines
+of motors waiting. The governesses chatted, and sometimes embroidered.
+Mademoiselle tatted.
+
+Alton Denslow was generally known as Pink, but the origin of the name
+was shrouded in mystery. As “Pink” he had learned to waltz at the
+dancing class, at a time when he was more attentive to the step than to
+the music that accompanied it. As Pink Denslow he had played on a scrub
+team at Harvard, and got two broken ribs for his trouble, and as Pink
+he now paid intermittent visits to the Denslow Bank, between the hunting
+season in October and polo at eastern fields and in California. At
+twenty-three he was still the boy of the dancing class, very careful at
+parties to ask his hostess to dance, and not noticeably upset when she
+did, having arranged to be cut in on at the end of the second round.
+
+Pink could not remember when he had not been in love with Lily Cardew.
+There had been other girls, of course, times when Lily seemed far away
+from Cambridge, and some other fair charmer was near. But he had always
+known there was only Lily. Once or twice he would have become
+engaged, had it not been for that. He was a blond boy, squarely built,
+good-looking without being handsome, and on rainy Sundays when there
+was no golf he went quite cheerfully to St. Peter's with his mother, and
+watched a pretty girl in the choir.
+
+He wished at those times that he could sing.
+
+A pleasant cumberer of the earth, he had wrapped his talents in a napkin
+and buried them by the wayside, and promptly forgotten where they were.
+He was to find them later on, however, not particularly rusty, and he
+increased them rather considerably before he got through.
+
+It was this pleasant cumberer of the earth, then, who on the morning
+after Lily's return, stopped his car before the Cardew house and got
+out. Immediately following his descent he turned, took a square white
+box from the car, ascended the steps, settled his neck in his collar and
+his tie around it, and rang the bell.
+
+The second man, hastily buttoned into his coat and with a faint odor
+of silver polish about him, opened the door. Pink gave him his hat, but
+retained the box firmly.
+
+“Mrs. Cardew and Miss Cardew at home?” he asked. “Yes? Then you might
+tell Grayson I'm here to luncheon--unless the family is lunching out.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the footman. “No, sir, they are lunching at home.”
+
+Pink sauntered into the library. He was not so easy as his manner
+indicated. One never knew about Lily. Sometimes she was in a mood when
+she seemed to think a man funny, and not to be taken seriously. And
+when she was serious, which was the way he liked her--he rather lacked
+humor--she was never serious about him or herself. It had been religion
+once, he remembered. She had wanted to know if he believed in the
+thirty-nine articles, and because he had seen them in the back of
+the prayer-book, where they certainly would not be if there was not
+authority for them, he had said he did.
+
+“Well, I don't,” said Lily. And there had been rather a bad half-hour,
+because he had felt that he had to stick to his thirty-nine guns,
+whatever they were. He had finished on a rather desperate note of
+appeal.
+
+“See here, Lily,” he had said. “Why do you bother your head about such
+things, anyhow?”
+
+“Because I've got a head, and I want to use it.”
+
+“Life's too short.”
+
+“Eternity's pretty long. Do you believe in eternity?” And there they
+were, off again, and of course old Anthony had come in after that, and
+had wanted to know about his Aunt Marcia, and otherwise had shown every
+indication of taking root on the hearth rug.
+
+Pink was afraid of Anthony. He felt like a stammering fool when Anthony
+was around. That was why he had invited himself to luncheon. Old Anthony
+lunched at his club.
+
+When he heard Lily coming down the stairs, Pink's honest heart beat
+somewhat faster. A good many times in France, but particularly on the
+ship coming back, he had thought about this meeting. In France a fellow
+had a lot of distractions, and Lily had seemed as dear as ever, but
+extremely remote. But once turned toward home, and she had filled
+the entire western horizon. The other men had seen sunsets there, and
+sometimes a ship, or a school of porpoises. But Pink had seen only Lily.
+
+She came in. The dear old girl! The beautiful, wonderful, dear old girl!
+The--
+
+“Pink!”
+
+“H--hello, Lily.”
+
+“Why, Pink--you're a man!”
+
+“What'd you think I'd be? A girl?”
+
+“You've grown.”
+
+“Oh, now see here, Lily. I quit growing years ago.”
+
+“And to think you are back all right. I was so worried, Pink.”
+
+He flushed at that.
+
+“Needn't have worried,” he said, rather thickly. “Didn't get to the
+front until just before the end. My show was made a labor division in
+the south of France. If you laugh, I'll take my flowers and go home.”
+
+“Why, Pink dear, I wouldn't laugh for anything. And it was the man
+behind the lines who--”
+
+“Won the war,” he finished for her, rather grimly. “All right, Lily.
+We've heard it before. Anyhow, it's all done and over, and--I brought
+gardenias and violets. You used to like 'em.”
+
+“It was dear of you to remember.”
+
+“Couldn't help remembering. No credit to me. I--you were always in my
+mind.”
+
+She was busily unwrapping the box.
+
+“Always,” he repeated, unsteadily.
+
+“What gorgeous things!” she buried her face in them.
+
+“Did you hear what I said, Lily?”
+
+“Yes, and it's sweet of you. Now sit down and tell me about things. I've
+got a lot to tell you, too.”
+
+He had a sort of quiet obstinacy, however, and he did not sit down. When
+she had done so he stood in front of her, looking down at her.
+
+“You've been in a camp. I know that. I heard it over there. Anne
+Devereaux wrote me. It worried me because--we had girls in the camps
+over there, and every one of them had a string of suitors a mile long.”
+
+“Well, I didn't,” said Lily, spiritedly. Then she laughed. He had been
+afraid she would laugh. “Oh, Pink, how dear and funny and masculine you
+are! I have a perfectly uncontrollable desire to kiss you.”
+
+Which she did, to his amazement and consternation. Nothing she could
+have done would more effectually have shown him the hopelessness of his
+situation than that sisterly impulse.
+
+“Good Lord,” he gasped, “Grayson's in the hall.”
+
+“If he comes in I shall probably do it again. Pink, you darling child,
+you are still the little boy at Mrs. Van Buren's and if you would only
+purse your lips and count one--two--three--Are you staying to luncheon?”
+
+He was suffering terribly. Also he felt strangely empty inside, because
+something that he had carried around with him for a long time seemed to
+have suddenly moved out and left a vacancy.
+
+“Thanks. I think not, Lily; I've got a lot to do to-day.”
+
+She sat very still. She had had to do it, had had to show him, somehow,
+that she loved him without loving him as he wanted her to. She had acted
+on impulse, on an impulse born of intention, but she had hurt him. It
+was in every line of his rigid body and set face.
+
+“You're not angry, Pink dear?”
+
+“There's nothing to be angry about,” he said, stolidly. “Things have
+been going on, with me, and staying where they've always been, with
+you. That's all. I'm not very keen, you know, and I used to think--Your
+people like me. I mean, they wouldn't--”
+
+“Everybody likes you, Pink.”
+
+“Well, I'll trot along.” He moved a step, hesitated. “Is there anybody
+else, Lily?”
+
+“Nobody.”
+
+“You won't mind if I hang around a bit, then? You can always send me off
+when you are sick of me. Which you couldn't if you were fool enough to
+marry me.”
+
+“Whoever does marry you, dear, will be a lucky woman.”
+
+In the end he stayed to luncheon, and managed to eat a very fair one.
+But he had little lapses into silence, and Grace Cardew drew her own
+shrewd conclusions.
+
+“He's such a nice boy, Lily,” she said, after he had gone. “And your
+grandfather would like it. In a way I think he expects it.”
+
+“I'm not going to marry to please him, mother.”
+
+“But you are fond of Alston.”
+
+“I want to marry a man, mother. Pink is a boy. He will always be a boy.
+He doesn't think; he just feels. He is fine and loyal and honest, but I
+would loathe him in a month.”
+
+“I wish,” said Grace Cardew unhappily, “I wish you had never gone to
+that camp.”
+
+All afternoon Lily and Grace shopped. Lily was fitted into shining
+evening gowns, into bright little afternoon frocks, into Paris wraps.
+The Cardew name was whispered through the shops, and great piles of
+exotic things were brought in for Grace's critical eye. Lily's own
+attitude was joyously carefree. Long lines of models walked by, draped
+in furs, in satins and velvet and chiffon, tall girls, most of them,
+with hair carefully dressed, faces delicately tinted and that curious
+forward thrust at the waist and slight advancement of one shoulder that
+gave them an air of languorous indifference.
+
+“The only way I could get that twist,” Lily confided to her mother,
+“would be to stand that way and be done up in plaster of paris. It is
+the most abandoned thing I ever saw.”
+
+Grace was shocked, and said so.
+
+Sometimes, during the few hours since her arrival, Lily had wondered if
+her year's experiences had coarsened her. There were so many times when
+her mother raised her eyebrows. She knew that she had changed, that the
+granddaughter of old Anthony Cardew who had come back from the war was
+not the girl who had gone away. She had gone away amazingly ignorant;
+what little she had known of life she had learned away at school. But
+even there she had not realized the possibility of wickedness and vice
+in the world. One of the girls had run away with a music master who
+was married, and her name was forbidden to be mentioned. That was
+wickedness, like blasphemy, and a crime against the Holy Ghost.
+
+She had never heard of prostitution. Near the camp there was a district
+with a bad name, and the girls of her organization were forbidden to so
+much as walk in that direction. It took her a long time to understand,
+and she suffered horribly when she did. There were depths of wickedness,
+then, and of abasement like that in the world. It was a bad world, a
+cruel, sordid world. She did not want to live in it.
+
+She had had to reorganize all her ideas of life after that. At first she
+was flamingly indignant. God had made His world clean and beautiful, and
+covered it with flowers and trees that grew, cleanly begotten, from the
+earth. Why had He not stopped there? Why had He soiled it with passion
+and lust?
+
+It was a little Red Cross nurse who helped her, finally.
+
+“Very well,” she said. “I see what you mean. But trees and flowers are
+not God's most beautiful gift to the world.”
+
+“I think they are.”
+
+“No. It is love.”
+
+“I am not talking about love,” said Lily, flushing.
+
+“Oh, yes, you are. You have never loved, have you? You are talking of
+one of the many things that go to make up love, and out of that one
+phase of love comes the most wonderful thing in the world. He gives us
+the child.”
+
+And again:
+
+“All bodies are not whole, and not all souls. It is wrong to judge life
+by its exceptions, or love by its perversions, Lily.”
+
+It had been the little nurse finally who cured her, for she secured
+Lily's removal to that shady house on a by-street, where the tragedies
+of unwise love and youth sought sanctuary. There were prayers there,
+morning and evening. They knelt, those girls, in front of their little
+wooden chairs, and by far the great majority of them quite simply laid
+their burdens before God, and with an equal simplicity, felt that He
+would help them out.
+
+“We have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have
+followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have
+offended against Thy holy laws.... Restore Thou those who are penitent,
+according to Thy promises.... And grant, Oh most merciful Father, that
+we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life.”
+
+After a time Lily learned something that helped her. The soul was
+greater and stronger than the body and than the mind. The body failed.
+It sinned, but that did not touch the unassailable purity and simplicity
+of the soul. The soul, which lived on, was always clean. For that reason
+there was no hell.
+
+Lily rose and buttoned her coat. Grace was fastening her sables, and
+making a delayed decision in satins.
+
+“Mother, I've been thinking it over. I am going to see Aunt Elinor.”
+
+Grace waited until the saleswoman had moved away.
+
+“I don't like it, Lily.”
+
+“I was thinking, while we were ordering all that stuff. She is a Cardew,
+mother. She ought to be having that sort of thing. And just because
+grandfather hates her husband, she hasn't anything.”
+
+“That is rather silly, dear. They are not in want. I believe he is quite
+flourishing.”
+
+“She is father's sister. And she is a good woman. We treat her like a
+leper.”
+
+Grace was weakening. “If you take the car, your grandfather may hear of
+it.”
+
+“I'll take a taxi.”
+
+Grace followed her with uneasy eyes. For years she paid a price for
+peace, and not a small price. She had placed her pride on the domestic
+altar, and had counted it a worthy sacrifice for Howard's sake. And she
+had succeeded. She knew Anthony Cardew had never forgiven her and would
+never like her, but he gave her, now and then, the tribute of a grudging
+admiration.
+
+And now Lily had come home, a new and different Lily, with her father's
+lovableness and his father's obstinacy. Already Grace saw in the girl
+the beginning of a passionate protest against things as they were.
+Perhaps, had Grace given to Lily the great love of her life, instead of
+to Howard, she might have understood her less clearly. As it was, she
+shivered slightly as she got into the limousine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Lily Cardew inspected curiously the east side neighborhood through which
+the taxi was passing. She knew vaguely that she was in the vicinity of
+one of the Cardew mills, but she had never visited any of the Cardew
+plants. She had never been permitted to do so. Perhaps the neighborhood
+would have impressed her more had she not seen, in the camp, that life
+can be stripped sometimes to its essentials, and still have lost very
+little. But the dinginess depressed her. Smoke was in the atmosphere,
+like a heavy fog. Soot lay on the window-sills, and mingled with street
+dust to form little black whirlpools in the wind. Even the white river
+steamers, guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were
+gray with soft coal smoke. The foam of the river falling in broken
+cataracts from their stern wheels was oddly white in contrast.
+
+Everywhere she began to see her own name. “Cardew” was on the ore hopper
+cars that were moving slowly along a railroad spur. One of the steamers
+bore “Anthony Cardew” in tall black letters on its side. There was a
+narrow street called “Cardew Way.”
+
+Aunt Elinor lived on Cardew Way. She wondered if Aunt Elinor found that
+curious, as she did. Did she resent these ever-present reminders of her
+lost family? Did she have any bitterness because the very grayness of
+her skies was making her hard old father richer and more powerful?
+
+Yet there was comfort, stability and a certain dignity about Aunt
+Elinor's house when she reached it. It stood in the district, but not
+of it, withdrawn from the street in a small open space which gave
+indication of being a flower garden in summer. There were two large
+gaunt trees on either side of a brick walk, and that walk had been swept
+to the last degree of neatness. The steps were freshly scoured, and a
+small brass door-plate, like a doctor's sign, was as bright as rubbing
+could make it. “James Doyle,” she read.
+
+Suddenly she was glad she had come. The little brick house looked
+anything but tragic, with its shining windows, its white curtains
+and its evenly drawn shades. Through the windows on the right came a
+flickering light, warm and rosy. There must be a coal fire there. She
+loved a coal fire.
+
+She had braced herself to meet Aunt Elinor at the door, but an elderly
+woman opened it.
+
+“Mrs. Doyle is in,” she said; “just step inside.”
+
+She did not ask Lily's name, but left her in the dark little hall and
+creaked up the stairs. Lily hesitated. Then, feeling that Aunt Elinor
+might not like to find her so unceremoniously received, she pushed open
+a door which was only partly closed, and made a step into the room. Only
+then did she see that it was occupied. A man sat by the fire, reading.
+He was holding his book low, to get the light from the fire, and he
+turned slowly to glance at Lily. He had clearly expected some one else.
+Elinor, probably.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” Lily said. “I am calling on Mrs. Doyle, and when I
+saw the firelight--”
+
+He stood up then, a tall, thin man, with close-cropped gray mustache and
+heavy gray hair above a high, bulging forehead. She had never seen Jim
+Doyle, but Mademoiselle had once said that he had pointed ears, like a
+satyr. She had immediately recanted, on finding Lily searching in a book
+for a picture of a satyr. This man had ears pointed at the top. Lily was
+too startled then to analyze his face, but later on she was to know
+well the high, intellectual forehead, the keen sunken eyes, the full
+but firmly held mouth and pointed, satyr-like ears of that brilliant
+Irishman, cynic and arch scoundrel, Jim Doyle.
+
+He was inspecting her intently.
+
+“Please come in,” he said. “Did the maid take your name?”
+
+“No. I am Lily Cardew.”
+
+“I see.” He stood quite still, eyeing her. “You are Anthony's
+granddaughter?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Just a moment.” He went out, closing the door behind him, and she
+heard him going quickly up the stairs. A door closed above, and a weight
+settled down on the girl's heart. He was not going to let her see Aunt
+Elinor. She was frightened, but she was angry, too. She would not run
+away. She would wait until he came down, and if he was insolent, well,
+she could be haughty. She moved to the fire and stood there, slightly
+flushed, but very straight.
+
+She heard him coming down again almost immediately. He was outside the
+door. But he did not come in at once. She had a sudden impression that
+he was standing there, his hand on the knob, outlining what he meant
+to say to her when he showed the door to a hated Cardew. Afterwards she
+came to know how right that impression was. He was never spontaneous. He
+was a man who debated everything, calculated everything beforehand.
+
+When he came in it was slowly, and with his head bent, as though he
+still debated within himself. Then:
+
+“I think I have a right to ask what Anthony Cardew's granddaughter is
+doing in my house.”
+
+“Your wife's niece has come to call on her, Mr. Doyle.”
+
+“Are you quite sure that is all?”
+
+“I assure you that is all,” Lily said haughtily. “It had not occurred to
+me that you would be here.”
+
+“I dare say. Still, strangely enough, I do spend a certain amount of
+time in my home.”
+
+Lily picked up her muff.
+
+“If you have forbidden her to come down, I shall go.”
+
+“Wait,” he said slowly. “I haven't forbidden her to see you. I asked her
+to wait. I wanted a few moments. You see, it is not often that I have a
+Cardew in my house, and I am a selfish man.”
+
+She hated him. She loathed his cold eyes, his long, slim white hands.
+She hated him until he fascinated her.
+
+“Sit down, and I will call Mrs. Doyle.”
+
+He went out again, but this time it was the elderly maid who went up the
+stairs. Doyle himself came back, and stood before her on the hearth rug.
+He was slightly smiling, and the look of uncertainty was gone.
+
+“Now that you've seen me, I'm not absolutely poisonous, am I, Miss Lily?
+You don't mind my calling you that, do you? You are my niece. You have
+been taught to hate me, of course.”
+
+“Yes,” said Lily, coldly.
+
+“By Jove, the truth from a Cardew!” Then: “That's an old habit of mine,
+damning the Cardews. I'll have to try to get over it, if they are going
+to reestablish family relations.” He was laughing at her, Lily knew, and
+she flushed somewhat.
+
+“I wouldn't make too great an effort, then,” she said.
+
+He smiled again, this time not unpleasantly, and suddenly he threw into
+his rich Irish voice an unexpected softness. No one knew better than Jim
+Doyle the uses of the human voice.
+
+“You mustn't mind me, Miss Lily. I have no reason to love your family,
+but I am very happy that you came here to-day. My wife has missed her
+people. If you'll run in like this now and then it will do her worlds of
+good. And if my being here is going to keep you away I can clear out.”
+
+She rather liked him for that speech. He was totally unlike what she had
+been led to expect, and she felt a sort of resentment toward her family
+for misleading her. He was a gentleman, on the surface at least. He
+had not been over-cordial at first, but then who could have expected
+cordiality under the circumstances? In Lily's defense it should be said
+that the vicissitudes of Elinor's life with Doyle had been kept from her
+always. She had but two facts to go on: he had beaten her grandfather as
+a young man, for a cause, and he held views as to labor which conflicted
+with those of her family.
+
+Months later, when she learned all the truth, it was too late.
+
+“Of course you're being here won't keep me away, if you care to have me
+come.”
+
+He was all dignity and charm then. They needed youth in that quiet
+place. They ought all to be able to forget the past, which was done
+with, anyhow. He showed the first genuine interest she had found in her
+work at the camp, and before his unexpected geniality the girl opened
+like a flower.
+
+And all the time he was watching her with calculating eyes. He was a
+gambler with life, and he rather suspected that he had just drawn a
+valuable card.
+
+“Thank you,” he said gravely, when she had finished. “You have done a
+lot to bridge the gulf that lies--I am sure you have noticed it--between
+the people who saw service in this war and those who stayed at home.”
+
+Suddenly Lily saw that the gulf between her family and herself was just
+that, which was what he had intended.
+
+When Elinor came in they were absorbed in conversation, Lily flushed and
+eager, and her husband smiling, urbane, and genial.
+
+To Lily, Elinor Doyle had been for years a figure of mystery. She had
+not seen her for many years, and she had, remembered a thin, girlish
+figure, tragic-eyed, which eternally stood by a window in her room,
+looking out. But here was a matronly woman, her face framed with soft,
+dark hair, with eyes like her father's, with Howard Cardew's ease of
+manner, too, but with a strange passivity, either of repression or of
+fires early burned out and never renewed.
+
+Lily was vaguely disappointed. Aunt Elinor, in soft gray silk, matronly,
+assured, unenthusiastically pleased to see her; Doyle himself, cheerful
+and suave; the neat servant; the fire lit, comfortable room,--there was
+no drama in all that, no hint of mystery or tragedy. All the hatred at
+home for an impulsive assault of years ago, and--this!
+
+“Lily, dear!” Elinor said, and kissed her. “Why, Lily, you are a woman!”
+
+“I am twenty, Aunt Elinor.”
+
+“Yes, of course. I keep forgetting. I live so quietly here that the days
+go by faster than I know.” She put Lily back in her chair, and glanced
+at her husband.
+
+“Is Louis coming to dinner, Jim?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I suppose you cannot stay, Lily?”
+
+“I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor. Only mother knows that I am here.”
+
+Aunt Elinor smiled her quiet smile.
+
+“I understand, dear. How are they all?”
+
+“Grandfather is very well. Father looks tired. There is some trouble at
+the mill, I think.”
+
+Elinor glanced at Doyle, but he said nothing.
+
+“And your mother?”
+
+“She is well.”
+
+Lily was commencing to have an odd conviction, which was that her Aunt
+Elinor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle. He seemed
+inclined to make up for Elinor's lack of enthusiasm by his own. He built
+up a larger fire, and moved her chair near it.
+
+“Weather's raw,” he said. “Sure you are comfortable now? And why not
+have dinner here? We have an interesting man coming, and we don't often
+have the chance to offer our guests a charming young lady.”
+
+“Lily only came home yesterday, Jim,” Elinor observed. “Her own people
+will want to see something of her. Besides, they do no know she is
+here.”
+
+Lily felt slightly chilled. For years she had espoused her Aunt
+Elinor's cause; in the early days she had painfully hemstitched a small
+handkerchief each fall and had sent it, with much secrecy, to Aunt
+Elinor's varying addresses at Christmas. She had felt a childish
+resentment of Elinor Doyle's martyrdom. And now--
+
+“Her father and grandfather are dining out to-night.” Had Lily looked up
+she would have seen Doyle's eyes fixed on his wife, ugly and menacing.
+
+“Dining out?” Lily glanced at him in surprise.
+
+“There is a dinner to-night, for the--” He checked himself “The steel
+manufacturers are having a meeting,” he finished. “I believe to discuss
+me, among other things. Amazing the amount of discussion my simple
+opinions bring about.”
+
+Elinor Doyle, unseen, made a little gesture of despair and surrender.
+
+“I hope you will stay, Lily,” she said. “You can telephone, if you like.
+I don't see you often, and there is so much I want to ask you.”
+
+In the end Lily agreed. She would find out from Grayson if the men were
+really dining out, and if they were Grayson would notify her mother that
+she was staying. She did not quite know herself why she had accepted,
+unless it was because she was bored and restless at home. Perhaps, too,
+the lure of doing a forbidden thing influenced her sub-consciously, the
+thought that her grandfather would detest it. She had not forgiven him
+for the night before.
+
+Jim Doyle left her in the back hall at the telephone, and returned
+to the sitting room, dosing the door behind him. His face was set and
+angry.
+
+“I thought I told you to be pleasant.”
+
+“I tried, Jim. You must remember I hardly know her.” She got up and
+placed her hand on his arm, but he shook it off. “I don't understand,
+Jim, and I wish you wouldn't. What good is it?”
+
+“I've told you what I want. I want that girl to come here, and to like
+coming here. That's plain, isn't it? But if you're going to sit with a
+frozen face--She'll be useful. Useful as hell to a preacher.”
+
+“I can't use my family that way.”
+
+“You and your family! Now listen, Elinor. This isn't a matter o the
+Cardews and me. It may be nothing, but it may be a big thing. I hardly
+know yet--” His voice trailed off; he stood with his head bent, lost in
+those eternal calculations with which Elinor Doyle was so familiar.
+
+The doorbell rang, and was immediately followed by the opening and
+closing of the front door.
+
+From her station at the telephone Lily Cardew saw a man come in, little
+more than a huge black shadow, which placed a hat on the stand and then,
+striking a match, lighted the gas overhead. In the illumination he stood
+before the mirror, smoothing back his shining black hair. Then he saw
+her, stared and retreated into the sitting room.
+
+“Got company, I see.”
+
+“My niece, Lily Cardew,” said Doyle, dryly.
+
+The gentleman seemed highly amused. Evidently he considered Lily's
+presence in the house in the nature of a huge joke. He was conveying
+this by pantomime, in deference to the open door, when Doyle nodded
+toward Elinor.
+
+“It's customary to greet your hostess, Louis.”
+
+“Easiest thing I do,” boasted the new arrival cheerily. “'Lo, Mrs.
+Doyle. Is our niece going to dine with us?”
+
+“I don't know yet, Mr. Akers,” she said, without warmth. Louis Akers
+knew quite well that Elinor did not like him, and the thought amused
+him, the more so since as a rule women liked him rather too well. Deep
+in his heart he respected Jim Doyle's wife, and sometimes feared her. He
+respected her because she had behind her traditions of birth and wealth,
+things he professed to despise but secretly envied. He feared her
+because he trusted no woman, and she knew too much.
+
+She loved Jim Doyle, but he had watched her, and he knew that sometimes
+she hated Doyle also. He knew that could be, because there had been
+women he had both loved and hated himself.
+
+Elinor had gone out, and Akers sat down.
+
+“Well,” he said, in a lowered tone. “I've written it.”
+
+Doyle closed the door, and stood again with his head lowered,
+considering.
+
+“You'd better look over it,” continued Lou. “I don't want to be jailed.
+You're better at skating over thin ice than I am. And I've been thinking
+over the Prohibition matter, Jim. In a sense you're right. It will make
+them sullen and angry. But they won't go the limit without booze. I'd
+advise cache-ing a lot of it somewhere, to be administered when needed.”
+
+Doyle returned to his old place on the hearth-rug, still thoughtful. He
+had paid no attention to Aker's views on Prohibition, nor to the paper
+laid upon the desk in the center of the room.
+
+“Do you know that that girl in the hall will be worth forty million
+dollars some day?”
+
+“Some money,” said Akers, calmly. “Which reminds me, Jim, that I've got
+to have a raise. And pretty soon.”
+
+“You get plenty, if you'd leave women alone.”
+
+“Tell them to leave me alone, then,” said Akers, stretching out his long
+legs. “All right. We'll talk about that, after dinner. What about this
+forty millions?”
+
+Doyle looked at him quickly. Akers' speech about women had crystallized
+the vague plans which Lily's arrival had suddenly given rise to. He gave
+the young man a careful scrutiny, from his handsome head to his feet,
+and smiled. It had occurred to him that the Cardew family would loathe a
+man of Louis Akers' type with an entire and whole-hearted loathing.
+
+“You might try to make her have a pleasant evening,” he suggested dryly.
+“And, to do that, it might be as well to remember a number of things,
+one of which is that she is accustomed to the society of gentlemen.”
+
+“All right, old dear,” said Akers, without resentment.
+
+“She hates her grandfather like poison,” Doyle went on. “She doesn't
+know it, but she does. A little education, and it is just possible--”
+
+“Get Olga. I'm no kindergarten teacher.”
+
+“You haven't seen her in the light yet.”
+
+Louis Akers smiled and carefully settled his tie.
+
+Like Doyle, Akers loved the game of life, and he liked playing for high
+stakes. He had joined forces with Doyle because the game was dangerous
+and exciting, rather than because of any real conviction. Doyle had
+a fanatic faith, with all his calculation, but Louis Akers had
+only calculation and ambition. A practicing attorney in the city, a
+specialist in union law openly, a Red in secret, he played his triple
+game shrewdly and with zest.
+
+Doyle turned to go, then stopped and came back. “I was forgetting
+something,” he said, slowly. “What possessed you to take that Boyd girl
+to the Searing Building the other night?”
+
+“Who told you that?”
+
+“Woslosky saw you coming out.”
+
+“I had left something there,” Akers said sullenly. “That's the truth,
+whether you believe it or not. I wasn't there two minutes.”
+
+“You're a fool, Louis,” Doyle said coldly. “You'll play that game once
+too often. What happens to you is your own concern, but what may happen
+to me is mine. And I'll take mighty good care it doesn't happen.”
+
+Doyle was all unction and hospitality when he met Lily in the hall. At
+dinner he was brilliant, witty, the gracious host. Akers played up to
+him. At the foot of the table Elinor sat, outwardly passive, inwardly
+puzzled, and watched Lily. She knew the contrast the girl must be
+drawing, between the bright little meal, with its simple service and
+clever talk, and those dreary formal dinners at home when old Anthony
+sometimes never spoke at all, or again used his caustic tongue like a
+scourge. Elinor did not hate her father; he was simply no longer her
+father. As for Howard, she had had a childish affection for him, but he
+had gone away early to school, and she hardly knew him. But she did
+not want his child here, drinking in as she was, without clearly
+understanding what they meant, Doyle's theories of unrest and
+revolution.
+
+“You will find that I am an idealist, in a way,” he was saying. “That
+is, if you come often. I hope you will, by the way. I am perpetually
+dissatisfied with things as they are, and wanting them changed. With
+the single exception of my wife”--he bowed to Elinor, “and this little
+party, which is delightful.”
+
+“Are you a Socialist?” Lily demanded, in her direct way.
+
+“Well, you might call it that. I go a bit further.”
+
+“Don't talk politics, Jim,” Elinor hastily interposed. He caught her eye
+and grinned.
+
+“I'm not talking politics, my dear.” He turned to Lily, smiling.
+
+“For one thing, I don't believe that any one should have a lot of
+money, so that a taxicab could remain ticking away fabulous sums while a
+charming young lady dines at her leisure.” He smiled again.
+
+“Will it be a lot?” Lily asked. “I thought I'd better keep him,
+because--” She hesitated.
+
+“Because this neighborhood is unlikely to have a cab stand? You
+were entirely right. But I can see that you won't like my idealistic
+community. You see, in it everybody will have enough, and nobody will
+have too much.”
+
+“Don't take him too seriously, Miss Cardew,” said Akers, bending
+forward. “You and I know that there isn't such a thing as too much.”
+
+Elinor changed the subject; as a girl she had drawn rather well, and she
+had retained her interest in that form of art. There was an exhibition
+in town of colored drawings. Lily should see them. But Jim Doyle
+countered her move.
+
+“I forgot to mention,” he said, “that in this ideal world we were
+discussing the arts will flourish. Not at once, of course, because the
+artists will be fighting--”
+
+“Fighting?”
+
+“Per aspera ad astra,” put in Louis Akers. “You cannot change a world in
+a day, without revolution--”
+
+“But you don't believe that revolution is ever worth while, do you?”
+
+“If it would drive starvation and wretchedness from the world, yes.”
+
+Lily found Louis Akers interesting. Certainly he was very handsome. And
+after all, why should there be misery and hunger in the world? There
+must be enough for all. It was hardly fair, for instance, that she
+should have so much, and others scarcely anything. Only it was like
+thinking about religion; you didn't get anywhere with it. You wanted to
+be good, and tried to be. And you wanted to love God, only He seemed so
+far away, mostly. And even that was confusing, because you prayed to God
+to be forgiven for wickedness, but it was to His Son our Lord one went
+for help in trouble.
+
+One could be sorry for the poor, and even give away all one had, but
+that would only help a few. It would have to be that every one who had
+too much would give up all but what he needed.
+
+Lily tried to put that into words.
+
+“Exactly,” said Jim Doyle. “Only in my new world we realize that there
+would be a few craven spirits who might not willingly give up what they
+have. In that case it would be taken from them.”
+
+“And that is what you call revolution?”
+
+“Precisely.”
+
+“But that's not revolution. It is a sort of justice, isn't it?”
+
+“You think very straight, young lady,” said Jim Doyle.
+
+He had a fascinating theory of individualism, too; no man should impose
+his will and no community its laws, on the individual. Laws were for
+slaves. Ethics were better than laws, to control.
+
+“Although,” he added, urbanely, “I daresay it might be difficult to
+convert Mr. Anthony Cardew to such a belief.”
+
+While Louis Akers saw Lily to her taxicab that night Doyle stood in the
+hall, waiting. He was very content with his evening's work.
+
+“Well?” he said, when Akers returned.
+
+“Merry as a marriage bell. I'm to show her the Brunelleschi drawings
+to-morrow.”
+
+Slightly flushed, he smoothed his hair in front of the mirror over the
+stand.
+
+“She's a nice child,” he said. In his eyes was the look of the hunting
+animal that scents food.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Lily did not sleep very well that night. She was repentant, for one
+thing, for her mother's evening alone, and for the anxiety in her face
+when she arrived.
+
+“I've been so worried,” she said, “I was afraid your grandfather would
+get back before you did.”
+
+“I'm sorry, mother dear. I know it was selfish. But I've had a wonderful
+evening.”
+
+“Wonderful?”
+
+“All sorts of talk,” Lily said, and hesitated. After all, her mother
+would not understand, and it would only make her uneasy. “I suppose it
+is rank hearsay to say it, but I like Mr. Doyle.”
+
+“I detest him.”
+
+“But you don't know him, do you?”
+
+“I know he is stirring up all sorts of trouble for us. Lily, I want you
+to promise not to go back there.”
+
+There was a little silence. A small feeling of rebellion was rising in
+the girl's heart.
+
+“I don't see why. She is my own aunt.”
+
+“Will you promise?”
+
+“Please don't ask me, mother. I--oh, don't you understand? It is
+interesting there, that's all. It isn't wrong to go. And the moment you
+forbid it you make me want to go back.”
+
+“Were there any other people there to dinner?” Grace asked, with sudden
+suspicion.
+
+“Only one man. A lawyer named Akers.”
+
+The name meant nothing to Grace Cardew.
+
+“A young man?”
+
+“Not very young. In his thirties, I should think,” Lily hesitated again.
+She had meant to tell her mother of the engagement for the next day, but
+Grace's attitude made it difficult. To be absolutely forbidden to meet
+Louis Akers at the gallery, and to be able to give no reason beyond the
+fact that she had met him at the Doyle house, seemed absurd.
+
+“A gentleman?”
+
+“I hardly know,” Lily said frankly. “In your sense of the word, perhaps
+not, mother. But he is very clever.”
+
+Grace Cardew sighed and picked up her book. She never retired until
+Howard came in. And Lily went upstairs, uneasy and a little defiant.
+She must live her own life, somehow; have her own friends; think her own
+thoughts. The quiet tyranny of the family was again closing down on
+her. It would squeeze her dry, in the end, as it had her mother and Aunt
+Elinor.
+
+She stood for a time by her window, looking out at the city. Behind her
+was her warm, luxurious room, her deep, soft bed. Yet all through
+the city there were those who did not sleep warm and soft. Close by,
+perhaps, in that deteriorated neighborhood, there were children that
+very night going to bed hungry.
+
+Because things had always been like that, should they always be so?
+Wasn't Mr. Doyle right, after all? Only he went very far. You couldn't,
+for instance, take from a man the thing he had earned. What about the
+people who did not try to earn?
+
+She rather thought she would be clearer about it if she talked to Willy
+Cameron.
+
+She went to bed at last, a troubled young thing in a soft white
+night-gown, passionately in revolt against the injustice which gave to
+her so much and to others so little. And against that quiet domestic
+tyranny which was forcing her to her first deceit.
+
+Yet the visit to the gallery was innocuous enough. Louis Akers met her
+there, and carefully made the rounds with her. Then he suggested tea,
+and chose a quiet tea-room, and a corner.
+
+“I'll tell you something, now it's over,” he said, his bold eyes fixed
+on hers. “I loathe galleries and pictures. I wanted to see you again.
+That's all. You see, I am starting in by being honest with you.”
+
+She was rather uncomfortable.
+
+“Why don't you like pictures?”
+
+“Because they are only imitations of life. I like life.” He pushed
+his teacup away. “I don't want tea either. Tea was an excuse, too.” He
+smiled at her. “Perhaps you don't like honesty,” he said. “If you don't
+you won't care for me.”
+
+She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness and
+effrontery, but he made her vaguely uneasy. He knew so many things, and
+yet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her family's sense of
+the word. He had a curious effect on her, too, one that she resented. He
+made her insistently conscious of her sex.
+
+And of his. His very deference had something of restraint about it. She
+thought, trying to drink her tea quietly, that he might be very terrible
+if he loved any one. There was a sort of repressed fierceness behind his
+suavity.
+
+But he interested her, and he was undeniably handsome, not in her
+father's way but with high-colored, almost dramatic good looks. There
+could be no doubt, too, that he was interested in her. He rarely took
+his eyes off hers. Afterwards she was to know well that bold possessive
+look of his.
+
+It was just before they left that he said:
+
+“I am going to see you again, you know. May I come in some afternoon?”
+
+Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments, and she raised frank
+eyes to his.
+
+“I am afraid not,” she said. “You see, you are a friend of Mr. Doyle's,
+and you must know that my people and Aunt Elinor's husband are on bad
+terms.”
+
+“What has that got to do with you and me?” Then he laughed. “Might be
+unpleasant, I suppose. But you go to the Doyles'.”
+
+She was very earnest.
+
+“My mother knows, but my grandfather wouldn't permit it if he knew.”
+
+“And you put up with that sort of thing?” He leaned closer to her. “You
+are not a baby, you know. But I will say you are a good sport to do it,
+anyhow.”
+
+“I'm not very comfortable about it.”
+
+“Bosh,” he said, abruptly. “You go there as often as you can. Elinor
+Doyle's a lonely woman, and Jim is all right. You pick your own friends,
+my child, and live your own life. Every human being has that right.”
+
+He helped her into a taxi at the door of the tea shop, giving her rather
+more assistance than she required, and then standing bare-headed in
+the March wind until the car had moved away. Lily, sitting back in her
+corner, was both repelled and thrilled. He was totally unlike the men
+she knew, those carefully repressed, conventional clean-cut boys, like
+Pink Denslow. He was raw, vigorous and possibly brutal. She did not
+quite like him, but she found herself thinking about him a great deal.
+
+The old life was reaching out its friendly, idle hands toward her. The
+next day Grace gave a luncheon for her at the house, a gay little affair
+of color, chatter and movement. But Lily found herself with little
+to say. Her year away had separated her from the small community of
+interest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to
+them in her sitting room later, what they would all talk about when they
+had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It
+would all be said so soon. And what then?
+
+Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small circle,
+carefully guarded. They belonged together, they and the men who
+likewise belonged. Now and then there would be changes. A new man, of
+irreproachable family connections would come to live in the city, and
+cause a small flurry. Then in time he would be appropriated. Or a girl
+would come to visit, and by the same system of appropriation would come
+back later, permanently. Always the same faces, the same small talk.
+Orchids or violets at luncheons, white or rose or blue or yellow frocks
+at dinners and dances. Golf at the country club. Travel, in the Cardew
+private car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting.
+Winter at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at seeing moving picture
+stars and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand. One never had a
+chance to meet them.
+
+And, in quiet intervals, this still house, and grandfather shut away
+in his upstairs room, but holding the threads of all their lives as a
+spider clutches the diverging filaments of its web.
+
+“Get in on this, Lily,” said a clear young voice. “We're talking about
+the most interesting men we met in our war work. You ought to have known
+a lot of them.”
+
+“I knew a lot of men. They were not so very interesting. There was a
+little nurse--”
+
+“Men, Lily dear.”
+
+“There was one awfully nice boy. He wasn't a soldier, but he was very
+kind to the men. They adored him.”
+
+“Did he fall in love with your?”
+
+“Not a particle.”
+
+“Why wasn't he a soldier?”
+
+“He is a little bit lame. But he is awfully nice.”
+
+“But what is extraordinary about him, then?”
+
+“Not a thing, except his niceness.”
+
+But they were surfeited with nice young men. They wanted something
+dramatic, and Willy Cameron was essentially undramatic. Besides, it was
+quite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical handicap made
+him unacceptable to them.
+
+“Don't be ridiculous, Lily. You're hiding some one behind this kind
+person. You must have met somebody worth while.”
+
+“Not in the camp. I know a perfectly nice Socialist, but he was not in
+the army. Not a Socialist, really. Much worse. He believes in having a
+revolution.”
+
+That stirred them somewhat. She saw their interested faces turned toward
+her.
+
+“With a bomb under his coat, of course, Lily.”
+
+“He didn't bulge.”
+
+“Good-looking?”
+
+“Well, rather.”
+
+“How old is he, Lily?” one of them asked, suspiciously.
+
+“Almost fifty, I should say.”
+
+“Good heavens!”
+
+Their interest died. She could have revived it, she knew, if she
+mentioned Louis Akers; he would have answered to their prime requisite
+in an interesting man. He was both handsome and young. But she felt
+curiously disinclined to mention him.
+
+The party broke up. By ones and twos luxuriously dressed little figures
+went down the great staircase, where Grayson stood in the hall and the
+footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle,
+watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense of
+comfort and well-being after they had all gone. This was as it should
+be. Lily would take up life again where she had left it off, and all
+would be well.
+
+It was now the sixth day, and she had not yet carried out that absurd
+idea of asking Ellen's friend to dinner.
+
+Lily was, however, at that exact moment in process of carrying it out.
+
+“Telephone for you, Mr. Cameron.”
+
+“Thanks. Coming,” sang out Willy Cameron.
+
+Edith Boyd sauntered toward his doorway.
+
+“It's a lady.”
+
+“Woman,” corrected Willy Cameron. “The word 'lady' is now obsolete,
+since your sex has entered the economic world.” He put on his coat.
+
+“I said 'lady' and that's what I mean,” said Edith. “'May I speak to Mr.
+Cameron?'” she mimicked. “Regular Newport accent.”
+
+Suddenly Willy Cameron went rather pale. If it should be Lily
+Cardew--but then of course it wouldn't be. She had been home for six
+days, and if she had meant to call--
+
+“Hello,” he said.
+
+It was Lily. Something that had been like a band around his heart
+suddenly loosened, to fasten about his throat. His voice sounded
+strangled and strange.
+
+“Why, yes,” he said, in the unfamiliar voice. “I'd like to come, of
+course.”
+
+Edith Boyd watched and listened, with a slightly strained look in her
+eyes.
+
+“To dinner? But--I don't think I'd better come to dinner.”
+
+“Why not, Willy?”
+
+Mr. William Wallace Cameron glanced around. There was no one about save
+Miss Boyd, who was polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of the
+other.
+
+“May I come in a business suit?”
+
+“Why, of course. Why not?”
+
+“I didn't know,” said Willy Cameron. “I didn't know what your people
+would think. That's all. To-morrow at eight, then. Thanks.”
+
+He hung up the receiver and walked to the door, where he stood looking
+out and seeing nothing. She had not forgotten. He was going to see her.
+Instead of standing across the street by the park fence, waiting for
+a glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the room with her.
+There would be--eight from eleven was three--three hours of her.
+
+What a wonderful day it was! Spring was surely near. He would like to be
+able to go and pick up Jinx, and then take a long walk through the park.
+He needed movement. He needed to walk off his excitement or he felt that
+he might burst with it.
+
+“Eight o'clock!” said Edith. “I wish you joy, waiting until eight for
+supper.”
+
+He had to come back a long, long way to her.
+
+“'May I come in a business suit?'” she mimicked him. “My evening clothes
+have not arrived yet. My valet's bringing them up to town to-morrow.”
+
+Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist, he
+caught the bitterness under her raillery. It puzzled him.
+
+“It's a young lady I knew at camp. I was in an army camp, you know.”
+
+“Is her name a secret?”
+
+“Why, no. It is Cardew. Miss Lily Cardew.”
+
+“I believe you--not.”
+
+“But it is,” he said, genuinely concerned. “Why in the world should I
+give you a wrong name?”
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his face.
+
+“No. You wouldn't. But it makes me laugh, because--well, it was crazy,
+anyhow.”
+
+“What was crazy?”
+
+“Something I had in my mind. Just forget it. I'll tell you what will
+happen, Mr. Cameron. You'll stay here about six weeks. Then you'll get a
+job at the Cardew Mills. They use chemists there, and you will be--”
+
+She lifted her finger-tips and blew along them delicately.
+
+“Gone--like that,” she finished.
+
+Sometimes Willy Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd. The large young man,
+for instance, whose name he had learned was Louis Akers, did not
+come any more. Not since that telephone conversation. But he had been
+distinctly a grade above that competent young person, Edith Boyd, if
+there were such grades these days; fluent and prosperous-looking, and
+probably able to offer a girl a good home. But she had thrown him over.
+He had heard her doing it, and when he had once ventured to ask her
+about Akers she had cut him off curtly.
+
+“I was sick to death of him. That's all,” she had said.
+
+But on the night of Lily's invitation he was to hear more of Louis
+Akers.
+
+It was his evening in the shop. One day he came on at seven-thirty in
+the morning and was off at six, and the next he came at ten and stayed
+until eleven at night. The evening business was oddly increasing. Men
+wandered in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a tooth-brush, and sat
+or stood around for an hour or so; clerks whose families had gone to the
+movies, bachelors who found their lodging houses dreary, a young doctor
+or two, coming in after evening office hours to leave a prescription,
+and remaining to talk and listen. Thus they satisfied their gregarious
+instinct while within easy call of home.
+
+The wealthy had their clubs. The workmen of the city had their balls and
+sometimes their saloons. But in between was that vast, unorganized male
+element which was neither, and had neither. To them the neighborhood
+pharmacy, open in the evening, warm and bright, gave them a rendezvous.
+They gathered there in thousands, the country over. During the war they
+fought their daily battles there, with newspaper maps. After the war the
+League of Nations, local politics, a bit of neighborhood scandal, washed
+down with soft drinks from the soda fountain, furnished the evening's
+entertainment.
+
+The Eagle Pharmacy had always been the neighborhood club, but with the
+advent of Willy Cameron it was attaining a new popularity. The roundsman
+on the beat dropped in, the political boss of the ward, named Hendricks,
+Doctor Smalley, the young physician who lived across the street, and
+others. Back of the store proper was a room, with the prescription desk
+at one side and reserve stock on shelves around the other three. Here
+were a table and a half dozen old chairs, a war map, still showing with
+colored pins the last positions before the great allied advance, and an
+ancient hat-rack, which had held from time immemorial an umbrella with
+three broken ribs and a pair of arctics of unknown ownership.
+
+“Going to watch this boy,” Hendricks confided to Doctor Smalley a night
+or two after Lily's return, meeting him outside. “He sure can talk.”
+
+Doctor Smalley grinned.
+
+“He can read my writing, too, which is more than I can do myself. What
+do you mean, watch him?”
+
+But whatever his purposes Mr. Hendricks kept them to himself. A big,
+burly man, with a fund of practical good sense a keen knowledge of
+men, he had gained a small but loyal following. He was a retired master
+plumber, with a small income from careful investments, and he had a
+curious, almost fanatic love for the city.
+
+“I was born here,” he would say, boastfully. “And I've seen it grow from
+fifty thousand to what it's got now. Some folks say it's dirty, but it's
+home to me, all right.”
+
+But on the evening of Lily's invitation the drug store forum found Willy
+Cameron extremely silent. He had been going over his weaknesses, for the
+thought of Lily always made him humble, and one of them was that he got
+carried away by things and talked too much. He did not intend to do that
+the next night, at the Cardew's.
+
+“Something's scared him off,” said Mr. Hendricks to Doctor Smalley,
+after a half hour of almost taciturnity, while Willy Cameron smoked his
+pipe and listened. “Watch him rise to this, though.” And aloud:
+
+“Why don't you fellows drop the League of Nations, which none of you
+knows a damn about anyhow, and get to the thing that's coming in this
+country?”
+
+“I'll bite,” said Mr. Clarey, who sold life insurance in the daytime and
+sometimes utilized his evenings in a similar manner. “What's coming to
+this country?”
+
+“Revolution.”
+
+The crowd laughed.
+
+“All right,” said Mr. Hendricks. “Laugh while you can. I saw the Chief
+of Police to-day, and he's got a line of conversation that makes a man
+feel like taking his savings out of the bank and burying them in the
+back yard.”
+
+Willy Cameron took his pipe out of his mouth, but remained dumb.
+
+Mr. Hendricks nudged Doctor Smalley, who rose manfully to the occasion.
+“What does he say?”
+
+“Says the Russians have got a lot of paid agents here. Not all Russians
+either. Some of our Americans are in it. It's to begin with a general
+strike.”
+
+“In this town?”
+
+“All over the country. But this is a good field for them. The crust's
+pretty thin here, and where that's the case there is likely to be
+earthquakes and eruptions. The Chief says they're bringing in a bunch of
+gunmen, wobblies and Bolshevists from every industrial town on the map.
+Did you get that, Cameron? Gunmen!”
+
+“Any of you men here dissatisfied with this form of government?”
+ inquired Willy, rather truculently.
+
+“Not so you could notice it,” said Mr. Clarey. “And once the Republican
+party gets in--”
+
+“Then there will never be a revolution.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“That's why,” said Willy Cameron. “Of course you are worthless now. You
+aren't organized. You don't know how many you are or how strong you
+are. You can't talk. You sit back and listen until you believe that this
+country is only capital and labor. You get squeezed in between them. You
+see labor getting more money than you, and howling for still more. You
+see both capital and labor raising prices until you can't live on what
+you get. There are a hundred times as many of you as represent capital
+and labor combined, and all you do is loaf here and growl about things
+being wrong. Why don't you do something? You ought to be running this
+country, but you aren't. You're lazy. You don't even vote. You leave
+running the country to men like Mr. Hendricks here.”
+
+Mr. Hendricks was cheerfully unirritated.
+
+“All right, son,” he said, “I do my bit and like it. Go on. Don't stop
+to insult me. You can do that any time.”
+
+“I've been buying a seditious weekly since I came,” said Willy Cameron.
+“It's preaching a revolution, all right. I'd like to see its foreign
+language copies. They'll never overthrow the government, but they may
+try. Why don't you fellows combine to fight them? Why don't you learn
+how strong you are? Nine-tenths of the country, and milling like sheep
+with a wolf around!”
+
+Mr. Hendricks winked at the doctor.
+
+“What'd I tell you?” whispered Hendricks. “Got them, hasn't he? If
+he'd suggest arming them with pop bottles and attacking that gang of
+anarchists at the cobbler's down the street, they'd do it this minute.”
+
+“All right, son,” he offered. “We'll combine. Anything you say goes.
+And we'll get the Jim Doyle-Woslosky-Louis Akers outfit first. I know a
+first-class brick wall--”
+
+“Akers?” said Willy Cameron. “Do you know him?”
+
+“I do,” said Hendricks. “But that needn't prejudice you against me any.
+He's a bad actor, and as smooth as butter. D'you know what their plan
+is? They expect to take the city. This city! The--” Mr. Hendrick's voice
+was lost in fury.
+
+“Talk!” said the roundsman. “Where'd the police be, I'm asking?”
+
+“The police,” said Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, “are as filled with
+sedition as a whale with corset bones. Also the army. Also the state
+constabulary.”
+
+“The hell they are,” said the roundsman aggressively. But Willy Cameron
+was staring through the smoke from his pipe at the crowd.
+
+“They might do it, for a while,” he said thoughtfully. “There's a
+tremendous foreign population in the mill towns around, isn't there?
+Does anybody in the crowd own a revolver? Or know how to use it if he
+has one.”
+
+“I've got one,” said the insurance agent. “Don't know how it would work.
+Found my wife nailing oilcloth with it the other day.”
+
+“Very well. If we're a representative group, they wouldn't need a
+battery of eight-inch guns, would they?”
+
+A little silence fell on the group. Around them the city went about its
+business; the roar of the day had softened to muffled night sounds, as
+though one said: “The city sleeps. Be still.” The red glare of the mills
+was the fire on the hearth. The hills were its four protecting walls.
+And the night mist covered it like a blanket.
+
+“Here's one representative of the plain people,” said Mr. Hendricks,
+“who is going home to get some sleep. And tomorrow I'll buy me a gun,
+and if I can keep the children out of the yard I'll learn to use it.”
+
+For a long time after he went home that night Willy Cameron paced the
+floor of his upper room, paced it until an irate boarder below hammered
+on his chandelier. Jinx followed him, moving sedately back and forth,
+now and then glancing up with idolatrous eyes. Willy Cameron's mind was
+active and not particularly coordinate. The Cardews and Lily; Edith Boyd
+and Louis Akers; the plain people; an army marching to the city to loot
+and burn and rape, and another army meeting it, saying: “You shall not
+pass”; Abraham Lincoln, Russia, Lily.
+
+His last thought, of course, was of Lily Cardew. He had neglected to
+cover Jinx, and at last the dog leaped on the bed and snuggled close to
+him. He threw an end of the blanket over him and lay there, staring into
+the darkness. He was frightfully lonely. At last he fell asleep, and
+the March wind, coming in through the open window, overturned a paper
+leaning against his collar box, on which he had carefully written:
+
+                     Have suit pressed.
+                     Buy new tie.
+                     Shirts from laundry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Going home that night Mr. Hendricks met Edith Boyd, and accompanied her
+for a block or two. At his corner he stopped.
+
+“How's your mother, Edith?”
+
+It was Mr. Hendricks' business to know his ward thoroughly.
+
+“About the same. She isn't really sick, Mr. Hendricks. She's just low
+spirited, but that's enough. I hate to go home.”
+
+Hendricks hesitated.
+
+“Still, home's a pretty good place,” he said. “Especially for a pretty
+girl.” There was unmistakable meaning in his tone, and she threw up her
+head.
+
+“I've got to get some pleasure out of life, Mr. Hendricks.”
+
+“Sure you have,” he agreed affably. “But playing around with Louis Akers
+is like playing with a hand-grenade, Edith.” She said nothing. “I'd cut
+him out, little girl. He's poor stuff. Mind, I'm not saying he's a fool,
+but he's a bad actor. Now if I was a pretty girl, and there was a nice
+fellow around like this Cameron, I'd be likely to think he was all
+right. He's got brains.” Mr. Hendricks had a great admiration for
+brains.
+
+“I'm sick of men.”
+
+He turned at her tone and eyed her sharply.
+
+“Well, don't judge them all by Akers. This is my corner. Good-night. Not
+afraid to go on by yourself, are you?”
+
+“If I ever was I've had a good many chances to get over it.”
+
+He turned the corner, but stopped and called after her.
+
+“Tell Dan I'll be in to see him soon, Edith. Haven't seen him since he
+came back from France.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+She went on, her steps lagging. She hated going home. When she reached
+the little house she did not go in at once. The March night was not
+cold, and she sat the step, hoping to see her mother's light go out in
+the second-story front windows. But it continued to burn steadily, and
+at last, with a gesture of despair, she rose and unlocked the door.
+
+Almost at once she heard footsteps above, and a peevish voice.
+
+“That you, Edie?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“D'you mind bringing up the chloroform liniment and rubbing my back?”
+
+“I'll bring it, mother.”
+
+She found it on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen. She could hear
+the faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor,
+and then silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her,
+and something crunched under her foot. She felt like screaming. That new
+clerk at the store was always talking about homes. What did he know
+of squalid city houses, with their insects and rats, their damp, moldy
+cellars, their hateful plumbing? A thought struck her. She lighted the
+gas and stared around. It was as she had expected. The dishes had not
+been washed. They were piled in the sink, and a soiled dish-towel had
+been thrown over them.
+
+She lowered the gas and went upstairs. The hardness had, somehow, gone
+out of her when she thought of Willy Cameron.
+
+“Back bad again, is it?” she asked.
+
+“It's always bad. But I've got a pain in my left shoulder and down my
+arm that's driving me crazy. I couldn't wash the dishes.”
+
+“Never mind the dishes. I'm not tired. Now crawl into bed and let me rub
+you.”
+
+Mrs. Boyd complied. She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties,
+who had set out to conquer life and had been conquered by it. The
+hopeless drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by the
+incident of her widowhood, and stretched ahead hopelessly. She had
+accepted Dan's going to France resignedly, with neither protest nor
+undue anxiety. She had never been very close to Dan, although she
+loved him more than she did Edith. She was the sort of woman who has
+no fundamental knowledge of men. They had to be fed and mended for, and
+they had strange physical wants that made a great deal of trouble in the
+world. But mostly they ate and slept and went to work in the morning,
+and came home at night smelling of sweat and beer.
+
+There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life,
+however. And through it she had seen Edith well married, with perhaps
+a girl to do the house work, and a room where Edith's mother could fold
+her hands and sit in the long silences without thought that were her
+sanctuary against life.
+
+“Is that the place, mother?”
+
+“Yes.” Edith's unwonted solicitude gave her courage.
+
+“Edie, I want to ask you something.”
+
+“Well?” But the girl stiffened.
+
+“Lou hasn't been round, lately.”
+
+“That's all over, mother.”
+
+“You mean you've quarreled? Oh, Edie, and me planning you'd have a nice
+home and everything.”
+
+“He never meant to marry me, if that's what you mean.”
+
+Mrs. Boyd turned on her back impatiently.
+
+“You could have had him. He was crazy about you. Trouble is with you,
+you think you've got a fellow hard and fast, and you begin acting up.
+Then, first thing you know--”
+
+Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl. “Listen,
+mother,” she said. “I give you my word, Lou'd run a mile if he thought
+any girl wanted to marry him. I know him better than you do. If any one
+ever does rope him in, he'll stick about three months, and then beat
+it.”
+
+“I don't know why we have to have men, anyhow. Put out the gas, Edie.
+No, don't open the window. The night air makes me cough.”
+
+Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen. Something
+would have to be done about the house. Dan was taking to staying out
+at nights, because the untidy rooms repelled him. And there was the
+question of food. Her mother had never learned to cook, and recently
+more and more of the food had been something warmed out of a tin. If
+only they could keep a girl, one who would scrub and wash dishes. There
+was a room on the third floor, an attic, full now of her mother's untidy
+harborings of years, that might be used for a servant. Or she could move
+up there, and they could get a roomer. The rent would pay a woman to
+come in now and then to clean up.
+
+She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had in
+mind was Willy Cameron. But the knowledge that he knew the Cardews
+had somehow changed all that. She couldn't picture him going from this
+sordid house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still, returning to it
+afterwards. She saw him there, at the Cardews, surrounded by bowing
+flunkies--a picture of wealth gained from the movies--and by women
+who moved indolently, trailing through long vistas of ball room and
+conservatory in low gowns without sleeves, and draped with ropes of
+pearls. Women who smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge for
+money.
+
+She hated the Cardews.
+
+On her way to her room she paused at her mother's door.
+
+“Asleep yet, mother?”
+
+“No. Feel like I'm not going to sleep at all.”
+
+“Mother,” she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, “we've got to
+change things around here. It isn't fair to Dan, for one thing. We've
+got to get a girl to do the work. And to do that we'll have to rent a
+room.”
+
+She heard the thin figure twist impatiently.
+
+“I've never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I'm not going to let
+the neighbors begin looking down on me now.”
+
+“Now, listen, mother--”
+
+“Go on away, Edie.”
+
+“But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out all
+but three evenings a week. I don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the store
+isn't satisfied where he is. He's got a dog, and they haven't any yard.
+We've got a yard.”
+
+“I won't be bothered with any dog,” said the querulous voice, from the
+darkness.
+
+With a gesture of despair the girl turned away. What was the use,
+anyhow? Let them go on, then, her mother and Dan. Only let them let her
+go on, too. She had tried her best to change herself, the house, the
+whole rotten mess. But they wouldn't let her.
+
+Her mood of disgust continued the next morning. When, at eleven o'clock,
+Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at him
+somberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did it
+matter? So long as something took her for a little while away from
+the sordidness of home, its stale odors, its untidiness, its querulous
+inmates.
+
+“What's got into you lately, Edith?” he inquired, lowering his voice.
+“You used to be the best little pal ever. Now the other day, when I
+called up--”
+
+“Had the headache,” she said laconically. “Well?”
+
+“Want to play around this evening?”
+
+She hesitated. Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be that
+night, and her face hardened. Had any one told Edith that she was
+beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, with
+his exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and his
+sentimental whistling, she would have laughed. But he gave her something
+that the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of self-respect. It
+was perhaps not so much that she cared for him, as that he enabled her
+to care more for herself.
+
+But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew.
+
+“I might, depending on what you've got to offer.”
+
+“I've got a car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outside
+work, and the organization came over. I've been after it for six months.
+We can have a ride, and supper somewhere. How's the young man with the
+wooden leg?”
+
+“If you want to know I'll call him out and let him tell you.”
+
+“Quick, aren't you?” He smiled down at where she stood, firmly
+entrenched behind a show case. “Well, don't fall in love with him.
+That's all. I'm a bad man when I'm jealous.”
+
+He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him. He did
+not know, nor would have cared had he known, that her acceptance of his
+invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, and
+of the fact that Willy Cameron was dining at the Cardews that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Howard Cardew was in his dressing room, sitting before the fire. His
+man had put out his dinner clothes and retired, and Howard was sifting
+before the fire rather listlessly.
+
+In Grace's room, adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices.
+Before Lily's return, now and then when he was tired Grace and he had
+dined by the fire in her boudoir. It had been very restful. He was still
+in love with his wife, although, as in most marriages, there was one who
+gave more than the other. In this case it was Grace who gave, and Howard
+who received. But he loved her. He never thought of other women. Only
+his father had never let him forget her weaknesses.
+
+Sometimes he was afraid that he was looking at Grace with his father's
+eyes, rather than his own.
+
+He had put up a hard fight with his father. Not about Grace. That was
+over and done with, although it had been bad while it lasted. But his
+real struggle had been to preserve himself, to keep his faiths and his
+ideals, and even his personality. In the inessentials he had yielded
+easily, and so bought peace. Or perhaps a truce, of a sort. But for the
+essentials he was standing with a sort of dogged conviction that if he
+lowered his flag it would precipitate a crisis. He was not brilliant,
+but he was intelligent, progressive and kindly. He knew that his father
+considered him both stupid and obstinate.
+
+There was going to be a strike. The quarrel now was between Anthony's
+curt “Let them strike,” and his own conviction that a strike at this
+time might lead to even worse things. The men's demands were exorbitant.
+No business, no matter how big, could concede them and live. But Howard
+was debating another phase of the situation.
+
+Not all the mills would go down. A careful canvass of some of the other
+independent concerns had shown the men eighty, ninety, even one hundred
+per cent, loyal. Those were the smaller plants, where there had always
+been a reciprocal good feeling between the owners and the men; there the
+men knew the owners, and the owners knew the men, who had been with them
+for years.
+
+But the Cardew Mills would go down. There had been no liaison between
+the Cardews and the workmen. The very magnitude of the business forbade
+that. And for many years, too, the Cardews had shown a gross callousness
+to the welfare of the laborers. Long ago he had urged on his father the
+progressive attitude of other steel men, but Anthony had jeered, and
+when Howard had forced the issue and gained concessions, it was too
+late. The old grievances remained in too many minds. To hate the Cardews
+bad become a habit. Their past sins would damn them now. The strike was
+wrong, a wicked thing. It was without reason and without aim. The men
+were knocking a hole in the boat that floated them. But--
+
+There was a tap at his door, and he called “Come in.” From her babyhood
+Lily had had her own peculiar method of signaling that she stood
+without, a delicate rapid tattoo of finger nails on the panel. He
+watched smilingly for her entrance.
+
+“Well!” she said. “Thank goodness you haven't started to dress. I tried
+to get here earlier, but my hair wouldn't go up, I want to make a good
+impression to-night.”
+
+“Is there a dinner on? I didn't know it.”
+
+“Not a dinner. A young man. I came to see what you are going to wear.”
+
+“Really! Well, I haven't a great variety. The ordinary dinner dress of a
+gentleman doesn't lend itself to any extraordinary ornamentation. If
+you like, I'll pin on that medal from the Iron and Steel--Who's coming,
+Lily?”
+
+“Grayson says grandfather's dining out.”
+
+“I believe so.”
+
+“What a piece of luck! I mean--you know what he'd say if I asked him not
+to dress for dinner.”
+
+“Am I to gather that you are asking me?”
+
+“You wouldn't mind, would you? He hasn't any evening clothes.”
+
+“Look here, Lily,” said her father, sitting upright. “Who is coming here
+to-night? And why should he upset the habits of the entire family?”
+
+“Willy Cameron. You know, father. And he has the queerest ideas about
+us. Honestly. And I want him to like us, and it's such a good chance,
+with grandfather out.”
+
+He ignored that.
+
+“How about our liking him?”
+
+“Oh, you'll like him. Everybody does. You will try to make a good
+impression, won't you, father?”
+
+He got up, and resting his hands on her shoulders, smiled down into her
+upturned face. “I will,” he said. “But I think I should tell you that
+your anxiety arouses deep and black suspicions in my mind. Am I to
+understand that you have fixed your young affections on this Willy
+Cameron, and that you want your family to help you in your dark
+designs?”
+
+Lily laughed.
+
+“I love him,” she said. “I really do. I could listen to him for hours.
+But people don't want to marry Willy Cameron. They just love him.”
+
+There was born in Howard's mind a vision of a nice pink and white young
+man, quite sexless, whom people loved but did not dream of marrying.
+
+“I see,” he said slowly. “Like a puppy.”
+
+“Not at all like a puppy.”
+
+“I'm afraid I'm not subtle, my dear. Well, ring for Adams, and--you
+think he wouldn't care for the medal?”
+
+“I think he'd love it. He'd probably think some king gave it to you. I'm
+sure he believes that you and grandfather habitually hobnob with kings.”
+ She turned to go out. “He doesn't approve of kings.”
+
+“You are making me extremely uneasy,” was her father's shot. “I only
+hope I acquit myself well.”
+
+“Hurry, then. He is sure to be exactly on the hour.” Howard was still
+smiling slightly to himself when, a half-hour later, he descended
+the staircase. But he had some difficulty first in reconciling his
+preconceived idea of Willy with the tall young man, with the faint
+unevenness of step, who responded to his greeting so calmly and so
+easily. “We are always glad to see any of Lily's friends.”
+
+“It is very good of you to let me come, sir.”
+
+Why, the girl was blind. This was a man, a fine, up-standing fellow,
+with a clean-cut, sensitive face, and honest, almost beautiful eyes. How
+did women judge men, anyhow?
+
+And, try as he would, Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willy
+Cameron that night. He tried him out on a number of things. In religion,
+for instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the church had not
+come up fully during the war.
+
+“Religion isn't a matter only of churches any more,” said Mr. Cameron.
+“It has to go out into the streets, I think, sir. It's a-well, Christ
+left the tabernacle, you remember.”
+
+That was all right. Howard felt that himself sometimes. He was a
+vestryman at Saint Peter's, and although he felt very devout during the
+service, especially during the offertory, when the music filled the fine
+old building, he was often conscious that he shed his spirituality at
+the door, when he glanced at the sky to see what were the prospects for
+an afternoon's golf.
+
+In politics Willy Cameron was less satisfactory.
+
+“I haven't decided, yet,” he said. “I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916, but
+although I suppose parties are necessary, I don't like to feel that I am
+party-bound. Anyhow, the old party lines are gone. I rather look--”
+
+He stopped. That terrible speech of Edith Boyd's still rankled.
+
+“Go on, Willy,” said Lily. “I told them they'd love to you talk.”
+
+“That's really all, sir,” said Willy Cameron, unhappily. “I am a Scot,
+and to start a Scot on reform is fatal.”
+
+“Ah, you believe in reform?”
+
+“We are not doing very well as we are, sir.”
+
+“I should like extremely to know how you feel about things,” said
+Howard, gravely.
+
+“Only this: So long as one party is, or is considered, the
+representative of capital, the vested interests, and the other of labor,
+the great mass of the people who are neither the one nor the other
+cannot be adequately represented.”
+
+“And the solution?”
+
+“Perhaps a new party. Or better still, a liberalizing of the
+Republican.”
+
+“Before long,” said Lily suddenly, “there will be no state. There will
+be enough for everybody, and nobody will have too much.”
+
+Howard smiled at her indulgently.
+
+“How do you expect to accomplish this ideal condition?”
+
+“That's the difficulty about it,” said Lily, thoughtfully. “It means a
+revolution. It would be peaceful, though. The thing to do is to convince
+people that it is simple justice, and then they will divide what they
+have.”
+
+“Why, Lily!” Grace's voice was anxious. “That's Socialism.”
+
+But Howard only smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject. Every
+one had these attacks of idealism in youth. They were the exaggerated
+altruism of adolescence; a part of its dreams and aspirations. He
+changed the subject.
+
+“I like the boy,” he said to Grace, later, over the cribbage board in
+the morning room. “He has character, and a queer sort of magnetism. It
+mightn't be a bad thing--”
+
+Grace was counting.
+
+“I forgot to tell you; I think she refused Pink Denslow the other day.”
+
+“I rather gathered, from the way she spoke of young Cameron, that she
+isn't interested there either.”
+
+“Not a bit,” said Grace, complacently. “You needn't worry about him.”
+
+Howard smiled. He was often conscious that after all the years of their
+common life, his wife's mind and his traveled along parallel lines that
+never met.
+
+Willy Cameron was extremely happy. He had brought his pipe along,
+although without much hope, but the moment they were settled by the
+library fire Lily had suggested it.
+
+“You know you can't talk unless you have it in your hand to wave
+around,” she said. “And I want to know such a lot of things. Where you
+live, and all that.”
+
+“I live in a boarding house. More house than board, really. And the
+work's all right. I'm going to study metallurgy some day. There are
+night courses at the college, only I haven't many nights.”
+
+He had lighted his pipe, and kept his eyes on it mostly, or on the fire.
+He was afraid to look at Lily, because there was something he could not
+keep out of his eyes, but must keep from her. It had been both better
+and worse than he had anticipated, seeing her in her home. Lily herself
+had not changed. She was her wonderful self, in spite of her frock and
+her surroundings. But the house, her people, with their ease of wealth
+and position, Grace's slight condescension, the elaborate simplicity of
+dining, the matter-of-course-ness of the service. It was not that Lily
+was above him. That was ridiculous. But she was far removed from him.
+
+“There is something wrong with you, Willy,” she said unexpectedly. “You
+are not happy, or you are not well. Which is it? You are awfully thin,
+for one thing.”
+
+“I'm all right,” he said, evading her eyes.
+
+“Are you lonely? I don't mean now, of course.”
+
+“Well, I've got a dog. That helps. He's a helpless sort of mutt. I carry
+his meat home from the shop in my pocket, and I feel like a butcher's
+wagon, sometimes. But he's taken a queer sort of liking to me, and he is
+something to talk to.”
+
+“Why didn't you bring him along?”
+
+Dogs were forbidden in the Cardew house, by old Anthony's order, as were
+pipes, especially old and beloved ones, but Lily was entirely reckless.
+
+“He did follow me. He's probably sitting on the doorstep now. I tried to
+send him back, but he's an obstinate little beast.”
+
+Lily got up.
+
+“I am going to bring him in,” she said. “And if you'll ring that bell
+we'll get him some dinner.”
+
+“I'll get him, while you ring.”
+
+Half an hour later Anthony Cardew entered his house. He had spent a
+miserable evening. Some young whipper snapper who employed a handful of
+men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew, was a clog in
+the wheel of progress. Not in so many words, but he had said: “Tempora
+mutantur, Mr. Cardew. And the wise employer meets those changes
+half-way.”
+
+“You young fools want to go all the way.”
+
+“Not at all. We'll meet them half-way, and stop.”
+
+“Bah!” said Anthony Cardew, and had left the club in a temper. The club
+was going to the dogs, along with the rest of the world. There was only
+a handful of straight-thinking men like himself left in it. Lot of young
+cravens, letting their men dominate them and intimidate them.
+
+So he slammed into his house, threw off his coat and hat, and--sniffed.
+A pungent, acrid odor was floating through a partly closed door. Anthony
+Cardew flung open the door and entered.
+
+Before the fire, on a deep velvet couch, sat his granddaughter. Beside
+her was a thin young man in a gray suit, and the thin young man was
+waving an old pipe about, and saying:
+
+“Tempora mutantur, Lily. The wise employer--”
+
+“I am afraid, sir,” said Anthony, in a terrible voice, “that you are
+not acquainted with the rules of my house. I object to pipes. There are
+cigars in the humidor behind you.”
+
+“Very sorry, Mr. Cardew,” Willy Cameron explained. “I didn't know. I'll
+put it away, sir.”
+
+But Anthony was not listening. His eyes had traveled from an empty
+platter on the hearth-rug to a deep chair where Jinx, both warm and
+fed at the same time, and extremely distended with meat, lay sleeping.
+Anthony put out a hand and pressed the bell beside him.
+
+“I want you to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather.” Lily was rather pale, but
+she had the Cardew poise. “He was in the camp when I was.”
+
+Grayson entered on that, however, and Anthony pointed to Jinx.
+
+“Put that dog out,” he said, and left the room, his figure rigid and
+uncompromising.
+
+“Grayson,” Lily said, white to the lips, “that dog is to remain here.
+He's perfectly quiet. And, will you find Ellen and ask her to come
+here?”
+
+“Haven't I made enough trouble?” asked Willy Cameron, unhappily. “I can
+see her again, you know.”
+
+“She's crazy to see you, Willy. And besides--”
+
+Grayson had gone, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+“Don't you see?” she said. “The others have always submitted. I did,
+too. But I can't keep it up, Willy. I can't live here and let him treat
+me like that. Or my friends. I know what will happen. I'll run away,
+like Aunt Elinor.”
+
+“You must not do that, Lily.” He was very grave.
+
+“Why not? They think she is unhappy. She isn't. She ran away and married
+a man she cared about. I may call you up some day and ask you to marry
+me!” she added, less tensely. “You would be an awfully good husband, you
+know.”
+
+She looked up at him, still angry, but rather amused with this new
+conceit.
+
+“Don't!”
+
+She was startled by the look on his face.
+
+“You see,” he said painfully, “what only amuses you in that idea
+is--well, it doesn't amuse me, Lily.”
+
+“I only meant--” she was very uncomfortable. “You are so real and
+dependable and kind, and I--”
+
+“I know what you mean. Like Jinx, there. I'm sorry! I didn't mean that.
+But you must not talk about marrying me unless you mean it. You see, I
+happen to care.”
+
+“Willy!”
+
+“It won't hurt you to know, although I hadn't meant to tell you. And of
+course, you know, I am not asking you to marry me. Only I'd like you to
+feel that you can count on me, always. The one person a woman can count
+on is the man who loves her.”
+
+And after a little silence:
+
+“You see, I know you are not in love with me. I cared from the
+beginning, but I always knew that.”
+
+“I wish I did.” She was rather close to tears. She had not felt at
+all like that with Pink. But, although she knew he was suffering, his
+quietness deceived her. She had the theory of youth about love, that it
+was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love
+demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and then asks. She could
+not know how he felt about his love for her, that it lay in a sort of
+cathedral shrine in his heart. There were holy days when saints left
+their niches and were shown in city streets, but until that holy day
+came they remained in the church.
+
+“You will remember that, won't you?”
+
+“I'll remember, Willy.”
+
+“I won't be a nuisance, you know. I've never had any hope, so I won't
+make you unhappy. And don't be unhappy about me, Lily. I would rather
+love you, even knowing I can't have you, than be loved by anybody else.”
+
+Perhaps, had he shown more hurt, he would have made it seem more real to
+her. But he was frightfully anxious not to cause her pain.
+
+“I'm really very happy, loving you,” he added, and smiled down at her
+reassuringly. But he had for all that a wild primitive impulse which
+almost overcame him for a moment, to pick her up in his arms and carry
+her out the door and away with him. Somewhere, anywhere. Away from that
+grim old house, and that despotic little man, to liberty and happiness
+and--William Wallace Cameron.
+
+Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired
+painstakingly about his mother, and his uncle in California, and the
+Presbyterian minister. But she was uncomfortable and uneasy and refused
+to sit down, and Willy watched her furtively slipping out again with a
+slight frown. It was not right, somehow, this dividing of the world into
+classes, those who served and those who were served. But he had an idea
+that it was those below who made the distinction, nowadays. It was the
+masses who insisted on isolating the classes. They made kings, perhaps
+that they might some day reach up and pull them off their thrones. At
+the top of the stairs Ellen found Mademoiselle, who fixed her with cold
+eyes.
+
+“What were you doing down there,” she demanded.
+
+“Miss Lily sent for me, to see that young man I told you about.”
+
+“How dare you go down? And into the library?”
+
+“I've just told you,” said Ellen, her face setting. “She sent for me.”
+
+“Why didn't you say you were in bed?”
+
+“I'm no liar, Mademoiselle. Besides, I guess it's no crime to see a boy
+I've known all his life, and his mother and me like sisters.”
+
+“You are a fool,” said Mademoiselle, and turning clumped back in her
+bedroom slippers to her room.
+
+Ellen went up to her room. Heretofore she had given her allegiance to
+Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew, and in a more remote fashion, to Howard.
+But Ellen, crying angry tears in her small white bed that night, sensed
+a new division in the family, with Mademoiselle and Anthony and Howard
+and Grace on one side, and Lily standing alone, fighting valiantly for
+the right to live her own life, to receive her own friends, and the
+friends of her friends, even though one of these latter might be a
+servant in her own house.
+
+Yet Ellen, with the true snobbishness of the servants' hall, disapproved
+of Lily's course while she admired it.
+
+“But they're all against her,” Ellen reflected. “The poor thing! And
+just because of Willy Cameron. Well, I'll stand by her, if they throw me
+out for it.”
+
+In her romantic head there formed strange, delightful visions. Lily
+eloping with Willy Cameron, assisted by herself. Lily in the little
+Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her
+charm, and being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village, and
+the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first call, and were
+cards necessary?
+
+Into Ellen's not very hard-working but monotonous life had comes its
+first dream of romance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+For three weeks Lily did not see Louis Akers, nor did she go back to the
+house on Cardew Way. She hated doing clandestine or forbidden things,
+and she was, too, determined to add nothing to the tenseness she began
+to realize existed at home. She went through her days, struggling to fit
+herself again into the old environment, reading to her mother,
+lending herself with assumed enthusiasm to such small gayeties as Lent
+permitted, and doing penance in a dozen ways for that stolen afternoon
+with Louis Akers.
+
+She had been forbidden to see him again. It had come about by Grace's
+confession to Howard as to Lily's visit to the Doyles. He had not
+objected to that.
+
+“Unless Doyle talks his rubbish to her,” he said. “She said something
+the other night that didn't sound like her. Was any one else there?”
+
+“An attorney named Akers,” she said.
+
+And at that Howard had scowled.
+
+“She'd better keep away altogether,” he observed, curtly. “She oughtn't
+to meet men like that.”
+
+“Shall I tell her?”
+
+“I'll tell her,” he said. And tell her he did, not too tactfully, and
+man-like shielding her by not telling her his reasons.
+
+“He's not the sort of man I want you to know,” he finished. “That ought
+to be sufficient. Have you seen him since?”
+
+Lily flushed, but she did not like to lie.
+
+“I had tea with him one afternoon. I often have tea with men, father.
+You know that.”
+
+“You knew I wouldn't approve, or you would have mentioned it.”
+
+Because he felt that he had been rather ruthless with her, he stopped
+in at the jeweler's the next morning and sent her a tiny jeweled watch.
+Lily was touched and repentant. She made up her mind not to see Louis
+Akers again, and found a certain relief in the decision. She was
+conscious that he had a peculiar attraction for her, a purely emotional
+appeal. He made her feel alive. Even when she disapproved of him, she
+was conscious of him. She put him resolutely out of her mind, to have
+him reappear in her dreams, not as a lover, but as some one dominant and
+insistent, commanding her to do absurd, inconsequential things.
+
+Now and then she saw Willy Cameron, and they had gone back, apparently,
+to the old friendly relationship. They walked together, and once they
+went to the moving pictures, to Grace's horror. But there were no
+peanuts to eat, and instead of the jingling camp piano there was an
+orchestra, and it was all strangely different. Even Willy Cameron was
+different. He was very silent, and on the way home he did not once speak
+of the plain people.
+
+Louis Akers had both written and telephoned her, but she made excuses,
+and did not see him, and the last time he had hung up the receiver
+abruptly. She felt an odd mixture of relief and regret.
+
+Then, about the middle of April, she saw him again.
+
+Spring was well on by that time. Before the Doyle house on Cardew Way
+the two horse-chestnuts were showing great red-brown buds, ready to fall
+into leaf with the first warm day, and Elinor, assisted by Jennie,
+the elderly maid, was finishing her spring house-cleaning. The Cardew
+mansion showed window-boxes at each window, filled by the florist with
+spring flowers, to be replaced later by summer ones. A potted primrose
+sat behind the plate glass of the Eagle Pharmacy, among packets of
+flower seeds and spring tonics, its leaves occasionally nibbled by
+the pharmacy cat, out of some atavistic craving survived through long
+generations of city streets.
+
+The children's playground near the Lily furnace was ready; Howard Cardew
+himself had overseen the locations of the swings and chute-the-chutes.
+And at Friendship an army of workers was sprinkling and tamping the turf
+of the polo field. After two years of war, there was to be polo again
+that spring and early summer. The Cherry Hill Hunt team was still
+intact, although some of the visiting outfits had been badly shot to
+pieces by the war. But the war was over. It lay behind, a nightmare to
+be forgotten as soon as possible. It had left its train of misery and
+debt, but--spring had come.
+
+On a pleasant Monday, Lily motored out to the field with Pink Denslow.
+It had touched her that he still wanted her, and it had offered an
+escape from her own worries. She was fighting a sense of failure that
+day. It seemed impossible to reconcile the warring elements at home.
+Old Anthony and his son were quarreling over the strike, and Anthony was
+jibing constantly at Howard over the playground. It was not so much her
+grandfather's irritability that depressed her as his tyranny over the
+household, and his attitude toward her mother roused her to bitter
+resentment.
+
+The night before she had left the table after one of his scourging
+speeches, only to have what amounted to a scene with her mother
+afterward.
+
+“But I cannot sit by while he insults you, mother.”
+
+“It is just his way. I don't mind, really. Oh, Lily, don't destroy what
+I have built up so carefully. It hurts your father so.”
+
+“Sometimes,” Lily said slowly, “he makes me think Aunt Elinor's husband
+was right. He believes a lot of things--”
+
+“What things?” Grace had asked, suspiciously.
+
+Lily hesitated.
+
+“Well, a sort of Socialism, for one thing, only it isn't exactly that.
+It's individualism, really, or I think so; the sort of thing that this
+house stifles.” Grace was too horrified for speech. “I don't want to
+hurt you, mother, but don't you see? He tyrannizes over all of us, and
+it's bad for our souls. Why should he bellow at the servants? Or talk to
+you the way he did to-night?” She smiled faintly. “We're all drowning,
+and I want to swim, that's all. Mr. Doyle--”
+
+“You are talking nonsense,” said Grace sharply. “You have got a lot of
+ideas from that wretched house, and now you think they are your own.
+Lily, I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles I shall take
+you abroad.”
+
+Lily turned and walked out of the room, and there was something
+suggestive of old Anthony in the pitch of her shoulders. Her anger did
+not last long, but her uneasiness persisted. Already she knew that she
+was older in many ways than Grace; she had matured in the past year more
+than her mother in twenty, and she felt rather like a woman obeying the
+mandates of a child.
+
+But on that pleasant Monday she was determined to be happy.
+
+“Old world begins to look pretty, doesn't it?” said Pink, breaking in on
+her thoughts.
+
+“Lovely.”
+
+“It's not a bad place to live in, after all,” said Pink, trying to cheer
+his own rather unhappy humor. “There is always spring to expect, when we
+get low in winter. And there are horses and dogs, and--and blossoms on
+the trees, and all that.” What he meant was, “If there isn't love.”
+
+“You are perfectly satisfied with things just as they are, aren't you?”
+ Lily asked, half enviously.
+
+“Well, I'd change some things.” He stopped. He wasn't going to go round
+sighing like a furnace. “But it's a pretty good sort of place. I'm for
+it.”
+
+“Have you sent your ponies out?”
+
+“Only two. I want to show you one I bought from the Government almost
+for nothing. Remount man piped me off. Light in flesh, rather, but fast.
+Handy, light mouth--all he needs is a bit of training.”
+
+They had been in the open country for some time, but now they were
+approaching the Cardew's Friendship plant. The furnaces had covered the
+fields with a thin deposit of reddish ore dust. Such blighted grass
+as grew had already lost its fresh green, and the trees showed stunted
+blossoms. The one oasis of freshness was the polo field itself,
+carefully irrigated by underground pipes. The field, with its stables
+and grandstand, had been the gift of Anthony Cardew, thereby promoting
+much discussion with his son. For Howard had wanted the land for certain
+purposes of his own, to build a clubhouse for the men at the plant, with
+a baseball field. Finding his father obdurate in that, he had urged that
+the field be thrown open to the men and their families, save immediately
+preceding and during the polo season. But he had failed there, too.
+Anthony Cardew had insisted, and with some reason, that to use
+the grounds for band concerts and baseball games, for picnics and
+playgrounds, would ruin the turf for its legitimate purpose.
+
+Howard had subsequently found other land, and out of his own private
+means had carried out his plans, but the location was less desirable.
+And he knew what his father refused to believe, that the polo ground,
+taking up space badly needed for other purposes, was a continual
+grievance.
+
+Suddenly Pink stared ahead.
+
+“I say,” he said, “have they changed the rule about that sort of thing?”
+
+He pointed to the field. A diamond had been roughly outlined on it with
+bags of sand, and a ball-game was in progress, boys playing, but a long
+line of men watching from the side lines.
+
+“I don't know, but it doesn't hurt anything.”
+
+“Ruins the turf, that's all.” He stopped the car and got out. “Look at
+this sign. It says 'ball-playing or any trespassing forbidden on these
+grounds.' I'll clear them off.”
+
+“I wouldn't, Pink. They may be ugly.”
+
+But he only smiled at her reassuringly, and went off. She watched him
+go with many misgivings, his sturdy young figure, his careful dress, his
+air of the young aristocrat, easy, domineering, unconsciously insolent.
+They would resent him, she knew, those men and boys. And after all, why
+should they not use the field? There was injustice in that sign.
+
+Yet her liking and real sympathy were with Pink.
+
+“Pink!” she called, “Come back here. Let them alone.”
+
+He turned toward her a face slightly flushed with indignation and set
+with purpose.
+
+“Sorry. Can't do it, Lily. This sort of thing's got to be stopped.”
+
+She felt, rather hopelessly, that he was wrong, but that he was right,
+too. The grounds were private property. She sat back and watched.
+
+Pink was angry. She could hear his voice, see his gestures. He was
+shooing them off like a lot of chickens, and they were laughing. The
+game had stopped, and the side lines were pressing forward. There was a
+moment's debate, with raised voices, a sullen muttering from the crowd,
+and the line closing into a circle. The last thing she saw before it
+closed was a man lunging at Pink, and his counter-feint. Then some one
+was down. If it was Pink he was not out, for there was fighting still
+going on. The laborers working on the grounds were running.
+
+Lily stood up in the car, pale and sickened. She was only vaguely
+conscious of a car that suddenly left the road, and dashed recklessly
+across the priceless turf, but she did see, and recognize, Louis Akers
+as he leaped from it and flinging men this way and that disappeared into
+the storm center. She could hear his voice, too, loud and angry, and see
+the quick dispersal of the crowd. Some of the men, foreigners, passed
+quite near to her, and eyed her either sullenly or with mocking smiles.
+She was quite oblivious of them. She got out and ran with shaking knees
+across to where Pink lay on the grass, his profile white and sharply
+chiseled, with two or three men bending over him.
+
+Pink was dead. Those brutes had killed him. Pink.
+
+He was not dead. He was moving his arms.
+
+Louis Akers straightened when he saw her and took off his hat.
+
+“Nothing to worry about, Miss Cardew,” he said. “But what sort of
+idiocy--! Hello, old man, all right now?”
+
+Pink sat up, then rose stiffly and awkwardly. He had a cut over one eye,
+and he felt for his handkerchief.
+
+“Fouled me,” he said. “Filthy lot, anyhow. Wonder they didn't walk on me
+when I was down.” He turned to the grounds-keeper, who had come up. “You
+ought to know better than to let those fellows cut up this turf,” he
+said angrily. “What're you here for anyhow?”
+
+But he was suddenly very sick. He looked at Lily, his face drawn and
+blanched.
+
+“Got me right,” he muttered. “I--”
+
+“Get into my car,” said Akers, not too amiably. “I'll drive you to the
+stables. I'll be back, Miss Cardew.”
+
+Lily went back to the car and sat down. She was shocked and startled,
+but she was strangely excited. The crowd had beaten Pink, but it had
+obeyed Louis Akers like a master. He was a man. He was a strong man. He
+must be built of iron. Mentally she saw him again, driving recklessly
+over the turf, throwing the men to right and left, hoarse with anger,
+tall, dominant, powerful.
+
+It was more important that a man be a man than that he be a gentleman.
+
+After a little he drove back across the field, sending the car forward
+again at reckless speed. Some vision of her grandfather, watching the
+machine careening over the still soft and spongy turf and leaving deep
+tracks behind it, made her smile. Akers leaped out.
+
+“No need to worry about our young friend,” he said cheerfully. “He is
+alternately being very sick at his stomach and cursing the poor working
+man. But I think I'd better drive you back. He'll be poor company, I'll
+say that.”
+
+He looked at her, his bold eyes challenging, belying the amiable
+gentleness of his smile.
+
+“I'd better let him know.”
+
+“I told him. He isn't strong for me. Always hate the fellow who saves
+you, you know. But he didn't object.”
+
+Lily moved into his car obediently. She felt a strange inclination to do
+what this man wanted. Rather, it was an inability to oppose him. He went
+on, big, strong, and imperious. And he carried one along. It was easy
+and queer. But she did, unconsciously, what she had never done with Pink
+or any other man; she sat as far away from him on the wide seat as she
+could.
+
+He noticed that, and smiled ahead, over the wheel. He had been
+infuriated over her avoidance of him, but if she was afraid of him--
+
+“Bully engine in this car. Never have to change a gear.”
+
+“You certainly made a road through the field.”
+
+“They'll fix that, all right. Are you warm enough?”
+
+“Yes, thank you.”
+
+“You have been treating me very badly, you know, Miss Cardew.”
+
+“I have been frightfully busy.”
+
+“That's not true, and you know it. You've been forbidden to see me,
+haven't you?”
+
+“I have been forbidden to go back to Cardew Way.”
+
+“They don't know about me, then?”
+
+“There isn't very much to know, is there?”
+
+“I wish you wouldn't fence with me,” he said impatiently. “I told you
+once I was frank. I want you to answer one question. If this thing
+rested with you, would you see me again?”
+
+“I think I would, Mr. Akers,” she said honestly.
+
+Had she ever known a man like the one beside her, she would not have
+given him that opportunity. He glanced sharply around, and then suddenly
+stopped the car and turned toward her.
+
+“I'm crazy about you, and you know it,” he said. And roughly, violently,
+he caught her to him and kissed her again and again. Her arms were
+pinned to her sides, and she was helpless. After a brief struggle to
+free herself she merely shut her eyes and waited for him to stop.
+
+“I'm mad about you,” he whispered.
+
+Then he freed her. Lily wanted to feel angry, but she felt only
+humiliated and rather soiled. There were men like that, then, men who
+gave way to violent impulses, who lost control of themselves and had to
+apologize afterwards. She hated him, but she was sorry for him, too. He
+would have to be so humble. She was staring ahead, white and waiting for
+his explanation, when he released the brake and started the car forward
+slowly.
+
+“Well?” he said, with a faint smile.
+
+“You will have to apologize for that, Mr. Akers.”
+
+“I'm damned if I will. That man back there, Denslow--he's the sort who
+would kiss a girl and then crawl about it afterwards. I won't. I'm not
+sorry. A strong man can digest his own sins. I kissed you because I
+wanted to. It wasn't an impulse. I meant to when we started. And you're
+only doing the conventional thing and pretending to be angry. You're not
+angry. Good God, girl, be yourself once in a while.”
+
+“I'm afraid I don't understand you.” Her voice was haughty. “And I must
+ask you to stop the car and let me get out.”
+
+“I'll do nothing of the sort, of course. Now get this straight, Miss
+Cardew. I haven't done you any harm. I may have a brutal way of showing
+that I'm crazy about you, but it's my way. I'm a man, and I'm no hand
+kisser.”
+
+And when she said nothing:
+
+“You think I'm unrestrained, and I am, in a way. But if I did what I
+really want to do, I'd not take you home at all. I'd steal you. You've
+done something to me, God knows what.”
+
+“Then I can only say I'm sorry,” Lily said slowly.
+
+She felt strangely helpless and rather maternal. With all his strength
+this sort of man needed to be protected from himself. She felt no
+answering thrill whatever to his passion, but as though, having told her
+he loved her, he had placed a considerable responsibility in her hands.
+
+“I'll be good now,” he said. “Mind, I'm not sorry. But I don't want to
+worry you.”
+
+He made no further overtures to her during the ride, but he was neither
+sulky nor sheepish. He feigned an anxiety as to the threatened strike,
+and related at great length and with extreme cleverness of invention his
+own efforts to prevent it.
+
+“I've a good bit of influence with the A.F.L.,” he said. “Doyle's in bad
+with them, but I'm still solid. But it's coming, sure as shooting. And
+they'll win, too.”
+
+He knew women well, and he saw that she was forgiving him. But she would
+not forget. He had a cynical doctrine, to the effect that a woman's
+first kiss of passion left an ineradicable mark on her, and he was quite
+certain that Lily had never been so kissed before.
+
+Driving through the park he turned to her:
+
+“Please forgive me,” he said, his mellow voice contrite and
+supplicating. “You've been so fine about it that you make me ashamed.”
+
+“I would like to feel that it wouldn't happen again: That's all.”
+
+“That means you intend to see me again. But never is a long word. I'm
+afraid to promise. You go to my head, Lily Cardew.” They were halted
+by the traffic, and it gave him a chance to say something he had been
+ingeniously formulating in his mind. “I've known lots of girls. I'm no
+saint. But you are different. You're a good woman. You could do anything
+you wanted with me, if you cared to.”
+
+And because she was young and lovely, and because he was always the
+slave of youth and beauty, he meant what he said. It was a lie, but he
+was lying to himself also, and his voice held unmistakable sincerity.
+But even then he was watching her, weighing the effect of his words on
+her. He saw that she was touched.
+
+He was very well pleased with himself on his way home. He left the
+car at the public garage, and walked, whistling blithely, to his small
+bachelor apartment. He was a self-indulgent man, and his rooms were
+comfortable to the point of luxury. In the sitting room was a desk, as
+clean and orderly as Doyle's was untidy. Having put on his dressing gown
+he went to it, and with a sheet of paper before him sat for some time
+thinking.
+
+He found his work irksome at times. True, it had its interest. He was
+the liaison between organized labor, which was conservative in the main,
+and the radical element, both in and out of the organization. He played
+a double game, and his work was always the same, to fan the discontent
+latently smoldering in every man's soul into a flame. And to do this he
+had not Doyle's fanaticism. Personally, Louis Akers found the world a
+pretty good place. He hated the rich because they had more than he had,
+but he scorned the poor because they had less. And he liked the feeling
+of power he had when, on the platform, men swayed to his words like
+wheat to a wind.
+
+Personal ambition was his fetish, as power was Anthony Cardew's.
+Sometimes he walked past the exclusive city clubs, and he dreamed of a
+time when he, too, would have the entree to them. But time was passing.
+He was thirty-three years old when Jim Doyle crossed his path, and the
+clubs were as far away as ever. It was Doyle who found the weak place
+in his armor, and who taught him that when one could not rise it was
+possible to pull others down.
+
+But it was Woslosky, the Americanized Pole; who had put the thing in a
+more appealing form.
+
+“Our friend Doyle to the contrary,” he said cynically, “we cannot hope
+to contend against the inevitable. The few will always govern the many,
+in the end. It will be the old cycle, autocracy, anarchy, and then
+democracy; but out of this last comes always the one man who crowns
+himself or is crowned. One of the people. You, or myself, it may be.”
+
+The Pole had smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Akers did not go to work immediately. He sat for some time, a cigarette
+in his hand, his eyes slightly narrowed. He believed that he could marry
+Lily Cardew. It would take time and all his skill, but he believed he
+could do it. His mind wandered to Lily herself, her youth and charm, her
+soft red mouth, the feel of her warm young body in his arms. He brought
+himself up sharply. Where would such a marriage take him?
+
+He pondered the question pro and con. On the one hand the Cardews, on
+the other, Doyle and a revolutionary movement. A revolution would be
+interesting and exciting, and there was strong in him the desire to pull
+down. But revolution was troublesome. It was violent and bloody. Even if
+it succeeded it would be years before the country would be stabilized.
+This other, now--
+
+He sat low in his chair, his long legs stretched out in his favorite
+position, and dreamed. He would not play the fool like Doyle. He would
+conciliate the family. In the end he would be put up at the clubs; he
+might even play polo. His thoughts wandered to Pink Denslow at the polo
+grounds, and he grinned.
+
+“Young fool!” he reflected. “If I can't beat his time--” He ordered
+dinner to be sent up, and mixed himself a cocktail, using the utmost
+care in its preparation. Drinking it, he eyed himself complacently in
+the small mirror over the mantel. Yes, life was not bad. It was damned
+interesting. It was a game. No, it was a race where a man could so hedge
+his bets that he stood to gain, whoever won.
+
+When there was a knock at the door he did not turn. “Come in,” he said.
+
+But it was not the waiter. It was Edith Boyd. He saw her through the
+mirror, and so addressed her.
+
+“Hello, sweetie,” he said. Then he turned. “You oughtn't to come here,
+Edith. I've told you about that.”
+
+“I had to see you, Lou.”
+
+“Well, take a good look, then,” he said. Her coming fitted in well with
+the complacence of his mood. Yes, life was good, so long as it held
+power, and drink, and women.
+
+He stooped to kiss her, but although she accepted the caress, she did
+not return it.
+
+“Not mad at me, Miss Boyd, are you?”
+
+“No. Lou, I'm frightened!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+On clear Sundays Anthony Cardew played golf all day. He kept his
+religious observances for bad weather, but at such times as he attended
+service he did it with the decorum and dignity of a Cardew, who bowed to
+his God but to nothing else. He made the responses properly and with a
+certain unction, and sat during the sermon with a vigilant eye on the
+choir boys, who wriggled. Now and then, however, the eye wandered to
+the great stained glass window which was a memorial to his wife. It said
+beneath: “In memoriam, Lilian Lethbridge Cardew.”
+
+He thought there was too much yellow in John the Baptist. On the Sunday
+afternoon following her ride into the city with Louis Akers, Lily found
+herself alone. Anthony was golfing and Grace and Howard had motored out
+of town for luncheon. In a small office near the rear of the hall the
+second man dozed, waiting for the doorbell. There would be people in
+for tea later, as always on Sunday afternoons; girls and men, walking
+through the park or motoring up in smart cars, the men a trifle bored
+because they were not golfing or riding, the girls chattering about the
+small inessentials which somehow they made so important.
+
+Lily was wretchedly unhappy. For one thing, she had begun to feel that
+Mademoiselle was exercising over her a sort of gentle espionage, and she
+thought her grandfather was behind it. Out of sheer rebellion she had
+gone again to the house on Cardew Way, to find Elinor out and Jim Doyle
+writing at his desk. He had received her cordially, and had talked to
+her as an equal. His deferential attitude had soothed her wounded pride,
+and she had told him something--very little--of the situation at home.
+
+“Then you are still forbidden to come here?”
+
+“Yes. As if what happened years ago matters now, Mr. Doyle.”
+
+He eyed her.
+
+“Don't let them break your spirit, Lily,” he had said. “Success can
+make people very hard. I don't know myself what success would do to
+me. Plenty, probably.” He smiled. “It isn't the past your people won't
+forgive me, Lily. It's my failure to succeed in what they call success.”
+
+“It isn't that,” she had said hastily. “It is--they say you are
+inflammatory. Of course they don't understand. I have tried to tell
+them, but--”
+
+“There are fires that purify,” he had said, smilingly.
+
+She had gone home, discontented with her family's lack of vision, and
+with herself.
+
+She was in a curious frame of mind. The thought of Louis Akers repelled
+her, but she thought of him constantly. She analyzed him clearly enough;
+he was not fine and not sensitive. He was not even kind. Indeed, she
+felt that he could be both cruel and ruthless. And if she was the first
+good woman he had ever known, then he must have had a hateful past.
+
+The thought that he had kissed her turned her hot with anger and shame
+at such times, but the thought recurred.
+
+Had she had occupation perhaps she might have been saved, but she had
+nothing to do. The house went on with its disciplined service; Lent had
+made its small demands as to church services, and was over. The weather
+was bad, and the golf links still soggy with the spring rains. Her
+wardrobe was long ago replenished, and that small interest gone.
+
+And somehow there had opened a breach between herself and the little
+intimate group that had been hers before the war. She wondered sometimes
+what they would think of Louis Akers. They would admire him, at first,
+for his opulent good looks, but very soon they would recognize what she
+knew so well--the gulf between him and the men of their own world, so
+hard a distinction to divine, yet so real for all that. They would know
+instinctively that under his veneer of good manners was something coarse
+and crude, as she did, and they would politely snub him. She had no name
+and no knowledge for the urge in the man that she vaguely recognized and
+resented. But she had a full knowledge of the obsession he was becoming
+in her mind.
+
+“If I could see him here,” she reflected, more than once, “I'd get over
+thinking about him. It's because they forbid me to see him. It's sheer
+contrariness.”
+
+But it was not, and she knew it. She had never heard of his theory about
+the mark on a woman.
+
+She was hating herself very vigorously on that Sunday afternoon.
+Mademoiselle and she had lunched alone in Lily's sitting-room, and
+Mademoiselle had dozed off in her chair afterwards, a novel on her knee.
+Lily was wandering about downstairs when the telephone rang, and she had
+a quick conviction that it was Louis Akers. It was only Willy Cameron,
+however, asking her if she cared to go for a walk.
+
+“I've promised Jinx one all day,” he explained, “and we might as well
+combine, if you are not busy.”
+
+She smiled at that.
+
+“I'd love it,” she said. “In the park?”
+
+“Wait a moment.” Then: “Yes, Jinx says the park is right.”
+
+His wholesome nonsense was good for her. She drew a long breath.
+
+“You are precisely the person I need to-day,” she said. “And come soon,
+because I shall have to be back at five.”
+
+When he came he was very neat indeed, and most scrupulous as to his
+heels being polished. He was also slightly breathless.
+
+“Had to sew a button on my coat,” he explained. “Then I found I'd sewed
+in one of my fingers and had to start all over again.”
+
+Lily was conscious of a change in him. He looked older, she thought, and
+thinner. His smile, when it came, was as boyish as ever, but he did
+not smile so much, and seen in full daylight he was shabby. He seemed
+totally unconscious of his clothes, however.
+
+“What do you do with yourself, Willy?” she asked. “I mean when you are
+free?”
+
+“Read and study. I want to take up metallurgy pretty soon. There's a
+night course at the college.”
+
+“We use metallurgists in the mill. When you are ready I know father
+would be glad to have you.”
+
+He flushed at that.
+
+“Thanks,” he said. “I'd rather get in, wherever I go, by what I know,
+and not who I know.”
+
+She felt considerably snubbed, but she knew his curious pride. After a
+time, while he threw a stick into the park lake and Jinx retrieved it,
+he said:
+
+“What do you do with yourself these days, Lily?”
+
+“Nothing. I've forgotten how to work, I'm afraid. And I'm not very
+happy, Willy. I ought to be, but I'm just--not.”
+
+“You've learned what it is to be useful,” he observed gravely, “and now
+it hardly seems worth while just to live, and nothing else. Is that it?”
+
+“I suppose.”
+
+“Isn't there anything you can do?”
+
+“They won't let me work, and I hate to study.”
+
+There was a silence. Willy Cameron sat on the bench, bent and staring
+ahead. Jinx brought the stick, and, receiving no attention, insinuated a
+dripping body between his knees. He patted the dog's head absently.
+
+“I have been thinking about the night I went to dinner at your house,”
+ he said at last. “I had no business to say what I said then. I've got
+a miserable habit of saying just what comes into my mind, and I've been
+afraid, ever since, that it would end in your not wanting to see me
+again. Just try to forget it happened, won't you?”
+
+“I knew it was an impulse, but it made me very proud, Willy.”
+
+“All right,” he said quietly. “And that's that. Now about your
+grandfather. I've had him on my mind, too. He is an old man, and
+sometimes they are peculiar. I am only sorry I upset him. And you are to
+forget that, too.”
+
+In spite of herself she laughed, rather helplessly.
+
+“Is there anything I am to remember?”
+
+He smiled too, and straightened himself, like a man who has got
+something off his chest.
+
+“Certainly there is, Miss Cardew. Me. Myself. I want you to know that
+I'm around, ready to fetch and carry like Jinx here, and about as
+necessary, I suppose. We are a good bit alike, Jinx and I. We're
+satisfied with a bone, and we give a lot of affection. You won't mind a
+bone now and then?”
+
+His cheerful tone reassured the girl. There was no real hurt, then.
+
+“That's nice of you, you know.”
+
+“Well,” he said slowly, “you know there are men who prefer a dream to
+reality. Perhaps I'm like that. Anyhow, that's enough about me. Do you
+know that there is a strike coming?”
+
+“Yes. I ought to tell you, Willy. I think the men are right.”
+
+He stared at her incredulously.
+
+“Right?” he said. “Why, my dear child, most of them want to strike about
+as much as I want delirium tremens. I've talked to them, and I know.”
+
+“A slave may be satisfied if he has never known freedom.”
+
+“Oh, fudge,” said Willy Cameron, rudely. “Where do you get all that?
+You're quoting; aren't you? The strike, any strike, is an acknowledgment
+of weakness. It is a resort to the physical because the collective
+mentality of labor isn't as strong as the other side. Or labor thinks it
+isn't, which amounts to the same thing. And there is a fine line between
+the fellow who fights for a principle and the one who knocks people down
+to show how strong he is.”
+
+“This is a fight for a principle, Willy.”
+
+“Fine little Cardew you are!” he scoffed. “Don't make any mistake. There
+have been fights by labor for a principle, and the principle won, as
+good always wins over evil. But this is different. It's a direct play
+by men who don't realize what they are doing, into the hands of a lot
+of--well, we'll call them anarchists. It's Germany's way of winning the
+war. By indirection.”
+
+“If by anarchists you mean men like my uncle--”
+
+“I do,” he said grimly. “That's a family accident and you can't help it.
+But I do mean Doyle. Doyle and a Pole named Woslosky, and a scoundrel of
+an attorney here in town, named Akers, among others.”
+
+“Mr. Akers is a friend of mine, Willy.”
+
+He stared at her.
+
+“If they have been teaching you their dirty doctrines, Lily,” he said
+at last, “I can only tell you this. They can disguise it in all the fine
+terms they want. It is treason, and they are traitors. I know. I've had
+a talk with the Chief of Police.”
+
+“I don't believe it.”
+
+“How well do you know Louis Akers?”
+
+“Not very well.” But there were spots of vivid color flaming in her
+cheeks. He drew a long breath.
+
+“I can't retract it,” he said. “I didn't know, of course. Shall we start
+back?”
+
+They were very silent as they walked. Willy Cameron was pained and
+anxious. He knew Akers' type rather than the man himself, but he knew
+the type well. Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal who
+attracted girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made passionate,
+pagan love promiscuously, and put the responsibility for the misery they
+caused on the Creator because He had made them as they were.
+
+He was agonized by another train of thought. For him Lily had always
+been something fine, beautiful, infinitely remote. There were other
+girls, girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less,
+with the soil of life. Even when they kept clean they saw it all
+about them, and looked on it with shrewd, sophisticated eyes. But Lily
+was--Lily. The very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as he had seen
+him look at Edith Boyd made him cold with rage.
+
+“Do you mind if I say something?”
+
+“That sounds disagreeable. Is it?”
+
+“Maybe, but I'm going to anyhow, Lily. I don't like to think of you
+seeing Akers. I don't know anything against him, and I suppose if I did
+I wouldn't tell you. But he is not your sort.”
+
+An impulse of honesty prevailed with her.
+
+“I know that as well as you do. I know him better than you do. But, he
+stands for something, at least,” she added rather hotly. “None of the
+other men I know stand for anything very much. Even you, Willy.”
+
+“I stand for the preservation of my country,” he said gravely. “I mean,
+I represent a lot of people who--well, who don't believe that change
+always means progress, and who do intend that the changes Doyle and
+Akers and that lot want they won't get. I don't believe--if you say you
+want what they want--that you know what you are talking about.”
+
+“Perhaps I am more intelligent than you think I am.”
+
+He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of
+arguing with her.
+
+“Do your people know that you are seeing Louis Akers!”
+
+“You are being rather solicitous, aren't you?”
+
+“I am being rather anxious. I wouldn't dare, of course, if we hadn't
+been such friends. But Akers is wrong, wrong every way, and I have to
+tell you that, even if it means that you will never see me again. He
+takes a credulous girl--”
+
+“Thank you!”
+
+“And talks bunk to her and possibly makes love to her--”
+
+“Haven't we had enough of Mr. Akers?” Lily asked coldly. “If you cannot
+speak of anything else, please don't talk.”
+
+The result of which was a frozen silence until they reached the house.
+
+“Good-by,” she said primly. “It was very nice of you to call me up.
+Good-by, Jinx.” She went up the steps, leaving him bare-headed and
+rather haggard, looking after her.
+
+He took the dog and went out into the country on foot, tramping through
+the mud without noticing it, and now and then making little despairing
+gestures. He was helpless. He had cut himself off from her like a fool.
+Akers. Akers and Edith Boyd. Other women. Akers and other women. And now
+Lily. Good God, Lily!
+
+Jinx was tired. He begged to be carried, planting two muddy feet on his
+master's shabby trouser leg, and pleading with low whines. Willy Cameron
+stooped and, gathering up the little animal, tucked him under his arm.
+When it commenced to rain he put him under his coat and plunged his head
+through the mud and wet toward home.
+
+Lily had entered the house in a white fury, but a moment later she was
+remorseful. For one thing, her own anger bewildered her. After all, he
+had meant well, and it was like him to be honest, even if it cost him
+something he valued.
+
+She ran to the door and looked around for him, but he had disappeared.
+She went in again, remorseful and unhappy. What had come over her to
+treat him like that? He had looked almost stricken.
+
+“Mr. Akers is calling, Miss Cardew,” said the footman. “He is in the
+drawing-room.”
+
+Lily went in slowly.
+
+Louis Akers had been waiting for some time. He had lounged into the
+drawing-room, with an ease assumed for the servant's benefit, and had
+immediately lighted a cigarette. That done, and the servant departed, he
+had carefully appraised his surroundings. He liked the stiff formality
+of the room. He liked the servant in his dark maroon livery. He
+liked the silence and decorum. Most of all, he liked himself in these
+surroundings. He wandered around, touching a bowl here, a vase there,
+eyeing carefully the ancient altar cloth that lay on a table, the old
+needle-work tapestry on the chairs.
+
+He saw himself fitted into this environment, a part of it; coming
+down the staircase, followed by his wife, and getting into his waiting
+limousine; sitting at the head of his table, while the important men of
+the city listened to what he had to say. It would come, as sure as God
+made little fishes. And Doyle was a fool. He, Louis Akers, would marry
+Lily Cardew and block that other game. But he would let the Cardews
+know who it was who had blocked it and saved their skins. They'd have to
+receive him after that; they would cringe to him.
+
+Then, unexpectedly, he had one of the shocks of his life. He had gone
+to the window and through it he saw Lily and Willy Cameron outside. He
+clutched at the curtain and cursed under his breath, apprehensively.
+But Willy Cameron did not come in; Akers watched him up the street with
+calculating, slightly narrowed eyes. The fact that Lily Cardew knew the
+clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an unexpected complication. His surprise
+was lost in anxiety. But Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather
+pale and unsmiling, found him facing the door, his manner easy, his head
+well up, and drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height. She found
+her poise entirely gone, and it was he who spoke first.
+
+“I know,” he said. “You didn't ask me, but I came anyhow.”
+
+She held out her hand rather primly.
+
+“It is very good of you to come.”
+
+“Good! I couldn't stay away.”
+
+He took her outstretched hand, smiling down at her, and suddenly made an
+attempt to draw her to him.
+
+“You know that, don't you?”
+
+“Please!”
+
+He let her go at once. He had not played his little game so long without
+learning its fine points. There were times to woo a woman with a strong
+arm, and there were other times that required other methods.
+
+“Right-o,” he said, “I'm sorry. I've been thinking about you so much
+that I daresay I have got farther in our friendship than I should. Do
+you know that you haven't been out of my mind since that ride we had
+together?”
+
+“Really? Would you like some tea?”
+
+“Thanks, yes. Do you dislike my telling you that?”
+
+She rang the bell, and then stood Lacing him.
+
+“I don't mind, no. But I am trying very hard to forget that ride, and I
+don't want to talk about it.”
+
+“When a beautiful thing comes into a man's life he likes to remember
+it.”
+
+“How can you call it beautiful?”
+
+“Isn't it rather fine when two people, a man and a woman, suddenly find
+a tremendous attraction that draws them together, in spite of the fact
+that everything else is conspiring to keep them apart?”
+
+“I don't know,” she said uncertainly. “It just seemed all wrong,
+somehow.”
+
+“An honest impulse is never wrong.”
+
+“I don't want to discuss it, Mr. Akers. It is over.”
+
+While he was away from her, her attraction for him loomed less than the
+things she promised, of power and gratified ambition. But he found her,
+with her gentle aloofness, exceedingly appealing, and with the tact of
+the man who understands women he adapted himself to her humor.
+
+“You are making me very unhappy; Miss Lily,” he said. “If you'll only
+promise to let me see you now and then, I'll promise to be as mild as
+dish-water. Will you promise?”
+
+She was still struggling, still remembering Willy Cameron, still trying
+to remember all the things that Louis Akers was not.
+
+“I think I ought not to see you at all.”
+
+“Then,” he said slowly, “you are going to cut me off from the one decent
+influence in my life.”
+
+She was still revolving that in her mind when tea came. Akers, having
+shot his bolt, watched with interest the preparation for the little
+ceremony, the old Georgian teaspoons, the Crown Derby cups, the
+bell-shaped Queen Anne teapot, beautifully chased, the old pierced sugar
+basin. Almost his gaze was proprietary. And he watched Lily, her casual
+handling of those priceless treasures, her taking for granted of service
+and beauty, her acceptance of quality because she had never known
+anything else, watched her with possessive eyes.
+
+When the servant had gone, he said:
+
+“You are being very nice to me, in view of the fact that you did not
+ask me to come. And also remembering that your family does not happen to
+care about me.”
+
+“They are not at home.”
+
+“I knew that, or I should not have come. I don't want to make trouble
+for you, child.” His voice was infinitely caressing. “As it happens, I
+know your grandfather's Sunday habits, and I met your father and mother
+on the road going out of town at noon. I knew they had not come back.”
+
+“How do you know that?”
+
+He smiled down at her. “I have ways of knowing quite a lot of things.
+Especially when they are as vital to me as this few minutes alone with
+you.”
+
+He bent toward her, as he sat behind the tea table.
+
+“You know how vital this is to me, don't you?” he said. “You're not
+going to cut me off, are you?”
+
+He stood over her, big, compelling, dominant, and put his hand under her
+chin.
+
+“I am insane about you,” he whispered, and waited.
+
+Slowly, irresistibly, she lifted her face to his kiss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+On the first day of May, William Wallace Cameron moved his trunk, the
+framed photograph of his mother, eleven books, an alarm clock and Jinx
+to the Boyd house. He went for two reasons. First, after his initial
+call at the dreary little house, he began to realize that something had
+to be done in the Boyd family. The second reason was his dog.
+
+He began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family as
+soon as he had met Mrs. Boyd.
+
+“I don't know what's come over the children,” Mrs. Boyd said, fretfully.
+She sat rocking persistently in the dreary little parlor. Her chair
+inched steadily along the dull carpet, and once or twice she brought up
+just as she was about to make a gradual exit from the room. “They act so
+queer lately.”
+
+She hitched the chair into place again. Edith had gone out. It was her
+idea of an evening call to serve cakes and coffee, and a strong and
+acrid odor was seeping through the doorway. “There's Dan come home from
+the war, and when he gets back from the mill he just sits and stares
+ahead of him. He won't even talk about the war, although he's got a lot
+to tell.”
+
+“It takes some time for the men who were over to get settled down again,
+you know.”
+
+“Well, there's Edith,” continued the querulous voice. “You'd think the
+cat had got her tongue, too. I tell you, Mr. Cameron, there are meals
+here when if I didn't talk there wouldn't be a word spoken.”
+
+Mr. Cameron looked up. It had occurred to him lately, not precisely that
+a cat had got away with Edith's tongue, but that something undeniably
+had got away with her cheerfulness. There were entire days in the store
+when she neglected to manicure her nails, and stood looking out past the
+fading primrose in the window to the street. But there were no longer
+any shrewd comments on the passers-by.
+
+“Of course, the house isn't very cheerful,” sighed Mrs. Boyd. “I'm a
+sick woman, Mr. Cameron. My back hurts most of the time. It just aches
+and aches.”
+
+“I know,” said Mr. Cameron. “My mother has that, sometimes. If you like
+I'll mix you up some liniment, and Miss Edith can bring it to you.”
+
+“Thanks. I've tried most everything. Edith wants to rent a room, so we
+can keep a hired girl, but it's hard to get a girl. They want all the
+money on earth, and they eat something awful. That's a nice friendly dog
+of yours, Mr. Cameron.”
+
+It was perhaps Jinx who decided Willy Cameron. Jinx was at that moment
+occupying the only upholstered chair, but he had developed a strong
+liking for the frail little lady with the querulous voice and the shabby
+black dress. He had, indeed, insisted shortly after his entrance
+on leaping into her lap, and had thus sat for some time, completely
+eclipsing his hostess.
+
+“Just let him sit,” Mrs. Boyd said placidly. “I like a dog. And he can't
+hurt this skirt I've got on. It's on its last legs.”
+
+With which bit of unconscious humor Willy Cameron had sat down.
+Something warm and kindly glowed in his heart. He felt that dogs have a
+curious instinct for knowing what lies concealed in the human heart, and
+that Jinx had discovered something worth while in Edith's mother.
+
+It was later in the evening, however, that he said, over Edith's bakery
+cakes and her atrocious coffee:
+
+“If you really mean that about a roomer, I know of one.” He glanced at
+Edith. “Very neat. Careful with matches. Hard to get up in the morning,
+but interesting, highly intelligent, and a clever talker. That's his one
+fault. When he is interested in a thing he spouts all over the place.”
+
+“Really?” said Mrs. Boyd. “Well, talk would be a change here. He sounds
+kind of pleasant. Who is he?”
+
+“This paragon of beauty and intellect sits before you,” said Willy
+Cameron.
+
+“You'll have to excuse me. I didn't recognize you by the description,”
+ said Mrs. Boyd, unconsciously. “Well, I don't know. I'd like to have
+this dog around.”
+
+Even Edith laughed at that. She had been very silent all evening,
+sitting most of the time with her hands in her lap, and her eyes on
+Willy Cameron. Rather like Jinx's eyes they were, steady, unblinking,
+loyal, and with something else in common with Jinx which Willy Cameron
+never suspected.
+
+“I wouldn't come, if I were you,” she said, unexpectedly.
+
+“Why, Edie, you've been thinking of asking him right along.”
+
+“We don't know how to keep a house,” she persisted, to him. “We can't
+even cook--you know that's rotten coffee. I'll show you the room, if you
+like, but I won't feel hurt if you don't take it, I'll be worried if you
+do.”
+
+Mrs. Boyd watched them perplexedly as they went out, the tall young man
+with his uneven step, and Edith, who had changed so greatly in the last
+few weeks, and blew hot one minute and cold the next. Now that she had
+seen Willy Cameron, Mrs. Boyd wanted him to come. He would bring new
+life into the little house. He was cheerful. He was not glum like Dan or
+discontented like Edie. And the dog--She got up slowly and walked over
+to the chair where Jinx sat, eyes watchfully on the door.
+
+“Nice Jinx,” she said, and stroked his head with a thin and stringy
+hand. “Nice doggie.”
+
+She took a cake from the plate and fed it to him, bit by bit. She felt
+happier than she had for a long time, since her children were babies and
+needed her.
+
+“I meant it,” said Edith, on the stairs. “You stay away. We're a poor
+lot, and we're unlucky, too. Don't get mixed up with us.”
+
+“Maybe I'm going to bring you luck.”
+
+“The best luck for me would be to fall down these stairs and break my
+neck.”
+
+He looked at her anxiously, and any doubts he might have had, born of
+the dreariness, the odors of stale food and of the musty cellar below,
+of the shabby room she proceeded to show him, died in an impulse to
+somehow, some way, lift this small group of people out of the slough of
+despondency which seemed to be engulfing them all.
+
+“Why, what's the matter with the room?” he said. “Just wait until I've
+got busy in it! I'm a paper hanger and a painter, and--”
+
+“You're a dear, too,” said Edith.
+
+So on the first of May he moved in, and for some evenings Political
+Economy and History and Travel and the rest gave way to anxious cuttings
+and fittings of wall paper, and a pungent odor of paint. The old house
+took on new life and activity, the latter sometimes pernicious, as when
+Willy Cameron fell down the cellar stairs with a pail of paint in his
+hand, or Dan, digging up some bricks in the back yard for a border the
+seeds of which were already sprouting in a flat box in the kitchen, ran
+a pickaxe into his foot.
+
+Some changes were immediate, such as the white-washing of the cellar and
+the unpainted fence in the yard, where Willy Cameron visualized, later
+on, great draperies of morning glories. He papered the parlor, and
+coaxed Mrs. Boyd to wash the curtains, although she protested that, with
+the mill smoke, it was useless labor.
+
+But there were some changes that he knew only time would effect.
+Sometimes he went to his bed worn out both physically and spiritually,
+as though the burden of lifting three life-sodden souls was too much.
+Not that he thought of that, however. What he did know was that the food
+was poor. No servant had been found, and years of lack of system had
+left Mrs. Boyd's mind confused and erratic. She would spend hours
+concocting expensive desserts, while the vegetables boiled dry and
+scorched and meat turned to leather, only to bring pridefully to the
+table some flavorless mixture garnished according to a picture in the
+cook book, and totally unedible.
+
+She would have ambitious cleaning days, too, starting late and leaving
+off with beds unmade to prepare the evening meal. Dan, home from the
+mill and newly adopting Willy Cameron's system of cleaning up for
+supper, would turn sullen then, and leave the moment the meal was over.
+
+“Hell of a way to live,” he said once. “I'd get married, but how can a
+fellow know whether a girl will make a home for him or give him this?
+And then there would be babies, too.”
+
+The relations between Dan and Edith were not particularly cordial. Willy
+Cameron found their bickering understandable enough, but he was puzzled,
+sometimes, to find that Dan was surreptitiously watching his sister.
+Edith was conscious of it, too, and one evening she broke into irritated
+speech.
+
+“I wish you'd quit staring at me, Dan Boyd.”
+
+“I was wondering what has come over you,” said Dan, ungraciously. “You
+used to be a nice kid. Now you're an angel one minute and a devil the
+next.”
+
+Willy spoke to him that night when they were setting out rows of
+seedlings, under the supervision of Jinx.
+
+“I wouldn't worry her, Dan,” he said; “it is the spring, probably. It
+gets into people, you know. I'm that way myself. I'd give a lot to be in
+the country just now.”
+
+Dan glanced at him quickly, but whatever he may have had in his mind, he
+said nothing just then. However, later on he volunteered:
+
+“She's got something on her mind. I know her. But I won't have her
+talking back to mother.”
+
+A week or so after Willy Cameron had moved, Mr. Hendricks rang the bell
+of the Boyd house, and then, after his amiable custom, walked in.
+
+“Oh, Cameron!” he bawled.
+
+“Upstairs,” came Willy Cameron's voice, somewhat thickened with carpet
+tacks. So Mr. Hendricks climbed part of the way, when he found his head
+on a level with that of the young gentleman he sought, who was nailing a
+rent in the carpet.
+
+“Don't stop,” said Mr. Hendricks. “Merely friendly call. And for
+heaven's sake don't swallow a tack, son. I'm going to need you.”
+
+“Whaffor?” inquired Willy Cameron, through his nose.
+
+“Don't know yet. Make speeches, probably. If Howard Cardew, or any
+Cardew, thinks he's going to be mayor of this town, he's got to think
+again.”
+
+“I don't give a tinker's dam who's mayor of this town, so long as he
+gives it honest government.”
+
+“That's right,” said Mr. Hendricks approvingly. “Old Cardew's been
+running it for years, and you could put all the honest government he's
+given us in a hollow tooth. If you'll stop that hammering, I'd like to
+make a proposition to you.”
+
+Willy Cameron took an admiring squint at his handiwork.
+
+“Sorry to refuse you, Mr. Hendricks, but I don't want to be mayor.”
+
+Mr. Hendricks chuckled, as Willy Cameron led the way to his room. He
+wandered around the room while Cameron opened a window and slid the dog
+off his second chair.
+
+“Great snakes!” he said. “Spargo's Bolshevism! Political Economy,
+History of--. What are you planning to be? President?”
+
+“I haven't decided yet. It's a hard job, and mighty thankless. But I
+won't be your mayor, even for you.”
+
+Mr. Hendricks sat down.
+
+“All right,” he said. “Of course if you'd wanted it!” He took two large
+cigars from the row in his breast pocket and held one out, but Willy
+Cameron refused it and got his pipe.
+
+“Well?” he said.
+
+Mr. Hendrick's face became serious and very thoughtful. “I don't know
+that I have ever made it clear to you, Cameron,” he said, “but I've got
+a peculiar feeling for this city. I like it, the way some people like
+their families. It's--well, it's home to me, for one thing. I like to
+go out in the evenings and walk around, and I say to myself: 'This is my
+town.' And we, it and me, are sending stuff all over the world. I like
+to think that somewhere, maybe in China, they are riding on our rails
+and fighting with guns made from our steel. Maybe you don't understand
+that.”
+
+“I think I do.”
+
+“Well, that's the way I feel about it, anyhow. And this Bolshevist stuff
+gets under my skin. I've got a home and a family here. I started in to
+work when I was thirteen, and all I've got I've made and saved right
+here. It isn't much, but it's mine.”
+
+Willy Cameron was lighting his pipe. He nodded. Mr. Hendricks bent
+forward and pointed a finger at him.
+
+“And to govern this city, who do you think the labor element is going
+to put up and probably elect? We're an industrial city, son, with a
+big labor vote, and if it stands together--they're being swindled into
+putting up as an honest candidate one of the dirtiest radicals in the
+country. That man Akers.”
+
+He got up and closed the door.
+
+“I don't want Edith to hear me,” he said. “He's a friend of hers. But
+he's a bad actor, son. He's wrong with women, for one thing, and when I
+think that all he's got to oppose him is Howard Cardew--” Mr. Hendricks
+got up, and took a nervous turn about the room.
+
+“Maybe you know that Cardew has a daughter?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, I hear a good many things, one way and another, and my wife likes
+a bit of gossip. She knows them both by sight, and she ran into them one
+day in the tea room of the Saint Elmo, sitting in a corner, and the girl
+had her back to the room. I don't like the look of that, Cameron.”
+
+Willy Cameron got up and closed the window. He stood there, with his
+back to the light, for a full minute. Then:
+
+“I think there must be some mistake about that, Mr. Hendricks. I have
+met her. She isn't the sort of girl who would do clandestine things.”
+
+Mr. Hendricks looked up quickly. He had made it his business to study
+men, and there was something in Willy Cameron's voice that caught his
+attention, and turned his shrewd mind to speculation.
+
+“Maybe,” he conceded. “Of course, anything a Cardew does is likely to
+be magnified in this town. If she's as keen as the men in her family,
+she'll get wise to him pretty soon.” Willy Cameron came back then, but
+Mr. Hendricks kept his eyes on the tip of his cigar.
+
+“We've got to lick Cardew,” he said, “but I'm cursed if I want to do it
+with Akers.”
+
+When there was no comment, he looked up. Yes, the boy had had a blow.
+Mr. Hendricks was sorry. If that was the way the wind blew it was
+hopeless. It was more than that; it was tragic.
+
+“Sorry I said anything, Cameron. Didn't know you knew her.”
+
+“That's all right. Of course I don't like to think she is being talked
+about.”
+
+“The Cardews are always being talked about. You couldn't drop her a
+hint, I suppose?”
+
+“She knows what I think about Louis Akers.”
+
+He made a violent effort and pulled himself together. “So it is Akers
+and Howard Cardew, and one's a knave and one's a poor bet.”
+
+“Right,” said Mr. Hendricks. “And one's Bolshevist, if I know anything,
+and the other is capital, and has about as much chance as a rich man to
+get through the eye of a needle.”
+
+Which was slightly mixed, owing to a repressed excitement now making
+itself evident in Mr. Hendricks's voice.
+
+“Why not run an independent candidate?” Willy Cameron asked quietly.
+“I've been shouting about the plain people. Why shouldn't they elect a
+mayor? There is a lot of them.”
+
+“That's the talk,” said Mr. Hendricks, letting his excitement have full
+sway. “They could. They could run this town and run it right, if they'd
+take the trouble. Now look here, son, I don't usually talk about myself,
+but--I'm honest. I don't say I wouldn't get off a street-car without
+paying my fare if the conductor didn't lift it! But I'm honest. I don't
+lie. I keep my word. And I live clean--which you can't say for Lou
+Akers. Why shouldn't I run on an independent ticket? I mightn't be
+elected, but I'd make a damned good try.”
+
+He stood up, and Willy Cameron rose also and held out his hand.
+
+“I don't know that my opinion is of any value, Mr. Hendricks. But I hope
+you get it, and I think you have a good chance. If I can do anything--”
+
+“Do anything! What do you suppose I came here for? You're going to elect
+me. You're going to make speeches and kiss babies, and tell the ordinary
+folks they're worth something after all. You got me started on this
+thing, and now you've got to help me out.”
+
+The future maker of mayors here stepped back in his amazement, and Jinx
+emitted a piercing howl. When peace was restored the F.M. of M. had got
+his breath, and he said:
+
+“I couldn't remember my own name before an audience, Mr. Hendricks.”
+
+“You're fluent enough in that back room of yours.”
+
+“That's different.”
+
+“The people we're going after don't want oratory. They want good,
+straight talk, and a fellow behind it who doesn't believe the country's
+headed straight for perdition. We've had enough calamity bowlers. You've
+got the way out. The plain people. The hope of the nation. And, by God,
+you love your country, and not for what you can get out of it. That's a
+thing a fellow's got to have inside him. He can't pretend it and get it
+over.”
+
+In the end the F.M. of M. capitulated.
+
+It was late when Mr. Hendricks left. He went away with all the old
+envelopes in his pockets covered with memoranda.
+
+“Just wait a minute, son,” he would say. “I've got to make some speeches
+myself. Repeat that, now. 'Sins of omission are as great, even greater
+than sins of commission. The lethargic citizen throws open the gates to
+revolution.' How do you spell 'lethargic'?”
+
+But it was not Hendricks and his campaign that kept the F.M. of M. awake
+until dawn. He sat in front of his soft coal fire, and when it died
+to gray-white ash he still sat there, unconscious of the chill of the
+spring night. Mostly he thought of Lily, and of Louis Akers, big and
+handsome, of his insolent eyes and his self-indulgent mouth. Into that
+curious whirlpool that is the mind came now and then other visions: His
+mother asleep in her chair; the men in the War Department who had
+turned him down; a girl at home who had loved him, and made him feel
+desperately unhappy because he could not love her in return. Was love
+always like that? If it was what He intended, why was it so often
+without reciprocation?
+
+He took to walking about the room, according to his old habit, and
+obediently Jinx followed him.
+
+It was four by his alarm clock when Edith knocked at his door. She was
+in a wrapper flung over her nightgown, and with her hair flying loose
+she looked childish and very small.
+
+“I wish you would go to bed,” she said, rather petulantly. “Are you
+sick, or anything?”
+
+“I was thinking, Edith. I'm sorry. I'll go at once. Why aren't you
+asleep?”
+
+“I don't sleep much lately.” Their voices were cautious. “I never go to
+sleep until you're settled down, anyhow.”
+
+“Why not? Am I noisy?”
+
+“It's not that.”
+
+She went away, a drooping, listless figure that climbed the stairs
+slowly and left him in the doorway, puzzled and uncomfortable.
+
+At six that morning Dan, tip-toeing downstairs to warm his left-over
+coffee and get his own breakfast, heard a voice from Willy Cameron's
+room, and opened the door. Willy Cameron was sitting up in bed with
+his eyes closed and his arms extended, and was concluding a speech to a
+dream audience in deep and oratorical tones.
+
+“By God, it is time the plain people know their power.”
+
+Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather primitive, he edged
+his way into the room and filled the orator's sponge with icy water from
+the pitcher.
+
+“All right, old top,” he said, “but it is also time the plain people got
+up.”
+
+Then he flung the sponge and departed with extreme expedition.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers' visit to the house
+that Lily's family learned of it.
+
+Lily's state of mind during that week had been an unhappy one. She
+magnified the incident until her nerves were on edge, and Grace, finding
+her alternating between almost demonstrative affection and strange
+aloofness, was bewildered and hurt. Mademoiselle watched her secretly,
+shook her head, and set herself to work to find out what was wrong. It
+was, in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated the crisis.
+
+Lily had not intended to make a secret of the visit, but as time went
+on she found it increasingly difficult to tell about it. She should, she
+knew, have spoken at once, and it would be hard to explain why she had
+delayed.
+
+She meant to go to her father with it. It was he who had forbidden her
+to see Akers, for one thing. And she felt nearer to her father than
+to her mother, always. Since her return she had developed an almost
+passionate admiration for Howard, founded perhaps on her grandfather's
+attitude toward him. She was strongly partizan, and she watched her
+father, day after day, fighting his eternal battles with Anthony,
+sometimes winning, often losing, but standing for a principle like
+a rock while the seas of old Anthony's wrath washed over and often
+engulfed him.
+
+She was rather wistful those days, struggling with her own perplexities,
+and blindly reaching out for a hand to help her. But she could not bring
+herself to confession. She would wander into her father's dressing-room
+before she went to bed, and, sitting on the arm of his deep chair, would
+try indirectly to get him to solve the problems that were troubling
+her. But he was inarticulate and rather shy with her. He had difficulty,
+sometimes, after her long absence at school and camp, in realizing her
+as the little girl who had once begged for his neckties to make into
+doll frocks.
+
+Once she said:
+
+“Could you love a person you didn't entirely respect, father?”
+
+“Love is founded on respect, Lily.”
+
+She pondered that. She felt that he was wrong.
+
+“But it does happen, doesn't it?” she had persisted.
+
+He had been accustomed to her searchings for interesting abstractions
+for years. She used to talk about religion in the same way. So he smiled
+and said:
+
+“There is a sort of infatuation that is based on something quite
+different.”
+
+“On what?”
+
+But he had rather floundered there. He could not discuss physical
+attraction with her.
+
+“We're getting rather deep for eleven o'clock at night, aren't we?”
+
+After a short silence:
+
+“Do you mind speaking about Aunt Elinor, father?”
+
+“No, dear. Although it is rather a painful subject.”
+
+“But if she is happy, why is it painful?”
+
+“Well, because Doyle is the sort of man he is.”
+
+“You mean--because he is unfaithful to her? Or was?”
+
+He was very uncomfortable.
+
+“That is one reason for it, of course. There are others.”
+
+“But if he is faithful to her now, father? Don't you think, whatever a
+man has been, if he really cares for a woman it makes him over?”
+
+“Sometimes, not always.” The subject was painful to him. He did not want
+his daughter to know the sordid things of life. But he added, gallantly:
+“Of course a good woman can do almost anything she wants with a man, if
+he cares for her.”
+
+She lay awake almost all night, thinking that over.
+
+On the Sunday following Louis Akers' call Mademoiselle learned of it, by
+the devious route of the servants' hall, and she went to Lily at once,
+yearning and anxious, and in her best lace collar. She needed courage,
+and to be dressed in her best gave her moral strength.
+
+“It is not,” she said, “that they wish to curtail your liberty, Lily.
+But to have that man come here, when he knows he is not wanted, to force
+himself on you--”
+
+“I need not have seen him. I wanted to see him.”
+
+Mademoiselle waved her hands despairingly.
+
+“If they find it out!” she wailed.
+
+“They will. I intend to tell them.”
+
+But Mademoiselle made her error there. She was fearful of Grace's
+attitude unless she forewarned her, and Grace, frightened, immediately
+made it a matter of a family conclave. She had not intended to include
+Anthony, but he came in on an excited speech from Howard, and heard it
+all.
+
+The result was that instead of Lily going to them with her confession,
+she was summoned, to find her family a unit for once and combined
+against her. She was not to see Louis Akers again, or the Doyles.
+
+They demanded a promise, but she refused. Yet even then, standing before
+them, forced to a defiance she did not feel, she was puzzled as well
+as angry. They were wrong, and yet in some strange way they were right,
+too. She was Cardew enough to get their point of view. But she was
+Cardew enough, too, to defy them.
+
+She did it rather gently.
+
+“You must understand,” she said, her hands folded in front of her, “that
+it is not so much that I care to see the people you are talking about.
+It is that I feel I have the right to choose my own friends.”
+
+“Friends!” sneered old Anthony. “A third-rate lawyer, a--”
+
+“That is not the point, grandfather. I went away to school when I was a
+little girl. I have been away for five years. You cannot seem to realize
+that I am a woman now, not a child. You bring me in here like a bad
+child.”
+
+In the end old Anthony had slammed out of the room. There were arguments
+after that, tears on Grace's part, persuasion on Howard's; but Lily had
+frozen against what she considered their tyranny, and Howard found in
+her a sort of passive resistance, that drove him frantic.
+
+“Very well,” he said finally. “You have the arrogance of youth, and its
+cruelty, Lily. And you are making us all suffer without reason.”
+
+“Don't you think I might say that too, father?”
+
+“Are you in love with this man?”
+
+“I have only seen him four times. If you would give me some reasons for
+all this fuss--”
+
+“There are things I cannot explain to you. You wouldn't understand.”
+
+“About his moral character?”
+
+Howard was rather shocked. He hesitated:
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Will you tell me what they are?”
+
+“Good heavens, no!” he exploded. “The man's a radical, too. That in
+itself ought to be enough.”
+
+“You can't condemn a man for his political opinions.”
+
+“Political opinions!”
+
+“Besides,” she said, looking at him with her direct gaze, “isn't there
+some reason in what the radicals believe, father? Maybe it is a dream
+that can't come true, but it is rather a fine dream, isn't it?”
+
+It was then that Howard followed his father's example, and flung out of
+the room.
+
+After that Lily went, very deliberately and without secrecy, to the
+house on Cardew Way. She found a welcome there, not so marked on her
+Aunt Elinor's part as on Doyle's, but a welcome. She found approval,
+too, where at home she had only suspicion and a solicitude based
+on anxiety. She found a clever little circle there, and sometimes a
+cultured one; underpaid, disgruntled, but brilliant professors from
+the college, a journalist or two, a city councilman, even prosperous
+merchants, and now and then strange bearded foreigners who were passing
+through the city and who talked brilliantly of the vision of Lenine and
+the future of Russia.
+
+She learned that the true League of Nations was not a political
+alliance, but a union of all the leveled peoples of the world. She had
+no curiosity as to how this leveling was to be brought about. All
+she knew was that these brilliant dreamers made her welcome, and that
+instead of the dinner chat at home, small personalities, old Anthony's
+comments on his food, her father's heavy silence, here was world talk,
+vast in its scope, idealistic, intoxicating.
+
+Almost always Louis Akers was there; it pleased her to see how the other
+men listened to him, deferred to his views, laughed at his wit. She did
+not know the care exercised in selecting the groups she was to meet, the
+restraints imposed on them. And she could not know that from her visits
+the Doyle establishment was gaining a prestige totally new to it, an
+almost respectability.
+
+Because of those small open forums, sometimes noted in the papers, those
+innocuous gatherings, it was possible to hold in that very room other
+meetings, not open and not innocuous, where practical plans took the
+place of discontented yearnings, and where the talk was more often of
+fighting than of brotherhood.
+
+She was, by the first of May, frankly infatuated with Louis Akers, yet
+with a curious knowledge that what she felt was infatuation only. She
+would lie wide-eyed at night and rehearse painfully the weaknesses she
+saw so clearly in him. But the next time she saw him she would yield to
+his arms, passively but without protest. She did not like his caresses,
+but the memory of them thrilled her.
+
+She was following the first uncurbed impulse of her life. Guarded and
+more or less isolated from other youth, she had always lived a strong
+inner life, purely mental, largely interrogative. She had had strong
+childish impulses, sometimes of pure affection, occasionally of sheer
+contrariness, but always her impulses had been curbed.
+
+“Do be a little lady,” Mademoiselle would say.
+
+She had got, somehow, to feel that impulse was wrong. It ranked with
+disobedience. It partook of the nature of sin. People who did wicked
+things did them on impulse, and were sorry ever after; but then it was
+too late.
+
+As she grew older, she added something to that. Impulses of the mind led
+to impulses of the body, and impulse was wrong. Passion was an impulse
+of the body. Therefore it was sin. It was the one sin one could not talk
+about, so one was never quite clear about it. However, one thing seemed
+beyond dispute; it was predominatingly a masculine wickedness. Good
+women were beyond and above it, its victims sometimes, like those girls
+at the camp, or its toys, like the sodden creatures in the segregated
+district who hung, smiling their tragic smiles, around their doorways in
+the late afternoons.
+
+But good women were not like that. If they were, then they were not
+good. They did not lie awake remembering the savage clasp of a man's
+arms, knowing all the time that this was not love, but something quite
+different. Or if it was love, that it was painful and certainly not
+beautiful.
+
+Sometimes she thought about Willy Cameron. He had had very exalted ideas
+about love. He used to be rather oratorical about it.
+
+“It's the fundamental principle of the universe,” he would say, waving
+his pipe wildly. “But it means suffering, dear child. It feeds on
+martyrdom and fattens on sacrifice. And as the h.c. of l. doesn't affect
+either commodity, it lives forever.”
+
+“What does it do, Willy, if it hasn't any martyrdom and sacrifice to
+feed on? Do you mean to say that when it is returned and everybody is
+happy, it dies?”
+
+“Practically,” he had said. “It then becomes domestic contentment, and
+expresses itself in the shape of butcher's bills and roast chicken on
+Sundays.”
+
+But that had been in the old care-free days, before Willy had thought he
+loved her, and before she had met Louis.
+
+She made a desperate effort one day to talk to her mother. She wanted,
+somehow, to be set right in her own eyes. But Grace could not meet her
+even half way; she did not know anything about different sorts of love,
+but she did know that love was beautiful, if you met the right man and
+married him. But it had to be some one who was your sort, because in the
+end marriage was only a sort of glorified companionship.
+
+The moral in that, so obviously pointed at Louis Akers, invalidated the
+rest of it for Lily.
+
+She was in a state of constant emotional excitement by that time, and it
+was only a night or two after that she quarreled with her grandfather.
+There had been a dinner party, a heavy, pompous affair, largely
+attended, for although spring was well advanced, the usual May hegira to
+the country or the coast had not yet commenced. Industrial conditions
+in and around the city were too disturbed for the large employers to
+get away, and following Lent there had been a sort of sporadic gayety,
+covering a vast uneasiness. There was to be no polo after all.
+
+Lily, doing her best to make the dinner a success, found herself
+contrasting it with the gatherings at the Doyle house, and found it very
+dull. These men, with their rigidity of mind, invited because they held
+her grandfather's opinions, or because they kept their own convictions
+to themselves, seemed to her of a bygone time. She did not see in them a
+safe counterpoise to a people which in its reaction from the old order,
+was ready to swing to anything that was new. She saw only a dozen or
+so elderly gentlemen, immaculate and prosperous, peering through their
+glasses after a world which had passed them by.
+
+They were very grave that night. The situation was serious. The talk
+turned inevitably to the approaching strike, and from that to a possible
+attempt on the part of the radical element toward violence. The older
+men pooh-poohed that, but the younger ones were uncertain. Isolated
+riotings, yes. But a coordinated attempt against the city, no. Labour
+was greedy, but it was law-abiding. Ah, but it was being fired by
+incendiary literature. Then what were the police doing? They were
+doing everything. They were doing nothing. The governor was secretly a
+radical. Nonsense. The governor was saying little, but was waiting and
+watching. A general strike was only another word for revolution. No. It
+would be attempted, perhaps, but only to demonstrate the solidarity of
+labor.
+
+After a time Lily made a discovery. She found that even into that
+carefully selected gathering had crept a surprising spirit, based on the
+necessity for concession; a few men who shared her father's convictions,
+and went even further. One or two, even, who, cautiously for fear of old
+Anthony's ears, voiced a belief that before long invested money would
+be given a fixed return, all surplus profits to be divided among the
+workers, the owners and the government.
+
+“What about the lean years?” some one asked.
+
+The government's share of all business was to form a contingent fund for
+such emergencies, it seemed.
+
+Lily listened attentively. Was it because they feared that if they did
+not voluntarily divide their profits they would be taken from them?
+Enough for all, and to none too much. Was that what they feared? Or was
+it a sense of justice, belated but real?
+
+She remembered something Jim Doyle had said:
+
+“Labor has learned its weakness alone, its strength united. But capital
+has not learned that lesson. It will not take a loss for a principle.
+It will not unite. It is suspicious and jealous, so it fights its
+individual battles alone, and loses in the end.”
+
+But then to offset that there was something Willy Cameron had said one
+day, frying doughnuts for her with one hand, and waving the fork about
+with the other.
+
+“Don't forget this, oh representative of the plutocracy,” he had said.
+“Capital has its side, and a darned good one, too. It's got a sense of
+responsibility to the country, which labor may have individually but
+hasn't got collectively.”
+
+These men at the table were grave, burdened with responsibility. Her
+father. Even her grandfather. It was no longer a question of profit. It
+was a question of keeping the country going. They were like men forced
+to travel, and breasting a strong head wind. There were some there who
+would turn, in time, and travel with the gale. But there were others
+like her grandfather, obstinate and secretly frightened, who would
+refuse. Who would, to change the figure, sit like misers over their
+treasure, an eye on the window of life for thieves.
+
+She went upstairs, perplexed and thoughtful. Some time later she heard
+the family ascending, the click of her mother's high heels on the
+polished wood of the staircase, her father's sturdy tread, and a moment
+or two later her grandfather's slow, rather weary step. Suddenly she
+felt sorry for him, for his age, for his false gods of power and
+pride, for the disappointment she was to him. She flung open her door
+impulsively and confronted him.
+
+“I just wanted to say good-night, grandfather,” she said breathlessly.
+“And that I am sorry.”
+
+“Sorry for what?”
+
+“Sorry--” she hesitated. “Because we see things so differently.”
+
+Lily was almost certain that she caught a flash of tenderness in his
+eyes, and certainly his voice had softened.
+
+“You looked very pretty to-night,” he said. But he passed on, and she
+had again the sense of rebuff with which he met all her small overtures
+at that time. However, he turned at the foot of the upper flight.
+
+“I would like to talk to you, Lily. Will you come upstairs?”
+
+She had been summoned before to those mysterious upper rooms of his,
+where entrance was always by request, and generally such requests
+presaged trouble. But she followed him light-heartedly enough then. His
+rare compliment had pleased and touched her.
+
+The lamp beside his high-backed, almost throne-like chair was lighted,
+and in the dressing-room beyond his valet was moving about, preparing
+for the night. Anthony dismissed the man, and sat down under the lamp.
+
+“You heard the discussion downstairs, to-night, Lily. Personally I
+anticipate no trouble, but if there is any it may be directed at this
+house.” He smiled grimly. “I cannot rely on my personal popularity
+to protect me, I fear. Your mother obstinately refuses to leave your
+father, but I have decided to send you to your grand-aunt Caroline.”
+
+“Aunt Caroline! She doesn't care for me, grandfather. She never has.”
+
+“That is hardly pertinent, is it? The situation is this: She intends to
+open the Newport house early in June, and at my request she will bring
+you out there. Next fall we will do something here; I haven't decided
+just what.”
+
+There was a sudden wild surge of revolt in Lily. She hated Newport.
+Grand-aunt Caroline was a terrible person. She was like Anthony,
+domineering and cruel, and with even less control over her tongue.
+
+“I need not point out the advantages of the plan,” said Anthony suavely.
+“There may be trouble here, although I doubt it. But in any event you
+will have to come out, and this seems an excellent way.”
+
+“Is it a good thing to spend a lot of money now, grandfather, when there
+is so much discontent?”
+
+Old Anthony had a small jagged vein down the center of his forehead, and
+in anger or his rare excitements it stood out like a scar. Lily saw it
+now, but his voice was quiet enough.
+
+“I consider it vitally important to the country to continue its social
+life as before the war.”
+
+“You mean, to show we are not frightened?”
+
+“Frightened! Good God, nobody's frightened. It will take more than a
+handful of demagogues to upset this government. Which brings me to
+a subject you insist on reopening, by your conduct. I have reason to
+believe that you are still going to that man's house.”
+
+He never called Doyle by name if he could avoid it.
+
+“I have been there several times.”
+
+“After you were forbidden?”
+
+His tone roused every particle of antagonism in her. She flushed.
+
+“Perhaps because I was forbidden,” she said, slowly. “Hasn't it occurred
+to you that I may consider your attitude very unjust?”
+
+If she looked for an outburst from him it did not come. He stood for a
+moment, deep in thought.
+
+“You understand that this Doyle once tried to assassinate me?”
+
+“I know that he tried to beat you, grandfather. I am sorry, but that was
+long ago. And there was a reason for it, wasn't there?”
+
+“I see,” he said, slowly. “What you are conveying to me, not too
+delicately, is that you have definitely allied yourself with my enemies.
+That, here in my own house, you intend to defy me. That, regardless of
+my wishes or commands, while eating my food, you purpose to traffic with
+a man who has sworn to get me, sooner or later. Am I correct?”
+
+“I have only said that I see no reason why I should not visit Aunt
+Elinor.”
+
+“And that you intend to. Do I understand also that you refuse to go to
+Newport?”
+
+“I daresay I shall have to go, if you send me. I don't want to go.”
+
+“Very well. I am glad we have had this little talk. It makes my own
+course quite plain. Good-night.”
+
+He opened the door for her and she went out and down the stairs. She
+felt very calm, and as though something irrevocable had happened. With
+her anger at her grandfather there was mixed a sort of pity for him,
+because she knew that nothing he could do would change the fundamental
+situation. Even if he locked her up, and that was possible, he
+would know that he had not really changed things, or her. She felt
+surprisingly strong. All these years that she had feared him, and yet
+when it came to a direct issue, he was helpless! What had he but his
+wicked tongue, and what did that matter to deaf ears?
+
+She found her maid gone, and Mademoiselle waiting to help her undress.
+Mademoiselle often did that. It made her feel still essential in Lily's
+life.
+
+“A long seance!” she said. “Your mother told me to-night. It is
+Newport?”
+
+“He wants me to go. Unhook me, Mademoiselle, and then run off and go to
+bed. You ought not to wait up like this.”
+
+“Newport!” said Mademoiselle, deftly slipping off the white and silver
+that was Lily's gown. “It will be wonderful, dear. And you will be a
+great success. You are very beautiful.”
+
+“I am not going to Newport, Mademoiselle.”
+
+Mademoiselle broke into rapid expostulation, in French. Every girl
+wanted to make her debut at Newport. Here it was all industry, money,
+dirt. Men who slaved in offices daily. At Newport was gathered the real
+leisure class of America, those who knew how to play, who lived. But
+Lily, taking off her birthday pearls before the mirror of her dressing
+table, only shook her head.
+
+“I'm not going,” she said. “I might as well tell you, for you'll hear
+about it later. I have quarreled with him, very badly. I think he
+intends to lock me up.”
+
+“C'est impossible!” cried Mademoiselle.
+
+But a glance at Lily's set face in the mirror told her it was true.
+
+She went away very soon, sadly troubled. There were bad times coming.
+The old peaceful quiet days were gone, for age and obstinacy had met
+youth and the arrogance of youth, and it was to be battle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+But there was a truce for a time. Lily came and went without
+interference, and without comment. Nothing more was said about Newport.
+She motored on bright days to the country club, lunched and played golf
+or tennis, rode along the country lanes with Pink Denslow, accepted such
+invitations as came her way cheerfully enough but without enthusiasm,
+and was very gentle to her mother. But Mademoiselle found her tense and
+restless, as though she were waiting.
+
+And there were times when she disappeared for an hour or two in the
+afternoons, proffering no excuses, and came back flushed, and perhaps a
+little frightened. On the evenings that followed those small excursions
+she was particularly gentle to her mother. Mademoiselle watched and
+waited for the blow she feared was about to fall. She felt sure that the
+girl was seeing Louis Akers, and that she would ultimately marry him. In
+her despair she fell back on Willy Cameron and persuaded Grace to invite
+him to dinner. It was meant to be a surprise for Lily, but she had
+telephoned at seven o'clock that she was dining at the Doyles'.
+
+It was that evening that Willy Cameron learned that Mr. Hendricks had
+been right about Lily. He and Grace dined alone, for Howard was away at
+a political conference, and Anthony had dined at his club. And in the
+morning room after dinner Grace found herself giving him her confidence.
+
+“I have no right to burden you with our troubles, Mr. Cameron,” Grace
+said, “but she is so fond of you, and she has great respect for your
+judgment. If you could only talk to her about the anxiety she is
+causing. These Doyles, or rather Mr. Doyle--the wife is Mr. Cardew's
+sister--are putting all sorts of ideas into her head. And she has met a
+man there, a Mr. Akers, and--I'm afraid she thinks she is in love with
+him, Mr. Cameron.”
+
+He met her eyes gravely.
+
+“Have you tried not forbidding her to go to the Doyles?”
+
+“I have forbidden her nothing. It is her grandfather.”
+
+“Then it seems to be Mr. Cardew who needs to be talked to, doesn't it?”
+ he said. “I wouldn't worry too much, Mrs. Cardew. And don't hold too
+tight a rein.”
+
+He was very down-hearted when he left. Grace's last words placed a heavy
+burden on him.
+
+“I simply feel,” she said, “that you can do more with her than we can,
+and that if something isn't done she will ruin her life. She is too fine
+and wonderful to have her do that.”
+
+To picture Lily as willfully going her own gait at that period would be
+most unfair. She was suffering cruelly; the impulse that led her to meet
+Louis Akers against her family's wishes was irresistible, but there was
+a new angle to her visits to the Doyle house. She was going there now,
+not so much because she wished to go, as because she began to feel that
+her Aunt Elinor needed her.
+
+There was something mysterious about her Aunt Elinor, mysterious and
+very sad. Even her smile had pathos in it, and she was smiling less
+and less. She sat in those bright little gatherings, in them but not of
+them, unbrilliant and very quiet. Sometimes she gave Lily the sense that
+like Lily herself she was waiting. Waiting for what?
+
+Lily had a queer feeling too, once or twice, that Elinor was afraid. But
+again, afraid of what? Sometimes she wondered if Elinor Doyle was afraid
+of her husband; certainly there were times, when they were alone, when
+he dropped his unctuous mask and held Elinor up to smiling contempt.
+
+“You can see what a clever wife I have,” he said once. “Sometimes I
+wonder, Elinor, how you have lived with me so long and absorbed so
+little of what really counts.”
+
+“Perhaps the difficulty,” Elinor had said quietly, “is because we differ
+as to what really counts.”
+
+Lily brought Elinor something she needed, of youth and irresponsible
+chatter, and in the end the girl found the older woman depending on her.
+To cut her off from that small solace was unthinkable. And then too she
+formed Elinor's sole link with her former world, a world of dinners and
+receptions, of clothes and horses and men who habitually dressed for
+dinner, of the wealth and panoply of life. A world in which her interest
+strangely persisted.
+
+“What did you wear at the country club dance last night?” she would ask.
+
+“A rose-colored chiffon over yellow. It gives the oddest effect, like an
+Ophelia rose.”
+
+Or:
+
+“At the Mainwarings? George or Albert?”
+
+“The Alberts.”
+
+“Did they ever have any children?”
+
+One day she told her about not going to Newport, and was surprised to
+see Elinor troubled.
+
+“Why won't you go? It is a wonderful house.”
+
+“I don't care to go away, Aunt Nellie.” She called her that sometimes.
+
+Elinor had knitted silently for a little. Then:
+
+“Do you mind if I say something to you?”
+
+“Say anything you like, of course.”
+
+“I just--Lily, don't see too much of Louis Akers. Don't let him carry
+you off your feet. He is good-looking, but if you marry him, you will be
+terribly unhappy.”
+
+“That isn't enough to say, Aunt Nellie,” she said gravely. “You must
+have a reason.”
+
+Elinor hesitated.
+
+“I don't like him. He is a man of very impure life.”
+
+“That's because he has never known any good women.” Lily rose valiantly
+to his defense, but the words hurt her. “Suppose a good woman came into
+his life? Couldn't she change him?”
+
+
+“I don't know,” Elinor said helplessly. “But there is something else. It
+will cut you off from your family.”
+
+“You did that. You couldn't stand it, either. You know what it's like.”
+
+
+
+“There must be some other way. That is no reason for marriage.”
+
+“But--suppose I care for him?” Lily said, shyly.
+
+“You wouldn't live with him a year. There are different ways of caring,
+Lily. There is such a thing as being carried away by a man's violent
+devotion, but it isn't the violent love that lasts.”
+
+Lily considered that carefully, and she felt that there was some truth
+in it. When Louis Akers came to take her home that night he found her
+unresponsive and thoughtful.
+
+“Mrs. Doyle's been talking to you,” he said at last. “She hates me, you
+know.”
+
+“Why should she hate you?”
+
+“Because, with all her vicissitudes, she's still a snob,” he said
+roughly. “My family was nothing, so I'm nothing.”
+
+“She wants me to be happy, Louis.”
+
+“And she thinks you won't be with me.”
+
+“I am not at all sure that I would be.” She made an effort then to throw
+off the strange bond that held her to him. “I should like to have three
+months, Louis, to get a--well, a sort of perspective. I can't think
+clearly when you're around, and--”
+
+“And I'm always around? Thanks.” But she had alarmed him. “You're
+hurting me awfully, little girl,” he said, in a different tone. “I can't
+live without seeing you, and you know it. You're all I have in life.
+You have everything, wealth, friends, position. You could play for three
+months and never miss me. But you are all I have.”
+
+In the end she capitulated
+
+Jim Doyle was very content those days. There had been a time when Jim
+Doyle was the honest advocate of labor, a flaming partizan of those who
+worked with their hands. But he had traveled a long road since then,
+from dreamer to conspirator. Once he had planned to build up; now he
+plotted to tear down.
+
+His weekly paper had enormous power. To the workers he had begun to
+preach class consciousness, and the doctrine of being true to their
+class. From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.
+Ostensibly he stood for a vast equality, world wide and beneficent;
+actually he preached an inflammable doctrine of an earth where the
+last shall be first. He advocated the overthrow of all centralized
+government, and considered the wages system robbery. Under it workers
+were slaves, and employers of workers slave-masters. It was with
+such phrases that he had for months been consistently inflaming the
+inflammable foreign element in and around the city, and not the foreign
+element only. A certain percentage of American-born workmen fell before
+the hammer-like blows of his words, repeated and driven home each week.
+
+He had no scruples, and preached none. He preached only revolt, and in
+that revolt defiance of all existing laws. He had no religion; Christ
+to him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same system that
+still crucified those who fought the established order. In his new world
+there would be no churches and no laws. He advocated bloodshed, arson,
+sabotage of all sorts, as a means to an end.
+
+Fanatic he was, but practical fanatic, and the more dangerous for that.
+He had viewed the failure of the plan to capture a city in the northwest
+in February with irritation, but without discouragement. They had acted
+prematurely there and without sufficient secrecy. That was all. The
+plan in itself was right. And he had watched the scant reports of the
+uprising in the newspapers with amusement and scorn. The very steps
+taken to suppress the facts showed the uneasiness of the authorities and
+left the nation with a feeling of false security.
+
+The people were always like that. Twice in a hundred years France had
+experienced the commune. Each time she had been warned, and each time
+she had waited too long. Ever so often in the life of every nation came
+these periodic outbursts of discontent, economic in their origin, and
+ran their course like diseases, contagious, violent and deadly.
+
+The commune always followed long and costly wars. The people would
+dance, but they revolted at paying the piper.
+
+The plan in Seattle had been well enough conceived; the city light plant
+was to have been taken over during the early evening of February 6, and
+at ten o'clock that night the city was to have gone dark. But the reign
+of terrorization that was to follow had revolted Jim Osborne, one
+of their leaders, and from his hotel bedroom he had notified the
+authorities. Word had gone out to “get” Osborne.
+
+If it had not been for Osborne, and the conservative element behind him,
+a flame would have been kindled at Seattle that would have burnt across
+the nation.
+
+Doyle watched Gompers cynically.. He considered his advocacy of
+patriotic cooperation between labor and the Government during the war
+the skillful attitude of an opportunist. Gompers could do better with
+public opinion behind him than without it. He was an opportunist, riding
+the wave which would carry him farthest. Playing both ends against the
+middle, and the middle, himself. He saw Gompers, watching the release
+of tension that followed the armistice and seeing the great child he
+had fathered, grown now and conscious of its power,--watching it, fully
+aware that it had become stronger than he.
+
+Gompers, according to Doyle, had ceased to be a leader and become a
+follower, into strange and difficult paths.
+
+The war had made labor's day. No public move was made without consulting
+organized labor, and a certain element in it had grown drunk with power.
+To this element Doyle appealed. It was Doyle who wrote the carefully
+prepared incendiary speeches, which were learned verbatim by his
+agents for delivery. For Doyle knew one thing, and knew it well. Labor,
+thinking along new lines, must think along the same lines. Be taught the
+same doctrines. Be pushed in one direction.
+
+There were, then, two Doyles, one the poseur, flaunting his outrageous
+doctrines with a sardonic grin, gathering about him a small circle of
+the intelligentsia, and too openly heterodox to be dangerous. And the
+other, secretly plotting against the city, wary, cautious, practical and
+deadly, waiting to overthrow the established order and substitute for it
+chaos. It was only incidental to him that old Anthony should go with the
+rest.
+
+But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis. He
+meant to be that. He steadily widened the breach between Lily and her
+family, and he watched the progress of her affair with Louis Akers with
+relish. He had not sought this particular form of revenge, but Fate had
+thrust it into his hands, and he meant to be worthy of the opportunity.
+
+He was in no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather liked
+sitting back and watching the slow development of his plans. It was like
+chess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then sat
+back waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell,
+with slow agonizing, into the trap.
+
+A few days after Lily had had her talk with Elinor, Doyle found a way to
+widen the gulf between Lily and her grandfather. Elinor seldom left the
+house, and Lily had done some shopping for her. The two women were in
+Elinor's bedroom, opening small parcels, when he knocked and came in.
+
+“I don't like to disturb the serenity of this happy family group,” he
+said, “but I am inclined to think that a certain gentleman, standing not
+far from a certain young lady's taxicab, belongs to a certain department
+of our great city government. And from his unflattering lack of interest
+in me, that he--”
+
+Elinor half rose, terrified.
+
+“Not the police, Jim?”
+
+“Sit down,” he said, in a tone Lily had never heard him use before. And
+to Lily, more gently: “I am not altogether surprised. As a matter of
+fact, I have known it for some time. Your esteemed grandfather seems to
+take a deep interest in your movements these days.”
+
+“Do you mean that I am being followed?”
+
+“I'm afraid so. You see, you are a very important person, and if you
+will venture in the slums which surround the Cardew Mills, you should be
+protected. At any time, for instance, Aunt Elinor and I may despoil you
+of those pearls you wear so casually, and--”
+
+“Don't talk like that, Jim,” Elinor protested. She was very pale. “Are
+you sure he is watching Lily?”
+
+He gave her an ugly look.
+
+“Who else?” he inquired suavely.
+
+Lily sat still, frozen with anger. So this was her grandfather's method
+of dealing with her. He could not lock her up, but he would know, day
+by day, and hour by hour, what she was doing. She could see him reading
+carefully his wicked little notes on her day. Perhaps he was watching
+her mail, too. Then when he had secured a hateful total he would go to
+her father, and together they would send her away somewhere. Away from
+Louis Akers. If he was watching her mail too he would know that Louis
+was in love with her. They would rake up all the things that belonged
+in the past he was done with, and recite them to her. As though they
+mattered now!
+
+She went to the window and looked out. Yes, she had seen the
+detective before. He must have been hanging around for days, his face
+unconsciously impressing itself upon her. When she turned:
+
+“Louis is coming to dinner, isn't he?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“If you don't mind, Aunt Nellie, I think I'll dine out with him
+somewhere. I want to talk to him alone.”
+
+“But the detective--”
+
+“If my grandfather uses low and detestable means to spy on me, Aunt
+Nellie, he deserves what he gets, doesn't he?”
+
+When Louis Akers came at half-past six, he found that she had been
+crying, but she greeted him calmly enough, with her head held high.
+Elinor, watching her, thought she was very like old Anthony himself just
+then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Willy Cameron came home from a night class in metallurgy the evening
+after the day Lily had made her declaration of independence, and let
+himself in with his night key. There was a light in the little parlor,
+and Mrs. Boyd's fragile silhouette against the window shade.
+
+He was not surprised at that. She had developed a maternal affection for
+him stronger than any she showed for either Edith or Dan. She revealed
+it in rather touching ways, too, keeping accounts when he accused her of
+gross extravagance, for she spent Dan's swollen wages wastefully; making
+him coffee late at night, and forcing him to drink it, although it kept
+him awake for hours; and never going to bed until he was safely closeted
+in his room at the top of the stairs.
+
+He came in as early as possible, therefore, for he had had Doctor
+Smalley in to see her, and the result had been unsatisfactory.
+
+“Heart's bad,” said the doctor, when they had retired to Willy's room.
+“Leaks like a sieve. And there may be an aneurism. Looks like it,
+anyhow.”
+
+“What is there to do?” Willy asked, feeling helpless and extremely
+shocked. “We might send her somewhere.”
+
+“Nothing to do. Don't send her away; she'd die of loneliness. Keep her
+quiet and keep her happy. Don't let her worry. She only has a short
+time, I should say, and you can't lengthen it. It could be shortened, of
+course, if she had a shock, or anything like that.”
+
+“Shall I tell the family?”
+
+“What's the use?” asked Doctor Smalley, philosophically. “If they fuss
+over her she'll suspect something.”
+
+As he went down the stairs he looked about him. The hall was fresh with
+new paper and white paint, and in the yard at the rear, visible through
+an open door, the border of annuals was putting out its first blossoms.
+
+“Nice little place you've got here,” he observed. “I think I see the
+fine hand of Miss Edith, eh?”
+
+“Yes,” said Willy Cameron, gravely.
+
+He had made renewed efforts to get a servant after that, but the invalid
+herself balked him. When he found an applicant Mrs. Boyd would sit, very
+much the grande dame, and question her, although she always ended by
+sending her away.
+
+“She looked like the sort that would be running out at nights,” she
+would say. Or: “She wouldn't take telling, and I know the way you like
+your things, Willy. I could see by looking at her that she couldn't cook
+at all.”
+
+She cherished the delusion that he was improving and gaining flesh under
+her ministrations, and there was a sort of jealousy in her care for him.
+She wanted to yield to no one the right to sit proudly behind one of her
+heavy, tasteless pies, and say:
+
+“Now I made this for you, Willy, because I know country boys like pies.
+Just see if that crust isn't nice.”
+
+“You don't mean to say you made it!”
+
+“I certainly did.” And to please her he would clear his plate. He rather
+ran to digestive tablets those days, and Edith, surprising him with one
+at the kitchen sink one evening, accused him roundly of hypocrisy.
+
+“I don't know why you stay anyhow,” she said, staring into the yard
+where Jinx was burying a bone in the heliotrope bed. “The food's awful.
+I'm used to it, but you're not.”
+
+“You don't eat anything, Edith.”
+
+“I'm not hungry. Willy, I wish you'd go away. What right we got to tie
+you up with us, anyhow? We're a poor lot. You're not comfortable and you
+know it. D'you know where she is now?”
+
+“She” in the vernacular of the house, was always Mrs. Boyd.
+
+“She forgot to make your bed, and she's doing it now.”
+
+He ran up the stairs, and forcibly putting Mrs. Boyd in a chair, made up
+his own bed, awkwardly and with an eye on her chest, which rose and fell
+alarmingly. It was after that that he warned Edith.
+
+“She's not strong,” he said. “She needs care and--well, to be happy.
+That's up to the three of us. For one thing, she must not have a shock.
+I'm going to warn Dan against exploding paper bags; she goes white every
+time.”
+
+Dan was at a meeting, and Willy dried the supper dishes for Edith. She
+was silent and morose. Finally she said:
+
+“She's not very strong for me, Willy. You needn't look so shocked. She
+loves Dan and you, but not me. I don't mind, you know. She doesn't know
+it, but I do.”
+
+“She is very proud of you.”
+
+“That's different. You're right, though. Pride's her middle name. It
+nearly killed her at first to take a roomer, because she is always
+thinking of what the neighbors will say. That's why she hates me
+sometimes.”
+
+“I wish you wouldn't talk that way.”
+
+“But it's true. That fool Hodge woman at the corner came here one day
+last winter and filled her up with a lot of talk about me, and she's
+been queer to me ever since.”
+
+“You are a very good daughter.”
+
+She eyed him furtively. If only he wouldn't always believe in her! It
+was almost worse than to have him know the truth. But he went along
+with his head in the clouds; all women were good and all men meant well.
+Sometimes it worked out; Dan, for instance. Dan was trying to live up to
+him. But it was too late for her. Forever too late.
+
+It was Willy Cameron's night off, and they went, the three of them,
+to the movies that evening. To Mrs. Boyd the movies was the acme of
+dissipation. She would, if warned in advance, spend the entire day with
+her hair in curlers, and once there she feasted her starved romantic
+soul to repletion. But that night the building was stifling, and without
+any warning Edith suddenly got up and walked toward the door. There was
+something odd about her walk and Willy followed her, but she turned on
+him almost fiercely outside.
+
+“I wish you'd let me alone,” she said, and then swayed a little. But she
+did not faint.
+
+“I'm going home,” she said. “You stay with her. And for heaven's sake
+don't stare at me like that. I'm all right.”
+
+Nevertheless he had taken her home, Edith obstinately silent and sullen,
+and Willy anxious and perplexed. At the door she said:
+
+“Now go back to her, and tell her I just got sick of the picture. It was
+the smells in that rotten place. They'd turn a pig's stomach.”
+
+“I wish you'd see a doctor.”
+
+She looked at him with suspicious eyes. “If you run Smalley in on me
+I'll leave home.”
+
+“Will you go to bed?”
+
+“I'll go to bed, all right.”
+
+He had found things rather more difficult after that. Two women, both
+ill and refusing to acknowledge it, and the prospect of Dan's being
+called out by the union. Try as he would, he could not introduce any
+habit of thrift into the family. Dan's money came and went, and on
+Saturday nights there was not only nothing left, but often a deficit.
+Dan, skillfully worked upon outside, began to develop a grievance, also,
+and on his rare evenings at home or at the table he would voice his
+wrongs.
+
+“It's just hand to mouth all the time,” he would grumble. “A fellow
+working for the Cardews never gets ahead. What chance has he got,
+anyhow? It takes all he can get to live.”
+
+Willy Cameron began to see that the trouble was not with Dan, but with
+his women folks. And Dan was one of thousands. His wages went for food,
+too much food, food spoiled in cooking. There were men, with able women
+behind them, making less than Dan and saving money.
+
+“Keep some of it out and bank it,” he suggested, but Dan sneered.
+
+“And have a store bill a mile long! You know mother as well as I do. She
+means well, but she's a fool with money.”
+
+He counted his hours from the time he entered the mill until he left it,
+but he revealed once that there were long idle periods when the heating
+was going on, when he and the other men of the furnace crew sat and
+waited, doing nothing.
+
+“But I'm there, all right,” he said. “I'm not playing golf or riding in
+my automobile. I'm on the job.”
+
+“Well,” said Willy Cameron, “I'm on the job about eleven hours a day,
+and I wear out more shoe leather than trouser seats at that. But it
+doesn't seem to hurt me.”
+
+“It's a question of principle,” said Dan doggedly. “I've got no personal
+kick, y'understand. Only I'm not getting anywhere, and something's got
+to be done about it.”
+
+So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration of
+independence, Willy Cameron made his way rather heavily toward the Boyd
+house. He was very tired. He had made one or two speeches for Hendricks
+already, before local ward organizations, and he was working hard at his
+night class in metallurgy. He had had a letter from his mother, too,
+and he thought he read homesickness between the lines. He was not at all
+sure where his duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the
+Boyds flat, seemed impossible.
+
+He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over
+the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice,
+he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had
+pleaded a week of engagements.
+
+“I'm sorry,” she had said. “I'll call you up next week some time I have
+a lot of things I want to talk over with you.”
+
+But he knew she was avoiding him.
+
+And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had
+learned something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not the
+poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the accusations
+against him. Lily mixed up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white
+flame of patriotism, was unthinkable. She must not go to the house on
+Cardew Way. A man's loyalty was like a woman's virtue; it could not be
+questionable. There was no middle ground.
+
+He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found
+Ellen in the parlor. She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her
+chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suit-case and brown paper bundle
+at her feet.
+
+Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.
+
+“I make it a point to hold my head high,” she was saying. “I guess there
+was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but--Is that you, Willy?”
+
+“Why, Miss Ellen!” he said. “And looking as though headed for a
+journey!”
+
+Ellen's face did not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour,
+letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking
+meanwhile her own bitter thoughts.
+
+“I am, Willy. Only I didn't wait for my money and the bank's closed, and
+I came to borrow ten dollars, if you have it.”
+
+That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable and
+reveling in a fresh audience, showed no sign of departing.
+
+“She says she's been living at the Cardews,” she put in, rocking
+valiantly. “I guess most any place would seem tame after that. I do
+hear, Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes once and
+then gives them away.”
+
+She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every
+indication of going up the chimney.
+
+“I call that downright wasteful,” she offered.
+
+Willy glanced at his watch, which had been his father's, and bore the
+inscription: “James Duncan Cameron, 1876” inside the case.
+
+“Eleven o'clock,” he said sternly. “And me promising the doctor I'd have
+you in bed at ten sharp every night! Now off with you.”
+
+“But, Willy--”
+
+“--or I shall have to carry you,” he threatened. It was an old joke
+between them, and she rose, smiling, her thin face illuminated with the
+sense of being looked after.
+
+“He's that domineering,” she said to Ellen, “that I can't call my soul
+my own.”
+
+“Good-night,” Ellen said briefly.
+
+Willy stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up. He knew
+she liked him to do that, that she would expect to find him there when
+she reached the top and looked down, panting slightly.
+
+“Good-night,” he called. “Both windows open. I shall go outside to see.”
+
+Then he went back to Ellen, still standing primly over her Lares and
+Penates.
+
+“Now tell me about it,” he said.
+
+“I've left them. There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily left
+to-night, I did too.”
+
+“She left her home?”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“It's awful, Willy. I don't know all of it, but they've been having her
+followed, or her grandfather did. I think there's a man in it. Followed!
+And her a good girl! Her grandfather's been treating her like a dog for
+weeks. We all noticed it. And to-night there was a quarrel, with all of
+them at her like a pack of dogs, and her governess crying in the hall. I
+just went up and packed my things.”
+
+“Where did she go?”
+
+“I don't know. I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag. I went
+right off to the housekeeper and told her I wouldn't stay, and they
+could send my money after me.”
+
+“Did you notice the number of the taxicab?”
+
+“I never thought of it.”
+
+He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of course.
+Then, if she had left her home rather than give him up, she was really
+in love with him. He had too much common sense to believe for a moment
+that she had fled to Louis Akers' protection, however. That was the
+last thing she would do. She would have gone to a hotel, or to the Doyle
+house.
+
+“She shouldn't have left home, Ellen.”
+
+“They drove her out, I tell you,” Ellen cried, irritably. “At least
+that's what it amounted to. There are things no high-minded girl will
+stand. Can you lend me some money, Willy?”
+
+He felt in his pocket, producing a handful of loose money.
+
+“Of course you can have all I've got,” he said. “But you must not go
+to-night, Miss Ellen. It's too late. I'll give you my room and go in
+with Dan Boyd.”
+
+And he prevailed over her protests, in the end. It was not until he saw
+her settled there, hiding her sense of strangeness under an impassive
+mask, that he went downstairs again and took his hat from its hook.
+
+Lily must go back home, he knew. It was unthinkable that she should
+break with her family, and go to the Doyles. He had too little
+self-consciousness to question the propriety of his own interference,
+too much love for her to care whether she resented that interference.
+And he was filled with a vast anger at Jim Doyle. He saw in all this,
+somehow, Doyle's work; how it would play into Doyle's plans to have
+Anthony Cardew's granddaughter a member of his household. He would take
+her away from there if he had to carry her.
+
+He was a long time in getting to the mill district, and a longer time
+still in finding Cardew Way. At an all-night pharmacy he learned
+which was the house, and his determined movements took on a sort of
+uncertainty. It was very late. Ellen had waited for him for some time.
+If Lily were in that sinister darkened house across the street, the
+family had probably retired. And for the first time, too, he began to
+doubt if Doyle would let him see her. Lily herself might even refuse to
+see him.
+
+Nevertheless, the urgency to get her away from there, if she were there,
+prevailed at last, and a strip of light in an upper window, as from an
+imperfectly fitting blind, assured him that some one was still awake in
+the house.
+
+He went across the street and opening the gate, strode up the walk.
+Almost immediately he was confronted by the figure of a man who had been
+concealed by the trunk of one of the trees. He lounged forward, huge,
+menacing, yet not entirely hostile.
+
+“Who is it?” demanded the figure blocking his way.
+
+“I want to see Mr. Doyle.”
+
+“What about?”
+
+“I'll tell him that,” said Willy Cameron.
+
+“What's your name?”
+
+“That's my business, too,” said Mr. Cameron, with disarming
+pleasantness.
+
+“Damn private about your business, aren't you?” jeered the sentry, still
+in cautious tones. “Well, you can write it down on a piece of paper and
+mail it to him. He's busy now.”
+
+“All I want to do,” persisted Mr. William Wallace Cameron, growing
+slightly giddy with repressed fury, “is to ring that doorbell and ask
+him a question. I'm going to do it, too.”
+
+There was rather an interesting moment then, because the figure lunged
+at Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron, stooping low and swiftly, as well as to
+one side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting Scot, which means
+a cool-eyed madman, got in one or two rather neat effects with his
+fists. The first took the shadow just below his breast-bone, and the
+left caught him at that angle of the jaw where a small cause sometimes
+produces a large effect. The figure sat down on the brick walk and
+grunted, and Mr. Cameron, judging that he had about ten seconds' leeway,
+felt in the dazed person's right hand pocket for the revolver he knew
+would be there, and secured it. The sitting figure made puffing, feeble
+attempts to prevent him, but there was no real struggle.
+
+Mr. Cameron himself was feeling extremely triumphant and as strong as a
+lion. He was rather sorry no one had seen the affair, but that of course
+was sub-conscious. And he was more cheerful than he had been for some
+days. He had been up against so many purely intangible obstacles lately
+that it was a relief to find one he could use his fists on.
+
+“Now I'll have a few words with you, my desperate friend,” he said.
+“I've got your gun, and I am hell with a revolver, because I've never
+fired one, and there's a sort of homicidal beginner's luck about the
+thing. If you move or speak, I'll shoot it into you first and when it's
+empty I'll choke it down your throat and strangle you to death.”
+
+After which ferocious speech he strolled up the path, revolver in hand,
+and rang the doorbell. He put the weapon in his pocket then, but he
+kept his hand upon it. He had read somewhere that a revolver was quite
+useable from a pocket. There was no immediate answer to the bell, and he
+turned and surveyed the man under the tree, faintly distinguishable in
+the blackness. It had occurred to him that the number of guns a man may
+carry is only limited to his pockets, which are about fifteen.
+
+There were heavy, deliberate footsteps inside, and the door was flung
+open. No glare of light followed it, however. There was a man there,
+alarmingly tall, who seemed to stare at him, and then beyond him into
+the yard.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Are you Mr. Doyle?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“My name is Cameron, Mr. Doyle. I have had a small difference with your
+watch-dog, but he finally let me by.”
+
+“I'm afraid I don't understand. I have no dog.”
+
+“The sentry you keep posted, then.” Mr. Cameron disliked fencing.
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Doyle, urbanely. “You have happened on one of my good
+friends, I see. I have many enemies, Mr. Cameron--was that the name? And
+my friends sometimes like to keep an eye on me. It is rather touching.”
+
+He was smiling, Mr. Cameron knew, and his anger rose afresh.
+
+“Very touching,” said Mr. Cameron, “but if he bothers me going out
+you may be short one friend. Mr. Doyle, Miss Lily Cardew left her home
+to-night. I want to know if she is here.”
+
+“Are you sent by her family?”
+
+“I have asked you if she is here.”
+
+Jim Doyle apparently deliberated.
+
+“My niece is here, although just why you should interest yourself--”
+
+“May I see her?”
+
+“I regret to say she has retired.”
+
+“I think she would see me.”
+
+A door opened into the hall, throwing a shaft of light on the wall
+across and letting out the sounds of voices.
+
+“Shut that door,” said Doyle, wheeling sharply. It was closed at once.
+“Now,” he said, turning to his visitor, “I'll tell you this. My niece
+is here.” He emphasized the “my.” “She has come to me for refuge, and
+I intend to give it to her. You won't see her to-night, and if you come
+from her people you can tell them she came here of her own free will,
+and that if she stays it will be because she wants to. Joe!” he called
+into the darkness.
+
+“Yes,” came a sullen voice, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+“Show this gentleman out.”
+
+All at once Willy Cameron was staring at a closed door, on the inner
+side of which a bolt was being slipped. He felt absurd and futile, and
+not at all like a lion. With the revolver in his hand, he went down the
+steps.
+
+“Don't bother about the gate, Joe,” he said. “I like to open my own
+gates. And--don't try any tricks, Joe. Get back to your kennel.”
+
+Fearful mutterings followed that, but the shadow retired, and he made
+an undisturbed exit to the street. Once on the street-car, the entire
+episode became unreal and theatrical, with only the drag of Joe's
+revolver in his coat pocket to prove its reality.
+
+It was after midnight when, shoes in hand, he crept up the stairs to
+Dan's room, and careful not to disturb him, slipped into his side of the
+double bed. He did not sleep at all. He lay there, facing the fact that
+Lily had delivered herself voluntarily into the hands of the enemy of
+her house, and not only of her house, an enemy of the country. That
+conference that night was a sinister one. Brought to book about it,
+Doyle might claim it as a labor meeting. Organizers planning a strike
+might--did indeed--hold secret conferences, but they did not post armed
+guards. They opened business offices, and brought in the press men, and
+shouted their grievances for the world to hear.
+
+This was different. This was anarchy. And in every city it was going
+on, this rallying of the malcontents, the idlers, the envious and
+the dangerous, to the red flag. Organized labor gathered together
+the workmen, but men like Doyle were organizing the riff-raff of
+the country. They secured a small percentage of idealists and
+pseudo-intellectuals, and taught them a so-called internationalism
+which under the name of brotherhood was nothing but a raid on private
+property, a scheme of pillage and arson. They allied with themselves
+imported laborers from Europe, men with everything to gain and nothing
+to lose, and by magnifying real grievances and inflaming them with
+imaginary ones, were building out of this material the rank and file of
+an anarchist army.
+
+And against it, what?
+
+On toward morning he remembered something, and sat bolt upright in bed.
+Edith had once said something about knowing of a secret telephone. She
+had known Louis Akers very well. He might have told her what she knew,
+or have shown her, in some braggart moment. A certain type of man was
+unable to keep a secret from a woman. But that would imply--For the
+first time he wondered what Edith's relations with Louis Akers might
+have been.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the even tenor of her
+days there, the feeling she had of sanctuary did not offset Lily's clear
+knowledge that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing. Even her
+grandfather, whose anger had driven her away, she remembered now as a
+feeble old man, fighting his losing battle in a changing world, and yet
+with a sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors to the end.
+
+She had determined, that first night in Elinor's immaculate guest room,
+to go back the next day. They had been right at home, by all the tenets
+to which they adhered so religiously. She had broken the unwritten law
+not to break bread with an enemy of her house. She had done what they
+had expressly forbidden, done it over and over.
+
+“On top of all this,” old Anthony had said, after reading the tale of
+her delinquencies from some notes in his hand, “you dined last night
+openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a man openly
+my enemy, and openly of impure life.”
+
+“I do not believe he is your enemy.”
+
+“He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened to
+kill me.”
+
+“Oh, Lily, Lily!” said her mother.
+
+But it was to her father, standing grave and still, that Lily replied.
+
+“I don't believe that, father. He is not a murderer. If you would let
+him come here--”
+
+“Never in this house,” said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in his
+hand. “He will come here over my dead body.”
+
+“You have no right to condemn a man unheard.”
+
+“Unheard! I tell you I know all about him. The man is an anarchist, a
+rake, a--dog.”
+
+“Just a moment, father,” Howard had put in, quietly. “Lily, do you care
+for this man? I mean by that, do you want to marry him?”
+
+“He has asked me. I have not given him any answer yet. I don't want to
+marry a man my family will not receive. It wouldn't be fair to him.”
+
+Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and led him to a
+bitterness of language that turned Lily cold and obstinate. She heard
+him through, with her father vainly trying to break in and save the
+situation; then she said, coldly:
+
+“I am sorry you feel that way about it,” and turned and left the room.
+
+She had made no plan, of course. She hated doing theatrical things. But
+shut in her bedroom with the doors locked, Anthony's furious words came
+back, his threats, his bitter sneers. She felt strangely alone, too.
+In all the great house she had no one to support her. Mademoiselle,
+her father and mother, even the servants, were tacitly aligned with the
+opposition. Except Ellen. She had felt lately that Ellen, in her humble
+way, had espoused her cause.
+
+She had sent for Ellen.
+
+In spite of the warmth of her greeting, Lily had felt a reserve in Aunt
+Elinor's welcome. It was as though she was determinedly making the best
+of a bad situation.
+
+“I had to do it, Aunt Elinor,” she said, when they had gone upstairs.
+There was a labor conference, Doyle had explained, being held below.
+
+“I know,” said Elinor. “I understand. I'll pin back the curtains so you
+can open your windows. The night air is so smoky here.”
+
+“I am afraid mother will grieve terribly.”
+
+“I think she will,” said Elinor, with her quiet gravity. “You are all
+she has.”
+
+“She has father. She cares more for him than for anything in the world.”
+
+“Would you like some ice-water, dear?”
+
+Some time later Lily roused from the light sleep of emotional
+exhaustion. She had thought she heard Willy Cameron's voice. But that
+was absurd, of course, and she lay back to toss uneasily for hours.
+Out of all her thinking there emerged at last her real self, so long
+overlaid with her infatuation. She would go home again, and make what
+amends she could. They were wrong about Louis Akers, but they were
+right, too.
+
+Lying there, as the dawn slowly turned her windows to gray, she saw him
+with a new clarity. She had a swift vision of what life with him would
+mean. Intervals of passionate loving, of boyish dependence on her, and
+then--a new face. Never again was she to see him with such clearness.
+He was incapable of loyalty to a woman, even though he loved her. He
+was born to be a wanderer in love, an experimenter in passion. She even
+recognized in him an incurable sensuous curiosity about women, that
+would be quite remote from his love for her. He would see nothing wrong
+in his infidelities, so long as she did not know and did not suffer. And
+he would come back to her from them, watchful for suspicion, relieved
+when he did not find it, and bringing her small gifts which would be
+actually burnt offerings to his own soul.
+
+She made up her mind to give him up. She would go home in the morning,
+make her peace with them all, and never see Louis Akers again.
+
+She slept after that, and at ten o'clock Elinor wakened her with the
+word that her father was downstairs. Elinor was very pale. It had been
+a shock to her to see her brother in her home after all the years, and a
+still greater one when he had put his arm around her and kissed her.
+
+“I am so sorry, Howard,” she had said. The sight of him had set her lips
+trembling. He patted her shoulder.
+
+“Poor Elinor,” he said. “Poor old girl! We're a queer lot, aren't we?”
+
+“All but you.”
+
+“An obstinate, do-and-be-damned lot,” he said slowly. “I'd like to see
+my little girl, Nellie. We can't have another break in the family.”
+
+He held Lily in much the same way when she came down, an arm around her,
+his big shoulders thrown back as though he would guard her against the
+world. But he was very uneasy and depressed, at that. He had come on a
+difficult errand, and because he had no finesse he blundered badly.
+It was some time before she gathered the full meaning of what he was
+saying.
+
+“Aunt Cornelia's!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Or, if you and your mother want to go to Europe,” he put in hastily,
+seeing her puzzled face, “I think I can arrange about passports.”
+
+“Does that mean he won't have me back, father?”
+
+“Lily, dear,” he said, hoarse with anxiety, “we simply have to remember
+that he is a very old man, and that his mind is not elastic. He is
+feeling very bitter now, but he will get over it.”
+
+“And I am to travel around waiting to be forgiven! I was ready to go
+back, but--he won't have me. Is that it?”
+
+“Only just for the present.” He threw out his hands. “I have tried
+everything. I suppose, in a way, I could insist, make a point of it,
+but there are other things to be considered. His age, for one thing,
+and then--the strike. If he takes an arbitrary stand against me, no
+concession, no argument with the men, it makes it very difficult, in
+many ways.”
+
+“I see. It is wicked that any one man should have such power. The city,
+the mills, his family--it's wicked.” But she was conscious of no deep
+anger against Anthony now. She merely saw that between them, they, she
+and her grandfather, had dug a gulf that could not be passed. And
+in Howard's efforts she saw the temporizing that her impatient youth
+resented.
+
+“I am afraid it is a final break, father,” she said. “And if he shuts
+me out I must live my own life. But I am not going to run away to Aunt
+Cornelia or Europe. I shall stay here.”
+
+He had to be content with that. After all, his own sister--but he wished
+it were not Jim Doyle's house. Not that he regarded Lily's shift toward
+what he termed Bolshevism very seriously; all youth had a slant toward
+socialism, and outgrew it. But he went away sorely troubled, after a few
+words with Elinor Doyle alone.
+
+“You don't look unhappy, Nellie.”
+
+“Things have been much better the last few years.”
+
+“Is he kind to you?”
+
+“Not always, Howard. He doesn't drink now, so that is over. And I think
+there are no other women. But when things go wrong I suffer, of course.”
+ She stared past him toward the open window.
+
+“Why don't you leave him?”
+
+“I couldn't go home, Howard. You know what it would be. Worse than
+Lily. And I'm too old to start out by myself. My habits are formed, and
+besides, I--” She checked herself.
+
+“I could take a house somewhere for both of you, Lily and yourself,” he
+said eagerly; “that would be a wonderful way out for everybody.”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“We'll manage all right,” she said. “I'll make Lily comfortable and as
+happy as I can.”
+
+He felt that he had to make his own case clear, or he might have
+noticed with what care she was choosing her words. His father's age, his
+unconscious dependence on Grace, his certainty to retire soon from the
+arbitrary stand he had taken. Elinor hardly heard him. Months
+afterwards he was to remember the distant look in her eyes, a sort of
+half-frightened determination, but he was self-engrossed just then.
+
+“I can't persuade you?” he finished.
+
+“No. But it is good of you to think of it.”
+
+“You know what the actual trouble was last night? It was not her coming
+here.”
+
+“I know, Howard.”
+
+“Don't let her marry him, Nellie! Better than any one, you ought to know
+what that would mean.”
+
+“I knew too, Howard, but I did it.”
+
+In the end he went away not greatly comforted, to fight his own battles,
+to meet committees from the union, and having met them, to find
+himself facing the fact that, driven by some strange urge he could
+not understand, the leaders wished a strike. There were times when he
+wondered what would happen if he should suddenly yield every point, make
+every concession. They would only make further demands, he felt. They
+seemed determined to put him out of business. If only he could have
+dealt with the men directly, instead of with their paid representatives,
+he felt that he would get somewhere. But always, interposed between
+himself and his workmen, was this barrier of their own erecting.
+
+It was like representative government. It did not always represent.
+It, too, was founded on representation in good faith; but there was not
+always good faith. The union system was wrong. It was like politics. The
+few handled the many. The union, with its all-powerful leaders, was only
+another form of autocracy. It was Prussian. Yet the ideal behind the
+union was sound enough.
+
+He had no quarrel with the union. He puzzled it out, traveling
+unaccustomed mental paths. The country was founded on liberty. All men
+were created free and equal. Free, yes, but equal? Was not equality a
+long way ahead along a thorny road? Men were not equal in the effort
+they made, nor did equal efforts bring equal result. If there was class
+antagonism behind all this unrest, would there not always be those who
+rose by dint of ceaseless effort? Equality of opportunity, yes. Equality
+of effort and result, no.
+
+To destroy the chance of gain was to put a premium on inertia; to kill
+ambition; to reduce the high without raising the low.
+
+At noon on the same day Willy Cameron went back to the house on Cardew
+Way, to find Lily composed and resigned, instead of the militant figure
+he had expected. He asked her to go home, and she told him then that she
+had no longer a home to go to.
+
+“I meant to go, Willy,” she finished. “I meant to go this morning. But
+you see how things are.”
+
+He had stood for a long time, looking at nothing very hard. “I see,” he
+said finally. “Of course your grandfather will be sorry in a day or two,
+but he may not swallow his pride very soon.”
+
+That rather hurt her.
+
+“What about my pride?” she asked.
+
+“You can afford to be magnanimous with all your life before you.” Then
+he faced her. “Besides, Lily, you're wrong. Dead wrong. You've hurt
+three people, and all you've got out of it has been your own way.”
+
+“There is such a thing as liberty.”
+
+“I don't know about that. And a good many crimes have been committed in
+its name.” Even in his unhappiness he was controversial. “We are never
+really free, so long as we love people, and they love us. Well--” He
+picked up his old felt hat and absently turned down the brim; it was
+raining. “I'll have to get back. I've overstayed my lunch hour as it
+is.”
+
+“You haven't had any luncheon?”
+
+“I wasn't hungry,” he had said, and had gone away, his coat collar
+turned up against the shower. Lily had had a presentiment that he was
+taking himself out of her life, that he had given her up as a bad job.
+She felt depressed and lonely, and not quite so sure of herself as
+she had been; rather, although she did not put it that way, as though
+something fine had passed her way, like Pippa singing, and had then gone
+on.
+
+She settled down as well as she could to her new life, making no plans,
+however, and always with the stricken feeling that she had gained her
+own point at the cost of much suffering. She telephoned to her mother
+daily, broken little conversations with long pauses while Grace steadied
+her voice. Once her mother hung up the receiver hastily, and Lily
+guessed that her grandfather had come in. She felt very bitter toward
+him.
+
+But she found the small oneage interesting, in a quiet way; to make
+her own bed and mend her stockings--Grace had sent her a trunkful of
+clothing; and on the elderly maid's afternoon out, to help Elinor with
+the supper. She seldom went out, but Louis Akers came daily, and on the
+sixth day of her stay she promised to marry him.
+
+She had not meant to do it, but it was difficult to refuse him. She had
+let him think she would do it ultimately, for one thing. And, however
+clearly she might analyze him in his absences, his strange attraction
+reasserted itself when he was near. But her acceptance of him was almost
+stoical.
+
+“But not soon, Louis,” she said, holding him off. “And--I ought to tell
+you--I don't think we will be happy together.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because--” she found it hard to put into words--“because love with you
+is a sort of selfish thing, I think.”
+
+“I'll lie down now and let you tramp on me,” he said exultantly, and
+held out his arms. But even as she moved toward him she voiced her inner
+perplexity.
+
+“I never seem to be able to see myself married to you.”
+
+“Then the sooner the better, so you can.”
+
+“You won't like being married, you know.”
+
+“That's all you know about it, Lily. I'm mad about you. I'm mad for
+you.”
+
+There was a new air of maturity about Lily those days, and sometimes
+a sort of aloofness that both maddened him and increased his desire to
+possess her. She went into his arms, but when he held her closest she
+sometimes seemed farthest away.
+
+“I want you now.”
+
+“I want to be engaged a long time, Louis. We have so much to learn about
+each other.”
+
+He thought that rather childish. But whatever had been his motive in the
+beginning, he was desperately in love with her by that time, and because
+of that he frightened her sometimes. He was less sure of himself, too,
+even after she had accepted him, and to prove his continued dominance
+over her he would bully her.
+
+“Come here,” he would say, from the hearth rug, or by the window.
+
+“Certainly not.”
+
+“Come here.”
+
+Sometimes she went, to be smothered in his hot embrace; sometimes she
+did not.
+
+But her infatuation persisted, although there were times when his
+inordinate vitality and his caresses gave her a sense of physical
+weariness, times when sheer contact revolted her. He seemed always to
+want to touch her. Fastidiously reared, taught a sort of aloofness from
+childhood, Lily found herself wondering if all men in love were like
+that, always having to be held off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Ellen was staying at the Boyd house. She went downstairs the morning
+after her arrival, and found the bread--bakery bread--toasted and
+growing cold on the table, while a slice of ham, ready to be cooked, was
+not yet on the fire, and Mrs. Boyd had run out to buy some milk.
+
+Dan had already gone, and his half-empty cup of black coffee was on the
+kitchen table. Ellen sniffed it and raised her eyebrows.
+
+She rolled up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in the
+frying pan, with much the same grimness with which she had sat the night
+before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue. If this was the way they
+looked after Willy Cameron, no wonder he was thin and pale. She threw
+out the coffee, which she suspected had been made by the time-saving
+method of pouring water on last night's grounds, and made a fresh pot of
+it. After that she inspected the tea towels, and getting a tin dishpan,
+set them to boil in it on the top of the range.
+
+“Enough to give him typhoid,” she reflected.
+
+Ellen disapproved of her surroundings; she disapproved of any woman who
+did not boil her tea towels. And when Edith came down carefully dressed
+and undeniably rouged she formed a disapproving opinion of that young
+lady, which was that she was trying to land Willy Cameron, and that he
+would be better dead than landed.
+
+She met Edith's stare of surprise with one of thinly veiled hostility.
+
+“Hello!” said Edith. “When did you blow in, and where from?”
+
+“I came to see Mr. Cameron last night, and he made me stay.”
+
+“A friend of Willy's! Well, I guess you needn't pay for your breakfast
+by cooking it. Mother's probably run out for something--she never has
+anything in the house--and is talking somewhere. I'll take that fork.”
+
+But Ellen proceeded to turn the ham.
+
+“I'll do it,” she said. “You might spoil your hands.”
+
+But Edith showed no offense.
+
+“All right,” she acceded indifferently. “If you're going to eat it you'd
+better cook it. We're rotten housekeepers here.”
+
+“I should think, if you're going to keep boarders, somebody would learn
+to cook. Mr. Cameron's mother is the best housekeeper in town, and he
+was raised on good food and plenty of it.”
+
+Her tone was truculent. Ellen's world, the world of short hours and
+easy service, of the decorum of the Cardew servants' hall, of luxury
+and dignity and good pay, had suddenly gone to pieces about her. She
+was feeling very bitter, especially toward a certain chauffeur who had
+prophesied the end of all service. He had made the statement that
+before long all people would be equal. There would be no above and
+below-stairs, no servants' hall.
+
+“They'll drive their own cars, then, damn them,” he had said once, “if
+they can get any to drive. And answer their own bells, if they've got
+any to ring. And get up and cook their own breakfasts.”
+
+“Which you won't have any to cook,” Grayson had said irritably, from
+the head of the long table. “Just a word, my man. That sort of talk is
+forbidden here. One word more and I go to Mr. Cardew.”
+
+The chauffeur had not sulked, however. “All right, Mr. Grayson,” he said
+affably. “But I can go on thinking, I daresay. And some of these days
+you'll be wishing you'd climbed on the band wagon before it's too late.”
+
+Ellen, turning the ham carefully, was conscious that her revolt had been
+only partially on Lily's account. It was not so much Lily's plight
+as the abuse of power, although she did not put it that way, that had
+driven her out. Ellen then had carried out her own small revolution, and
+where had it put her? She had lost a good home, and what could she do?
+All she knew was service.
+
+Edith poured herself a cup of coffee, and taking a piece of toast from
+the oven, stood nibbling it. The crumbs fell on the not over-clean
+floor.
+
+“Why don't you go into the dining-room to eat?” Ellen demanded.
+
+“Got out of the wrong side of the bed, didn't you?” Edith asked.
+“Willy's bed, I suppose. I'm not hungry, and I always eat breakfast like
+this. I wish he would hurry. We'll be late.”
+
+Ellen stared. It was her first knowledge that this girl, this painted
+hussy, worked in Willy's pharmacy, and her suspicions increased. She
+had a quick vision, as she had once had of Lily, of Edith in the Cameron
+house; Edith reading or embroidering on the front porch while Willy's
+mother slaved for her; Edith on the same porch in the evening, with all
+the boys in town around her. She knew the type, the sort that set an
+entire village by the ears and in the end left home and husband and ran
+away with a traveling salesman.
+
+Ellen had already got Willy married and divorced when Mrs. Boyd came in.
+She carried the milk pail, but her lips were blue and she sat down in a
+chair and held her hand to her heart.
+
+“I'm that short of breath!” she gasped. “I declare I could hardly get
+back.”
+
+“I'll give you some coffee, right off.”
+
+When Willy Cameron had finished his breakfast she followed him into the
+parlor. His pallor was not lost on her, or his sunken eyes. He looked
+badly fed, shabby, and harassed, and he bore the marks of his sleepless
+night on his face. “Are you going to stay here?” she demanded.
+
+“Why, yes, Miss Ellen.”
+
+“Your mother would break her heart if she knew the way you're living.”
+
+“I'm very comfortable. We've tried to get a ser--” He changed color
+at that. In the simple life of the village at home a woman whose only
+training was the town standard of good housekeeping might go into
+service in the city and not lose caste. But she was never thought of as
+a servant. “--help,” he substituted. “But we can't get any one, and Mrs.
+Boyd is delicate. It is heart trouble.”
+
+“Does that girl work where you do?”
+
+“Yes. Why?”
+
+“Is she engaged to you? She calls you Willy.” He smiled into her eyes.
+
+“Not a bit of it, or thinking of it.”
+
+“How do you know what she's thinking? It's all over her. It's Willy this
+and Willy that--and men are such fools.”
+
+There flashed into his mind certain things that he had tried to forget;
+Edith at his doorway, with that odd look in her eyes; Edith never going
+to sleep until he had gone to bed; and recently, certain things she had
+said, that he had passed over lightly and somewhat uncomfortably.
+
+“That's ridiculous, Miss Ellen. But even if it were true, which it
+isn't, don't you think it would be rather nice of her?” He smiled.
+
+“I do not. I heard you going out last night, Willy. Did you find her?”
+
+“She is at the Doyles'. I didn't see her.”
+
+“That'll finish it,” Ellen prophesied, somberly. She glanced around the
+parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard, at the
+unwound clock on the mantel shelf.
+
+“If you're going to stay here I will,” she announced abruptly. “I owe
+that much to your mother. I've got some money. I'll take what they'd
+pay some foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another family.” Then,
+seeing hesitation in his eyes: “That woman's sick, and you've got to be
+looked after. I could do all the work, if that--if the girl would help
+in the evenings.”
+
+He demurred at first. She would find it hard. They had no luxuries, and
+she was accustomed to luxury. There was no room for her. But in the
+end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to find Edith
+offering to share her upper bedroom.
+
+“It's a hole,” she said, “cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer.
+But there's room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone.”
+
+“I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith,” he said for perhaps the
+twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, “and you would
+take my room.”
+
+“No chance,” she said cheerfully. “Mother would raise the devil if you
+tried it.” She glanced at Ellen's face. “If that word shocks you, you're
+due for a few shocks, you know.”
+
+“The way you talk is your business, not mine,” said Ellen austerely.
+
+When they finally departed on a half-run Ellen was established as
+a fixture in the Boyd house, and was already piling all the cooking
+utensils into a wash boiler and with grim efficiency was searching for
+lye with which to clean them.
+
+Two weeks later, the end of June, the strike occurred. It was not,
+in spite of predictions, a general walk-out. Some of the mills,
+particularly the smaller plants, did not go down at all, and with
+reduced forces kept on, but the chain of Cardew Mills was closed. There
+was occasional rioting by the foreign element in outlying districts, but
+the state constabulary handled it easily.
+
+Dan was out of work, and the loss of his pay was a serious matter in
+the little house. He had managed to lay by a hundred dollars, and Willy
+Cameron had banked it for him, but there was a real problem to be
+faced. On the night of the day the Cardew Mills went down Willy called a
+meeting of the household after supper, around the dining room table. He
+had been in to see Mr. Hendricks, who had been laid up with bronchitis,
+and Mr. Hendricks had predicted a long strike.
+
+“The irresistible force and the immovable body, son,” he said. “They'll
+stay set this time. And unless I miss my guess that is playing Doyle's
+hand for him, all right. His chance will come when the men have used up
+their savings and are growing bitter. Every strike plays into the hands
+of the enemy, son, and they know it. The moment production ceases prices
+go up, and soon all the money in the world won't pay them wages enough
+to live on.”
+
+He had a store of homely common sense, and a gift of putting things into
+few words. Willy Cameron, going back to the little house that evening,
+remembered the last thing he had said.
+
+“The only way to solve this problem of living,” he said, “is to see how
+much we can work, and not how little. Germany's working ten hours a day,
+and producing. We're talking about six, and loafing and fighting while
+we talk.”
+
+So Willy went home and called his meeting, and knowing Mrs. Boyd's
+regard for figures, set down and added or subtracted, he placed a pad
+and pencil on the table before him. It was an odd group: Dan sullen,
+resenting the strike and the causes that had led to it; Ellen, austere
+and competent; Mrs. Boyd with a lace fichu pinned around her neck,
+now that she had achieved the dignity of hired help, and Edith. Edith
+silent, morose and fixing now and then rather haggard eyes on Willy
+Cameron's unruly hair. She seldom met his eyes.
+
+“First of all,” said Willy, “we'll take our weekly assets. Of course
+Dan will get something temporarily, but we'll leave that out for the
+present.”
+
+The weekly assets turned out to be his salary and Edith's.
+
+“Why, Willy,” said Mrs. Boyd, “you can't turn all your money over to
+us.”
+
+“You are all the family I have just now. Why not? Anyhow, I'll have
+to keep out lunch money and carfare, and so will Edith. Now as to
+expenses.”
+
+Ellen had made a great reduction in expenses, but food was high. And
+there was gas and coal, and Dan's small insurance, and the rent. There
+was absolutely no margin, and a sort of silence fell.
+
+“What about your tuition at night school?” Edith asked suddenly.
+
+“Spring term ended this week.”
+
+“But you said there was a summer one.”
+
+“Well, I'll tell you about that,” Willy said, feeling for words. “I'm
+going to be busy helping Mr. Hendricks in his campaign. Then next
+fall--well, I'll either go back or Hendricks will make me chief of
+police, or something.” He smiled around the table. “I ought to get some
+sort of graft out of it.”
+
+“Mother!” Edith protested. “He mustn't sacrifice himself for us. What
+are we to him anyhow? A lot of stones hung around his neck. That's all.”
+
+It was after Willy had declared that this was his home now, and he had
+a right to help keep it going, and after Ellen had observed that she had
+some money laid by and would not take any wages during the strike, that
+the meeting threatened to become emotional. Mrs. Boyd shed a few tears,
+and as she never by any chance carried a handkerchief, let them flow
+over her fichu. And Dan shook Willy's hand and Ellen's, and said that
+if he'd had his way he'd be working, and not sitting round like a stiff
+letting other people work for him. But Edith got up and went out into
+the little back garden, and did not come back until the meeting was both
+actually and morally broken up. When she heard Dan go out, and Ellen
+and Mrs. Boyd go upstairs, chatting in a new amiability brought about by
+trouble and sacrifice, she put on her hat and left the house.
+
+Ellen, rousing on her cot in Edith's upper room, heard her come in some
+time later, and undress and get into bed. Her old suspicion of the girl
+revived, and she sat upright.
+
+“Where I come from girls don't stay out alone until all hours,” she
+said.
+
+“Oh, let me alone.”
+
+Ellen fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed that Mrs. Boyd had taken
+sick and was moaning. The moaning was terrible; it filled the little
+house. Ellen wakened suddenly. It was not moaning; it was strange, heavy
+breathing, strangling; and it came from Edith's bed.
+
+“Are you sick?” she called, and getting up, her knees hardly holding
+her, she lighted the gas at its unshaded bracket on the wall and ran to
+the other bed.
+
+Edith was lying there, her mouth open, her lips bleached and twisted.
+Her stertorous breathing filled the room, and over all was the odor of
+carbolic acid.
+
+“Edith, for God's sake!”
+
+The girl was only partially conscious. Ellen ran down the stairs and
+into Willy's room.
+
+“Get up,” she cried, shaking him. “That girl's killed herself.”
+
+“Lily!”
+
+“No, Edith. Carbolic acid.”
+
+Even then he remembered her mother.
+
+“Don't let her hear anything, It will kill her,” he said, and ran up the
+stairs. Almost immediately he was down again, searching for alcohol;
+he found a small quantity and poured that down the swollen throat. He
+roused Dan then, and sent him running madly for Doctor Smalley, with
+a warning to bring him past Mrs. Boyd's door quietly, and to bring an
+intubation set with him in case her throat should close. Then, on one of
+his innumerable journeys up and down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Boyd
+herself, in her nightgown, and terrified.
+
+“What's the matter, Willy?” she asked. “Is it a fire?”
+
+“Edith is sick. I don't want you to go up. It may be contagious. It's
+her throat.”
+
+And from that Mrs. Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairs in her
+nightgown, a shaken helpless figure, asking countless questions of those
+that hurried past. But they reassured her, and after a time she went
+downstairs and made a pot of coffee. Ensconced with it in the lower
+hall, and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid them with it as they hurried
+up and down.
+
+Upstairs the battle went on. There were times when the paralyzed muscles
+almost stopped lifting the chest walls, when each breath was a new
+miracle. Her throat was closing fast, too, and at eight o'clock came a
+brisk young surgeon, and with Willy Cameron's assistance, an operation
+was performed. After that, and for days, Edith breathed through a tube
+in her neck.
+
+The fiction of diphtheria was kept up, and Mrs. Boyd, having a childlike
+faith in medical men, betrayed no anxiety after the first hour or two.
+She saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going down through the house while
+she herself was kept out of that upper room where Edith lay, conscious
+now but sullen, disfigured, silent. She was happy, too, to have her
+old domain hers again, while Ellen nursed; to make again her flavorless
+desserts, her mounds of rubberlike gelatine, her pies. She brewed broths
+daily, and when Edith could swallow she sent up the results of hours of
+cooking which Ellen cooled, skimmed the crust of grease from the top,
+and heated again over the gas flame.
+
+She never guessed the conspiracy against her.
+
+Between Ellen and Edith there was no real liking. Ellen did her duty,
+and more; got up at night; was gentle with rather heavy hands; bathed
+the girl and brushed and braided her long hair. But there were hours
+during that simulated quarantine when a brooding silence held in the
+sick-room, and when Ellen, turning suddenly, would find Edith's eyes on
+her, full of angry distrust. At those times Ellen was glad that Edith
+could not speak.
+
+For at the end of a few days Ellen knew, and Edith knew she knew.
+
+Edith could not speak. She wrote her wants with a stub of pencil, or
+made signs. One day she motioned toward a mirror and Ellen took it to
+her.
+
+“You needn't be frightened,” she said. “When those scabs come off the
+doctor says you'll hardly be marked at all.”
+
+But Edith only glanced at herself, and threw the mirror aside.
+
+Another time she wrote: “Willy?”
+
+“He's all right. They've got a girl at the store to take your place, but
+I guess you can go back if you want to.” Then, seeing the hunger in the
+girl's eyes: “He's out a good bit these nights. He's making speeches for
+that Mr. Hendricks. As if he could be elected against Mr. Cardew!”
+
+The confinement told on Ellen. She would sit for hours, wondering what
+had become of Lily. Had she gone back home? Was she seeing that other
+man? Perhaps her valiant loyalty to Lily faded somewhat during those
+days, because she began to guess Willy Cameron's secret. If a girl had
+no eyes in her head, and couldn't see that Willy Cameron was the finest
+gentleman who ever stepped in shoe leather, that girl had something
+wrong about her.
+
+Then, sometimes, she wondered how Edith's condition was going to be kept
+from her mother. She had measured Mrs. Boyd's pride by that time, her
+almost terrible respectability. She rather hoped that the sick woman
+would die some night, easily and painlessly in her sleep, because death
+was easier than some things. She liked Mrs. Boyd; she felt a slightly
+contemptuous but real affection for her.
+
+Then one night Edith heard Willy's voice below, and indicated that she
+wanted to see him. He came in, stooping under the sheet which Mrs. Boyd
+had heard belonged in the doorway of diphtheria, and stood looking down
+at her. His heart ached. He sat down on the bed beside her and stroked
+her hand.
+
+“Poor little girl,” he said. “We've got to make things very happy for
+her, to make up for all this!”
+
+But Edith freed her hand, and reaching out for paper and pencil stub,
+wrote something and gave it to Ellen.
+
+Ellen read it.
+
+“Tell him.”
+
+“I don't want to, Edith. You wait and do it yourself.”
+
+But Edith made an insistent gesture, and Ellen, flushed and wretched,
+had to tell. He made no sign, but sat stroking Edith's hand, only he
+stared rather fixedly at the wall, conscious that the girl's eyes were
+watching him for a single gesture of surprise or anger. He felt no
+anger, only a great perplexity and sadness, an older-brother grief.
+
+“I'm sorry, little sister,” he said, and did the kindest thing he could
+think of, bent over and kissed her on the forehead. “Of course I know
+how you feel, but it is a big thing to bear a child, isn't it? It is the
+only miracle we have these days.”
+
+“A child with no father,” said Ellen, stonily.
+
+“Even then,” he persisted, “it's a big thing. We would have this one
+come under happier circumstances if we could, but we will welcome and
+take care of it, anyhow. A child's a child, and mighty valuable. And,”
+ he added--“I appreciate your wanting me to know, Edith.”
+
+He stayed a little while after that, but he read aloud, choosing a
+humorous story and laughing very hard at all the proper places. In the
+end he brought a faint smile to Edith's blistered lips, and a small lift
+to the cloud that hung over her now, day and night.
+
+He made a speech that night, and into it he put all of his aching,
+anxious soul; Edith and Dan and Lily were behind it. Akers and Doyle.
+It was at a meeting in the hall over the city market, and the audience a
+new men's non-partisan association.
+
+“Sometimes,” he said, “I am asked what it is that we want, we men who
+are standing behind Hendricks as an independent candidate.” He was
+supposed to bring Mr. Hendricks' name in as often as possible. “I answer
+that we want honest government, law and order, an end to this conviction
+that the country is owned by the unions and the capitalists, a fair deal
+for the plain people, which is you and I, my friends. But I answer still
+further, we want one thing more, a greater thing, and that thing we
+shall have. All through this great country to-night are groups of men
+hoping and planning for an incredible thing. They are not great in
+numbers; they are, however, organized, competent, intelligent and
+deadly. They plow the land with discord to sow the seeds of sedition.
+And the thing they want is civil war.
+
+“And against them, what? The people like you and me; the men with homes
+they love; the men with little businesses they have fought and labored
+to secure; the clerks; the preachers; the doctors, the honest laborers,
+the God-fearing rich. I tell you, we are the people, and it is time we
+knew our power.
+
+“And this is the thing we want, we the people; the greater thing, the
+thing we shall have; that this government, this country which we love,
+which has three times been saved at such cost of blood, shall survive.”
+
+It was after that speech that he met Pink Denslow for the first time.
+A square, solidly built young man edged his way through the crowd, and
+shook hands with him.
+
+“Name's Denslow,” said Pink. “Liked what you said. Have you time to run
+over to my club with me and have a high-ball and a talk?”
+
+“I've got all the rest of the night.”
+
+“Right-o!” said Pink, who had brought back a phrase or two from the
+British.
+
+It was not until they were in the car that Pink said:
+
+“I think you're a friend of Miss Cardew's, aren't you?”
+
+“I know Miss Cardew,” said Willy Cameron, guardedly. And they were both
+rather silent for a time.
+
+That night proved to be a significant one for them both, as it
+happened. They struck up a curious sort of friendship, based on a humble
+admiration on Pink's part, and with Willy Cameron on sheer hunger for
+the society of his kind. He had been suffering a real mental starvation.
+He had been constantly giving out and getting nothing in return.
+
+Pink developed a habit of dropping into the pharmacy when he happened
+to be nearby. He was rather wistfully envious of that year in the camp,
+when Lily Cardew and Cameron had been together, and at first it was
+the bond of Lily that sent him to the shop. In the beginning the shop
+irritated him, because it seemed an incongruous background for the fiery
+young orator. But later on he joined the small open forum in the back
+room, and perhaps for the first time in his idle years he began to
+think. He had made the sacrifice of his luxurious young life to go to
+war, had slept in mud and risked his body and been hungry and cold and
+often frightfully homesick. And now it appeared that a lot of madmen
+were going to try to undo all that he had helped to do. He was surprised
+and highly indignant. Even a handful of agitators, it seemed, could do
+incredible harm.
+
+One night he and Willy Cameron slipped into a meeting of a Russian
+Society, wearing old clothes, which with Willy was not difficult,
+and shuffling up dirty stairs without molestation. They came away
+thoughtful.
+
+“Looks like it's more than talk,” Pink said, after a time.
+
+“They're not dangerous,” Willy Cameron said. “That's talk. But it shows
+a state of mind. The real incendiaries don't show their hand like that.”
+
+“You think it's real, then?”
+
+“Some boils don't come to a head. But most do.”
+
+It was after a mob of foreigners had tried to capture the town of
+Donesson, near Pittsburgh, and had been turned back by a hastily armed
+body of its citizens, doctors, lawyers and shop-keepers, that a nebulous
+plan began to form in Willy Cameron's active mind.
+
+If one could unite the plain people politically, or against a foreign
+war, why could they not be united against an enemy at home? The South
+had had a similar problem, and the result was the Ku Klux Klan.
+
+The Chief of Police was convinced that a plan was being formulated to
+repeat the Seattle experiment against the city. The Mayor was dubious.
+He was not a strong man; he had a conviction that because a thing never
+had happened it never could happen.
+
+“The mob has done it before,” urged the Chief of Police one day. “They
+took Paris, and it was damned disagreeable.”
+
+The Mayor was a trifle weak in history.
+
+“Maybe they did,” he agreed. “But this is different. This is America.”
+
+He was rather uneasy after that. It had occurred to him that the Chief
+might have referred to Paris, Illinois.
+
+Now and then Pink coaxed Willy Cameron to his club, and for those rare
+occasions he provided always a little group of men like themselves,
+young, eager, loyal, and struggling with the new problems of the day. In
+this environment Willy Cameron received as well as gave.
+
+Most of the men had been in the army, and he found in them an eager
+anxiety to face the coming situation and combat it. In the end the
+nucleus of the new Vigilance Committee was formed there.
+
+Not immediately. The idea was of slow growth even with its originator,
+and it only reached the point of speech when Mr. Hendricks stopped in
+one day at the pharmacy and brought a bundle which he slapped down on
+the prescription desk.
+
+“Read that dynamite,” he said, his face flushed and lowering. “A man I
+know got it translated for me. Read it and then tell me whether I'm an
+alarmist and a plain fool, or if it means trouble around here.”
+
+There was no question in Willy Cameron's mind as to which it meant.
+
+Louis Akers had by that time announced his candidacy for Mayor, and
+organized labor was behind him to an alarming extent. When Willy
+Cameron went with Pink to the club that afternoon, he found Akers under
+discussion, and he heard some facts about that gentleman's private life
+which left him silent and morose. Pink knew nothing of Lily's friendship
+with Akers. Indeed, Pink did not know that Lily was in the city, and
+Willy Cameron had not undeceived him. It had pleased Anthony Cardew to
+announce in the press that Lily was making a round of visits, and the
+secret was not his to divulge. But the question which was always in his
+mind rose again. What did she see in the man? How could she have thrown
+away her home and her family for a fellow who was so obviously what Pink
+would have called “a wrong one”?
+
+He roused, however, at a question.
+
+“He may,” he said; “with three candidates we're splitting the vote three
+ways, and it's hard to predict. Mr. Cardew can't be elected, but he
+weakens Hendricks. One thing's sure. Where's my pipe?” Silence while Mr.
+Cameron searched for his pipe, and took his own time to divulge the
+sure thing. “If Hendricks is elected he'll clear out the entire bunch of
+anarchists. The present man's afraid. But if Akers can hypnotize labor
+into voting for him, and he gets it, it will be up to the city to
+protect itself, for he won't. He'll let them hold their infamous
+meetings and spread their damnable doctrine, and--you know what they've
+tried to do in other places.” He explained what he had in mind then,
+finding them expectant and eager. There ought to be some sort of
+citizen organization, to supplement the state and city forces. Nothing
+spectacular; indeed, the least said about it the better. He harked back
+then to his idea of the plain people, with homes to protect.
+
+“That needn't keep you fellows out,” he said, with his whimsical smile.
+“But the rank and file will have to constitute the big end. We don't
+want a lot of busybodies, pussy-footing around with guns and looking for
+trouble. We had enough of that during the war. We would want some men
+who would answer a riot call if they were needed. That's all.”
+
+He had some of the translations Hendricks had brought him in his pocket,
+and they circulated around the group.
+
+“Do you think they mean to attack the city?”
+
+“That looks like it, doesn't it? And they are getting that sort of stuff
+all the time. There are a hundred thousand of them in this end of the
+state.”
+
+“Would you make it a secret organization?”
+
+“Yes. I like doing things in the open myself, but you've got to fight a
+rat in his hole, if he won't come out.”
+
+“Would you hold office?” Pink asked.
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+“I'm a good bit like the boy who dug post holes in the daytime and took
+in washing at night to support the family. But I'll work, if that's what
+you mean.”
+
+“We'd better have a constitution and all that, don't you think?” Pink
+asked. “We can draw up a tentative one, and then fix it up at the first
+meeting. This is going to be a big thing. It'll go like a fire.”
+
+But Willy Cameron overruled that.
+
+“We don't need that sort of stuff,” he said, “and if we begin that we
+might as well put it in the newspapers. We want men who can keep their
+mouths shut, and who will sign some sort of a card agreeing to stand
+by the government and to preserve law and order. Then an office and a
+filing case, and their addresses, so we can get at them in a hurry if we
+need them. Get me a piece of paper, somebody.”
+
+Then and there, in twenty words, Willy Cameron wrote the now historic
+oath of the new Vigilance Committee, on the back of an old envelope. It
+was a promise, an agreement rather than an oath. There was a little
+hush as the paper passed from hand to hand. Not a man there but felt a
+certain solemnity in the occasion. To preserve the Union and the flag,
+to fight all sedition, to love their country and support it; the very
+simplicity of the words was impressive. And the mere putting of it into
+visible form crystallized their hitherto vague anxieties, pointed to a
+real enemy and a real danger. Yet, as Willy Cameron pointed out, they
+might never be needed.
+
+“Our job,” he said, “is only as a last resort. Only for real trouble.
+Until the state troops can get here, for instance, and if the
+constabulary is greatly outnumbered. It's their work up to a certain
+point. We'll fight if they need us. That's all.”
+
+It was very surprising to him to find the enterprise financed
+immediately. Pink offered an office in the bank building. Some one
+agreed to pay a clerk who should belong to the committee. It was
+practical, businesslike, and--done. And, although he had protested, he
+found himself made the head of the organization.
+
+“--without title and without pay,” he stipulated. “If you wish a title
+on me, I'll resign.”
+
+He went home that night very exalted and very humble.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+For a time Lily remained hidden in the house on Cardew Way, walking
+out after nightfall with Louis occasionally, but shrinkingly keeping to
+quiet back streets. She had a horror of meeting some one she knew,
+of explanations and of gossip. But after a time the desire to see her
+mother became overwhelming. She took to making little flying visits
+home at an hour when her grandfather was certain to be away, going in a
+taxicab, and reaching the house somewhat breathless and excited. She was
+driven by an impulse toward the old familiar things; she was homesick
+for them all, for her mother, for Mademoiselle, for her own rooms, for
+her little toilet table, for her bed and her reading lamp. For the old
+house itself.
+
+She was still an alien where she was. Elinor Doyle was a perpetual
+enigma to her; now and then she thought she had penetrated behind the
+gentle mask that was Elinor's face, only to find beyond it something
+inscrutable. There was a dead line in Elinor's life across which Lily
+never stepped. Whatever Elinor's battles were, she fought them alone,
+and Lily had begun to realize that there were battles.
+
+The atmosphere of the little house had changed. Sometimes, after she
+had gone to bed, she heard Doyle's voice from the room across the hall,
+raised angrily. He was nervous and impatient; at times he dropped the
+unctuousness of his manner toward her, and she found herself looking
+into a pair of cold blue eyes which terrified her.
+
+The brilliant little dinners had entirely ceased, with her coming. A
+sort of early summer lethargy had apparently settled on the house.
+Doyle wrote for hours, shut in the room with the desk; the group of
+intellectuals, as he had dubbed them, had dispersed on summer vacations.
+But she discovered that there were other conferences being held in the
+house, generally late at night.
+
+She learned to know the nights when those meetings were to occur. On
+those evenings Elinor always made an early move toward bed, and Lily
+would repair to her hot low-ceiled room, to sit in the darkness by the
+window and think long, painful thoughts.
+
+That was how she learned of the conferences. She had no curiosity about
+them at first. They had something to do with the strike, she considered,
+and with that her interest died. Strikes were a symptom, and ultimately,
+through great thinkers like Mr. Doyle, they would discover the cure for
+the disease that caused them. She was quite content to wait for that
+time.
+
+Then, one night, she went downstairs for a glass of ice water, and found
+the lower floor dark, and subdued voices coming from the study. The
+kitchen door was standing open, and she closed and locked it, placing
+the key, as was Elinor's custom, in a table drawer. The door was partly
+glass, and Elinor had a fear of the glass being broken and thus the key
+turned in the lock by some intruder.
+
+On toward morning there came a violent hammering at her bedroom door,
+and Doyle's voice outside, a savage voice that she scarcely recognized.
+When she had thrown on her dressing gown and opened the door he had
+instantly caught her by the shoulder, and she bore the imprints of his
+fingers for days.
+
+“Did you lock the kitchen door?” he demanded, his tones thick with fury.
+
+“Yes. Why not?” She tried to shake off his hand, but failed.
+
+“None of your business why not,” he said, and gave her an angry shake.
+“Hereafter, when you find that door open, you leave it that way. That's
+all.”
+
+“Take your hands off me!” She was rather like her grandfather at that
+moment, and his lost caution came back. He freed her at once and laughed
+a little.
+
+“Sorry!” he said. “I get a bit emphatic at times. But there are times
+when a locked door becomes a mighty serious matter.”
+
+The next day he removed the key from the door, and substituted a bolt.
+Elinor made no protest.
+
+Another night Elinor was taken ill, and Lilly had been forced to knock
+at the study door and call Doyle. She had an instant's impression of the
+room crowded with strange figures. The heavy odors of sweating bodies,
+of tobacco, and of stale beer came through the half-open door and
+revolted her. And Doyle had refused to go upstairs.
+
+She began to feel that she could not remain there very long. The
+atmosphere was variable. It was either cynical or sinister, and she
+hated them both. She had a curious feeling, too, that Doyle both wanted
+her there and did not want her, and that he was changing his attitude
+toward her Aunt Elinor. Sometimes she saw him watching Elinor from under
+half-closed eyelids.
+
+But she could not fill her days with anxieties and suspicions, and she
+turned to Louis Akers as a flower to the open day. He at least was what
+he appeared to be. There was nothing mysterious about him.
+
+He came in daily, big, dominant and demonstrative, filling the house
+with his presence, and demanding her in a loud, urgent voice. Hardly had
+the door slammed before he would call:
+
+“Lily! Where are you?”
+
+Sometimes he lifted her off her feet and held her to him.
+
+“You little whiffet!” he would say. “I could crush you to death in my
+arms.”
+
+Had his wooing all been violent she might have tired sooner, because
+those phases of his passion for her tired her. But there were times when
+he put her into a chair and sat on the floor at her feet, his handsome
+face uplifted to hers in a sort of humble adoration, his arms across her
+knees. It was not altogether studied. He was a born wooer, but he had
+his hours of humility, of vague aspirations. His insistent body was
+always greater than his soul, but now and then, when he was physically
+weary, he had a spiritual moment.
+
+“I love you, little girl,” he would say.
+
+It was in one of those moments that she extracted a promise from him.
+He had been, from his position on the floor, telling her about the
+campaign.
+
+“I don't like your running against my father, Louis.”
+
+“He couldn't have got it, anyhow. And he doesn't want it. I do, honey.
+I need it in my business. When the election's over you're going to marry
+me.”
+
+She ignored that.
+
+“I don't like the men who come here, Louis. I wish they were not friends
+of yours.”
+
+“Friends of mine! That bunch?”
+
+“You are always with them.”
+
+“I draw a salary for being with them, honey.”
+
+“But what do you draw a salary for?” He was immediately on the alert,
+but her eyes were candid and unsuspicious. “They are strikers, aren't
+they?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Is it legal business?”
+
+“Partly that.”
+
+“Louis, is there going to be a general strike?”
+
+“There may be some bad times coming, honey.” He bent his head and kissed
+her hands, lying motionless in her lap. “I wish you would marry me soon.
+I want you. I want to keep you safe.”
+
+She drew her hands away.
+
+“Safe from what, Louis?”
+
+He sat back and looked up into her face.
+
+“You must remember, dear, that for all your theories, which are very
+sweet, this is a man's world, and men have rather brutal methods of
+settling their differences.”
+
+“And you advocate brutality?”
+
+“Well, the war was brutal, wasn't it? And you were in a white heat
+supporting it, weren't you? How about another war,”--he chose his words
+carefully--“just as reasonable and just? You've heard Doyle. You know
+what I mean.”
+
+“Not now!”
+
+He was amazed at her horror, a horror that made her recoil from him and
+push his hands away when he tried to touch her. He got up angrily and
+stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets.
+
+“What the devil did you think all this talk meant?” he demanded. “You've
+heard enough of it.”
+
+“Does Aunt Elinor know?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“And she approves?”
+
+“I don't know and I don't care.” Suddenly, with one of the quick changes
+she knew so well, he caught her hands and drawing her to her feet, put
+his arms around her. “All I know is that I love you, and if you say the
+word I'll cut the whole business.”
+
+“You would?”
+
+He amended his offer somewhat.
+
+“Marry me, honey,” he begged. “Marry me now. Do you think I'll let
+anything in God's world come between us? Marry me, and I'll do more than
+leave them.” He was whispering to her, stroking her hair. “I'll cut the
+whole outfit. And on the day I go into your house as your husband I'll
+tell your people some things they want to know. That's a promise.”
+
+“What will they do to you?”
+
+“Your people?”
+
+“The others.”
+
+He drew himself to his full height, and laughed.
+
+“They'll try to do plenty, old girl,” he said, “but I'm not afraid of
+them, and they know it. Marry me, Lily,” he urged. “Marry me now. And
+we'll beat them out, you and I.”
+
+He gave her a sense of power, over him and over evil. She felt suddenly
+an enormous responsibility, that of a human soul waiting to be uplifted
+and led aright.
+
+“You can save me, honey,” he whispered, and kneeling suddenly, he kissed
+the toe of her small shoe.
+
+He was strong. But he was weak too. He needed her. “I'll do it, Louis,”
+ she said. “You--you will be good to me, won't you?”
+
+“I'm crazy about you.”
+
+The mood of exaltation upheld her through the night, and into the next
+day. Elinor eyed her curiously, and with some anxiety. It was a long
+time since she had been a girl, going about star-eyed with power over a
+man, but she remembered that lost time well.
+
+At noon Louis came in for a hasty luncheon, and before he left he
+drew Lily into the little study and slipped a solitaire diamond on her
+engagement finger. To Lily the moment was almost a holy one, but he
+seemed more interested in the quality of the stone and its appearance on
+her hand than in its symbolism.
+
+“Got you cinched now, honey. Do you like it?”
+
+“It makes me feel that I don't belong to myself any longer.”
+
+“Well, you've passed into good hands,” he said, and laughed his great,
+vibrant laugh. “Costing me money already, you mite!”
+
+A little of her exaltation died then. But perhaps men were like that,
+shyly covering the things they felt deepest.
+
+She was rather surprised when he suggested keeping the engagement a
+secret.
+
+“Except the Doyles, of course,” he said. “I am not taking any chances on
+losing you, child.”
+
+“Not mother?”
+
+“Not unless you want to be kidnaped and taken home. It's only a matter
+of a day or two, anyhow.”
+
+“I want more time than that. A month, anyhow.”
+
+And he found her curiously obstinate and determined. She did not
+quite know herself why she demanded delay, except that she shrank from
+delivering herself into hands that were so tender and might be so cruel.
+It was instinctive, purely.
+
+“A month,” she said, and stuck to it.
+
+He was rather sulky when he went away, and he had told her the exact
+amount he had paid for her ring.
+
+Having forced him to agree to the delay, she found her mood of
+exaltation returning. As always, it was when he was not with he that she
+saw him most clearly, and she saw his real need for her. She had a sense
+of peace, too, now that at last something was decided. Her future, for
+better or worse, would no longer be that helpless waiting which had
+been hers for so long. And out of her happiness came a desire to do kind
+things, to pat children on the head, to give alms to beggars, and--to
+see Willy Cameron.
+
+She came downstairs that afternoon, dressed for the street.
+
+“I am going out for a little while, Aunt Nellie,” she said, “and when I
+come back I want to tell you something.”
+
+“Perhaps. I can guess.”
+
+“Perhaps you can.”
+
+She was singing to herself as she went out the door.
+
+Elinor went back heavy-hearted to her knitting. It was very difficult
+always to sit by and wait. Never to raise a hand. Just to wait and
+watch. And pray.
+
+Lily was rather surprised, when she reached the Eagle Pharmacy, to find
+Pink Denslow coming out. It gave her a little pang, too; he looked so
+clean and sane and normal, so much a part of her old life. And it hurt
+her, too, to see him flush with pleasure at the meeting.
+
+“Why, Lily!” he said, and stood there, gazing at her, hat in hand, the
+sun on his gleaming, carefully brushed hair. He was quite inarticulate
+with happiness. “I--when did you get back?”
+
+“I have not been away, Pink. I left home--it's a long story. I am
+staying with my aunt, Mrs. Doyle.”
+
+“Mrs. Doyle? You are staying there?”
+
+“Why not? My father's sister.”
+
+His young face took on a certain sternness.
+
+“If you knew what I suspect about Doyle, Lily, you wouldn't let the same
+roof cover you.” But he added, rather wistfully, “I wish I might see you
+sometimes.”
+
+Lily's head had gone up a trifle. Why did her old world always try to
+put her in the wrong? She had had to seek sanctuary, and the Doyle house
+had been the only sanctuary she knew.
+
+“Since you feel as you do, I'm afraid that's impossible. Mr. Doyle's
+roof is the only roof I have.”
+
+“You have a home,” he said, sturdily.
+
+“Not now. I left, and my grandfather won't have me back. You mustn't
+blame him, Pink. We quarreled and I left. I was as much responsible as
+he was.”
+
+For a moment after she turned and disappeared inside the pharmacy door
+he stood there, then he put on his hat and strode down the street,
+unhappy and perplexed. If only she had needed him, if she had not looked
+so self-possessed and so ever so faintly defiant, as though she dared
+him to pity her, he would have known what to do. All he needed was to be
+needed. His open face was full of trouble. It was unthinkable that Lily
+should be in that center of anarchy; more unthinkable that Doyle might
+have filled her up with all sorts of wild ideas. Women were queer; they
+liked theories. A man could have a theory of life and play with it and
+boast about it, but never dream of living up to it. But give one to a
+woman, and she chewed on it like a dog on a bone. If those Bolshevists
+had got hold of Lily--!
+
+The encounter had hurt Lily, too. The fine edge of her exaltation was
+gone, and it did not return during her brief talk with Willy Cameron.
+He looked much older and very thin; there were lines around his eyes
+she had never seen before, and she hated seeing him in his present
+surroundings. But she liked him for his very unconsciousness of those
+surroundings. One always had to take Willy Cameron as he was.
+
+“Do you like it, Willy?” she asked. It had dawned on her, with a sort
+of panic, that there was really very little to talk about. All that they
+had had in common lay far in the past.
+
+“Well, it's my daily bread, and with bread costing what it does, I cling
+to it like a limpet to a rock.”
+
+“But I thought you were studying, so you could do something else.”
+
+“I had to give up the night school. But I'll get back to it sometime.”
+
+She was lost again. She glanced around the little shop, where once
+Edith Boyd had manicured her nails behind the counter, and where now a
+middle-aged woman stood with listless eyes looking out over the street.
+
+“You still have Jinx, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes. I--”
+
+Lily glanced up as he stopped. She had drawn off her gloves, and his
+eyes had fallen on her engagement ring. To Lily there had always been a
+feeling of unreality about his declaration of love for her. He had
+been so restrained, so careful to ask nothing in exchange, so without
+expectation of return, that she had put it out of her mind as an
+impulse. She had not dreamed that he could still care, after these
+months of silence. But he had gone quite white.
+
+“I am going to be married, Willy,” she said, in a low tone. It is
+doubtful if he could have spoken, just then. And as if to add a
+finishing touch of burlesque to the meeting, a small boy with a swollen
+jaw came in just then and demanded something to “make it stop hurting.”
+
+He welcomed the interruption, she saw. He was very professional
+instantly, and so absorbed for a moment in relieving the child's pain
+that he could ignore his own.
+
+“Let's see it,” he said in a businesslike, slightly strained voice.
+“Better have it out, old chap. But I'll give you something just to ease
+it up a bit.”
+
+Which he proceeded to do. When he came back to Lily he was quite calm
+and self-possessed. As he had never thought of dramatizing himself, nor
+thought of himself at all, it did not occur to him that drama requires
+setting, that tragedy required black velvet rather than tooth-brushes,
+and that a small boy with an aching tooth was a comedy relief badly
+introduced.
+
+All he knew was that he had somehow achieved a moment in which to steady
+himself, and to find that a man can suffer horribly and still smile. He
+did that, very gravely, when he came back to Lily.
+
+“Can you tell me about it?”
+
+“There is not very much to tell. It is Louis Akers.”
+
+The middle-aged clerk had disappeared.
+
+“Of course you have thought over what that means, Lily.”
+
+“He wants me to marry him. He wants it very much, Willy. And--I know you
+don't like him, but he has changed. Women always think they have changed
+men, I know. But he is very different.”
+
+“I am sure of that,” he said, steadily.
+
+There was something childish about her, he thought. Childish and
+infinitely touching. He remembered a night at the camp, when some of the
+troops had departed for over-seas, and he had found her alone and crying
+in her hut. “I just can't let them go,” she had sobbed. “I just can't.
+Some of them will never come back.”
+
+Wasn't there something of that spirit in her now, the feeling that she
+could not let Akers go, lest worse befall him? He did not know. All he
+knew was that she was more like the Lily Cardew he had known then than
+she had been since her return. And that he worshiped her.
+
+But there was anger in him, too. Anger at Anthony Cardew. Anger at the
+Doyles. And a smoldering, bitter anger at Louis Akers, that he should
+take the dregs of his life and offer them to her as new wine. That he
+should dare to link his scheming, plotting days to this girl, so wise
+and yet so ignorant, so clear-eyed and yet so blind.
+
+“Do they know at home?”
+
+“I am going to tell mother to-day.”
+
+“Lily,” he said, slowly, “there is one thing you ought to do. Go home,
+make your peace there, and get all this on the right footing. Then have
+him there. You have never seen him in that environment, yet that is the
+world he will have to live in, if you marry him. See how he fits there.”
+
+“What has that got to do with it?”
+
+“Think a minute. Am I quite the same to you here, as I was in the camp?”
+
+He saw her honest answer in her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The new movement was growing rapidly, and with a surprising catholicity
+of range. Already it included lawyers and doctors, chauffeurs, butchers,
+clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truck gardeners from the surrounding
+county, railroad employees, and some of the strikers from the mills,
+men who had obeyed their union order to quit work, but had obeyed it
+unwillingly; men who resented bitterly the invasion of the ranks of
+labor by the lawless element which was fomenting trouble.
+
+Dan had joined.
+
+On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers, one
+of the cards of the new Vigilance Committee was being inspected with
+cynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices in the
+Searing Building. They studied it with interest, while the man who had
+brought it stood by.
+
+“Where'd you pick it up, Cusick?”
+
+“One of our men brought it into the store. Said you might want to see
+it.”
+
+The three men bent over it.
+
+The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. During the
+day two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made a pretense
+of business at such times as the door opened, or when an occasional
+client, seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates. At such times the
+clerks were politely regretful. The firm's contracts were all they could
+handle for months ahead.
+
+There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably
+professional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls,
+waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved to
+be accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or less fluency, with
+Croats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.
+
+There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pails and
+brushes, soap and ladders. But there was a great safe also, and its
+compartments were filled with pamphlets in many tongues, a supply
+constantly depleted and yet never diminishing. Workmen, carrying out the
+pails of honest labor, carried them loaded down with the literature it
+was their only business to circulate.
+
+Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrine
+of no God; of no government, and of no church; of the confiscation of
+private property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape, arson and
+pillage.
+
+And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Its theatres
+were crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels. Two classes of people
+were spending money prodigally; women with shawls over their heads,
+women who in all their peasant lives had never owned a hat, drove in
+automobiles to order their winter supply of coal, and vast amounts of
+liquors were being bought by the foreign element against the approaching
+prohibition law, and stored in untidy cellars.
+
+On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reaction
+from war. The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of the
+wealthy, and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall. Among
+the list of debutantes Lily's name always appeared.
+
+And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were being ground
+the professional and salaried men with families, the women clerks, the
+vast army who asked nothing but the right to work and live. They went
+through their days doggedly, with little anxious lines around their
+eyes, suffering a thousand small deprivations, bewildered, tortured with
+apprehension of to-morrow, and yet patiently believing that, as things
+could not be worse, they must soon commence to improve.
+
+“It's bound to clear up soon,” said Joe Wilkinson over the back fence
+one night late in June, to Willy Cameron. Joe supported a large family
+of younger brothers and sisters in the house next door, and was employed
+in a department store. “I figure it this way--both sides need each
+other, don't they? Something like marriage, you know. It'll all be over
+in six months. Only I'm thanking heaven just now it's summer, because
+our kids are hell on shoes.”
+
+“I hope so,” said Willy Cameron. “What are you doing over there,
+anyhow?”
+
+“Wait and see,” said Joe, cryptically. “If you think you're going to be
+the only Central Park in this vicinity you've got to think again.” He
+hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons were searching
+for worms in the overturned garden mold. “How's Edith?” he asked.
+
+“She's all right, Joe.”
+
+“Seeing anybody yet?”
+
+“Not yet. In a day or so she'll be downstairs.”
+
+“You might tell her I've been asking about her.”
+
+There was something in Joel's voice that caught Willy Cameron's
+attention. He thought about Joe a great deal that night. Joe was another
+one who must never know about Edith's trouble. The boy had little
+enough, and if he had built a dream about Edith Boyd he must keep his
+dream. He was rather discouraged that night, was Willy Cameron, and he
+began to think that dreams were the best things in life. They were a
+sort of sanctuary to which one fled to escape realities. Perhaps no
+reality was ever as beautiful as one's dream of it.
+
+Lily had passed very definitely out of his life. Sometimes during his
+rare leisure he walked to Cardew Way through the warm night, and past
+the Doyle house, but he never saw her, and because it did not occur to
+him that she might want to see him he never made an attempt to call.
+Always after those futile excursions he was inclined to long silences,
+and only Jinx could have told how many hours he sat in his room at
+night, in the second-hand easy chair he had bought, pipe in hand and
+eyes on nothing in particular, lost in a dream world where the fields
+bore a strong resemblance to the parade ground of an army camp, and
+through which field he and Lily wandered like children, hand in hand.
+
+But he had many things to think of. So grave were the immediate
+problems, of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd and Edith, that a little of his
+fine frenzy as to the lurking danger of revolution departed from him.
+The meetings in the back room at the pharmacy took on a political
+bearing, and Hendricks was generally the central figure. The ward felt
+that Mr. Hendricks was already elected, and called him “Mr. Mayor.” At
+the same time the steel strike pursued a course of comparative calm. At
+Friendship and at Baxter there had been rioting, and a fatality or two,
+but the state constabulary had the situation well in hand. On a Sunday
+morning Willy Cameron went out to Baxter on the trolley, and came
+home greatly comforted. The cool-eyed efficiency of the state police
+reassured him. He compared them, disciplined, steady, calm with the
+calmness of their dangerous calling, with the rabble of foreigners who
+shuffled along the sidewalks, and he felt that his anxiety had been
+rather absurd.
+
+He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentioned in
+the newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spent much
+time in searching for these notices, and then in painfully cutting them
+out and pasting them in a book. On those days when there was nothing
+about him she felt thwarted, and was liable to sharp remarks on
+newspapers in general, and on those of the city in particular.
+
+Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off like
+other strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd, having plowed the field for
+sedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a talk with
+Edith.
+
+She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early in
+July, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches, and he placed
+her, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor. Dan had brought her
+down and had made a real effort to be kind, but his suspicion of the
+situation made it difficult for him to dissemble, and soon he went out.
+Ellen was on the doorstep, and through the open window came the shrieks
+of numerous little Wilkinsons wearing out expensive shoe-leather on the
+brick pavement.
+
+They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Cameron talking
+with a sort of determined optimism. After a time he realized that she
+was not even listening.
+
+“I wish you'd close the window,” she said at last. “Those crazy
+Wilkinson kids make such a racket. I want to tell you something.”
+
+“All right.” He closed the window and stood looking down at her. “Are
+you sure you want me to hear it?” he asked gravely.
+
+“Yes. It is not about myself. I've been reading the newspapers while
+I've been shut away up there, Willy. It kept me from thinking. And if
+things are as bad as they say I'd better tell you, even if I get into
+trouble doing it. I will, probably. Murder's nothing to them.”
+
+“Who are 'them'?”
+
+“You get the police to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, in the
+Searing Building.”
+
+“Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that? The police will
+want something definite to go on.”
+
+She hesitated.
+
+“I don't know very much. I met somebody there, once or twice, at night.
+And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer of the desk in the
+back room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn't matter now. Tell them
+to examine the safe, too. I don't know what's in it. Dynamite, maybe.”
+
+“What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn't
+much to go on.”
+
+“When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk,” she said
+briefly, and before that sordid picture Willy Cameron was silent. After
+a time he said:
+
+“You won't tell me the name of the man you met there?”
+
+“No. Don't ask me, Willy. That's between him and me.” He got up and took
+a restless turn or two about the little rooms. Edith's problem had begun
+to obsess him. Not for long would it be possible to keep her condition
+from Mrs. Boyd. He was desperately at a loss for some course to pursue.
+
+“Have you ever thought,” he said at last, “that this man, whoever he is,
+ought to marry you?”
+
+Edith's face set like a flint.
+
+“I don't want to marry him,” she said. “I wouldn't marry him if he was
+the last man on earth.”
+
+He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixed on
+Louis Akers, but he could not be sure.
+
+“I won't tell you his name, either,” Edith added, shrewishly. Then her
+voice softened. “I will tell you this, Willy,” she said wistfully. “I
+was a good girl until I knew him. I'm not saying that to let myself out.
+It's the truth.”
+
+“You're a good girl now,” he said gravely.
+
+Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he was going out.
+
+“I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks,” he said. “And we may
+go on and have a talk with the Chief of Police. If you are right it may
+be important.”
+
+After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen now and
+then looked in to see if she was comfortable.
+
+Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse at
+that. But suppose they trapped Louis Akers in the Searing Building?
+
+Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back with her
+the news of the family. At first she had sternly refused to talk about
+the Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room had been long and
+monotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken the form, when she
+could talk, of incessant questions.
+
+So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leaving
+home, and called her a poor thing in her heart. Quite lately she had
+heard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably would be, soon.
+Now her motives were mixed, and her emotions confused. She had wanted
+to tell Willy Cameron what she knew, but she wanted Lily to marry Louis
+Akers. She wanted that terribly. Then Lily would be out of the way,
+and--Willy was not like Dan; he did not seem to think her forever lost.
+He had always been thoughtful, but lately he had been very tender with
+her. Men did strange things sometimes. He might be willing to forget,
+after a long time. She could board the child out somewhere, if it lived.
+Sometimes they didn't live.
+
+But if they arrested Louis, Lily Cardew would fling him aside like an
+old shoe.
+
+She closed her eyes. That opened a vista of possibilities she would not
+face.
+
+She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs, moved
+to sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its close. If that
+were life she did not want it, with its drab days and futile effort, its
+incessant deprivations, its hands, gnarled with work that got nowhere,
+its greatest blessing sleep and forgetfulness.
+
+She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away.
+
+“I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother,” she said from the
+doorway. “How's the pain down your arm?”
+
+“Bring me the mucilage, Edie,” requested Mrs. Boyd. She was propped up
+in bed and surrounded by newspapers. “I've found Willy's name again.
+I've got fourteen now. Where's the scissors?”
+
+Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know, and still
+sit among her pillows, snipping?
+
+“I wonder,” said Mrs. Boyd, “did anybody feed Jinx? That Ellen is so
+saving that she grudges him a bone.”
+
+“He looks all right,” said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe the Lord
+did that for people, when they reached a certain point. Maybe He took
+away the fear of death, by showing after years of it that life was not
+so valuable after all. She remembered her own facing of eternity, and
+her dread of what lay beyond. She had prayed first, because she wanted
+to have some place on the other side. She had prayed to be received
+young and whole and without child. And her mother--
+
+Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater than
+life, and that was love. Her mother was upheld by love. That was what
+the eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the love
+of her starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing death, because his
+hand was close by to hold to.
+
+For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw what
+love might be, and might do. She held out both hands in the darkness,
+but no strong and friendly clasp caught them close. If she could only
+have him to cling to, to steady her wavering feet along the gray path
+that stretched ahead, years and years of it. Youth. Middle age. Old age.
+
+“I'd only drag him down,” she muttered bitterly.
+
+Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's story,
+and together late that evening they saw the Chief of Police at his
+house. Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated putting a watch
+on the offices of the Myers Housecleaning Company and thus ultimately
+getting the heads of the organization. But the Chief was unwilling to
+delay.
+
+“Every day means more of their infernal propaganda,” he said, “and if
+this girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to get the
+outfit now. Those clerks, for instance--we'll get some information out
+of them. That sort always squeals. They're a cheap lot.”
+
+“Going to ball it up, of course,” Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly, on the
+way home. “Won't wait, because if Akers gets in he's out, and he wants
+to make a big strike first. I'll drop in to-morrow evening and tell you
+what's happened.”
+
+He came into the pharmacy the next evening, with a bundle of red-bound
+pamphlets under his arm, and a look of disgust on his face.
+
+“What did I tell you, Cameron?” he demanded, breathing heavily. “Yes,
+they got them all right. Got a safe full of stuff so inflammable that,
+since I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow up myself. It's worse than
+that first lot I showed you. They got the two clerks, and a half-dozen
+foreigners, too. And that's all they got.”
+
+“They won't talk?”
+
+“Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the Myers
+Housecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault, and
+they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false arrest.
+They'll have to let them go, son. Here. You can do most everything. Can
+you read Croatian? No? Well, here's something in English to cut your
+wisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the government is where these fellows
+start.”
+
+It was intelligent, that propaganda. Willy Cameron thought he saw behind
+it Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew the discontents of
+the world, and would fatten by them; men who, secretly envious of the
+upper classes and unable to attain to them, would pull all men to their
+own level, or lower. Men who cloaked their own jealousies with the garb
+of idealism. Intelligent it was, dangerous, and imminent.
+
+The pamphlets spoke of “the day.” It was a Prussian phrase. The
+revolution was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered loot as a
+reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust and
+greed and idleness.
+
+At a signal the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and rule
+itself.
+
+Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out at the
+city he loved.
+
+“Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?” he asked. “Will our
+people take it up? Is the American nation going crazy?”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” said Willy Cameron stoutly. “They're about as able to
+overthrow the government as you are to shove over the Saint Elmo Hotel.”
+
+“I could do that, with a bomb.”
+
+“No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizeable hole in it. It's
+the hole we don't want.”
+
+Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+To old Anthony the early summer had been full of humiliations, which he
+carried with an increased arrogance of bearing that alienated even his
+own special group at his club.
+
+“Confound the man,” said Judge Peterson, holding forth on the golf links
+one Sunday morning while Anthony Cardew, hectic with rage, searched for
+a lost ball and refused to drop another. “He'll hold us up all morning,
+for that ball, just as he tries to hold up all progress.” He lowered his
+voice. “What's happened to the granddaughter, anyhow?”
+
+Senator Lovell lighted a cigarette.
+
+“Turned Bolshevist,” he said, briefly.
+
+The Judge gazed at him.
+
+“That's a pretty serious indictment, isn't it?”
+
+“Well, that's what I hear. She's living in Jim Doyle's house. I guess
+that's the answer. Hey, Cardew! D'you want these young cubs behind us to
+play through, or are you going to show some sense and come on?”
+
+Howard, fighting his father tooth and nail, was compelled to a reluctant
+admiration of his courage. But there was no cordiality between them.
+They were in accord again, as to the strike, although from different
+angles. Both of them knew that they were fighting for very life; both
+of them felt that the strikers' demands meant the end of industry, meant
+that the man who risked money in a business would eventually cease to
+control that business, although if losses came it would be he, and
+not the workmen, who bore them. Howard had gone as far as he could in
+concessions, and the result was only the demand for more. The Cardews,
+father and son, stood now together, their backs against a wall, and
+fought doggedly.
+
+But only anxiety held them together.
+
+His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty, but he
+was rather late with his support, and in private he retained his cynical
+attitude. He had not come over at all until he learned that Louis Akers
+was an opposition candidate. At that his wrath knew no bounds and the
+next day he presented a large check to the campaign committee.
+
+Mr. Hendricks, hearing of it, was moved to a dry chuckle.
+
+“Can't you hear him?” he demanded. “He'd stalk into headquarters as
+important as an office boy who's been sent to the bank for money, and
+he'd slam down his check and say just two words.”
+
+“Which would be?” inquired Willy Cameron.
+
+“'Buy 'em',” quoted Mr. Hendricks. “The old boy doesn't know that things
+have changed since the 80's. This city has changed, my lad. It's voting
+now the way it thinks, right or wrong. That's why these foreign language
+papers can play the devil with us. The only knowledge the poor wretches
+have got of us is what they're given to read. And most of it stinks of
+sedition. Queer thing, this thinking. A fellow can think himself into
+murder.”
+
+The strike was going along quietly enough. There had been rioting
+through the country, but not of any great significance. It was in
+reality a sort of trench warfare, with each side dug in and waiting for
+the other to show himself in the open. The representatives of the press,
+gathered in the various steel cities, with automobiles arranged for
+to take them quickly to any disturbance that might develop, found
+themselves with little news for the telegraph, and time hung heavy on
+their hands.
+
+On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner, and
+realized with a shock that she was looking thin and much older. He
+kissed her and then held her off and looked at her.
+
+“You've got to keep your courage up, dear,” he said. “I don't think it
+will be long now.”
+
+“Have you seen her?”
+
+“No. But something has happened. Don't look like that, Grace. It's
+not--”
+
+“She hasn't married that man?”
+
+“No. Not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't stay there.
+Even Elinor--” he checked himself. “I'll tell you after dinner.”
+
+Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one speech
+rather at length.
+
+“So far as I can make out, Howard,” he said, “this man Hendricks is
+getting pretty strong. He has a young fellow talking for him who gets
+over pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had better be bought
+off. He goes around shouting that he's a plain man, after the support of
+the plain people. Although I'm damned if I know what he means by that.”
+
+Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. He placed
+the blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings away from home as
+possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to
+the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over
+to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool and his creature, merely
+staying in his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to
+his lawyers with new protests almost daily! A man was no longer master
+even in his own home. His employees would not work for him, his family
+disobeyed him, his government held him up and shook him. In the good old
+days--
+
+“I'm going out,” he said, as he rose from the table. “Grace, that chef
+is worse than the last. You'd better send him off.”
+
+“I can't get any one else. I have tried for weeks. There are no servants
+anywhere.”
+
+“Try New York.”
+
+“I have tried--it is useless.”
+
+No cooks, either. No servants. Even Anthony recognized that, with the
+exception of Grayson, the servants in his house were vaguely hostile
+to the family. They gave grudging service, worked short hours, and,
+the only class of labor to which the high cost of food was a negligible
+matter, demanded wages he considered immoral.
+
+“I don't know what the world's coming to,” he snarled. “Well, I'm off.
+Thank God, there are still clubs for a man to go to.”
+
+“I want to have a talk with you, father.”
+
+“I don't want to talk.”
+
+“You needn't. I want you to listen, and I want Grace to hear, too.”
+
+In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Grayson had
+brought liqueurs and coffee and had gone, Howard drew the card from his
+pocket.
+
+“I met young Denslow to-day,” he said. “He came in to see me. As a
+matter of fact, I signed a card he had brought along, and I brought one
+for you, sir. Shall I read it?”
+
+“You evidently intend to.”
+
+Howard read the card slowly. Its very simplicity was impressive, as
+impressive as it had been when Willy Cameron scrawled the words on the
+back of an old envelope. Anthony listened.
+
+“Just what does that mean?”
+
+“That the men behind this movement believe that there is going to be a
+general strike, with an endeavor to turn it into a revolution. Perhaps
+only local, but these things have a tendency to spread. Denslow had some
+literature which referred to an attempt to take over the city. They have
+other information, too, all pointing the same way.”
+
+“Strikers?”
+
+“Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born. Their plans are
+fairly comprehensive; they mean to dynamite the water works, shut down
+the gas and electric plants, and cut off all food supplies. Then when
+they have starved and terrorized us into submission, we'll accept their
+terms.”
+
+“What terms?”
+
+“Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose. They intend to take over the
+banks, for one thing.”
+
+“I don't believe it. It's incredible.”
+
+“They meant to do it in Seattle.”
+
+“And didn't. Don't forget that.”
+
+“They may have learned some things from Seattle,” Howard said quietly.
+
+“We have the state troops.”
+
+“What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the same
+time? Or rioting in other places, carefully planned to draw the troops
+and constabulary away?”
+
+In the end old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced. But
+he had no faith in the plain people, and said so. “They'll see property
+destroyed and never lift a hand,” he said. “Didn't I stand by in
+Pittsburgh during the railroad riots, and watch them smile while the
+yards burned? Because the railroads meant capital to them, and they hate
+capital.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Howard, “but after twenty-four hours they were
+fighting like demons to restore law and order. It is”--he fingered the
+card--“to save that twenty-four hours that this organization is being
+formed. It is secret. Did I tell you that? And the idea originated with
+the young man you spoke about as supporting Hendricks--you met him here
+once, a friend of Lily's. His name is Cameron--William Wallace Cameron.”
+
+Old Anthony remained silent, but the small jagged vein on his forehead
+swelled with anger. After a time:
+
+“I suppose Doyle is behind this?” he asked. “It sounds like him.”
+
+“That is the supposition. But they have nothing on him yet; he is too
+shrewd for that. And that leads to something else. Lily cannot continue
+to stay there.”
+
+“I didn't send her there.”
+
+“Actually, no. In effect--but we needn't go into that now. The situation
+is very serious. I can imagine that nothing could fit better into his
+plans than to have her there. She gives him a cachet of respectability.
+Do you want that?”
+
+“She is probably one of them now. God knows how much of his rotten
+doctrine she has absorbed.”
+
+Howard flushed, but he kept his temper.
+
+“His theories, possibly. His practice, no. She certainly has no idea...
+it has come to this, father. She must have a home somewhere, and if it
+cannot be here, Grace and I must make one for her elsewhere.”
+
+Probably Anthony Cardew had never respected Howard more than at that
+moment, or liked him less.
+
+“Both you and Grace are free to make a home where you please.”
+
+“We prefer it here, but you must see yourself that things cannot go on
+as they are. We have waited for you to see that, all three of us, and
+now this new situation makes it imperative to take some action.”
+
+“I won't have that fellow Akers coming here.”
+
+“He would hardly come, under the circumstances. Besides, her friendship
+with him is only a part of her revolt. If she comes home it will be with
+the understanding that she does not see him again.”
+
+“Revolt?” said old Anthony, raising his eyebrows.
+
+“That is what it actually was. She found her liberty interfered with,
+and she staged her own small rebellion. It was very human, I think.”
+
+“It was very Cardew,” said old Anthony, and smiled faintly. He had, to
+tell the truth, developed a grudging admiration for his granddaughter in
+the past two months. He saw in her many of his own qualities, good and
+bad. And, more than he cared to own, he had missed her and the young
+life she had brought into the quiet house. Most important of all, she
+was the last of the Cardews. Although his capitulation when it came was
+curt, he was happier than he had been for weeks.
+
+“Bring her home,” he said, “but tell her about Akers. If she says that
+is off, I'll forget the rest.”
+
+On her way to her room that night Grace Cardew encountered Mademoiselle,
+a pale, unhappy Mademoiselle, who seemed to spend her time mostly in
+Lily's empty rooms or wandering about corridors. Whenever the three
+members of the family were together she would retire to her own
+quarters, and there feverishly with her rosary would pray for a
+softening of hearts. She did not comprehend these Americans, who were so
+kind to those beneath them and so hard to each other.
+
+“I wanted to see you, Mademoiselle,” Grace said, not very steadily. “I
+have good news for you.”
+
+Mademoiselle began to tremble. “She is coming? Lily is coming?”
+
+“Yes. Will you have some fresh flowers put in her rooms in the morning?”
+
+Suddenly Mademoiselle forgot her years of repression, and flinging her
+arms around Grace's neck she kissed her. Grace held her for a moment,
+patting her shoulder gently.
+
+“We must try to make her very happy, Mademoiselle. I think things will
+be different now.”
+
+Mademoiselle stood back and wiped her eyes.
+
+“But she must be different, too,” she said. “She is sweet and good,
+but she is strong of will, too. The will to do, to achieve, that is
+one thing, and very good. But the will to go one's own way, that is
+another.”
+
+“The young are always headstrong, Mademoiselle.”
+
+But, alone later on, her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered. If
+youth were the indictment against Lily, was she not still young? It took
+years, or suffering, or sometimes both, to break the will of youth and
+chasten its spirit. God grant Lily might not have suffering.
+
+It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself,
+and thus save her the humiliation of coming back alone. All morning
+housemaids were busy in Lily's rooms. Rugs were shaken, floors waxed
+and rubbed, the silver frames and vases in her sitting room polished
+to refulgence. And all morning Mademoiselle scolded and ran suspicious
+fingers into corners, and arranged and re-arranged great boxes of
+flowers.
+
+Long before the time she had ordered the car Grace was downstairs,
+dressed for the street, and clad in cool shining silk, was pacing the
+shaded hall. There was a vague air of expectation about the old house.
+In a room off the pantry the second man was polishing the buttons of
+his livery, using a pasteboard card with a hole in it to save the fabric
+beneath. Grayson pottered about in the drawing room, alert for the
+parlor maid's sins of omission.
+
+The telephone in the library rang, and Grayson answered it, while Grace
+stood in the doorway.
+
+“A message from Miss Lily,” he said. “Mrs. Doyle has telephoned that
+Miss Lily is on her way here.”
+
+Grace was vaguely disappointed. She had wanted to go to Lily with her
+good news, to bring her home bag and baggage, to lead her into the house
+and to say, in effect, that this was home, her home. She had felt that
+they, and not Lily, should take the first step.
+
+She went upstairs, and taking off her hat, smoothed her soft dark hair.
+She did not want Lily to see how she had worried; she eyed herself
+carefully for lines. Then she went down, to more waiting, and for the
+first time, to a little doubt.
+
+Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been. There was no doubt
+about her close embrace of her mother, her happiness at seeing her. She
+did not remove her gloves, however, and after she had put Grace in a
+chair and perched herself on the arm of it, there was a little pause.
+Each was preparing to tell something, each hesitated. Because Grace's
+task was the easier it was she who spoke first.
+
+“I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear,” she said. “I--we
+want you to come home to us again.”
+
+There was a queer, strained silence.
+
+“Who wants me?” Lily asked, unsteadily.
+
+“All of us. Your grandfather, too. He expects to find you here to-night.
+I can explain to your Aunt Elinor over the telephone, and we can send
+for your clothes.”
+
+Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room. When she came
+back her eyes were filled with tears, and her left hand was bare.
+
+“It nearly kills me to hurt you,” she said, “but--what about this?”
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+Grace seemed frozen in her chair. At the sight of her mother's face Lily
+flung herself on her knees beside the chair.
+
+“Mother, mother,” she said, “you must know how I love you. Love you
+both. Don't look like that. I can't bear it.”
+
+Grace turned away her face.
+
+“You don't love us. You can't. Not if you are going to marry that man.”
+
+“Mother,” Lily begged, desperately, “let me come home. Let me bring him
+here. I'll wait, if you'll only do that. He is different; I know all
+that you want to say about his past. He has never had a real chance
+in all his life. He won't belong at first, but--he's a man, mother, a
+strong man. And it's awfully important. He can do so much, if he only
+will. And he says he will, if I marry him.”
+
+“I don't understand you,” Grace said coldly. “What can a man like that
+do, but wreck all our lives?”
+
+Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down. “I'll tell you
+about that later,” she said, and slowly got to her feet. “Is that all,
+mother? You won't see him? I can't bring him here? Isn't there any
+compromise? Won't you meet me half-way?”
+
+“When you say half-way, you mean all the way, Lily.”
+
+“I wanted you so,” Lily said, drearily, “I need you so just now. I am
+going to be married, and I have no one to go to. Aunt Elinor doesn't
+understand, either. Every way I look I find--I suppose I can't come back
+at all, then.”
+
+“Your grandfather's condition was that you never see this Louis Akers
+again.”
+
+Lily's resentment left her. Anger was a thing for small matters, trivial
+affairs. This that was happening, an irrevocable break with her family,
+was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears. She wondered dully if
+any man were worth all this. Perhaps she knew, sub-consciously, that
+Louis Akers was not. All her exaltation was gone, and in its stead was a
+sort of dogged determination to see the thing through now, at any cost;
+to re-make Louis into the man he could be, to build her own house of
+life, and having built it, to live in it as best she could.
+
+“That is a condition I cannot fulfill, mother. I am engaged to him.”
+
+“Then you love him more than you do any of us, or all of us.”
+
+“I don't know. It is different,” she said vaguely.
+
+She kissed her mother very tenderly when she went away, but there was
+a feeling of finality in them both. Mademoiselle, waiting at the top of
+the stairs, heard the door close and could not believe her ears. Grace
+went upstairs, her face a blank before the servants, and shut herself
+in her room. And in Lily's boudoir the roses spread a heavy, funereal
+sweetness over the empty room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder.
+In some cities there had been rioting, but half-hearted and
+easily controlled. Almost without exception it was the foreign and
+unassimilated element that broke the peace. Alien women spat on the
+state police, and flung stones at them. Here and there property
+was destroyed. A few bomb outrages filled the newspapers with great
+scare-heads, and sent troops and a small army of secret service men here
+and there.
+
+In the American Federation of Labor a stocky little man grimly fought to
+oppose the Radical element, which was slowly gaining ground, and at the
+same time to retain his leadership. The great steel companies, united
+at last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded, stood
+doggedly and courageously together, waiting for a return of sanity to
+the world. The world seemed to have gone mad. Everywhere in the country
+production was reduced by the cessation of labor, and as a result the
+cost of living was mounting.
+
+And every strike lost in the end. Labor had yet to learn that to cease
+to labor may express a grievance, but that in itself it righted no
+wrongs. Rather, it turned that great weapon, public opinion, without
+which no movement may succeed, against it. And that to stand behind
+the country in war was not enough. It must stand behind the country in
+peace.
+
+It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest
+link. The weak link in the labor chain was its Radical element. Rioters
+were arrested with union cards in their pockets. In vain the unions
+protested their lack of sympathy with the unruly element. The vast
+respectable family of union labor found itself accused of the sins of
+the minority, and lost standing thereby.
+
+At Friendship the unruly element was very strong. For a time it held its
+meetings in a hall. When that was closed it resorted to the open air.
+
+On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused
+polo field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers, and
+to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being built
+around the field, with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In
+a few days the fence was finished, only to be partly demolished the next
+night, secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to
+hold meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly
+held in the woods near the town, but the rendezvous was not located.
+
+On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found one
+morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate was shot
+through the heart, from ambush.
+
+Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic riotings
+began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause, and to end as
+suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts,
+but one or two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not
+all foreign strikers from the mills. They were garment workers, hotel
+waiters, a rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to
+no end, apparently. They began with a chance word, fought their furious
+way for an hour or so, and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and
+torn clothing behind them.
+
+On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable
+size. The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majority of
+the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons, lengths
+of pipe and short, wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until
+the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriously reenforced by
+a cool-headed number of citizens, led by a tall thin man who limped
+slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous support with a few words
+and considerable skill.
+
+The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to investigate
+an arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard a conversation between
+two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the battle, for comfort and a
+little conversation.
+
+“Can you beat that, Henry?” said one. “Where the hell'd they come from?”
+
+“Search me,” said Henry. “D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too.
+D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how
+to fight, I'll tell the world.”
+
+The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee. Willy
+Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or intention,
+purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contrary to the plans of
+their leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black eye at home after the
+recent outburst, sized up the situation shrewdly.
+
+“You can boil a kettle too hard,” he said, “and then the lid pops off.
+Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire a little high,
+that's all. They'll quit now, because they want to get us off guard
+later. You and your committee can take a vacation, unless you can set
+them to electioneering for me. They've had enough for a while, the
+devils. They'll wait now for Akers to get in and make things easy for
+them. Mind my words, boy. That's the game.”
+
+And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of order still occurred,
+but no big ones. To the headquarters in the Denslow Bank came an
+increasing volume of information, to be duly docketed and filed. Some of
+it was valueless. Now and then there came in something worth following
+up. Thus one night Pink and a picked band, following a vague clew, went
+in automobiles to the state borderline, and held up and captured two
+trucks loaded with whiskey and destined for Friendship and Baxter. He
+reported to Willy Cameron late that night.
+
+“Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road,” he said. “Hurt like
+sin to do it, though. Felt like the fellow who shot the last passenger
+pigeon.”
+
+But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, in the
+Boyd house things were rapidly approaching a climax, and that through
+Dan. He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched. The strike
+was on his nerves; he felt his position keenly, resented Willy Cameron
+supporting the family, and had developed a curious jealousy of his
+mother's affection for him.
+
+Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an open break
+came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go to work again.
+They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to and from the kitchen,
+carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift could not make it other than
+scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plate away.
+
+“Going back to work, are you?” he sneered. “And how long do you think
+you'll be able to work?”
+
+“You keep quiet,” Edith flared at him. “I'm going to work. That's all
+you need to know. I can't sit here and let a man who doesn't belong
+to us provide every bite we eat, if you can.” Willy Cameron got up and
+closed the door, for Mrs. Boyd an uncanny ability to hear much that went
+on below.
+
+“Now,” he said when he came back, “we might as well have this out. Dan
+has a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plan something.” He
+turned to Dan. “It must be kept from your mother, Dan.”
+
+“Plan something!” Dan snarled. “I know what to plan, all right. I'll
+find the--” he broke into foul, furious language, but suddenly Willy
+Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.
+
+“I know who it is,” Dan said, more quietly, “and he's got to marry her,
+or I'll kill him.”
+
+“You know, do you? Well, you don't,” Edith said, “and I won't marry him
+anyhow.”
+
+“You will marry him. Do you think I'm going to see mother disgraced,
+sick as she is, and let you get away with it? Where does Akers live? You
+know, don't you? You've been there, haven't you?”
+
+All Edith's caution was forgotten in her shame and anger.
+
+“Yes, I know,” she said, hysterically, “but I won't tell you. And I
+won't marry him. I hate him. If you go to him he'll beat you to death.”
+ Suddenly the horrible picture of Dan in Akers' brutal hands overwhelmed
+her. “Dan, you won't go?” she begged. “He'll kill you.”
+
+“A lot you'd care,” he said, coldly. “As if we didn't have enough
+already! As if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson, next door, and
+been a decent woman. And instead, you're a--”
+
+“Be quiet, Dan,” Willy Cameron interrupted him. “That sort of talk
+doesn't help any. Edith is right. If you go to Akers there will be a
+fight. And that's no way to protect her.”
+
+“God!” Dan muttered. “With all the men in the world, to choose that
+rotten anarchist!”
+
+It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there in the
+badly lighted little room around the disordered table, with Ellen grimly
+listening in the doorway, and the odors of cooking still heavy in
+the air. Edith sat there, her hands on the table, staring ahead, and
+recounted her wrongs. She had never had a chance. Home had always been a
+place to get away from. Nobody had cared what became of her. And hadn't
+she tried to get out of the way? Only they all did their best to make
+her live. She wished she had died.
+
+Dan, huddled low in his chair, his legs sprawling, stared at nothing
+with hopeless eyes.
+
+Afterwards Willy Cameron could remember nothing of the scene in detail.
+He remembered its setting, but of all the argument and quarreling only
+one thing stood out distinctly, and that was Edith's acceptance of Dan's
+accusation. It was Akers, then. And Lily Cardew was going to marry him.
+Was in love with him.
+
+“Does he know how things are?” he asked.
+
+She nodded. “Yes.”
+
+“Does he offer to do anything?”
+
+“Him? He does not. And don't you go to him and try to get him to marry
+me. I tell you I'd die first.”
+
+He left them there, sitting in the half light, and going out into the
+hall picked up his hat. Mrs. Boyd heard him and called to him, and
+before he went out he ran upstairs to her room. It seemed to him, as he
+bent over her, that her lips were bluer than ever, her breath a little
+shallower and more difficult. Her untouched supper tray was beside her.
+
+“I wasn't hungry,” she explained. “Seems to me, Willy, if you'd let
+me go downstairs so I could get some of my own cooking I'd eat better.
+Ellen's all right, but I kind o' crave sweet stuff, and she don't like
+making desserts.”
+
+“You'll be down before long,” he assured her. “And making me pies.
+Remember those pies you used to bake?”
+
+“You always were a great one for my pies,” she said, complacently.
+
+He kissed her when he left. He had always marveled at the strange lack
+of demonstrativeness in the household, and he knew that she valued his
+small tendernesses.
+
+“Now remember,” he said, “light out at ten o'clock, and no going
+downstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke. When you
+do, it's my pipe.”
+
+“I don't think you hardly ever go to bed, Willy.”
+
+“Me? Get too much sleep. I'm getting fat with it.”
+
+The stale little joke was never stale with her. He left her smiling, and
+went down the stairs and out into the street.
+
+He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to find out
+from him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd's accusation.
+He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty before he did
+anything. Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men. If he could get the
+facts from Louis Akers--but he had no idea of what he would do then. He
+couldn't very well tell Lily, but her people might do something. Or Mrs.
+Doyle.
+
+He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than
+marry Akers, under the circumstances. That her failure to marry Louis
+Akers would mean anything as to his own relationship with her he never
+even considered. All that had been settled long ago, when she said she
+did not love him.
+
+At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for an hour
+or two he walked the streets. The city seemed less majestic to him than
+usual; its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, it is true, but those
+very streets hid also vice and degradation, and ugly passions. They
+sheltered, but also they concealed.
+
+At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told that Mr.
+Akers had come in.
+
+It was Akers himself who opened the door. Because the night was hot he
+had shed coat and shirt, and his fine torso, bare to the shoulders and
+at the neck, gleamed in the electric light. Willy Cameron had not seen
+him since those spring days when he had made his casual, bold-eyed
+visits to Edith at the pharmacy, and he had a swift insight into the
+power this man must have over women. He himself was tall; but Akers was
+taller, fully muscled, his head strongly set on a neck like a column.
+But he surmised that the man was soft, out of condition. And he had lost
+the first elasticity of youth.
+
+Akers' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness when
+he opened the door.
+
+“Well!” he said. “Making a late call, aren't you?”
+
+“What I had to say wouldn't wait.”
+
+Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in.
+The room was very hot, for a small fire, littered as to its edges with
+papers, burned in the grate. Although he knew that Akers had guessed the
+meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, there was a moment or two
+when each sparred for an opening.
+
+“Sit down. Have a cigarette?”
+
+“No, thanks.” He remained standing.
+
+“Or a high-ball? I still have some fairly good whiskey.”
+
+“No. I came to ask you a question, Mr. Akers.”
+
+“Well, answering questions is one of the best little things I do.”
+
+“You know about Edith Boyd's condition. She says you are responsible. Is
+that true?”
+
+Louis Akers was not unprepared. Sooner or later he had known that Edith
+would tell. But what he had not counted on was that she would tell
+any one who knew Lily. He had felt that her leaving the pharmacy had
+eliminated that chance. “What do you mean, her condition?”
+
+“You know. She says she has told you.”
+
+“You're pretty thick with her yourself, aren't you?”
+
+“I happen to live at the Boyd house.”
+
+He was keeping himself well under control, but Akers saw his hand
+clench, and resorted to other tactics. He was not angry himself, but he
+was wary now; he considered that life was unnecessarily complicated, and
+that he had a distinct grievance.
+
+“I have asked you a question, Mr. Akers.”
+
+“You don't expect me to answer it, do you?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“If you have come here to talk to me about marrying her--”
+
+“She won't marry you,” Willy Cameron said steadily. “That's not the
+point I want your own acknowledgment of responsibility, that's all.”
+
+Akers was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved. He lighted a cigarette
+and over the match stared at the other man's quiet face.
+
+“No!” he said suddenly. “I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility. She
+knew her way around long before I ever saw her. Ask her. She can't lie
+about it. I can produce other men to prove what I say. I played around
+with her, but I don't know whose child that is, and I don't believe she
+does.”
+
+“I think you are lying.”
+
+“All right. But I can produce the goods.”
+
+Willy Cameron went very pale. His hands were clenched again, and Akers
+eyed him warily.
+
+“None of that,” he cautioned. “I don't know what interest you've got in
+this, and I don't give a God-damn. But you'd better not try any funny
+business with me.”
+
+Willy Cameron smiled. Much the sort of smile he had worn during the
+rioting.
+
+“I don't like to soil my hands on you,” he said, “but I don't mind
+telling you that any man who ruins a girl's life and then tries to get
+out of it by defaming her, is a skunk.”
+
+Akers lunged at him.
+
+Some time later Mr. William Wallace Cameron descended to the street.
+He wore his coat collar turned up to conceal the absence of certain
+articles of wearing apparel which he had mysteriously lost. And he wore,
+too, a somewhat distorted, grim and entirely complacent smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+The city had taken the rioting with a weary philosophy. It was tired of
+fighting. For two years it had labored at high tension for the European
+war. It had paid taxes and bought bonds, for the war. It had saved and
+skimped and denied itself, for the war. And for the war it had made
+steel, steel for cannon and for tanks, for ships and for railroads. It
+had labored hard and well, and now all it wanted was to be allowed to
+get back to normal things. It wanted peace.
+
+It said, in effect: “I have both fought and labored, sacrificed and
+endured. Give me now my rest of nights, after a day's work. Give me
+marriage and children. Give me contentment. Give me the things I have
+loved long since, and lost awhile.”
+
+And because the city craved peace, it was hard to rouse it to its
+danger. It was war-weary, and its weariness was not of apathy, but of
+exhaustion. It was not yet ready for new activity.
+
+Then, the same night that had seen Willy Cameron's encounter with Akers,
+it was roused from its lethargy. A series of bomb outrages shook the
+downtown district. The Denslow Bank was the first to go. Willy Cameron,
+inspecting a cut lip in his mirror, heard a dull explosion, and ran down
+to the street. There he was joined by Joe Wilkinson, in trousers over
+his night shirt, and as they looked, a dull red glare showed against
+the sky. Joe went back for more clothing, but Willy Cameron ran down the
+street. At the first corner he heard a second explosion, further away
+and to the east, but apparently no fire followed it. That, he learned
+later, was the City Club, founded by Anthony Cardew years before.
+
+The Denslow Bank was burning. The facade had been shattered and from the
+interior already poured a steady flow of flame and smoke. He stood among
+the crowd, while the engines throbbed and the great fire hose lay
+along the streets, and watched the little upper room where the precious
+records of the Committee were burning brightly. The front wall gone,
+the small office stood open to the world, a bright and shameless thing,
+flaunting its nakedness to the crowd below.
+
+He wondered why Providence should so play into the hands of the enemy.
+
+After a time he happened on Pink Denslow, wandering alone on the
+outskirts of the crowd.
+
+“Just about kill the governor, this,” said Pink, heavily. “Don't suppose
+the watchmen got out, either. Not that they'd care,” he added, savagely.
+
+“How about the vaults? I suppose they are fireproof?”
+
+“Yes. Do you realize that every record we've got has gone? D'you suppose
+those fellows knew about them?”
+
+Willy Cameron had been asking himself the same question.
+
+“Trouble is,” Pink went on, “you don't know who to trust. They're not
+all foreigners. Let's get away from here; it makes me sick.”
+
+They wandered through the night together, almost unconsciously in the
+direction of the City Club, but within a block of it they realized that
+something was wrong. A hospital ambulance dashed by, its gong ringing
+wildly, and a fire engine, not pumping, stood at the curb.
+
+“Come on,” Pink said suddenly. “There were two explosions. It's just
+possible--”
+
+The club was more sinister than the burning bank; it was a mass of grim
+wreckage, black and gaping, with now and then the sound of settling
+masonry, and already dotted with the moving flash-lights of men who
+searched.
+
+To Pink this catastrophe was infinitely greater than that of the bank.
+Men he knew had lived there. There were old club servants who were like
+family retainers; one or two employees were ex-service men for whom he
+had found employment. He stood there, with Willy Cameron's hand on his
+arm, with a new maturity and a vast suffering in his face.
+
+“Before God,” he said solemnly, “I swear never to rest until the fellows
+behind this are tried, condemned and hanged. You've heard it, Cameron.”
+
+The death list for that night numbered thirteen, the two watchmen at
+the bank and eleven men at the club, two of them members. Willy Cameron,
+going home at dawn, exhausted and covered with plaster dust, bought
+an extra and learned that a third bomb, less powerful, had wrecked the
+mayor's house. It had been placed under the sleeping porch, and but for
+the accident of a sick baby the entire family would have been wiped out.
+
+Even his high courage began to waver. His records were gone; that
+was all to do over again. But what seemed to him the impasse was this
+fighting in the dark. An unseen enemy, always. And an enemy which
+combined with skill a total lack of any rules of warfare, which killed
+here, there and everywhere, as though for the sheer joy of killing. It
+struck at the high but killed the low. And it had only begun.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Dominant family traits have a way of skipping one generation and
+appearing in the next. Lily Cardew at that stage of her life had a
+considerable amount of old Anthony's obstinacy and determination,
+although it was softened by a long line of Cardew women behind her,
+women who had loved, and suffered dominance because they loved. Her very
+infatuation for Louis Akers, like Elinor's for Doyle, was possibly an
+inheritance from her fore-mothers, who had been wont to overlook the
+evil in a man for the strength in him. Only Lily mistook physical
+strength for moral fibre, insolence and effrontery for courage.
+
+In both her virtues and her faults, however, irrespective of heredity,
+Lily represented very fully the girl of her position and period. With no
+traditions to follow, setting her course by no compass, taught to think
+but not how to think, resentful of tyranny but unused to freedom,
+she moved ahead along the path she had elected to follow, blindly and
+obstinately, yet unhappy and suffering.
+
+Her infatuation for Louis Akers had come to a new phase of its rapid
+development. She had reached that point where a woman realizes that the
+man she loves is, not a god of strength and wisdom, but a great child
+who needs her. It is at that point that one of two things happens: the
+weak woman abandons him, and follows her dream elsewhere. The woman
+of character, her maternal instinct roused, marries him, bears him
+children, is both wife and mother to him, and finds in their united
+weaknesses such strength as she can.
+
+In her youth and self-sufficiency Lily stood ready to give, rather than
+to receive. She felt now that he needed her more than she needed him.
+There was something unconsciously patronizing those days in her attitude
+toward him, and if he recognized it he did not resent it. Women had
+always been “easy” for him. Her very aloofness, her faint condescension,
+her air of a young grande dame, were a part of her attraction for him.
+
+Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when
+it gains sight, it dies. Already Lily was seeing him with the critical
+eyes of youth, his loud voice, his over-fastidious dress, his occasional
+grossnesses. To offset these she placed vast importance on his promise
+to leave his old associates when she married him.
+
+The time was very close now. She could not hold him off much longer,
+and she began to feel, too, that she must soon leave the house on Cardew
+Way. Doyle's attitude to her was increasingly suspicious and ungracious.
+She knew that he had no knowledge of Louis's promise, but he began to
+feel that she was working against him, and showed it.
+
+And in Louis Akers too she began to discern an inclination not to pull
+out until after the election. He was ambitious, and again and again he
+urged that he would be more useful for the purpose in her mind if he
+were elected first.
+
+That issue came to a climax the day she had seen her mother and learned
+the terms on which she might return home. She was alarmed by his noisy
+anger at the situation.
+
+“Do sit down, Louis, and be quiet,” she said. “You have known their
+attitude all along, haven't you?”
+
+“I'll show them,” he said, thickly. “Damned snobs!” He glanced at her
+then uneasily, and her expression put him on his guard. “I didn't mean
+that, little girl. Honestly I didn't. I don't care for myself. It's
+you.”
+
+“You must understand that they think they are acting for my good. And
+I am not sure,” she added, her clear eyes on him, “that they are not
+right. You frighten me sometimes, Louis.”
+
+But a little later he broke out again. If he wasn't good enough to enter
+their house, he'd show them something. The election would show them
+something. They couldn't refuse to receive the mayor of the city.
+She saw then that he was bent on remaining with Doyle until after the
+election.
+
+Lily sat back, listening and thinking. Sometimes she thought that he
+did not love her at all. He always said he wanted her, but that was
+different.
+
+“I think you love yourself more than you love me, Louis,” she said, when
+he had exhausted himself. “I don't believe you know what love is.”
+
+That brought him to his knees, his arms around her, kissing her hands,
+begging her not to give him up, and once again her curious sense of
+responsibility for him triumphed.
+
+“You will marry me soon, dear, won't you?” he implored her. But she
+thought of Willy Cameron, oddly enough, even while his arms were around
+her; of the difference in the two men. Louis, big, crouching, suppliant
+and insistent; Willy Cameron, grave, reserved and steady, taking what
+she now knew was the blow of her engagement like a gentleman and a
+soldier.
+
+They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions of men
+in love, the men who offer much and give little, the others who, out of
+a deep humility, offer little and give everything they have.
+
+In the end, nothing was settled. After he had gone Lily, went up to
+Elinor's room. She had found in Elinor lately a sort of nervous tension
+that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily told her of
+her visit home, and of her determination to marry Louis within the next
+few days. Elinor had dropped her sewing and clenched her hands in her
+lap.
+
+“Not soon, Lily!” she said. “Oh, not soon. Wait a little--wait two
+months.”
+
+“Two months?” Lily said wonderingly. “Why two months?”
+
+“Because, at the end of two months, nothing would make you marry him,”
+ Elinor said, almost violently. “I have sat by and waited, because I
+thought you would surely see your mistake. But now--Lily, do you envy me
+my life?”
+
+“No,” Lily said truthfully; “but you love him.”
+
+Elinor sat, her eyes downcast and brooding.
+
+“You are different,” she said finally. “You will break, where I have
+only bent.”
+
+But she said no more about a delay. She had been passive too long to be
+able to take any strong initiative now. And all her moral and physical
+courage she was saving for a great emergency.
+
+Cardew Way was far from the center of town, and Lily knew nothing of the
+bomb outrages of that night.
+
+When she went down to breakfast the next morning she found Jim Doyle
+pacing the floor of the dining room in a frenzy of rage, a newspaper
+clenched in his hand. By the window stood Elinor, very pale and with
+slightly reddened eyes. They had not heard her, and Doyle continued a
+furious harangue.
+
+“The fools!” he said. “Damn such material as I have to work with! This
+isn't the time, and they know it. I've warned them over and over. The
+fools!”
+
+Elinor saw her then, and made a gesture of warning. But it was too late.
+Lily had a certain quality of directness, and it did not occur to her to
+dissemble.
+
+“Is anything wrong?” she asked, and went at once to Elinor. She had once
+or twice before this stood between them for Elinor's protection.
+
+“Everything is as happy as a May morning,” Doyle sneered. “Your Aunt
+Elinor has an unpleasant habit of weeping for joy.”
+
+Lily stiffened, but Elinor touched her arm.
+
+“Sit down and eat your breakfast, Lily,” she said, and left the room.
+
+Doyle stood staring at Lily angrily. He did not know how much she
+had heard, how much she knew. At the moment he did not care. He had
+a reckless impulse to tell her the truth, but his habitual caution
+prevailed. He forced a cold smile.
+
+“Don't bother your pretty head about politics,” he said.
+
+Lily was equally cold. Her dislike of him had been growing for weeks,
+coupled to a new and strange distrust.
+
+“Politics? You seem to take your politics very hard.”
+
+“I do,” he said urbanely. “Particularly when I am fighting my wife's
+family. May I pour you some coffee?”
+
+And pour it he did, eyeing her furtively the while, and brought it to
+her.
+
+“May I give you a word of advice, Lily?” he said. “Don't treat your
+husband to tears at breakfast--unless you want to see him romping off to
+some other woman.”
+
+“If he cared to do that I shouldn't want him anyhow.”
+
+“You're a self-sufficient child, aren't you? Well, the best of us do it,
+sometimes.”
+
+He had successfully changed the trend of her thoughts, and he went out,
+carrying the newspaper with him.
+
+Nevertheless, he began to feel that her presence in the house was a
+menace. With all her theories he knew that a word of the truth would
+send her flying, breathless with outrage, out of his door. He could
+quite plainly visualize that home-coming of hers. The instant steps that
+would be taken against him, old Anthony on the wire appealing to the
+governor, Howard closeted with the Chief of Police, an instant closing
+of the net. And he was not ready for the clash.
+
+No. She must stay. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling
+and mouthing! In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced
+the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and
+not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in
+the hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself
+the head, not of the nation--there would be no nation, as such--but of
+the country. The very incidents of the night before, blundering as they
+were, showed him the ease with which the new force could be applied.
+
+He was drunk with power.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon, in the person of Pink
+Denslow. She had assumed some of Elinor's cares for the day, for Elinor
+herself had not been visible since breakfast. It soothed the girl to
+attend to small duties, and she was washing and wiping Elinor's small
+stock of fine china when the bell rang.
+
+“Mr. Denslow is calling,” said Jennie. “I didn't know if you'd see him,
+so I said I didn't know if you were in.”
+
+Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him. He was
+covered with plaster dust, even to the brim of his hat, and his hands
+were scratched and rough.
+
+“Pink!” she said. “Why, what is the matter?”
+
+For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the first
+time in his life perhaps, entirely indifferent to it.
+
+“I've been digging in the ruins,” he said. “Is that man Doyle in the
+house?”
+
+Her color faded. Suddenly she noticed a certain wildness about Pink's
+eyes, and the hard strained look of his mouth.
+
+“What ruins, Pink?” she managed to ask.
+
+“All the ruins,” he said. “You know, don't you? The bank, our bank, and
+the club?”
+
+It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw it
+all, a dreadful picture which had somehow superimposed upon it a vision
+of Jim Doyle with the morning paper, and the thing that this was not the
+time for.
+
+“That's all,” he finished. “Eleven at the club, two of them my own
+fellows. In France, you know. I found one of them myself, this morning.”
+ He stared past her, over her head. “Killed for nothing, the way the
+Germans terrorized Belgium. Haven't you seen the papers?”
+
+“No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course. Lily, I want you to
+leave here. If you don't, if you stay now, you're one of them, whether
+you believe what they preach or not. Don't you see that?”
+
+She was not listening. Her faith was dying hard, and the mental shock
+had brought her dizziness and a faint nausea. He stood watching her, and
+when she glanced up at him it seemed to her that Pink was hard. Hard and
+suspicious, and the suspicion was for her. It was incredible.
+
+“Do you believe what they preach?” he demanded. “I've got to know, Lily.
+I've suffered the tortures of the damned all night.”
+
+“I didn't know it meant this.”
+
+“Do you?” he repeated.
+
+“No. You ought to know me better than that. But I don't believe that it
+started here, Pink. He was very angry this morning, and he wouldn't let
+me see the paper.”
+
+“He's behind it all right,” Pink said grimly. “Maybe he didn't plant the
+bombs, but his infernal influence did it, just the same. Do you mean
+to say you've lived here all this time and don't know he is plotting a
+revolution? What if he didn't authorize these things last night? He is
+only waiting, to place a hundred bombs instead of three. A thousand,
+perhaps.”
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+“We've got their own statements. Department of Justice found them. The
+fools, to think they can overthrow the government! Can you imagine men
+planning to capture this city and hold it?”
+
+“It wouldn't be possible, Pink?”
+
+“It isn't possible now, but they'll make a try at it.”
+
+There was a short pause, with Lily struggling to understand. Pink's
+set face relaxed somewhat. All that night he had been fighting for his
+belief in her.
+
+“I never dreamed of it, Pink. I suppose all the talk I've heard meant
+that, but I never--are you sure? About Jim Doyle, I mean.”
+
+“We know he is behind it. We haven't got the goods on him yet, but we
+know. Cameron knows. You ask him and he'll tell you.”
+
+“Willy Cameron?”
+
+“Yes. He's had some vision, while the rest of us--! He's got a lot of us
+working now, Lily. We are on the right trail, too, although we lost some
+records last night that put us back a couple of months. We'll get them,
+all right. We'll smash their little revolution into a cocked hat.”
+ It occurred to him, then, that this house was a poor place for such a
+confidence. “I'll tell you about it later. Get your things now, and let
+me take you home.”
+
+But Lily's problem was too complex for Pink's simple remedy. She was
+stricken with sudden conviction; the very mention of Willy Cameron gave
+Pink's statements authority. But to go like that, to leave Elinor in
+that house, with all that it implied, was impossible. And there was her
+own private problem to dispose of.
+
+“I'll go this afternoon, Pink. I'll promise you that. But I can't go
+with you now. I can't. You'll have to take my word, that's all. And you
+must believe I didn't know.”
+
+“Of course you didn't know,” he said, sturdily. “But I hate like thunder
+to go and leave you here.” He picked up his hat, reluctantly. “If I can
+do anything--”
+
+Lily's mind was working more clearly now. This was the thing Louis Akers
+had been concerned with, then, a revolution against his country. But
+it was the thing, too, that he had promised to abandon. He was not a
+killer. She knew him well, and he was not a killer. He had got to a
+certain point, and then the thing had sickened him. Even without her he
+would never have gone through with it. But it would be necessary now to
+get his information quickly. Very quickly.
+
+“Suppose,” she said, hesitatingly, “suppose I tell you that I think I am
+going to be able to help you before long?”
+
+“Help? I want you safe. This is not work for women.”
+
+“But suppose I can bring you a very valuable ally?” she persisted. “Some
+one who knows all about certain plans, and has changed his views about
+them?”
+
+“One of them?”
+
+“He has been.”
+
+“Is he selling his information?”
+
+“In a way, yes,” said Lily, slowly.
+
+“Ware the fellow who sells information,” Pink said. “But we'll be glad
+to have it. We need it, God knows. And--you'll leave?”
+
+“I couldn't stay, could I?”
+
+He kissed her hand when he went away, doing it awkwardly and
+self-consciously, but withal reverently. She wondered, rather dully, why
+she could not love Pink. A woman would be so safe with him, so sure.
+
+She had not even then gathered the full force of what he had told her.
+But little by little things came back to her; the man on guard in the
+garden; the incident of the locked kitchen door; Jim Doyle once talking
+angrily over a telephone in his study, although no telephone, so far as
+she knew, was installed in the room; his recent mysterious absences, and
+the increasing visits of the hateful Woslosky.
+
+She went back to Louis. This was what he had meant. He had known all
+along, and plotted with them; even if his stomach had turned now, he
+had been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him; she saw
+him, misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding phrases, lured on
+by one of those wild dreams of empire to which men were sometimes given.
+She did not love him any more; she was sorry for him.
+
+She saw her position with the utmost clearness. To go home was to
+abandon him, to lose him for those who needed what he could give, to
+send him back to the enemy. She had told Pink she could secure an ally
+for a price, and she was the price. There was not an ounce of melodrama
+in her, as she stood facing the situation. She considered, quite simply,
+that she had assumed an obligation which she must carry out. Perhaps her
+pride was dictating to her also. To go crawling home, bowed to the dust,
+to admit that life had beaten her, to face old Anthony's sneers and her
+mother's pity--that was hard for any Cardew.
+
+She remembered Elinor's home-comings of years ago, the strained air of
+the household, the whispering servants, and Elinor herself shut away,
+or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father was
+out of the house.
+
+No, she could not face that.
+
+Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass; she faced that
+uncompromisingly. She would marry Louis, and hold him to his promise,
+and so perhaps out of all this misery some good would come. But at the
+thought of marriage she found herself trembling violently. With no love
+and no real respect to build on, with an intuitive knowledge of the
+man's primitive violences, the reluctance toward marriage with him which
+she had always felt crystallized into something very close to dread.
+
+But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and fully
+determined. At Elinor's door she tapped lightly, and she heard movements
+within. Then Elinor opened the door wide. She had been lying on her bed,
+and automatically after closing the door she began to smooth it. Lily
+felt a wave of intense pity for her.
+
+“I wish you would go away from here, Aunt Elinor,” she said.
+
+Elinor glanced up, without surprise.
+
+“Where could I go?”
+
+“If you left him definitely, you could go home.”
+
+Elinor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly to
+desperation.
+
+“You know what is going on,” she said, her voice strained. “You don't
+believe it is right; you know it is wicked. Clothe it in all the fine
+language in the world, Aunt Elinor, and it is still wicked. If you stay
+here you condone it. I won't. I am going away.”
+
+“I wish you had never come, Lily.”
+
+“It's too late for that,” Lily said, stonily. “But it is not too late
+for you to get away.”
+
+“I shall stay,” Elinor said, with an air of finality. But Lily made one
+more effort.
+
+“He is killing you.”
+
+“No, he is killing himself.” Suddenly Elinor flared into a passionate
+outburst. “Don't you think I know where all this is leading? Do you
+believe for a moment that I think all this can lead to anything but
+death? It is a madness, Lily; they are all mad, these men. Don't you
+know that I have talked and argued and prayed, against it?”
+
+“Then come away. You have done all you could, and you have failed,
+haven't you?”
+
+“It is not time for me to go,” Elinor said. And Lily, puzzled and
+baffled, found herself again looking into Elinor's quiet, inscrutable
+eyes.
+
+Elinor had taken it for granted that the girl was going home, and
+together they packed almost in silence. Once Elinor looked up from
+folding a garment, and said:
+
+“You said you had not understood before, but that now you do. What did
+you mean?”
+
+“Pink Denslow was here.”
+
+“What does he know?”
+
+“Do you think I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor? It isn't that I don't
+trust you. You must believe that, but don't you see that so long as you
+stay here--he said that to me--you are one of them.”
+
+Elinor resumed her folding.
+
+“Yes, I suppose I am one of them,” she said quietly. “And you are right.
+You must not tell me anything. Pink is Henry Denslow's son, I suppose.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Do they--still live in the old house?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Elinor continued her methodical work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Willy Cameron was free that evening. Although he had not slept at all
+the night before, he felt singularly awake and active. The Committee
+had made temporary quarters of his small back room at the pharmacy,
+and there had sat in rather depressed conclave during a part of the
+afternoon. Pink Denslow had come in late, and had remained, silent and
+haggard, through the debate.
+
+There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get files
+and card indexes. Greater secrecy was to be preserved and enjoined, the
+location of the office to be known only to a small inner circle,
+and careful policing of it and of the building which housed it to be
+established. As a further safeguard, two duplicate files would be kept
+in other places. The Committee groaned over its own underestimate of the
+knowledge of the radicals.
+
+The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the bank
+building where their file was kept, and the club, where nine-tenths
+of the officers of the Committee were members. The significance of the
+double outrage was unquestionable.
+
+When the meeting broke up Pink remained behind. He found it rather
+difficult to broach the matter in his mind. It was always hard for him
+to talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had had a growing conviction
+that Willy Cameron found it equally difficult. He wondered if Cameron,
+too, was in love with Lily. There had been a queer look in his face on
+those rare occasions when Pink had mentioned her, a sort of exaltation,
+and an odd difficulty afterwards in getting back to the subject in hand.
+
+Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for Willy
+Cameron, a strange, loyal, half wistful, totally unselfish devotion. It
+had steadied him, when the loss of Lily might have made him reckless,
+and had taken the form in recent weeks of finding innumerable business
+opportunities, which Willy Cameron cheerfully refused to take.
+
+“I'll stay here until this other thing is settled,” was Willy's
+invariable answer. “I have a certain amount of time here, and the
+fellows can drop in to see me without causing suspicion. In an office it
+would be different. And besides, I can't throw Mr. Davis down. His wife
+is in bad shape.”
+
+So, that afternoon, Pink waited until the Committee had dispersed, and
+then said, with some difficulty:
+
+“I saw her, Cameron. She has promised to leave.”
+
+“To-day?”
+
+“This afternoon. I wanted to take her away, but she had some things to
+do.”
+
+“Then she hadn't known before?”
+
+“No. She thought it was just talk. And they'd kept the papers from her.
+She hadn't heard about last night. Well, that's all. I thought you'd
+want to know.”
+
+Pink started out, but Willy Cameron called him back.
+
+“Have any of your people any influence with the Cardews?”
+
+“No one has any influence with the Cardews, if you mean the Cardew men.
+Why?”
+
+“Because Cardew has got to get out of the mayoralty campaign. That's
+all.”
+
+“That's a-plenty,” said Pink, grinning. “Why don't you go and tell him
+so?”
+
+“I'm thinking of it. He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll defeat
+Hendricks by splitting the vote, and let the other side in. And you know
+what that means.”
+
+“I know it,” Pink observed, “but Mr. Cardew doesn't, and he won't after
+you've told him. They've put a lot of money in, and once a Cardew has
+invested in a thing he holds on like death. Especially the old man.
+Wouldn't wonder he was the fellow who pounded the daylights out of Akers
+last night,” he added.
+
+Willy Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door into
+the shop, and opened a window.
+
+“Akers?” he inquired.
+
+“Noon edition has it,” Pink said. “Claims to have been attacked in his
+rooms by two masked men. Probably wouldn't have told it, but the doctor
+talked. Looks as though he could wallop six masked men, doesn't he?”
+
+“Yes,” said Willy Cameron, reflectively. “Yes; he does, rather.”
+
+He felt more hopeful than he had for days. Lily on her way home, clear
+once more of the poisonous atmosphere of Doyle and his associates; Akers
+temporarily out of the way, perhaps for long enough to let the normal
+influences of her home life show him to her in a real perspective; and a
+rather unholy but very human joy that he had given Akers a part of what
+was coming to him--all united to cheer him. He saw Lily going home, and
+a great wave of tenderness flooded him. If only they would be tactful
+and careful, if only they would be understanding and kind. If they would
+only be normal and every-day, and accept her as though she had never
+been away. These people were so hedged about with conventions and
+restrictions, they put so much emphasis on the letter and so little on
+the spirit. If only--God, if only they wouldn't patronize her!
+
+His mother would have known how to receive her. He felt, that afternoon,
+a real homesickness for his mother. He saw her, ample and comfortable
+and sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed to
+ignore the soul, and yet bringing healing with her every matter-of-fact
+movement.
+
+If only Lily could have gone back to her, instead of to that great
+house, full of curious eyes and whispering voices.
+
+He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper. Mr.
+Hendricks had lost flesh and some of his buoyancy, but he was
+persistently optimistic.
+
+“Up to last night I'd have said we were done, son,” he observed. “But
+this bomb business has settled them. The labor vote'll split on it, sure
+as whooping cough.”
+
+“They've bought a half-page in all the morning papers, disclaiming all
+responsibility and calling on all citizens to help them in protecting
+private property.”
+
+“Have they, now,” said Hendricks, with grudging admiration. “Can you
+beat that? Where do they get the money, anyhow? If I lost my watch these
+days I'd have to do some high-finance before I'd be able to advertise
+for it.”
+
+“All right, see Cardew,” were his parting words. “But he doesn't want
+this election any more than I want my right leg. He'll stick. You can
+talk, Cameron, I'll say it. But you can't pry him off with kind words,
+any more than you can a porous plaster.”
+
+Behind Mr. Hendricks' colloquialisms there was something sturdy and
+fine. His very vernacular made him popular; his honesty was beyond
+suspicion. If he belonged to the old school in politics, he had most
+of its virtues and few of its vices. He would take care of his friends,
+undoubtedly, but he was careful in his choice of friends. He would make
+the city a good place to live in. Like Willy Cameron, he saw it, not
+a center of trade so much as a vast settlement of homes. Business
+supported the city in his mind, not the city business.
+
+Nevertheless the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of a
+desperate remedy for a desperate disease that Willy Cameron, after a
+careful toilet, rang the bell of the Cardew house that night. He had no
+hope of seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were under one roof
+gave him a sense of nearness and of comfort in her safety.
+
+Dinner was recently over, and he found both the Cardews, father and son,
+in the library smoking. He had arrived at a bad moment, for the bomb
+outrage, coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home under the given
+conditions, had roused Anthony to a cold rage, and left Howard with a
+feeling of helplessness.
+
+Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and offered
+him a chair.
+
+“I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron,” he said. “You made me
+wish I could have had your support.”
+
+“I came to talk about that. I am sorry to have to come in the evening,
+but I am not free at any other time.”
+
+“When we go into politics,” said old Anthony in his jibing voice, “the
+ordinary amenities have to go. When you are elected, Howard, I shall
+live somewhere else.”
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+“I don't think you will be put to that inconvenience, Mr. Cardew.”
+
+“What's that?” Old Anthony's voice was incredulous. Here, in his own
+house, this whipper-snapper--
+
+“I am sure Mr. Howard Cardew realizes he cannot be elected.”
+
+The small ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal for the
+family. Howard glanced at him, and said urbanely:
+
+“Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron? Or a liqueur?”
+
+“Nothing, thank you. If I can have a few minutes' talk with you--”
+
+“If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you that
+I am heavily interested in this matter myself,” said old Anthony. “I
+have put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out,
+I want to hear it. You've played the devil with us already, with your
+independent candidate who can't talk English.”
+
+Willy Cameron kept his temper.
+
+“No,” he said, slowly. “It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks
+withdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out.”
+
+Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.
+
+“It's like this,” Willy Cameron said. “Your son knows it. Even if we
+drop out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly--and I mean that--nobody
+with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city.
+There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you a
+fact.”
+
+Howard had listened attentively and without anger. “For a long time, Mr.
+Cameron,” he said, “I have been urging men of--of position in the city,
+to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professional
+politician. I went in, without much hope of election, to--well, you can
+say to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me, so
+much as to show my willingness to serve.”
+
+Old Anthony recovered his voice.
+
+“The Cardews made this town, sir,” he barked. “Willingness to serve,
+piffle! We need a business man to run the city, and by God, we'll get
+it!”
+
+“You'll get an anarchist,” said Willy Cameron, slightly flushed.
+
+“If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick.
+And how do we know that your Vigilance Committee isn't a trick, too?
+You try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do heaven
+knows what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals to
+the public imagination. You don't say anything about votes, but you see
+that they vote for your man. Isn't that true?”
+
+“Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Akers is an
+anarchist. He calls himself something else, but that's what it amounts
+to. And those bombs last night were not imaginary.”
+
+The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on Anthony
+Cardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Akers defeated.
+The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough, in
+Willy Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard.
+What Willy Cameron told about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of
+his daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing about
+Cameron himself. Something of fearlessness and honesty that began,
+slowly, to dispose Anthony in his favor.
+
+It was Howard who held out.
+
+“If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking,”
+ he said, quietly obstinate. “Grant your point, that I'm defeated. All
+right, I'll be defeated--but I won't quit.”
+
+And Anthony Cardew, confronted by that very quality of obstinacy which
+had been his own weapon for so many years, retired in high dudgeon to
+his upper rooms. He was living in a strange new world, a reasonable soul
+on an unreasonable earth, an earth where a man's last sanctuary, his
+club, was blown up about him, and a man's family apparently lived only
+to thwart him.
+
+With Anthony gone, Howard dropped the discussion with the air of a man
+who has made a final stand.
+
+“What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly,” he observed,
+“because--you probably do not know this--my sister married him some
+years ago. It was a most unhappy affair.”
+
+“I do know it. For that reason I am glad that Miss Lily has come home.”
+
+“Has come home? She has not come home, Mr. Cameron. There was a
+condition we felt forced to make, and she refused to agree to it.
+Perhaps we were wrong. I--”
+
+Willy Cameron got up.
+
+“Was that to-day?” he asked.
+
+“No.”
+
+“But she was coming home to-day. She was to leave there this afternoon.”
+
+“How do you know that?”
+
+“Denslow saw her there this afternoon. She agreed to leave at once. He
+had told her of the bombs, and of other things. She hadn't understood
+before, and she was horrified. It is just possible Doyle wouldn't let
+her go.”
+
+“But--that's ridiculous. She can't be a prisoner in my sister's house.”
+
+“Will you telephone and find out if she is there?” Howard went to the
+telephone at once. It seemed to Willy Cameron that he stood there for
+uncounted years, and as though, through all that eternity of waiting, he
+knew what the answer would be. And that he knew, too, what that answer
+meant, where she had gone, what she had done. If only she had come to
+him. If only she had come to him. He would have saved her from herself.
+He--
+
+“She is not there,” Howard Cardew said, in a voice from which all life
+had gone. “She left this afternoon, at four o'clock. Of course she has
+friends. Or she may have gone to a hotel. We had managed to make it
+practically impossible for her to come home.”
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at his watch. He had discounted the worst before
+it came, and unlike the older man, was ready for action. It was he who
+took hold of the situation.
+
+“Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels,” he said. “And if you
+will drop me downtown--I'll tell you where--I'll follow up something
+that has just occurred to me.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+In one way Howard had been correct in his surmise. It had been Lily's
+idea to go to a hotel until she had made some definite plan. She would
+telephone Louis then, and the rest--she did not think beyond that. She
+called a taxi and took a small bag with her, but in the taxicab she
+suddenly realized that she could not go to any of the hotels she knew.
+She would be recognized at once.
+
+She wanted a little time to herself, time to think. And before it was
+discovered that she had left Cardew Way she must see Louis, and judge
+again if he intended to act in good faith. While he was with her,
+reiterating his promises, she believed him, but when he was gone, she
+always felt, a curious doubt.
+
+She thought then of finding a quiet room somewhere, and stopping the
+cab, bought a newspaper. It was when she was searching for the “rooms
+for rent” column that she saw he had been attacked and slightly injured.
+
+They had got him. He had said that if they ever suspected him of playing
+them false they would get him, and now they had done so. That removed
+the last doubt of his good faith from her mind. She felt indignation and
+dismay, and a sort of aching consciousness that always she brought only
+trouble to the people who cared for her; she felt that she was going
+through her life, leaving only unhappiness behind her.
+
+He had suffered, and for her.
+
+She told the chauffeur to go to the Benedict Apartments, and sitting
+back read the notice again. He had been attacked by two masked men and
+badly bruised, after putting up a terrific resistance. They would
+wear masks, of course. They loved the theatrical. Their very flag was
+theatrical. And he had made a hard fight That was like him, too; he was
+a fighter.
+
+She was a Cardew, and she loved strength. There were other men, men like
+Willy Cameron, for instance, who were lovable in many ways, but they
+were not fighters. They sat back, and let life beat them, and they took
+the hurt bravely and stoically. But they never got life by the throat
+and shook it until it gave up what they wanted.
+
+She had never been in a bachelors' apartment house before, and she
+was both frightened and self-conscious. The girl at the desk eyed her
+curiously while she telephoned her message, and watched her as she moved
+toward the elevator. “Ever seen her before?” she said to the hall boy.
+
+“No. She's a new one.”
+
+“Face's kind of familiar to me,” said the telephone girl, reflectively.
+“Looks worried, doesn't she? Two masked men! Huh! All Sam took up there
+last night was a thin fellow with a limp.”
+
+The hall boy grinned.
+
+“Then his limp didn't bother him any. Sam says y'ought to seen that
+place.”
+
+In the meantime, outside the door of Akers' apartment, Lily's fine
+courage almost left her. Had it not been for the eyes of the elevator
+man, fixed on her while he lounged in his gateway, she might have gone
+away, even then. But she stood there, committed to a course of action,
+and rang.
+
+Louis himself admitted her, an oddly battered Louis, in a dressing gown
+and slippers; an oddly watchful Louis, too, waiting, after the manner of
+men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat would jump.
+He had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge. All day he had sat
+there, unable to go out, and had wondered just when Cameron would see
+her and tell her about Edith Boyd. For, just as Willy Cameron rushed him
+for the first time, there had been something from between clenched teeth
+about marrying another girl, under the given circumstances. Only that
+had not been the sort of language in which it was delivered.
+
+“I just saw about it in the newspaper,” Lily said. “How dreadful,
+Louis.”
+
+He straightened himself and drew a deep breath. The game was still his,
+if he played it right.
+
+“Bad enough, dear,” he said, “but I gave them some trouble, too.” He
+pushed a chair toward her. “It was like you to come. But I don't like
+your seeing me all mussed up, little girl.”
+
+He made a move then to kiss her, but she drew back.
+
+“Please!” she said. “Not here. And I can't sit down. I can't stay. I
+only came because I wanted to tell you something and I didn't want to
+telephone it. Louis, Jim Doyle knew about those bombs last night. He
+didn't want it to happen before the election, but--that doesn't alter
+the fact, does it?”
+
+“How do you know he knew?”
+
+“I do know. That's all. And I have left Aunt Elinor's.”
+
+“No!”
+
+“I couldn't stay, could I?” She looked up at him, the little wistful
+glance that Willy always found so infinitely touching, like the appeal
+of a willful but lovable child, that has somehow got into trouble. “And
+I can't go home, Louis, unless I--”
+
+“Unless you give me up,” he finished for her. “Well?”
+
+She hesitated. She hated making terms with him, and yet somehow she must
+make terms.
+
+“Well?” he repeated. “Are you going to throw me over?”
+
+Apparently merely putting the thought into words crystallized all his
+fears of the past hours; seeing her there, too, had intensified his want
+of her. She stood there, where he had so often dreamed of seeing her,
+but still holding him off with the aloofness that both chilled and
+inflamed him, and with a question in her eyes. He held out his arms, but
+she drew back.
+
+“Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them, if I marry
+you, and doing all you can to stop them?”
+
+“You know I mean it.”
+
+“Then--I'll not go home.”
+
+“You are going to marry me? Now?”
+
+“Whenever you say.”
+
+Suddenly she was trembling violently, and her lips felt dry and stiff.
+He pushed her into a chair, and knelt down beside her.
+
+“You poor little kid,” he said, softly.
+
+Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts; Lily his, in his arms,
+in spite of that white-faced drug clerk with the cold eyes; himself in
+the Cardew house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardew at his own
+cynical game; and persistently held back and often rising again to the
+surface, Woslosky and Doyle and the others, killers that they were,
+pursuing him with their vengeance over the world. They would have to be
+counted in; they were his price, as he, had he known it, was Lily's.
+
+“My wife!” he said. “My wife.”
+
+She stiffened in his arms.
+
+“I must go, Louis,” she said. “I can't stay here. I felt very queer
+downstairs. They all stared so.”
+
+There was a clock on the mantel shelf, and he looked at it. It was a
+quarter before five.
+
+“One thing is sure, Lily,” he said. “You can't wander about alone,
+and you are right--you can't stay here. They probably recognized you
+downstairs. You are pretty well known.”
+
+For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised herself,
+and that the net, of her own making, was closing fast about her.
+
+“I wish I hadn't come.”
+
+“Why? We can fix that all right in a jiffy.”
+
+But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final struggle.
+In a few days, even to-morrow, but not just then. He listened,
+impatiently, his eyes on the clock. Beside it in the mirror he saw his
+own marred face, and it added to his anger. In the end he took control
+of the situation; went into his bedroom, changed into a coat, and came
+out again, ready for the street. He telephoned down for a taxicab, and
+then confronted her, his face grim.
+
+“I've let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily,” he said.
+“Now I'm in charge. It won't be to-morrow or next week or next month. It
+will be now. You're here. You've given them a chance to talk downstairs.
+You've nowhere to go, and you're going to marry me at once.”
+
+In the cab he explained more fully. They would get a license, and then
+go to one of the hotels. There they could be married, in their own
+suite.
+
+“All regularly and in order, honey,” he said, and kissed her hand. She
+had hardly heard. She was staring ahead, not thinking, not listening,
+not seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man before her, of his
+sheer physical proximity, of his increasing exuberance.
+
+“I'm mad about you, girl,” he said. “Mad. And now you are going to be
+mine, until death do us part.”
+
+She shivered and drew away, and he laughed a little. Girls were like
+that, at such times. They always took a step back for every two steps
+forward. He let her hand go, and took a careful survey of his face in
+the mirror of the cab. The swelling had gone down, but that bruise below
+his eye would last for days. He cursed under his breath.
+
+
+It was after nine o'clock when one of the Cardew cars stopped not far
+from the Benedict Apartments, and Willy Cameron got out.
+
+He was quite certain that Louis Akers would know where Lily was, and
+he anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor. There might
+be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the
+night before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if
+he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white
+throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more
+than a ripple of excitement.
+
+“Well, look who's here!” muttered the telephone girl, and watched his
+approach, with its faint limp, over the top of her desk. Behind, from
+his cage, the elevator man was staring with avid interest.
+
+“I suppose Mr. Akers is in?” said Willy Cameron, politely. The girl
+smiled up at him.
+
+“I'll say he ought to be, after last night! What're you going to do now?
+Kill him?”
+
+In spite of his anxiety there was a faint twinkle in Willy Cameron's
+eyes.
+
+“No,” he said slowly. “No. I think not. I want to talk to him.”
+
+“Sam,” called the telephone girl, “take this gentleman up to
+forty-three.”
+
+“Forty-three's out.” Sam partly shut the elevator door; he had seen
+Forty-three's rooms the night before, and he had the discretion of his
+race. “Went out with a lady at quarter to five.”
+
+Willy Cameron took a step or two toward the cage.
+
+“You don't happen to be lying, I suppose?”
+
+“No, sir!” said Sam. “I'll take you up to look, if you like. And about
+an hour ago he sent a boy here with a note, to get some of his clothes.
+The young lady at the desk was out at the movies at the time.”
+
+“I was getting my supper, Sam.”
+
+Willy Cameron had gone very white.
+
+“Did the boy say where he was taking the things?”
+
+“To the Saint Elmo Hotel, sir.”
+
+On the street again Willy Cameron took himself fiercely in hand. There
+were a half-dozen reasons why Akers might go to the Saint Elmo. He
+might, for one thing, have thought that he, Cameron, would go back to
+the Benedict. He might be hiding from Dan, or from reporters. But there
+had been, apparently, no attempt to keep his new quarters secret. If
+Lily was at the Saint Elmo--
+
+He found a taxicab, and as it drew up at the curb before the hotel he
+saw the Cardew car moving away. It gave him his first real breath for
+twenty minutes. Lily was not there.
+
+But Louis Akers was. He got his room number from a clerk and went up,
+still determinedly holding on to himself. Afterwards he had no clear
+recollection of any interval between the Benedict and the moment he
+found himself standing outside a door on an upper floor of the Saint
+Elmo. From that time on it was as clear as crystal, his own sudden calm,
+the overturning of a chair inside, a man's voice, slightly raised, which
+he recognized, and then the thin crash of a wineglass dropped or thrown
+to the floor.
+
+He opened the door and went in.
+
+In the center of the sitting room a table was set, and on it the
+remains of a dinner for two. Akers was standing by the table, his chair
+overturned behind him, a splintered glass at his feet, staring angrily
+at the window. Even then Willy Cameron saw that he had had too much to
+drink, and that he was in an ugly mood. He was in dinner clothes, but
+with his bruised face and scowling brows he looked a sinister imitation
+of a gentleman.
+
+By the window, her back to the room, was Lily.
+
+Neither of them glanced at the door. Evidently the waiter had been
+moving in and out, and Akers considered him as little as he would a dog.
+
+“Come and sit down,” he said angrily. “I've quit drinking, I tell you.
+Good God, just because I've had a little wine--and I had the hell of a
+time getting it--you won't eat and won't talk. Come here.”
+
+“I'm not hungry.”
+
+“Come here.”
+
+“Stay where you are, Lily,” said Willy Cameron, from inside the closed
+door. “Or perhaps you'd better get your wraps. I came to take you home.”
+
+Akers had wheeled at the voice, and now stood staring incredulously.
+First anger, and then a grin of triumph, showed in his face. Drink had
+made him not so much drunk as reckless. He had lost last night, but
+to-day he had won.
+
+“Hello, Cameron,” he said.
+
+Willy Cameron ignored him.
+
+“Will you come?” he said to Lily.
+
+“I can't, Willy.”
+
+“Listen, Lily dear,” he said gravely. “Your father is searching the city
+for you. Do you know what that means? Don't you see that you must go
+home at once? You can't dine here in a private suite, like this, and not
+expose yourself to all sorts of talk.”
+
+“Go on,” said Akers, leering. “I like to hear you.”
+
+“Especially,” continued Willy Cameron, “with a man like this.”
+
+Akers took a step toward him, but he was not too sure of himself, and
+he knew now that the other man had a swing to his right arm like the
+driving rod of a locomotive. He retreated again to the table, and his
+hand closed over a knife there.
+
+“Louis!” Lily said sharply.
+
+He picked up the knife and smiled at her, his eyes cunning. “Not going
+to kill him, my dear,” he said. “Merely to give him a hint that I'm not
+as easy as I was last night.”
+
+That was a slip, and he knew it. Lily had left the window and come
+forward, a stricken slip of a girl, and he turned to her angrily.
+
+“Go into the other room and close the door,” he ordered. “When I've
+thrown this fellow out, you can come back.”
+
+But Lily's eyes were fixed on Willy Cameron's face.
+
+“It was you last night?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because,” Willy Cameron said steadily, “he had got a girl into trouble,
+and then insulted her. I wouldn't tell you, but you've got to know the
+truth before it's too late.”
+
+Lily threw out both hands dizzily, as though catching for support. But
+she steadied herself. Neither man moved.
+
+“It is too late, Willy,” she said. “I have just married him.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+At midnight Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired and broken man.
+Grace had been lying awake in her bedroom, puzzled by his unexplained
+absence, and brooding, as she now did continually, over Lily's absence.
+
+At half past eleven she heard Anthony Cardew come in and go upstairs,
+and for some time after that she heard him steadily pacing back and
+forth overhead. Sometimes Grace felt sorry for Anthony. He had made
+himself at such cost, and now when he was old, he had everything and yet
+nothing.
+
+They had never understood women, these Cardews. Howard was gentle with
+them where Anthony was hard, but he did not understand, either. She
+herself, of other blood, got along by making few demands, but the Cardew
+women were as insistent in their demands as the men. Elinor, Lily--She
+formed a sudden resolution, and getting up, dressed feverishly. She had
+no plan in her mind, nothing but a desperate resolution to put Lily's
+case before her grandfather, and to beg that she be brought home without
+conditions.
+
+She was frightened as she went up the stairs. Never before had she
+permitted things to come to an issue between herself and Anthony. But
+now it must be done. She knocked at the door.
+
+Anthony Cardew opened it. The room was dark, save for one lamp burning
+dimly on a great mahogany table, and Anthony's erect figure was little
+more than a blur of black and white.
+
+“I heard you walking about,” she said breathlessly. “May I come in and
+talk to you?”
+
+“Come in,” he said, with a sort of grave heaviness. “Shall I light the
+other lamps?”
+
+“Please don't.”
+
+“Will you sit down? No? Do you mind if I do? I am very tired. I suppose
+it is about Lily?”
+
+“Yes. I can't stand it any longer. I can't.”
+
+Sitting under the lamp she saw that he looked very old and very weary. A
+tired little old man, almost a broken one.
+
+“She won't come back?”
+
+“Not under the conditions. But she must come back, father. To let her
+stay on there, in that house, after last night--”
+
+She had never called him “father” before. It seemed to touch him.
+
+“You're a good woman, Grace,” he said, still heavily. “We Cardews all
+marry good women, but we don't know how to treat them. Even Howard--”
+ His voice trailed off. “No, she can't stay there,” he said, after a
+pause.
+
+“But--I must tell you--she refuses to give up that man.”
+
+“You are a woman, Grace. You ought to know something about girls. Does
+she actually care for him, or is it because he offers the liberty
+she thinks we fail to give her? Or”--he smiled faintly--“is it Cardew
+pig-headedness?”
+
+Grace made a little gesture of despair.
+
+“I don't know. She wanted to come home. She begged--it was dreadful.”
+ Grace hesitated. “Even that couldn't be as bad as this, father,” she
+said. “We have all lived our own lives, you and Howard and myself, and
+now we won't let her do it.”
+
+“And a pretty mess we have made of them!” His tone was grim. “No, I
+can't say that we offer her any felicitous examples. But the fellow's
+plan is transparent enough. He is ambitious. He sees himself installed
+here, one of us. Mark my words, Grace, he may love the child, but his
+real actuating motive is that. He's a Radical, because since he can't
+climb up, he'll pull down. But once let him get his foot on the Cardew
+ladder, and he'll climb, over her, over all of us.”
+
+He sat after that, his head dropped on his chest, his hands resting on
+the arms of his chair, in a brooding reverie. Grace waited.
+
+“Better bring her home,” he said finally. “Tell her I surrender. I want
+her here. Let her bring that fellow here, too, if she has to see him.
+But for God's sake, Grace,” he added, with a flash of his old fire,
+“show her some real men, too.”
+
+Suddenly Grace bent over and kissed him. He put up his hand, and patted
+her on the shoulder.
+
+“A good woman, Grace,” he said, “and a good daughter to me. I'm sorry.
+I'll try to do better.”
+
+As Grace straightened she heard the door close below, and Howard's
+voice. Almost immediately she heard him coming up the staircase, and
+going out into the hall she called softly to him.
+
+“Where are you?” he asked, looking up. “Is father there?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I want you both to come down to the library, Grace.”
+
+She heard him turn and go slowly down the stairs. His voice had been
+strained and unnatural. As she turned she found Anthony behind her.
+
+“Something has happened!”
+
+“I rather think so,” said old Anthony, slowly.
+
+They went together down the stairs.
+
+In the library Lily was standing, facing the door, a quiet figure,
+listening and waiting. Howard had dropped into a chair and was staring
+ahead. And beyond the circle of lights was a shadowy figure, vaguely
+familiar, tall, thin, and watchful. Willy Cameron.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+The discovery that Lily had left his house threw Jim Doyle into a
+frenzy. The very manner of her going filled him with dark suspicion.
+Either she had heard more that morning than he had thought, or--In his
+cunning mind for weeks there had been growing a smoldering suspicion
+of his wife. She was too quiet, too acquiescent. In the beginning, when
+Woslosky had brought the scheme to him, and had promised it financial
+support from Europe, he had taken a cruel and savage delight in
+outlining it to her, in seeing her cringe and go pale.
+
+He had not feared her then. She had borne with so much, endured,
+tolerated, accepted, that he had not realized that she might have a
+breaking point.
+
+The plan had appealed to his cynical soul from the first. It was the
+apotheosis of cynicism, this reducing of a world to its lowest level.
+And it had amused him to see his wife, a gentlewoman born, bewildered
+before the chaos he depicted.
+
+“But--it is German!” she had said.
+
+“I bow before intelligence. It is German. Also it is Russian. Also it
+is of all nations. All this talk now, of a League of Nations, a few dull
+diplomats acting as God over the peoples of the earth!” His eyes blazed.
+“While the true league, of the workers of the world, is already in
+effect!”
+
+But he watched her after that, not that he was afraid of her, but
+because her re-action as a woman was important. He feared women in the
+movement. It had its disciples, fervent and eloquent, paid and unpaid
+women agitators, but he did not trust them. They were invariably women
+without home ties, women with nothing to protect, women with everything
+to gain and nothing to lose. The woman in the home was a natural
+anti-radical. Not the police, not even the army, but the woman in the
+home was the deadly enemy of the great plan.
+
+He began to hate Elinor, not so much for herself, as for the women she
+represented. She became the embodiment of possible failure. She stood in
+his path, passively resistant, stubbornly brave.
+
+She was not a clever woman, and she was slow in gathering the full
+significance of a nation-wide general strike, that with an end of all
+production the non-producing world would be beaten to its knees. And
+then she waited for a world movement, forgetting that a flame must start
+somewhere and then spread. But she listened and learned. There was a
+great deal of talk about class and mass. She learned that the mass, for
+instance, was hungry for a change. It would welcome any change. Woslosky
+had been in Russia when the Kerensky regime was overthrown, and had seen
+that strange three days when the submerged part of the city filled the
+streets, singing, smiling, endlessly walking, exalted and without guile.
+
+No problems troubled them. They had ceased to labor, and that was
+enough.
+
+Had it not been for its leaders, the mass would have risen like a tide,
+and ebbed again.
+
+Elinor had struggled to understand. This was not Socialism. Jim had been
+a Socialist for years. He had believed that the gradual elevation of the
+few, the gradual subjection of the many, would go on until the majority
+would drag the few down to their own level. But this new dream was
+something immediate. At her table she began to hear talk of substituting
+for that slow process a militant minority. She was a long time, months,
+in discovering that Jim Doyle was one of the leaders of that militant
+minority, and that the methods of it were unspeakably criminal.
+
+Then had begun Elinor Doyle's long battle, at first to hold him back,
+and that failing, the fight between her duty to her husband and that to
+her country. He had been her one occupation and obsession too long to
+be easily abandoned, but she was sturdily national, too. In the end she
+made her decision. She lived in his house, mended his clothing, served
+his food, met his accomplices, and--watched.
+
+She hated herself for it. Every fine fiber of her revolted. But as time
+went on, and she learned the full wickedness of the thing, her days
+became one long waiting. She saw one move after another succeed, strike
+after strike slowing production, and thus increasing the cost of living.
+She saw the growing discontent and muttering, the vicious circle of
+labor striking for more money, and by its own ceasing of activity making
+the very increases they asked inadequate. And behind it all she saw
+the ceaseless working, the endless sowing, of a grim-faced band of
+conspirators.
+
+She was obliged to wait. A few men talking in secret meetings, a hidden
+propaganda of crime and disorder--there was nothing to strike at. And
+Elinor, while not clever, had the Cardew shrewdness. She saw that,
+like the crisis in a fever, the thing would have to come, be met, and
+defeated.
+
+She had no hope that the government would take hold. Government was
+aloof, haughty, and secure in its own strength. Just now, too, it was
+objective, not subjective. It was like a horse set to win a race, and
+unconscious of the fly on its withers. But the fly was a gadfly.
+
+Elinor knew Doyle was beginning to suspect her. Sometimes she thought
+he would kill her, if he discovered what she meant to do. She did
+not greatly care. She waited for some inkling of the day set for the
+uprising in the city, and saved out of her small house allowance by
+innumerable economies and subterfuges. When she found out the time she
+would go to the Governor of the State. He seemed to be a strong man,
+and she would present him facts. Facts and names. Then he must act--and
+quickly.
+
+Cut off from her own world, and with no roots thrown out in the new, she
+had no friends, no one to confide in or of whom to ask assistance. And
+she was afraid to go to Howard. He would precipitate things. The leaders
+would escape, and a new group would take their places. Such a group, she
+knew, stood ready for that very emergency.
+
+On the afternoon of Lily's departure she heard Doyle come in. He had not
+recovered from his morning's anger, and she heard his voice, raised in
+some violent reproof to Jennie. He came up the stairs, his head sagged
+forward, his every step deliberate, heavy, ominous. He had an evening
+paper in his hand, and he gave it to her with his finger pointing to a
+paragraph.
+
+“You might show that to the last of the Cardews,” he sneered.
+
+It was the paragraph about Louis Akers. Elinor read it. “Who were the
+masked men?” she asked. “Do you know?”
+
+“I wish to God I did. I'd--Makes him a laughing stock, of course. And
+just now, when--Where's Lily?”
+
+Elinor put down the paper.
+
+“She is not here. She went home this afternoon.”
+
+He stared at her, angrily incredulous.
+
+“Home?”
+
+“This afternoon.”
+
+She passed him and went out into the hall. But he followed her and
+caught her by the arm as she reached the top of the staircase.
+
+“What made her go home?”
+
+“I don't know, Jim.”
+
+“She didn't say?”
+
+“Don't hold me like that. No.”
+
+She tried to free her arm, but he held her, his face angry and
+suspicious.
+
+“You are lying to me,” he snarled. “She gave you a reason. What was it?”
+
+Elinor was frightened, but she had not lost her head. She was thinking
+rapidly.
+
+“She had a visitor this afternoon, a young man. He must have told her
+something about last night. She came up and told me she was going.”
+
+“You know he told her something, don't you?”
+
+“Yes.” Elinor had cowered against the wall. “Jim, don't look like that.
+You frighten me. I couldn't keep her here. I--”
+
+“What did he tell her?”
+
+“He accused you.”
+
+He was eyeing her coldly, calculatingly. All his suspicions of the past
+weeks suddenly crystallized. “And you let her go, after that,” he said
+slowly. “You were glad to have her go. You didn't deny what she said.
+You let her run back home, with what she had guessed and what you told
+her to-day. You--”
+
+He struck her then. The blow was as remorseless as his voice, as
+deliberate. She fell down the staircase headlong, and lay there, not
+moving.
+
+The elderly maid came running from the kitchen, and found him half-way
+down the stairs, his eyes still calculating, but his body shaking.
+
+“She fell,” he said, still staring down. But the servant faced him, her
+eyes full of hate.
+
+“You devil!” she said. “If she's dead, I'll see you hang for it.”
+
+But Elinor was not dead. Doctor Smalley, making rounds in a nearby
+hospital and answering the emergency call, found her lying on her bed,
+fully conscious and in great pain, while her husband bent over her in
+seeming agony of mind. She had broken her leg. He sent Doyle out during
+the setting. It was a principle of his to keep agonized husbands out of
+the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Life had beaten Lily Cardew. She went about the house, pathetically
+reminiscent of Elinor Doyle in those days when she had sought sanctuary
+there; but where Elinor had seen those days only as interludes in her
+stormy life, Lily was finding a strange new peace. She was very tender,
+very thoughtful, insistently cheerful, as though determined that her own
+ill-fortune should not affect the rest of the household.
+
+But to Lily this peace was not an interlude, but an end. Life for her
+was over. Her bright dreams were gone, her future settled. Without so
+putting it, even to herself, she dedicated herself to service, to small
+kindnesses, and little thoughtful acts. She was, daily and hourly,
+making reparation to them all for what she had cost them, in hope.
+
+That was the thing that had gone out of life. Hope. Her loathing of
+Louis Akers was gone. She did not hate him. Rather she felt toward him a
+sort of numbed indifference. She wished never to see him again, but the
+revolt that had followed her knowledge of the conditions under which he
+had married her was gone. She tried to understand his viewpoint, to make
+allowances for his lack of some fundamental creed to live by. But as the
+days went on, with that healthy tendency of the mind to bury pain, she
+found him, from a figure that bulked so large as to shut out all the
+horizon of her life, receding more and more.
+
+But always he would shut off certain things. Love, and marriage, and of
+course the hope of happiness. Happiness was a thing one earned, and she
+had not earned it.
+
+After the scene at the Saint Elmo, when he had refused to let her go,
+and when Willy Cameron had at last locked him in the bedroom of the
+suite and had taken her away, there had followed a complete silence.
+She had waited for some move or his part, perhaps an announcement of the
+marriage in the newspapers, but nothing had appeared. He had commenced
+a whirlwind campaign for the mayoralty and was receiving a substantial
+support from labor.
+
+The months at the house on Cardew Way seemed more and more dream-like,
+and that quality of remoteness was accentuated by the fact that she
+had not been able to talk to Elinor. She had telephoned more than once
+during the week, but a new maid had answered. Mrs. Doyle was out. Mrs.
+Doyle was unable to come to the telephone. The girl was a foreigner,
+with something of Woslosky's burr in her voice.
+
+Lily had not left the house since her return. During that family
+conclave which had followed her arrival, a stricken thing of few words
+and long anxious pauses, her grandfather had suggested that. He had
+been curiously mild with her, her grandfather. He had made no friendly
+overtures, but he had neither jibed nor sneered.
+
+“It's done,” he had said briefly. “The thing now is to keep her out of
+his clutches.” He had turned to her. “I wouldn't leave the house for few
+days, Lily.”
+
+It was then that Willy Cameron had gone. Afterwards she thought that
+he must have been waiting, patiently protective, to see how the old man
+received her.
+
+Her inability to reach Elinor began to dismay her, at last. There was
+something sinister about it, and finally Howard himself went to the
+Doyle house. Lily had come back on Thursday, and on the following
+Tuesday he made his call, timing it so that Doyle would probably be away
+from home. But he came back baffled.
+
+“She was not at home,” he said. “I had to take the servant's word for
+it, but I think the girl was lying.”
+
+“She may be ill. She almost never goes out.”
+
+“What possible object could they have in concealing her illness?” Howard
+said impatiently.
+
+But he was very uneasy, and what Lily had told him since her return only
+increased his anxiety. The house was a hotbed of conspiracy, and for her
+own reasons Elinor was remaining there. It was no place for a sister
+of his. But Elinor for years had only touched the outer fringes of
+his life, and his days were crowded with other things; the increasing
+arrogance of the strikers, the utter uselessness of trying to make
+terms with them, his own determination to continue to fight his futile
+political campaign. He put her out of his mind.
+
+Then, at the end of another week, a curious thing happened. Anthony and
+Lily were in the library. Old Anthony without a club was Old Anthony
+lost, and he had developed a habit, at first rather embarrassing to the
+others, of spending much of his time downstairs. He was no sinner turned
+saint. He still let the lash of his tongue play over the household, but
+his old zest in it seemed gone. He made, too, small tentative overtures
+to Lily, intended to be friendly, but actually absurdly self-conscious.
+Grace, watching him, often felt him rather touching. It was obvious to
+her that he blamed himself, rather than Lily, for what had happened.
+
+On this occasion he had asked Lily to read to him.
+
+“And leave out the politics,” he had said, “I get enough of that
+wherever I go.”
+
+As she read she felt him watching her, and in the middle of a paragraph
+he suddenly said:
+
+“What's become of Cameron?”
+
+“He must be very busy. He is supporting Mr. Hendricks, you know.”
+
+“Supporting him! He's carrying him on his back,” grunted Anthony. “What
+is it, Grayson?”
+
+“A lady--a woman--calling on Miss Cardew.”
+
+Lily rose, but Anthony motioned her back.
+
+“Did she give any name?”
+
+“She said to say it was Jennie, sir.”
+
+“Jennie! It must be Aunt Elinor's Jennie!”
+
+“Send her in,” said Anthony, and stood waiting Lily noticed his face
+twitching; it occurred to her then that this strange old man might still
+love his daughter, after all the years, and all his cruelty.
+
+It was the elderly servant from the Doyle house who came in, a tall
+gaunt woman, looking oddly unfamiliar to Lily in a hat.
+
+“Why, Jennie!” she said. And then: “Is anything wrong?”
+
+“There is and there isn't,” Jennie said, somberly. “I just wanted to
+tell you, and I don't care if he kills me for it. It was him that threw
+her downstairs. I heard him hit her.”
+
+Old Anthony stiffened.
+
+“He threw Aunt Elinor downstairs?”
+
+“That's how she broke her leg.”
+
+Sheer amazement made Lily inarticulate.
+
+“But they said--we didn't know--do you mean that she has been there all
+this time, hurt?”
+
+“I mean just that,” said Jennie, stolidly. “I helped set it, with him
+pretending to be all worked up, for the doctor to see. He got rid of
+me all right. He's got one of his spies there now, a Bolshevik like
+himself. You can ask the neighbors.”
+
+Howard was out, and when the woman had gone Anthony ordered his car.
+Lily, frightened by the look on his face, made only one protest.
+
+“You mustn't go alone,” she said. “Let me go, too. Or take
+Grayson--anybody.”
+
+But he went alone; in the hall he picked up his hat and stick, and drew
+on his gloves.
+
+“What is the house number?”
+
+Lily told him and he went out, moving deliberately, like a man who has
+made up his mind to follow a certain course, but to keep himself well in
+hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Acting on Willy Cameron's suggestion, Dan Boyd retained his membership
+in the union and frequented the meetings. He learned various things,
+that the strike vote had been padded, for instance, and that the
+Radicals had taken advantage of the absence of some of the conservative
+leaders to secure such support as they had received. He found the better
+class of workmen dissatisfied and unhappy. Some of them, men who loved
+their tools, had resented the order to put them down where they were and
+walk out, and this resentment, childish as it seemed, was an expression
+of their general dissatisfaction with the autocracy they had themselves
+built up.
+
+Finally Dan's persistent attendance and meek acquiescence, added to his
+war record, brought him reward. He was elected member of a conference to
+take to the Central Labor Council the suggestion for a general strike.
+It was arranged that the delegates take the floor one after the other,
+and hold it for as long as possible. Then they were to ask the President
+of the Council to put the question.
+
+The arguments were carefully prepared. The general strike was to be
+urged as the one salvation of the labor movement. It would prove the
+solidarity of labor. And, at the Council meeting a few days later, the
+rank and file were impressed by the arguments. Dan, gnawing his nails
+and listening, watched anxiously. The idea was favorably received,
+and the delegates went back to their local unions, to urge, coerce and
+threaten.
+
+Not once, during the meeting, had there been any suggestion of violence,
+but violence was in the air, nevertheless. The quantity of revolutionary
+literature increased greatly during the following ten days, and now it
+was no longer furtively distributed. It was sold or given away at all
+meetings; it flooded the various headquarters with its skillful compound
+of lies and truth. The leaders notified of the situation, pretended
+that it was harmless raving, a natural and safe outlet for suppressed
+discontents.
+
+Dan gathered up an armful of it and took it home. On a Sunday following,
+there was a mass meeting at the Colosseum, and a business agent of
+one of the unions made an impassioned speech. He recited old and new
+grievances, said that the government had failed to live up to its
+promises, that the government boards were always unjust to the workers,
+and ended with a statement of the steel makers' profits. Dan turned
+impatiently to a man beside him.
+
+“Why doesn't he say how much of that profit the government gets?” he
+demanded.
+
+But the man only eyed him suspiciously.
+
+Dan fell silent. He knew it was wrong, but he had no gift of tongue.
+It was at that meeting that for the first time he heard used the word
+“revolution.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Old Anthony's excursion to his daughter's house had not prospered.
+During the drive to Cardew Way he sat forward on the edge of the seat of
+his limousine, his mouth twitching with impatience and anger, his stick
+tightly clutched in his hand. Almost before the machine stopped he was
+out on the pavement, scanning the house with hostile eyes.
+
+The building was dark. Paul, the chauffeur, watching curiously, for
+the household knew that Anthony Cardew had sworn never to darken his
+daughter's door, saw his erect, militant figure enter the gate and lose
+itself in the shadow of the house. There followed a short interval of
+nothing in particular, and then a tall man appeared in the rectangle of
+light which was the open door.
+
+Jim Doyle was astounded when he saw his visitor. Astounded and alarmed.
+But he recovered himself quickly, and smiled.
+
+“This is something I never expected to see,” he said, “Mr. Anthony
+Cardew on my doorstep.”
+
+“I don't give a damn what you expected to see,” said Mr. Anthony Cardew.
+“I want to see my daughter.”
+
+“Your daughter? You have said for a good many years that you have no
+daughter.”
+
+“Stand aside, sir. I didn't come here to quibble.”
+
+“But I love to quibble,” sneered Doyle. “However, if you insist--I might
+as well tell you, I haven't the remotest intention of letting you in.”
+
+“I'll ask you a question,” said old Anthony. “Is it true that my
+daughter has been hurt?”
+
+“My wife is indisposed. I presume we are speaking of the same person.”
+
+“You infernal scoundrel,” shouted Anthony, and raising his cane, brought
+it down with a crack on Doyle's head. The chauffeur was half-way up
+the walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the
+light, reel, recover and raise his fist, but he did not bring it down.
+
+“Stop that!” yelled the chauffeur, and came on like a charging steer.
+When he reached the steps old Anthony was hanging his stick over his
+left forearm, and Doyle was inside the door, trying to close it. This
+was difficult, however, because Anthony had quietly put his foot over
+the sill.
+
+“I am going to see my daughter, Paul,” said Anthony Cardew. “Can you
+open the door?”
+
+“Open it!” Paul observed truculently. “Watch me!”
+
+He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent him
+sprawling inside at Doyle's feet. He was up in an instant, squared to
+fight, but he only met Jim Doyle's mocking smile. Doyle stood, arms
+folded, and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house. Whatever he feared
+he covered with the cynical mask that was his face.
+
+He made no move, offered no speech.
+
+“Is she upstairs?”
+
+“She is asleep. Do you intend to disturb her?”
+
+“I do,” said old Anthony grimly. “I'll go first, Paul. You follow me,
+but I'd advise you to come up backwards.”
+
+Suddenly Doyle laughed.
+
+“What!” he said, “Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble
+home, and anticipating violence! You underestimate the honor you are
+doing me.”
+
+He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the
+two men had reached the top. Then he followed them. The mask had dropped
+from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it. If she talked,
+he would kill her. But she knew that. She was not a fool.
+
+Elinor lay in the bed, listening. She had recognized her father's voice,
+and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief. They had
+found her. They had come to take her away. For she knew now that she was
+a prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner.
+The girl downstairs was one of them, and her jailer. A jailer who fed
+her, and gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was
+all.
+
+Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the
+night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his suspicions. He
+had found first her little store of money, and that had angered him. In
+the end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook
+in which for months she had kept her careful records. Here and there,
+scattered among house accounts, were the names of the radical members
+of The Central Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and
+carefully remembered. He had read them out to her as he came to them,
+suffering as she was, and she had expected death then. But he had not
+killed her. He had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a
+mad-eyed fanatic named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once
+daily. In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning
+of all punishments; he told her of the movement's progress, of its
+ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of its inevitable success.
+What buildings and homes were to be bombed, the Cardew house first among
+them; what leading citizens were to be held as hostages, with all that
+that implied; and again the Cardews headed the list.
+
+When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present,
+solicitous and attentive. She got out of her bed one day, and dragging
+her splinted leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing a note and
+finding some opportunity of giving it to the doctor. Only to discover
+that they had taken away her pen, pencils and paper.
+
+She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment. Olga
+had helped her back into bed without a word, but from that time on had
+spent most of her day on the upper floor. Not until Doyle came in would
+she go downstairs to prepare his food.
+
+Elinor lay in her bed and listened to her father coming up the stairs.
+She knew, before he reached the top, that Doyle would never let her be
+taken away. He would kill her first. He might kill Anthony Cardew. She
+had a sickening sense of tragedy coming up the staircase, tragedy which
+took the form of her father's familiar deliberate step. Perhaps had she
+known of the chauffeur's presence she might have chanced it, for every
+fiber of her tired body was crying for release. But she saw only her
+father, alone in that house with Doyle and the smoldering Russian.
+
+The key turned in the lock.
+
+Anthony Cardew stood in the doorway, looking at her. With her long hair
+in braids, she seemed young, almost girlish. She looked like the little
+girl who had gone to dancing school in short white frocks and long black
+silk stockings, so many years ago.
+
+“I've just learned about it, Elinor,” he said. He moved to the bed and
+stood beside it, looking down, but he did not touch her. “Are you able
+to be taken away from here?”
+
+She knew that Doyle was outside, listening, and she hardened her heart
+for the part she had to play. It was difficult; she was so infinitely
+moved by her father's coming, and in the dim light he, too, looked like
+himself of years ago.
+
+“Taken away? Where?” she asked.
+
+“You don't want to stay here, do you?” he demanded bluntly.
+
+“This is my home, father.”
+
+“Good God, home! Do you mean to tell me that, with all you must know
+about this man, you still want to stay with him?”
+
+“I have no other home.”
+
+“I am offering you one.”
+
+Old Anthony was bewildered and angry. Elinor put out a hand to touch
+him, but he drew back.
+
+“After he has thrown you downstairs and injured you--”
+
+“How did you hear that?”
+
+“The servant you had here came to see me to-night, Elinor. She said
+that that blackguard outside there had struck you and you fell down the
+stairs. If you tell me that's the truth I'll break every bone in his
+body.”
+
+Sheer terror for Anthony made her breathless.
+
+“But it isn't true,” she said wildly. “You mustn't think that. I fell. I
+slipped and fell.”
+
+“Then,” said Anthony, speaking slowly, “you are not a prisoner here?”
+
+“A prisoner? I'd be a prisoner anywhere, father. I can't walk.”
+
+“That door was locked.”
+
+She was fighting valiantly for him.
+
+“I can't walk, father. I don't require a locked door to keep me in.”
+
+He was too confused and puzzled to notice the evasion.
+
+“Do you mean to say that you won't let me have you taken home? You are
+still going to stay with this man? You know what he is, don't you?”
+
+“I know what you think he is.” She tried to smile, and he looked away
+from her quickly and stared around the room, seeing nothing, however.
+Suddenly he turned and walked to the door; but he stopped there, his
+hand on the knob, and us face twitching.
+
+“Once more, Elinor,” he said, “I ask you if you will let me take you
+back with me. This is the last time. I have come, after a good many
+years of bad feeling, to make my peace with you and to offer you a home.
+Will you come?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Her courage almost failed her. She lay back, her eyes closed and her
+face colorless. The word itself was little more than a whisper.
+
+Her father opened the door and went out. She heard him going down the
+stairs, heard other footsteps that followed him, and listened in an
+agony of fear that Doyle would drop him in the hall below. But nothing
+happened. The outside door closed, and after a moment she opened her
+eyes. Doyle was standing by the bed.
+
+“So,” he said, “you intend to give me the pleasure of your society for
+some time, do you?”
+
+She said nothing. She was past any physical fear for herself.
+
+“You liar!” he said softly. “Do you think I don't understand why you
+want to remain here? You are cleverer than I thought you were, but you
+are not as clever as I am. You'd have done better to have let him take
+you away.”
+
+“You would have killed him first.”
+
+“Perhaps I would.” He lighted a cigarette. “But it is a pleasant thought
+to play with, and I shall miss it when the thing is fait accompli. I see
+Olga has left you without ice water. Shall I bring you some?”
+
+He was still smiling faintly when he brought up the pitcher, some time
+later, and placed it on the stand beside the bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+In the Boyd house things went on much as before, but with a new
+heaviness. Ellen, watching keenly, knew why the little house was so
+cheerless and somber. It had been Willy Cameron who had brought to
+it its gayer moments, Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming doors and
+whistling; Willy racing up the stairs with something hot for Mrs. Boyd's
+tray; Willy at the table, making them forget the frugality of the meals
+with campaign anecdotes; Willy, lamenting the lack of a chance to fish,
+and subsequently eliciting a rare smile from Edith by being discovered
+angling in the kitchen sink with a piece of twine on the end of his
+umbrella.
+
+Rather forced, some of it, but eminently good for all of them. And then
+suddenly it ceased. He made an effort, but there was no spontaneity in
+him. He came in quietly, never whistled, and ate very little. He began
+to look almost gaunt, too, and Edith, watching him with jealous, loving
+eyes, gave voice at last to the thought that was in her mind.
+
+“I wish you'd go away,” she said, “and let us fight this thing out
+ourselves. Dan would have to get something to do, then, for one thing.”
+
+“But I don't want to go away, Edith.”
+
+“Then you're a fool,” she observed, bitterly. “You can't help me any,
+and there's no use hanging mother around your neck.”
+
+“She won't be around any one's neck very long, Edith dear.”
+
+“After that, will you go away?”
+
+“Not if you still want me.”
+
+“Want you!”
+
+Dan was out, and Ellen had gone up for the invalid's tray. They were
+alone together, standing in the kitchen doorway.
+
+Suddenly Edith, beside him, ran her hand through his arm.
+
+“If I had been a different sort of girl, Willy, do you think--could you
+ever have cared for me?”
+
+“I never thought about you that way,” he said, simply. “I do care for
+you. You know that.”
+
+She dropped her hand.
+
+“You are in love with Lily Cardew. That's why you don't--I've known it
+all along, Willy. I used to think you'd get over it, never seeing her
+and all that. But you don't, do you?” She looked up at him. “The real
+thing lasts, I suppose. It will with me. I wish to heaven it wouldn't.”
+
+He was most uncomfortable, but he drew her hand within his arm again and
+held it there.
+
+“Don't get to thinking that you care anything about me,” he said.
+“There's not as much love in the world as there ought to be, and we all
+need to hold hands, but--don't fancy anything like that.”
+
+“I wanted to tell you. If I hadn't known about her I wouldn't have told
+you, but--you said it when you said there's not as much love as there
+ought to be. I'm gone, but I guess my caring for you hasn't hurt me any.
+It's the only reason I'm alive to-day.”
+
+She freed her hand, and stood staring out over the little autumn
+garden. There was such brooding trouble in her face that he watched her
+anxiously.
+
+“I think mother suspects,” she said at last.
+
+“I hope not, Edith.”
+
+“I think she does. She watches me all the time, and she asked to see Dan
+to-night. Only he didn't come home.”
+
+“You must deny it, Edith,” he said, almost fiercely. “She must not know,
+ever. That is one thing we can save her, and must save her.”
+
+But, going upstairs as usual before he went out, he realized that Edith
+was right, and that matters had reached a crisis. The sick woman had
+eaten nothing, and her eyes were sunken and anxious. There was an
+unspoken question in them, too, as she turned them on him. Most
+significant of all, the little album was not beside her, nor the usual
+litter of newspapers on the bed.
+
+“I wish you weren't going out, Willy,” she said querulously. “I want to
+talk to you about something.”
+
+“Can't we discuss it in the morning?”
+
+“I won't sleep till I get it off my mind, Willy.” But he could not face
+that situation then. He needed time, for one thing. Surely there must be
+some way out, some way to send this frail little woman dreamless to her
+last sleep, life could not be so cruel that death would seem kind.
+
+He spoke at three different meetings that night, for the election was
+close at hand. Pink Denslow took him about in his car, and stood waiting
+for him at the back of the crowd. In the intervals between hall and hall
+Pink found Willy Cameron very silent and very grave, but he could not
+know that the young man beside him was trying to solve a difficult
+question. Which was: did two wrongs ever make a right?
+
+At the end of the last meeting Willy Cameron decided to walk home.
+
+“I have some things to think over. Pink,” he said. “Thanks for the car.
+It saves a lot of time.”
+
+Pink sat at the wheel, carefully scrutinizing Willy. It struck him then
+that Cameron looked fagged and unhappy.
+
+“Nothing I can do, I suppose?”
+
+“Thanks, no.”
+
+Pink knew nothing of Lily's marriage, nor of the events that had
+followed it. To his uninquiring mind all was as it should be with her;
+she was at home again, although strangely quiet and very sweet, and
+her small world was at peace with her. It was all right with her, he
+considered, although all wrong with him. Except that she was strangely
+subdued, which rather worried him. It was not possible, for instance,
+to rouse her to one of their old red-hot discussions on religion, or
+marriage, or love.
+
+“I saw Lily Cardew this afternoon, Cameron.”
+
+“Is she all right?” asked Willy Cameron, in a carefully casual tone.
+
+“I don't know.” Pink's honest voice showed perplexity. “She looks all
+right, and the family's eating out of her hand.. But she's changed
+somehow. She asked for you.”
+
+“Thanks. Well, good-night, old man.”
+
+Willy Cameron was facing the decision of his life that night, as he
+walked home. Lily was gone, out of his reach and out of his life. But
+then she had never been within either. She was only something wonderful
+and far away, like a star to which men looked and sometimes prayed. Some
+day she would be free again, and then in time she would marry. Some one
+like Pink, her own sort, and find happiness.
+
+But he knew that he would always love her, to the end of his days, and
+even beyond, in that heaven in which he so simply believed. All the
+things that puzzled him would be straightened out there, and perhaps a
+man who had loved a woman and lost her here would find her there, and
+walk hand in hand with her, through the bright days of Paradise.
+
+Not that that satisfied him. He was a very earthly lover, with the
+hungry arms of youth. He yearned unspeakably for her. He would have
+died for her as easily as he would have lived for her, but he could do
+neither.
+
+That was one side of him. The other, having put her away in that warm
+corner of his heart which was hers always, was busy with the practical
+problem of the Boyds. He saw only one way out, and that way he had been
+seeing with increasing clearness for several days. Edith's candor that
+night, and Mrs. Boyd's suspicions, clearly pointed to it. There was one
+way by which to save Edith and her child, and to save the dying woman
+the agony of full knowledge.
+
+Edith was sitting on the doorstep, alone. He sat down on the step below
+her, rather silent, still busy with his problem. Although the night was
+warm, the girl shivered.
+
+“She's not asleep. She's waiting for me to go up, Willy. She means to
+call me in and ask me.”
+
+“Then I'd better say what I have to say quickly. Edith, will you marry
+me?”
+
+She drew off and looked at him.
+
+“I'd better explain what I mean,” he said, speaking with some
+difficulty. “I mean--go through the ceremony with me. I don't mean
+actual marriage. That wouldn't be fair to either of us, because you know
+that I care for some one else.”
+
+“But you mean a real marriage?”
+
+“Of course. Your child has the right to a name, dear. And, if you don't
+mind telling a lie to save our souls, and for her peace of mind, we can
+say that it took place some time ago.”
+
+She gazed at him dazedly. Then something like suspicion came into her
+face.
+
+“Is it because of what I told you to-night?”
+
+“I had thought of it before. That helped, of course.”
+
+It seemed so surprisingly simple, put into words, and the light on the
+girl's face was his answer. A few words, so easily spoken, and two lives
+were saved. No, three, for Edith's child must be considered.
+
+“You are like God,” said Edith, in a low voice. “Like God.” And fell to
+soft weeping. She was unutterably happy and relieved. She sat there, not
+daring to touch him, and looked out into the quiet street. Before her
+she saw all the things that she had thought were gone; honor, a place
+in the world again, the right to look into her mother's eyes; she saw
+marriage and happy, golden days. He did not love her, but he would be
+hers, and perhaps in His own good time the Manager of all destinies
+would make him love her. She would try so hard to deserve that.
+
+Mrs. Boyd was asleep when at last Edith went up the staircase, and
+Ellen, lying sleepless on her cot in the hot attic room, heard the girl
+softly humming to herself as she undressed, and marveled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+When Lily had been at home for some time, and Louis Akers had made no
+attempt to see her, or to announce the marriage, the vigilance of the
+household began to relax. Howard Cardew had already consulted the family
+lawyer about an annulment, and that gentleman had sent a letter to
+Akers, which had received no reply.
+
+Then one afternoon Grayson, whose instructions had been absolute as to
+admitting Akers to the house, opened the door to Mrs. Denslow, who was
+calling, and found behind that lady Louis Akers himself. He made an
+effort to close the door behind the lady, but Akers was too quick for
+him, and a scene at the moment was impossible.
+
+He ushered Mrs. Denslow into the drawing room, and coming out, closed
+the doors.
+
+“My instructions, sir, are to say to you that the ladies are not at
+home.”
+
+But Akers held out his hat and gloves with so ugly a look that Grayson
+took them.
+
+“I have come to see my wife,” he said. “Tell her that, and that if she
+doesn't see me here I'll go upstairs and find her.”
+
+When Grayson still hesitated he made a move toward the staircase, and
+the elderly servant, astounded at the speech and the movement, put down
+the hat and faced him.
+
+“I do not recognize any one in the household by that name, sir.”
+
+“You don't, don't you? Very well. Tell Miss Cardew I am here, and that
+either she will come down or I'll go up. I'll wait in the library.”
+
+He watched Grayson start up the stairs, and then went into the library.
+He was very carefully dressed, and momentarily exultant over the success
+of his ruse, but he was uneasy, too, and wary, and inclined to regard
+the house as a possible trap. He had made a gambler's venture, risking
+everything on the cards he held, and without much confidence in them.
+His vanity declined to believe that his old power over Lily was gone,
+but he had held a purely physical dominance over so many women that he
+knew both his strength and his limitations.
+
+What he could not understand, what had kept him awake so many nights
+since he had seen her, was her recoil from him on Willy Cameron's
+announcement. She had known he had led the life of his sort; he
+had never played the plaster saint to her. And she had accepted her
+knowledge of his connection with the Red movement, on his mere promise
+to reform. But this other, this accident, and she had turned from him
+with a horror that made him furious to remember. These silly star-eyed
+virgins, who accepted careful abstractions and then turned sick at life
+itself, a man was a fool to put himself in their hands.
+
+Mademoiselle was with Lily in her boudoir when Grayson came up, a thin,
+tired-faced, suddenly old Mademoiselle, much given those days to early
+masses, during which she prayed for eternal life for the man who had
+ruined Lily's life, and that soon. To Mademoiselle marriage was a final
+thing and divorce a wickedness against God and His establishment on
+earth.
+
+Lily, rather like Willy Cameron, was finding on her spirit at that time
+a burden similar to his, of keeping up the morale of the household.
+
+Grayson came in and closed the door behind him. Anger and anxiety were
+in his worn old face, and Lily got up quickly. “What is it, Grayson?”
+
+“I'm sorry, Miss Lily. He was in the vestibule behind Mrs. Denslow, and
+I couldn't keep him out. I think he had waited for some one to call,
+knowing I couldn't make a scene.”
+
+Mademoiselle turned to Lily.
+
+“You must not see him,” she said in rapid French. “Remain here, and I
+shall telephone for your father. Lock your door. He may come up. He will
+do anything, that man.”
+
+“I am going down,” Lily said quietly. “I owe him that. You need not
+be frightened. And don't tell mother; it will only worry her and do no
+good.”
+
+Her heart was beating fast as she went down the stairs. From the drawing
+room came the voices of Grace and Mrs. Denslow, chatting amiably. The
+second man was carrying in tea, the old silver service gleaming. Over
+all the lower floor was an air of peace and comfort, the passionless
+atmosphere of daily life running in old and easy grooves.
+
+When Lily entered the library she closed the door behind her. She had,
+on turning, a swift picture of Grayson, taking up his stand in the hall,
+and it gave her a sense of comfort. She knew he would remain there,
+impassively waiting, so long as Akers was in the house.
+
+Then she faced the man standing by the center table. He made no move
+toward her, did not even speak at once. It left on her the burden of the
+opening, of setting the key of what was to come. She was steady enough
+now.
+
+“Perhaps it is as well that you came, Louis,” she said. “I suppose we
+must talk it over some time.”
+
+“Yes,” he agreed, his eyes on her. “We must. I have married a wife, and
+I want her, Lily.”
+
+“You know that is impossible.”
+
+“Because of something that happened before I knew you? I never made
+any pretensions about my life before we met. But I did promise to go
+straight if you'd have me, and I have. I've lived up to my bargain. What
+about you?”
+
+“It was not a part of my bargain to marry you while you--I have thought
+and thought, Louis. There is only one thing to be done. You will have to
+divorce me, and marry her.”
+
+“Marry her? A girl of the streets, who chooses to say that I am the
+father of her child! It's the oldest trick in the word. Besides--” He
+played his best card--“she won't marry me. Ask Cameron, who chose to
+make himself so damned busy about my affairs. He's in love with her. Ask
+him.”
+
+In spite of herself Lily winced. Out of the wreckage of the past few
+weeks one thing had seemed to remain, something to hold to, solid and
+dependable and fine, and that had been Willy Cameron. She had found, in
+these last days, something infinitely comforting in the thought that he
+cared for her. It was because he had cared that he had saved her from
+herself. But, if this were true--
+
+“I am not going back to you, Louis. I think you know that. No amount of
+talking about things can change that.”
+
+“Why don't you face life and try to understand it?” he demanded,
+brutally. “Men are like that. Women are like that--sometimes. You can't
+measure human passions with a tape line. That's what you good women try
+to do, and you make life a merry little hell.” He made an effort, and
+softened his voice. “I'll be true to you, Lily, if you'll come back.”
+
+“No,” she said, “you would mean to be, but you would not. You have no
+foundation to build on.”
+
+“Meaning that I am not a gentleman.”
+
+“Not that. I know you, that's all. I understand so much that I didn't
+before. What you call love is only something different. When that was
+gone there would be the same thing again. You would be sorry, but I
+would be lost.”
+
+Her coolness disconcerted him. Two small triangular bits of color showed
+in his face. He had been prepared for tears, even for a refusal to
+return, but this clear-eyed appraisal of himself, and the accuracy of
+it, confused him. He took refuge in the only method he knew; he threw
+himself on her pity; he made violent, passionate love to her, but her
+only expression was one of distaste. When at last he caught her to him
+she perforce submitted, a frozen thing that told him, more than any
+words, how completely he had lost her. He threw her away from him, then,
+baffled and angry.
+
+“You little devil!” he said. “You cold little devil!”
+
+“I don't love you. That's all. I think now that I never did.”
+
+“You pretended damned well.”
+
+“Don't you think you'd better go?” Lily said wearily. “I don't like to
+hurt you. I am to blame for a great deal. But there is no use going on,
+is there? I'll give you your freedom as soon as I can. You will want
+that, of course.”
+
+“My freedom! Do you think I am going to let you go like that? I'll fight
+you and your family in every court in the country before I give you up.
+You can't bring Edith Boyd up against me, either. If she does that I'll
+bring up other witnesses, other men, and she knows it.”
+
+Lily was very pale, but still calm. She made a movement toward the bell,
+but he caught her hand before she could ring it.
+
+“I'll get your Willy Cameron, too,” he said, his face distorted with
+anger. “I'll get him good. You've done a bad thing for your friends and
+your family to-day, Lily. I'll go the limit on getting back at them.
+I've got the power, and by God, I'll use it.”
+
+He flung out into the hall, and toward the door. There he encountered
+Grayson, who reminded him of his hat and gloves, or he would have gone
+without them.
+
+Grayson, going into the library a moment later, found Lily standing
+there, staring ahead and trembling violently. He brought her a cup of
+tea, and stood by, his old face working, while she drank it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+The strike had apparently settled down to the ordinary run of strikes.
+The newspaper men from New York were gradually recalled, as the mill
+towns became orderly, and no further acts of violence took place. Here
+and there mills that had gone down fired their furnaces again and went
+back to work, many with depleted shifts, however.
+
+But the strikers had lost, and knew it. Howard Cardew, facing the
+situation with his customary honesty, saw in the gradual return of
+the men to work only the urgency of providing for their families, and
+realized that it was not peace that was coming, but an armed neutrality.
+The Cardew Mills were still down, but by winter he was confident they
+would be open again. To what purpose? To more wrangling and bickering,
+more strikes? Where was the middle ground? He was willing to give the
+men a percentage of the profits they made. He did not want great wealth,
+only an honest return for his invested capital. But he wanted to manage
+his own business. It was his risk.
+
+The coal miners were going out. The Cardews owned coal mines. The miners
+wanted to work a minimum day for a maximum wage, but the country must
+have coal. Shorter hours meant more men for the mines, and they would
+have to be imported. But labor resented the importation of foreign
+workers.
+
+Again, what was the answer?
+
+Still, he was grateful for peace. The strike dragged on, with only
+occasional acts of violence. From the hill above Baxter a sniper daily
+fired with a long range rifle at the toluol tank in the center of one
+of the mills, and had so far escaped capture, as the tank had escaped
+damage. But he knew well enough that a long strike was playing into the
+hands of the Reds. It was impossible to sow the seeds of revolution
+so long as a man's dinner-pail was full, his rent paid, and his family
+contented. But a long strike, with bank accounts becoming exhausted and
+credit curtailed, would pave the way for revolution.
+
+Old Anthony had had a drastic remedy for strikes.
+
+“Let all the storekeepers, the country over, refuse credit to the
+strikers, and we'd have an end to this mess,” he said.
+
+“We'd have an end to the storekeepers, too,” Howard had replied, grimly.
+
+One good thing had come out of the bomb outrages. They had had a
+salutary effect on the honest labor element. These had no sympathy with
+such methods and said so. But a certain element, both native and foreign
+born, secretly gloated and waited.
+
+One thing surprised and irritated Howard. Public sentiment was not so
+much with the strikers, as against the mill owners. The strike worked
+a hardship to the stores and small businesses dependent on the
+great mills; they forgot the years when the Cardews had brought them
+prosperity, had indeed made them possible, and they felt now only
+bitter resentment at the loss of trade. In his anger Howard saw them as
+parasites, fattening on the conceptions and strength of those who had
+made the city. They were men who built nothing, originated nothing. Men
+who hated the ladder by which they had climbed, who cared little how
+shaky its foundation, so long as it stood.
+
+In September, lured by a false security, the governor ordered the
+demobilization of the state troops, save for two companies. The men at
+the Baxter and Friendship plants, owned by the Cardews, had voted to
+remain out, but their leaders appeared to have them well in hand, and
+no trouble was anticipated. The agents of the Department of Justice,
+however, were still suspicious. The foreigners had plenty of money.
+Given as they were to hoarding their savings in their homes, the local
+banks were unable to say if they were drawing on their reserves or were
+being financed from the outside.
+
+Shortly before the mayoralty election trouble broke out in the western
+end of the state, and in the north, in the steel towns. There were ugly
+riotings, bombs were sent through the mails, the old tactics of night
+shootings and destruction of property began. In the threatening chaos
+Baxter and Friendship, and the city nearby, stood out by contrast for
+their very orderliness. The state constabulary remained in diminished
+numbers, a still magnificent body of men but far too few for any real
+emergency, and the Federal agents, suspicious but puzzled, were removed
+to more turbulent fields.
+
+The men constituting the Vigilance Committee began to feel a sense
+of futility, almost of absurdity. They had armed and enrolled
+themselves--against what? The growth of the organization slowed down,
+but it already numbered thousands of members. Only its leaders retained
+their faith in its ultimate necessity, and they owed perhaps more than
+they realized to Willy Cameron's own conviction.
+
+It was owing to him that the city was divided into a series of zones, so
+that notification of an emergency could be made rapidly by telephone and
+messenger. Owing to him, too, was a new central office, with some one
+on duty day and night. Rather ironically, the new quarters were the
+dismantled rooms of the Myers Housecleaning Company.
+
+On the day after his proposal to Edith, Willy Cameron received an
+unexpected holiday. Mrs. Davis, the invalid wife of the owner of the
+Eagle Pharmacy, died and the store was closed. He had seen Edith for
+only a few moments that morning, but it was understood then that the
+marriage would take place either that day or the next.
+
+He had been physically so weary the night before that he had slept, but
+the morning found him with a heaviness of spirit that he could not throw
+off. The exaltation of the night before was gone, and all that remained
+was a dogged sense of a duty to be done. Although he smiled at Edith,
+his face remained with her all through the morning.
+
+“I'll make it up to him,” she thought, humbly. “I'll make it up to him
+somehow.”
+
+Then, with Ellen out doing her morning marketing, she heard the
+feeble thump of a cane overhead which was her mother's signal. She was
+determined not to see her mother again until she could say that she was
+married, but the thumping continued, and was followed by the crash of a
+broken glass.
+
+“She's trying to get up!” Edith thought, panicky. “If she gets up it
+will kill her.”
+
+She stood at the foot of the stairs, scarcely breathing, and listened.
+There was a dreadful silence above. She stole up, finally, to where she
+could see her mother. Mrs. Boyd was still in her bed, but lying with
+open eyes, unmoving.
+
+“Mother,” she called, and ran in. “Mother.”
+
+Mrs. Boyd glanced at her.
+
+“I thought that glass would bring you,” she said sharply, but with
+difficulty. “I want you to stand over there and let me look at you.”
+
+Edith dropped on her knees beside the bed, and caught her mother's hand.
+
+“Don't! Don't talk like that, mother,” she begged. “I know what you
+mean. It's all right, mother. Honestly it is. I--I'm married, mother.”
+
+“You wouldn't lie to me, Edith?”
+
+“No. I'm telling you. I've been married a long time. You--don't you
+worry, mother. You just lie there and quit worrying. It's all right.”
+
+There was a sudden light in the sick woman's eyes, an eager light that
+flared up and died away again.
+
+“Who to?” she asked. “If it's some corner loafer, Edie--” Edith had
+gained new courage and new facility. Anything was right that drove the
+tortured look from her mother's eyes.
+
+“You can ask him when he comes home this evening.”
+
+“Edie! Not Willy?”
+
+“You've guessed it,” said Edith, and burying her face in the bed
+clothing, said a little prayer, to be forgiven for the lie and for all
+that she had done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end to earn
+the love of the man who was like God to her.
+
+There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one
+on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable
+suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul.
+
+Mrs. Boyd lay back and closed her eyes.
+
+“I haven't been so tickled since the day you were born,” she said.
+
+She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head. When Edith
+moved, a little later, her mother was asleep, with a new look of peace
+on her face.
+
+It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she had
+done. She shrank from doing it. It was one thing for Willy to have done
+it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly afraid of Ellen.
+And Ellen's reception of the news justified her fears.
+
+“And you'd take him that way!” she said, scornfully. “You'd hide behind
+him, besides spoiling his life for him! It sounds like him to offer, and
+it's like you to accept.”
+
+“It's to save mother,” said Edith, meekly.
+
+“It's to save yourself. You can't fool me. And if you think I'm going to
+sit by and let him do it, you can think again.”
+
+“It's as good as done,” Edith flashed. “I've told mother.”
+
+“That you're going to be, or that you are?”
+
+“That we are married.”
+
+“All right,” Ellen said triumphantly. “She's quiet and peaceful now,
+isn't she? You don't have to get married now, do you? You take my
+advice, and let it go at that.”
+
+It was then that Edith realized what she had done. He would still marry
+her, of course, but behind all his anxiety to save her had been the real
+actuating motive of his desire to relieve her mother's mind. That was
+done now. Then, could she let him sacrifice himself for her?
+
+She could. She could and she would. She set her small mouth firmly, and
+confronted the future; she saw herself, without his strength to support
+her, going down and down. She remembered those drabs of the street on
+whom she had turned such cynical eyes in her virtuous youth, and she saw
+herself one of that lost sisterhood, sodden, hectic, hopeless.
+
+When Willy Cameron left the pharmacy that day it was almost noon. He
+went to the house of mourning first, and found Mr. Davis in a chair in
+a closed room, a tired little man in a new black necktie around a not
+over-clean collar, his occupation of years gone, confronting a new and
+terrible leisure that he did not know how to use.
+
+“You know how it is, Willy,” he said, blinking his reddened eyelids.
+“You kind of wish sometimes that you had somebody to help you bear your
+burden, and then it's taken away, but you're kind of bent over and used
+to it. And you'd give your neck and all to have it back.”
+
+Willy Cameron pondered that on his way up the street.
+
+There was one great longing in him, to see Lily again. In a few hours
+now he would have taken a wife, and whatever travesty of marriage
+resulted, he would have to keep away from Lily. He meant to play square
+with Edith.
+
+He wondered if it would hurt Lily to see him, remind her of things she
+must be trying to forget. He decided in the end that it would hurt her,
+so he did not go. But he walked, on his way to see Pink Denslow at the
+temporary bank, through a corner of the park near the house, and took a
+sort of formal and heart-breaking farewell of her.
+
+Time had been when life had seemed only a long, long trail, with Lily at
+the end of it somewhere, like water to the thirsty traveler, or home to
+the wanderer; like a camp fire at night. But now, life seemed to him a
+broad highway, infinitely crowded, down which he must move, surrounded
+yet alone.
+
+But at least he could walk in the middle of the road, in the sunlight.
+It was the weaklings who were crowded to the side. He threw up his head.
+
+It had never occurred to him that he was in any, danger, either from
+Louis Akers or from the unseen enemy he was fighting. He had a curious
+lack of physical fear. But once or twice that day, as he went about,
+he happened to notice a small man, foreign in appearance and shabbily
+dressed. He saw him first when he came out of the marriage license
+office, and again when he entered the bank.
+
+He had decided to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask him
+to be present. He meant to tell him the facts. The intimacy between them
+was now very close, and he felt that Pink would understand. He neither
+wanted nor expected approval, but he did want honesty between them. He
+had based his life on honesty.
+
+Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to. It would be hard to set
+before any outsider the conditions at the Boyd house, or his own sense
+of obligation to help. Put into everyday English the whole scheme
+sounded visionary and mock-heroic.
+
+In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with excitement
+written large all over him.
+
+“I sent for you,” he said, “because I think we've got something at last.
+One of our fellows has just been in, that storekeeper I told you about
+from Friendship, Cusick. He says he has found out where they're meeting,
+back in the hills. He's made a map of it. Look, here's the town, and
+here's the big hill. Well, behind it, about a mile and a half, there's a
+German outfit, a family, with a farm. They're using the barn, according
+to this chap.”
+
+“The barn wouldn't hold very many of them.”
+
+“That's the point. It's the leaders. The family has an alibi. It goes in
+to the movies in the town on meeting nights. The place has been searched
+twice, but he says they have a system of patrols that gives them
+warning. The hills are heavily wooded there, and he thinks they have
+rigged up telephones in the trees.”
+
+There was a short silence. Willy Cameron studied the rug.
+
+“I had to swear to keep it to ourselves,” Pink said at last. “Cusick
+won't let the Federal agents in on it. They've raided him for liquor
+twice, and he's sick as a poisoned pup.”
+
+“How about the county detectives?”
+
+“You know them. They'll go in and fight like hell when the time comes,
+but they're likely to gum the game where there's any finesse required.
+We'd better find out for ourselves first.”
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+“What you mean is, that it's too good a thing to throw to the other
+fellow. Well, I'm on, if you want me. But I'm no detective.”
+
+Pink had come armed for such surrender. He produced a road map of the
+county and spread it on the desk.
+
+“Here's the main road to Friendship,” he said, “and here's the road they
+use. But there's another way, back of the hills. Cusick said it was a
+dirt lane, but dry. It's about forty miles by it to a point a mile or so
+behind the farm. He says he doesn't think they use that road. It's too
+far around.”
+
+“All right,” said Willy Cameron. “We use that road, and get to the farm,
+and what then? Surrender?”
+
+“Not on your life. We hide in the barn. That's all.”
+
+“That's enough. They'll search the place, automatically. You're talking
+suicide, you know.”
+
+But his mind was working rapidly. He was a country boy, and he knew
+barns. There would be other outbuildings, too, probably a number of
+them. The Germans always had plenty of them. And the information was too
+detailed to be put aside lightly.
+
+“When does he think they will meet again?”
+
+“That's the point,” Pink said eagerly. “The family has been all over the
+town this morning. It is going on a picnic, and he says those picnics of
+theirs last half the night. What he got from the noise they were making
+was that they were raising dust again, and something's on for to-night.”
+
+“They'll leave somebody there. Their stock has to be looked after.”
+
+“This fellow says they drop everything and go. The whole outfit. They're
+as busy raising an alibi as the other lot is raising the devil.”
+
+But Willy Cameron was a Scot, and hard-headed.
+
+“It looks too simple, Pink,” he said reflectively. He sat for some time,
+filling and lighting his pipe, and considering as he did so. He was
+older than Pink; not much, but he felt extremely mature and very
+responsible.
+
+“What do we know about Cusick?” he asked, finally.
+
+“One of the best men we've got. They've fired his place once, and he's
+keen to get them.”
+
+“You're anxious to go?”
+
+“I'm going,” said Pink, cheerfully.
+
+“Then I'd better go along and look after you. But I tell you how I see
+it. After I've done that I'll go as far as you like. Either there is
+nothing to it and we're fools for our pains, or there's a lot to it,
+and in that case we are a pair of double-distilled lunatics to go there
+alone.”
+
+Pink laughed joyously.
+
+Life had been very dull for him since his return from France. He had
+done considerable suffering and more thinking than was usual with him,
+but he had had no action. But behind his boyish zest there was something
+more, something he hid as he did the fact that he sometimes said his
+prayers; a deep and holy thing, that always gave him a lump in his
+throat at Retreat, when the flag came slowly down and the long lines of
+men stood at attention. Something he was half ashamed and half proud of,
+love of his country.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of
+a small printing shop in the heart of the city. It went on to the
+accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two
+printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the front and rear
+entrances.
+
+Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him,
+smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper from Friendship, Cusick. In a
+corner on the table, scowling, sat Louis Akers.
+
+“I don't know why you're so damned suspicious, Jim,” he was saying.
+“Cusick says the stall about the Federal agents went all right.”
+
+“Like a house a-fire,” said Cusick, complacently.
+
+“I think, Akers,” Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, “that you
+are letting your desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with your
+judgment. If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready to take
+their places.”
+
+“Cameron is the brains of the outfit,” Akers said sulkily.
+
+“How do you know Cameron will go?”
+
+Akers rose lazily and stretched himself.
+
+“I've got a hunch. That's all.”
+
+A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her hand.
+With one hand Akers took the sheets from her; with the other he settled
+his tie. He smiled down at her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Ellen was greatly disturbed. At three o'clock that afternoon she found
+Edith and announced her intention of going out.
+
+“I guess you can get the supper for once,” she said ungraciously.
+
+Edith looked up at her with wistful eyes.
+
+“I wish you didn't hate me so, Ellen.”
+
+“I don't hate you.” Ellen was slightly mollified. “But when I see you
+trying to put your burdens on other people--”
+
+Edith got up then and rather timidly put her arms around Ellen's neck.
+
+“I love him so, Ellen,” she whispered, “and I'll try so hard to make him
+happy.”
+
+Unexpected tears came into Ellen's eyes. She stroked the girl's fair
+hair.
+
+“Never mind,” she said. “The Good Man's got a way of fixing things to
+suit Himself. And I guess He knows best. We do what it's foreordained we
+do, after all.”
+
+Mrs. Boyd was sleeping. Edith went back to her sewing. She had depended
+all her life on her mother's needle, and now that that had failed her
+she was hastily putting some clothing into repair. In the kitchen near
+the stove the suit she meant to be married in was hung to dry, after
+pressing. She was quietly happy.
+
+Willy Cameron found her there. He told her of Mrs. Davis' death, and
+then placed the license on the table at her side.
+
+“I think it would be better to-morrow, Edith,” he said. He glanced down
+at the needle in her unaccustomed fingers; she seemed very appealing,
+with her new task and the new light in her eyes. After all, it was worth
+while, even if it cost a lifetime, to take a soul out of purgatory.
+
+“I had to tell mother, Willy.”
+
+“That's all right Did it cheer her any?”
+
+“Wonderfully. She's asleep now.”
+
+He went up to his room, and for some time she heard him moving about.
+Then she heard the scraping of his chair as he drew it to his desk,
+and vaguely wondered. When he came down he had a sealed envelope in his
+hand.
+
+“I am going out, Edith,” he said. “I shall be late getting back, and--I
+am going to ask you to do something for me.”
+
+She loved doing things for him. She flushed slightly.
+
+“If I am not back here by two o'clock to-night,” he said, “I want you to
+open that letter and read it. Then go to the nearest telephone, and call
+up the number I've written down. Ask for the man whose name is given,
+and read him the message.”
+
+“Willy!” she gasped. “You are doing something dangerous!”
+
+“What I really expect,” he said, smiling down at her, “is to be back,
+feeling more or less of a fool, by eleven o'clock. I'm providing against
+an emergency that will almost surely never happen, and I am depending on
+the most trustworthy person I know.”
+
+Very soon after that he went away. She sat for some time after he
+had gone, fingering the blank white envelope and wondering, a little
+frightened but very proud of his trust.
+
+Dan came in and went up the stairs. That reminded her of the dinner, and
+she sat down in the kitchen with a pan of potatoes on her knee. As she
+pared them she sang. She was still singing when Ellen came back.
+
+Something had happened to Ellen. She stood in the kitchen, her hat still
+on, drawing her cotton gloves through her fingers and staring at Edith
+without seeing her.
+
+“You're not sick, are you, Ellen?”
+
+Ellen put down her gloves and slowly took off her hat, still with the
+absorbed eyes of a sleep-walker.
+
+“I'm not sick,” she said at last. “I've had bad news.”
+
+“Sit down and I'll make you a cup of tea. Then maybe you'll feel like
+talking about it.”
+
+“I don't want any tea. Do you know that that man Akers has married Lily
+Cardew?”
+
+“Married her!”
+
+“The devil out of hell that he is.” Ellen's voice was terrible. “And
+all the time knowing that you--She's at home, the poor child, and
+Mademoiselle just sat and cried when she told me. It's a secret,” she
+added, fiercely. “You keep your mouth shut about it. She never lived
+with him. She left him right off. I wouldn't know it now but the
+servants were talking about the house being forbidden to him, and I went
+straight to Mademoiselle. I said: 'You keep him away from Miss Lily,
+because I know something about him.' It was when I told her that she
+said they were married.”
+
+She went out and up the stairs, moving slowly and heavily. Edith sat
+still, the pan on her knee, and thought. Did Willy know? Was that why he
+was willing to marry her? She was swept with bitter jealousy, and added
+to that came suspicion. Something very near the truth flashed into her
+mind and stayed there. In her bitterness she saw Willy telling Lily of
+Akers and herself, and taking her away, or having her taken. It must
+have been something like that, or why had she left him?
+
+But her anger slowly subsided; in the end she began to feel that the new
+situation rendered her own position more secure, even justified her
+own approaching marriage. Since Lily was gone, why should she not marry
+Willy Cameron? If what Ellen had said was true she knew him well enough
+to know that he would deliberately strangle his love for Lily. If it
+were true, and if he knew it.
+
+She moved about the kitchen, making up the fire, working automatically
+in that methodless way that always set Ellen's teeth on edge, and
+thinking. But subconsciously she was listening, too. She had heard Dan
+go into his mother's room and close the door. She was bracing herself
+against his coming down.
+
+Dan was difficult those days, irritable and exacting. Moody, too, and
+much away from home. He hated idleness at its best, and the strike was
+idleness at its worst. Behind the movement toward the general strike,
+too, he felt there was some hidden and sinister influence at work, an
+influence that was determined to turn what had commenced as a labor
+movement into a class uprising.
+
+That very afternoon, for the first time, he had heard whispered the
+phrase: “when the town goes dark.” There was a diabolical suggestion in
+it that sent him home with his fists clenched.
+
+He did not go to his mother's room at once. Instead, he drew a chair to
+his window and sat there staring out on the little street. When the town
+went dark, what about all the little streets like this one?
+
+After an hour or so of ominous quiet Edith heard him go into his
+mother's room. Her hands trembled as she closed her door.
+
+She heard him coming down at last, and suddenly remembering the license,
+hid it in a drawer. She knew that he would destroy it if he saw it. And
+Dan's face justified the move. He came in and stood glowering at her,
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+“What made you tell that lie to mother?” he demanded.
+
+“She was worried, Dan. And it will be true to-morrow. You--Dan, you
+didn't tell her it was a lie, did you?”
+
+“I should have, but I didn't. What do you mean, it will be true
+to-morrow?”
+
+“We are going to be married to-morrow.”
+
+“I'll lock you up first,” he said, angrily. “I've been expecting
+something like that. I've watched you, and I've seen you watching him.
+You'll not do it, do you hear? D'you think I'd let you get away with
+that? Isn't it enough that he's got to support us, without your coaxing
+him to marry you?”
+
+She made no reply, but went on with a perfunctory laying of the table.
+Her mouth had gone very dry.
+
+“The poor fish,” Dan snarled. “I thought he had some sense. Letting
+himself in for a nice life, isn't he? We're not his kind, and you know
+it. He knows more in a minute than you'll know all your days. In about
+three months he'll hate the very sight of you, and then where'll you
+be?”
+
+When she made no reply, he called to the dog and went out into the yard.
+She saw him there, brooding and sullen, and she knew that he had not
+finished. He would say no more to her, but he would wait and have it out
+with Willy himself.
+
+Supper was silent. No one ate much, and Ellen, coming down with the
+tray, reported Mrs. Boyd as very tired, and wanting to settle down
+early.
+
+“She looks bad to me,” she said to Edith. “I think the doctor ought to
+see her.”
+
+“I'll go and send him.”
+
+Edith was glad to get out of the house. She had avoided the streets
+lately, but as it was the supper hour the pavements were empty. Only
+Joe Wilkinson, bare-headed, stood in the next doorway, and smiled and
+flushed slightly when he saw her.
+
+“How's your mother?” he asked.
+
+“She's not so well. I'm going to get the doctor.”
+
+“Do you mind if I get my hat and walk there with you?”
+
+“I'm going somewhere else from there, Joe.”
+
+“Well, I'll walk a block or two, anyhow.”
+
+She waited impatiently. She liked Joe, but she did not want him then.
+She wanted to think and plan alone and in the open air, away from the
+little house with its odors and its querulous thumping cane upstairs;
+away from Ellen's grim face and Dan's angry one.
+
+He came out almost immediately, followed by a string of little
+Wilkinsons, clamoring to go along.
+
+“Do you mind?” he asked her. “They can trail along behind. The poor kids
+don't get out much.”
+
+“Bring them along, of course,” she said, somewhat resignedly. And with a
+flash of her old spirit: “I might have brought Jinx, too. Then we'd have
+had a real procession.”
+
+They moved down the street, with five little Wilkinsons trailing along
+behind, and Edith was uncomfortably aware that Joe's eyes were upon her.
+
+“You don't look well,” he said at last. “You're wearing yourself out
+taking care of your mother, Edith.”
+
+“I don't do much for her.”
+
+“You'd say that, of course. You're very unselfish.”
+
+“Am I?” She laughed a little, but the words touched her. “Don't think
+I'm better than I am, Joe.”
+
+“You're the most wonderful girl in the world. I guess you know how I
+feel about that.”
+
+“Don't Joe!”
+
+But at that moment a very little Wilkinson fell headlong and burst into
+loud, despairing wails. Joe set her on her feet, brushed her down with
+a fatherly hand, and on her refusal to walk further picked her up and
+carried her. The obvious impossibility of going on with what he had been
+saying made him smile sheepishly.
+
+“Can you beat it?” he said helplessly, “these darn kids--!” But he held
+the child close.
+
+At the next corner he turned toward home. Edith stopped and watched his
+valiant young back, his small train of followers. He was going to be
+very sad when he knew, poor Joe, with his vicarious fatherhood, his
+cluttered, noisy, anxious life.
+
+Life was queer. Queer and cruel.
+
+From the doctor's office, the waiting room lined with patient figures,
+she went on. She had a very definite plan in mind, but it took all
+her courage to carry it through. Outside the Benedict Apartments she
+hesitated, but she went in finally, upheld by sheer determination.
+
+The chair at the telephone desk was empty, but Sam remembered her.
+
+“He's out, miss,” he said. “He's out most all the time now, with the
+election coming on.”
+
+“What time does he usually get in?”
+
+“Sometimes early, sometimes late,” said Sam, watching her. Everything
+pertaining to Louis Akers was of supreme interest those days to the
+Benedict employees. The beating he had received, the coming election,
+the mysterious young woman who had come but once, and the black days
+that had followed his return from the St. Elmo--out of such patchwork
+they were building a small drama of their own. Sam was trying to fit in
+Edith's visit with the rest.
+
+The Benedict was neither more moral nor less than its kind. An
+unwritten law kept respectable women away, but the management showed no
+inclination to interfere where there was no noise or disorder. Employees
+were supposed to see that no feminine visitors remained after midnight,
+that was all.
+
+“You might go up and wait for him,” Sam suggested. “That is, if it's
+important.”
+
+“It's very important.”
+
+He threw open the gate of the elevator hospitably.
+
+At half past ten that night Louis Akers went back to his rooms. The
+telephone girl watched him sharply as he entered.
+
+“There's a lady waiting for you, Mr. Akers.”
+
+He swung toward her eagerly.
+
+“A lady? Did she give any name?”
+
+“No. Sam let her in and took her up. He said he thought you wouldn't
+mind. She'd been here before.”
+
+The thought of Edith never entered Akers' head. It was Lily, Lily
+miraculously come back to him. Lily, his wife.
+
+Going up in the elevator he hastily formulated a plan of action. He
+would not be too ready to forgive; she had cost him too much. But in the
+end he would take her in his arms and hold her close. Lily! Lily!
+
+It was the bitterness of his disappointment that made him brutal. Wicked
+and unscrupulous as he was with men, with women he was as gentle as he
+was cruel. He put them from him relentlessly and kissed them good-by. It
+was his boast that any one of them would come back to him if he wanted
+her.
+
+Edith, listening for his step, was startled at the change in his face
+when he saw her.
+
+“You!” he said thickly. “What are you doing here?”
+
+“I've been waiting all evening. I want to ask you something.”
+
+He flung his hat into a chair and faced her.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Is it true that you are married to Lily Cardew?”
+
+“If I am, what are you going to do about it?” His eyes were wary, but
+his color was coming back. He was breathing more easily.
+
+“I only heard it to-day. I must know, Lou. It's awfully important.”
+
+“What did you hear?” He was watching her closely.
+
+“I heard you were married, but that she had left you.”
+
+It seemed to him incredible that she had come there to taunt him, she
+who was responsible for the shipwreck of his marriage. That she could
+come there and face him, and not expect him to kill her where she stood.
+
+He pulled himself together.
+
+“It's true enough.” He swore under his breath. “She didn't leave me. She
+was taken away. And I'll get her back if I--You little fool, I ought to
+kill you. If you wanted a cheap revenge, you've got it.”
+
+“I don't want revenge, Lou.”
+
+He caught her by the arm.
+
+“Then what brought you here?”
+
+“I wanted to be sure Lily Cardew was married.”
+
+“Well, she is. What about it?”
+
+“That's all.”
+
+“That's not all. What about it?”
+
+She looked up at him gravely.
+
+“Because, if she is, I am going to marry Mr. Cameron tomorrow.” At the
+sight of his astounded face she went on hastily: “He knows, Lou, and he
+offered anyhow.”
+
+“And what,” he said slowly, “has my wife to do with that?”
+
+“I wanted to be fair to him. And I think he is--I think he used to be
+terribly in love with her.”
+
+Quite apart from his increasing fear of Willy Cameron and his Committee,
+there had been in Akers for some time a latent jealousy of him. In a
+flash he saw the room at the Saint Elmo, and a cold-eyed man inside the
+doorway. The humiliation of that scene had never left him, of his own
+maudlin inadequacy, of hearing from beyond a closed and locked door, the
+closing of another door behind Lily and the man who had taken her away
+from him. A mad anger and jealousy made him suddenly reckless.
+
+“So,” he said, “he is terribly in love with my wife, and he intends to
+marry you. That's--interesting. Because, my sweet child, he's got a damn
+poor chance of marrying you, or anybody.”
+
+“Lou!”
+
+“Listen,” he said deliberately. “Men who stick their heads into the
+lion's jaws are apt to lose them. Our young friend Cameron has done
+that. I'll change the figure. When a man tries to stop a great machine
+by putting his impudent fingers into the cog wheels, the man's a fool.
+He may lose his hand, or he may lose his life.”
+
+Fortunately for Edith he moved on that speech to the side table, and
+mixed himself a highball. It gave her a moment to summon her scattered
+wits, to decide on a plan of action. Her early training on the streets,
+her recent months of deceit, helped her now. If he had expected any
+outburst from her it did not come.
+
+“If you mean that he is in danger, I don't believe it.”
+
+“All right, old girl. I've told you.”
+
+But the whiskey restored his equilibrium again.
+
+“That is,” he added slowly, “I've warned you. You'd better warn him.
+He's doing his best to get into trouble.”
+
+She knew him well, saw the craftiness come back into his eyes, and met
+it with equal strategy.
+
+“I'll tell him,” she said, moving toward the door. “You haven't scared
+me for a minute and you won't scare him. You and your machine!”
+
+She dared not seem to hurry.
+
+“You're a boaster,” she said, with the door open. “You always were.
+And you'll never lay a hand on him. You're like all bullies; you're a
+coward!”
+
+She was through the doorway by that time, and in terror for fear, having
+told her so much, he would try to detain her. She saw the idea come into
+his face, too, just as she slipped outside. He made a move toward her.
+
+“I think--” he began.
+
+She slammed the door and ran down the hallway toward the stairs. She
+heard him open the door and come out into the hall, but she was well in
+advance and running like a deer.
+
+“Edith!” he called.
+
+She stumbled on the second flight of stairs and fell a half-dozen steps,
+but she picked herself up and ran on. At the bottom of the lower flight
+she stopped and listened, but he had gone back. She heard the slam of
+his door as he closed it.
+
+But the insistent need of haste drove her on, headlong. She shot through
+the lobby, past the staring telephone girl, and into the street, and
+there settled down into steady running, her elbows close to her sides,
+trying to remember to breathe slowly and evenly. She must get home
+somehow, get the envelope and follow the directions inside. Her thoughts
+raced with her. It was almost eleven o'clock and Willy had been gone for
+hours. She tried to pray, but the words did not come.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+At something after seven o'clock that night Willy Cameron and Pink
+Denslow reached that point on the Mayville Road which had been
+designated by the storekeeper, Cusick. They left the car there, hidden
+in a grove, and struck off across country to the west. Willy Cameron
+had been thoughtful for some time, and as they climbed a low hill, going
+with extreme caution, he said:
+
+“I'm still skeptical about Cusick, Pink. Do you think he's straight?”
+
+“One of the best men we've got,” Pink replied, confidently. “He's put us
+on to several things.”
+
+“He's foreign born, isn't he?”
+
+“That's his value. They don't suspect him for a minute.”
+
+“But--what does he get out of it?”
+
+“Good citizen,” said Pink, with promptness. “You've got to remember,
+Cameron, that a lot of these fellows are better Americans than we are.
+They're like religious converts, stronger than the ones born in the
+fold. They're Americans because they want to be. Anyhow, you ought to be
+strong for him, Cameron. He said to tell you, but no one else.”
+
+“I'll tell you how strong I am for him later,” Willy Cameron said,
+grimly. “Just at this minute I'm waiting to be shown.”
+
+They advanced with infinite caution, for the evening was still light.
+Going slowly, it was well after eight and fairly dark before they came
+within sight of the farm buildings in the valley below. Long unpainted,
+they were barely discernable in the shadows of the hills. The land
+around had been carefully cleared, and both men were dismayed at the
+difficulty of access without being seen.
+
+“Doesn't look very good, does it?” Pink observed. “I will say this, for
+seclusion and keeping away unwanted visitors, it has it all over any
+dug-out I ever saw in France.”
+
+“Listen!” Willy Cameron said, tensely.
+
+They stood on the alert, but only the evening sounds of country and
+forest rewarded them.
+
+“What was it?” Pink inquired, after perhaps two minutes of waiting.
+
+“Plain scare on my part, probably. I don't so much mind this little
+excursion, Pink, as I hate the idea that a certain gentleman named
+Cusick may have a chance to come to our funerals and laugh himself to
+death.”
+
+When real darkness had fallen, they had reached the lower fringe of the
+woods. Pink had the fault of the city dweller, however, of being unable
+to step lightly in the dark, and their progress had been less silent
+than it should have been. In spite of his handicap, Willy Cameron made
+his way with the instinctive knowledge of the country bred boy, treading
+like a cat.
+
+“Pretty poor,” Pink said in a discouraged whisper, after a twig had
+burst under his foot with a report like the shot of a pistol. “You
+travel like a spook, while I--”
+
+“Listen, Pink. I'm going in alone to look around. Stop muttering and
+listen to me. It's poor strategy not to have a reserve somewhere, isn't
+it?”
+
+“I'm a poor prune at the best,” Pink said stubbornly, “but I am not
+going to let you go into that place alone. You can rave all you want.”
+
+“Very well. Then we'll both stay here. You are about as quiet as a horse
+going through a corn patch.”
+
+After some moments Pink spoke again.
+
+“If you insist on stealing the whole show,” he said, sulkily, “what am I
+to do? Run to town for help, if you need it?”
+
+“I'm not going to round up the outfit, if there is one. I haven't lost
+my mind. I'll see what is going on, or about to go on. Then I'll come
+back.”
+
+“Here?”
+
+Cameron considered.
+
+“Better meet at the machine,” he decided, after a glance at the sky. “In
+half an hour you won't be able to see your hand in front of you. Wait
+here for a half-hour or so, and then start back, and for heaven's sake
+don't shoot at anything you see moving. As a matter of fact, I might
+as well have your revolver. I won't need it, but it may avoid any
+accidental shooting by a youth I both love and admire!”
+
+“If I hear any shooting, I'll come in,” Pink said, still sulky.
+
+“Come in and welcome,” said Willy Cameron, and Pink knew he was smiling.
+
+He took the revolver and slipped away into the darkness, leaving Pink
+both melancholy and disturbed. Unaccustomed to night in the woods, he
+found his nerves twitching at every sound. In the war there had been a
+definite enemy, definitely placed. Even when he had gone into that vile
+strip between the trenches, there had been a general direction for the
+inimical. Here--
+
+He moved carefully, and stood with his back against a tree.
+
+Not a sound came from the farm buildings. Willy Cameron's progress, too,
+was noiseless. With no way to tell the lapse of time, and gauging it by
+his war experience, when an hour had apparently passed by, he knew that
+Cameron had been gone about ten minutes.
+
+Time dragged on. A cow, unmilked, lowed plaintively once or twice. A
+September night breeze set the dying leaves on the trees to rustling,
+and stirred the dried ones about his feet. Pink's mind, gradually
+reassured, turned to other things. He thought of Lily Cardew, for one.
+Like Willy Cameron, he knew he would always love her, but unlike Willy,
+the first pain of her loss was gone. He was glad that time was over.
+He was glad that she was at home again, safe from those--Some one was
+moving near him, passing within twenty feet. Whoever it was was stepping
+cautiously but blunderingly. It was not Cameron, then. He was a footfall
+only, not even an outline. Before Pink could decide on a line of action,
+the sound was lost.
+
+Every sense acute, he waited. He had decided that if the incident were
+repeated, he would make an effort to get the fellow from behind, but
+there was no return. The wind had died again, and there was no longer
+even the rustling of the leaves to break the utter stillness.
+
+Suddenly he saw a red flash near the barn, and an instant later heard
+the report of a pistol. Came immediately after that a brief fusillade of
+shots, a pause, then two or three scattering ones.
+
+With the first shot Pink started running. He was vaguely conscious of
+other steps near him, running also, but he could see nothing. His whole
+mind was set on finding Willy Cameron. Alone he had not a chance, but
+two of them together could put up a fight. He pelted along, stumbling,
+recovering, stumbling again.
+
+Another shot was fired. They hadn't got him yet, or they wouldn't be
+shooting. He raised his voice in a great call.
+
+“Cameron! Here! Cameron!”
+
+He ran into a low fence then, and it threw him. He had hardly got to
+his knees before the other running figure had hurled itself on him, and
+struck him with the butt of a revolver. He dropped flat and lay still.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+For weeks Woslosky had known of the growing strength of the Vigilance
+Committee, and that it was arming steadily.
+
+It threatened absolutely the success of his plans. Even the election of
+Akers and the changes he would make in the city police; even the ruse
+of other strikes and machine-made riotings to call away the state
+troops,--none of these, or all of them, would be effectual against an
+organized body of citizens, duly called to the emergency.
+
+And such an organization was already effected. Within a week, when the
+first card reached his hands, it had grown to respectable proportions.
+Woslosky went to Doyle, and they made their counter-moves quickly. No
+more violence. A seemingly real but deceptive orderliness. They were
+dealing with inflammatory material, however, and now and then it got
+out of hand. Unlike Doyle the calculating, who made each move slowly and
+watched its results with infinite zest, the Pole chafed under delay.
+
+“We can't hold them much longer,” he complained, bitterly. “This thing
+of holding them off until after the election--and until Akers takes
+office--it's got too many ifs in it.”
+
+“It was haste lost Seattle,” said Doyle, as unmoved as Woslosky was
+excited.
+
+Woslosky did not like Louis Akers. What was more important, he
+distrusted him. When he heard of his engagement to Lily Cardew he warned
+Doyle about him.
+
+“He's in this thing for what he can get out of it,” he said. “He'll go
+as far as he can, with safety, to be accepted by the Cardews.”
+
+“Exactly,” was Doyle's dry comment, “with safety, you said. Well, he
+knows you and he knows me, and he'll he straight because he's afraid not
+to be.”
+
+“When there's a woman in it!” said the Pole, skeptically.
+
+But Doyle only smiled. He had known many women and loved none of them,
+and he was temperamentally unable to understand the type of man who saw
+the world through a woman's eyes and in them.
+
+So Woslosky was compelled to watch the growth of Willy Cameron's
+organization, and to hold in check the violent passions he had himself
+roused, and to wait, gnawing his nails with inaction and his heart with
+rage. But these certain things he discovered:
+
+That the organization's growth was coincident with a new interest in
+local politics, as though some vital force had wakened the plain people
+to a sense of responsibility.
+
+That a drug clerk named Cameron was the founder and moving spirit of the
+league, and that he was, using Hendricks' candidacy as a means, rousing
+the city to a burning patriotic activity that Mr. Woslosky regarded as
+extremely pernicious.
+
+And that this same Willy Cameron had apparently a knowledge of certain
+plans, which was rather worse than pernicious. Mr. Woslosky's name for
+it was damnable.
+
+For instance, there were the lists of the various city stores and their
+estimated contents, missing from Mr. Woslosky's own inconspicuous trunk
+in a storage house. On that had been based the plan for feeding the
+revolution, by the simple expedient of exchanging by organized pillage
+the contents of the city stores for food stuffs from the farmers in
+outlying districts.
+
+Revolution, according to Mr. Woslosky, could only be starved out. He had
+no anxiety as to troops which would be sent against them, because he had
+a cynical belief that a man's country was less to him than various other
+things, including his stomach. He believed that all armies were riddled
+with sedition and fundamentally opposed to law.
+
+Copies of other important matters, too, were missing. Lists of officials
+for the revolutionary city government and of deputies to take the places
+of the disbanded police, plans for manning, by the radicals, the city
+light, water and power plants; a schedule of public eating houses to
+take the place of the restaurants.
+
+Woslosky began to find this drug clerk with the ridiculous given name
+getting on his nerves. He considered him a dangerous enemy to progress,
+that particular form of progress which Mr. Woslosky advocated, and
+he suspected him of a lack of ethics regarding trunks in storage. Mr.
+Woslosky had the old-world idea that the best government was a despotism
+tempered by assassination. He thought considerably about Willy Cameron.
+
+But the plan concerning the farm house was, in the end, devised by Louis
+Akers. Woslosky was skeptical. It was true that Cameron might stick his
+head into the lion's jaws, but precautions had been known to be taken at
+such times to prevent their closing. However, the Pole was desperate.
+
+He took six picked men with him that afternoon to the farm, and made a
+strategic survey of the situation. The house was closed and locked,
+but he was not concerned with the house. Cusick had told Denslow the
+meetings were held late at night in the barn, and to the barn Woslosky
+repaired, sawed-off shotgun under his coat and cigarette in mouth, and
+inspected it with his evil smile. Two men, young and reckless, might
+easily plan to conceal themselves under the hay in the loft, and--
+
+Woslosky put down his gun and went down into the cow barn below,
+whistling softly to himself. He began to enjoy the prospect. He gathered
+some eggs from the feed boxes, carrying them in his hat, and breaking
+the lock of the kitchen door he and his outfit looted the closet
+there and had an early supper, being careful to extinguish the fire
+afterwards.
+
+Not until dusk was falling did he post his men, three outside among
+the outbuildings, one as a sentry near the woods, and two in the barn
+itself. He himself took up his station inside the barn door, sitting on
+the floor with his gun across his knees. Looking out from there, he saw
+the sharp flash of a hastily extinguished match, and snarled with anger.
+He had forbidden smoking.
+
+“I've got to go out,” he said cautiously. “Don't you fools shoot me when
+I come back.”
+
+He slipped out into what was by that time complete blackness.
+
+Some five minutes later he came back, still noiselessly, and treading
+like a cat. He could only locate the barn door by feeling for it, and
+above the light scraping of his fingers he could hear, inside, cautious
+footsteps over the board floor. He scowled again. Damn this country
+quiet, anyhow! But he had found the doorway, and was feeling his way
+through when he found himself caught and violently thrown. The fall
+and the surprise stunned him. He lay still for an infuriated helpless
+second, with a knee on his chest and both arms tightly held, to hear one
+of his own men above him saying:
+
+“Got him, all right. Woslosky, you've got the rope, haven't you?”
+
+“You fool!” snarled Woslosky from the floor, “let me up. You've half
+killed me. Didn't I tell you I was going out?”
+
+He scrambled to his feet, and to an astounded silence.
+
+“But you came in a couple of minutes ago. Somebody came in. You heard
+him, Cusick, didn't you?”
+
+Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost with
+the same movement drew a searchlight and flashed it over the place. It
+was apparently empty.
+
+The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp questions.
+Both men had heard the cautious entrance they had taken for his own,
+both men had remained silent and unsuspicious, and both were positive
+whoever had come in had not gone out again.
+
+He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search. The
+summer's hay filled one end, but it was closely packed below and offered
+no refuge. Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash in his pocket,
+Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going softly. He listened at
+the top, and then searched it with the light, holding it far to the left
+for a possible bullet. The loft was empty. He climbed into it and walked
+over it, gun in one hand and flash in the other, searching for some
+buried figure. But there was nothing. The loft was fragrant with the
+newly dried hay, sweet and empty. Woslosky descended the ladder again,
+the flash extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering.
+Cusick was a man without imagination, and he had sworn that some one had
+come in. Then--
+
+Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited
+flutterings first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who roosted
+on the roof. Woslosky listened and slowly smiled.
+
+“We've got him, boys,” he said, without excitement. “Outside, and call
+the others. He's on the roof.”
+
+Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others
+coming pell-mell toward him. He flung a guard of all five of them around
+the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward.
+The very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore
+softly. In the hope of drawing an answering flash he fired, but without
+result. The explosion echoed and reechoed, died away.
+
+He called to Cusick, and had him try the same experiment, following the
+line of the gutter as nearly as possible in the darkness, on that side,
+and emptying his revolver. Still silence.
+
+Woslosky began to doubt. The pigeons might have seen his flashlight,
+might have heard his own stealthy movements. He was intensely irritated.
+The shooting, if the alarm had been false, had ruined everything. He
+saw, as in a vision, Doyle's sneering face when he told him. Beside him
+Cusick was reloading his revolver in the darkness.
+
+Then, out of the night, came a call from the direction of the woods, and
+unintelligible at that distance.
+
+“What's that?” Cusick said hoarsely.
+
+Woslosky made no reply. He was listening. Some one was approaching, now
+running, now stopping as though confused. Woslosky held his gun ready,
+and waited. Then, from a distance, he heard his name called.
+
+He stepped inside the door of the barn and showed the light for a
+moment. Soon after the sentry floundered in, breathless and excited.
+
+“I got one of them,” he gasped. “Hit him with my gun. He's lying back by
+the stone fence.”
+
+“Did you call out, or did he?”
+
+“He did. That's how I knew it wasn't one of our fellows. He called
+Cameron, so he's the other one.”
+
+Woslosky drew a deep breath. Then it was Cameron on the roof. It was
+Cameron they wanted.
+
+“He'll sleep for an hour or two, if he ever wakes up,” Pink's assailant
+boasted. But Woslosky was taking no chances that night. He sent two men
+after Pink, and began to pace the floor thoughtfully. If he could have
+waited for daylight it would have been simple enough, but he did not
+know how much time he had. He did not underestimate young Cameron's
+intelligence, and it had occurred to him that that young Scot might
+cannily have provided against his failure to return. Then, too, the
+state constabulary had an uncomfortable habit of riding lonely back
+roads at night, and shots could be heard a long distance off.
+
+He had never surveyed the barn roof closely, but he knew that it was
+steeply pitched. Cameron, then, was probably braced somewhere in the
+gutter. The departure of the two men had left him short-handed, and he
+waited impatiently for their return. With a ladder, provided it could be
+quietly placed, a man could shoot from a corner along two sides of the
+roof. With two ladders, at diagonal corners, they could get him. But a
+careful search discovered no ladders on the place.
+
+He went out, and standing close against the wall for protection, called
+up.
+
+“We know you're there, Cameron,” he said. “If you come down we won't
+hurt you. If you don't, we'll get you, and you know it.”
+
+But he received no reply.
+
+Soon after that the two men carried in Pink Denslow, and laid him on the
+floor of the barn. Then Woslosky tried again, more reckless this time
+with anger. He stood out somewhat from the wall and called:
+
+“One more chance, Cameron, or we'll put a bullet through your friend
+here. Come down, or we'll--”
+
+Something struck him heavily and he fell, with a bullet in the shoulder.
+He struggled to his feet and gained the shelter of the wall, his face
+twisted with pain.
+
+“All right,” he said, “if that's the way you feel about it!”
+
+He regained the barn and had his arm supported in an extemporized sling.
+Then he ordered Pink to be tied, and fighting down his pain considered
+the situation. Cameron was on the roof, and armed. Even if he had no
+extra shells he still had five shots in reserve, and he would not waste
+any of them. Whoever tried to scale the walls would be done in at once;
+whoever attempted to follow him to the roof by way of the loft would
+be shot instantly. And his own condition demanded haste; the bullet,
+striking from above, had broken his arm. Every movement was torture.
+
+He thought of setting fire to the barn. Then Cameron would have the
+choice of two things, to surrender or to be killed. He might get some of
+them first, however. Well, that was a part of the game.
+
+He delivered a final ultimatum from the shelter of the doorway.
+
+“I've just thought of something, Cameron,” he called. “We're going to
+fire the barn. Your young friend is here, tied, and we'll leave him
+here. Do you get that? Either throw down that gun of yours, and come
+down, or I'm inclined to think you'll be up against it. I'll give you a
+minute or so to think it over.”
+
+At half-past eleven o'clock that night the first of four automobiles
+drove into Friendship. It was driven by a hatless young man in a
+raincoat over a suit of silk pajamas, and it contained four County
+detectives and the city Chief of Police. Behind it, but well
+outdistanced, came the other cars, some of them driven by leading
+citizens in a state of considerable deshabille.
+
+At a cross street in Friendship the lead car drew up, and flashlights
+were turned on a road map in the rear of the car. There was some
+argument over the proper road, and a member of the state constabulary,
+riding up to investigate, showed a strong inclination to place them
+under arrest.
+
+It took a moment to put him right.
+
+“Wish I could go along,” he said, wistfully. “The place you want is back
+there. I can't leave the town, but I'll steer you out. You'll probably
+run into some of our fellows back there.”
+
+He rode on ahead, his big black horse restive in the light from the
+lamps behind him. At the end of a lane he stopped.
+
+“Straight ahead up there,” he said. “You'll find--”
+
+He broke off and stared ahead to where a dull red glare, reflected on
+the low hanging clouds, had appeared over the crest of the hill.
+
+“Something doing up there,” he called suddenly. “Let's go.”
+
+He jerked his revolver free, dug his heels into the flanks of his horse,
+and was off on a dead run. Half way up the hill the car passed him, the
+black going hard, and its rider's face, under the rim of his uniform
+hat, a stern profile. His reins lay loose on the animal's neck, and he
+was examining his gun.
+
+The road mounted to a summit, and dipped again. They were in a long
+valley, and the burning barn was clearly outlined at the far end of it.
+One side was already flaming, and tongues of fire leaped out through the
+roof. The men in the car were standing now, doors open, ready to leap,
+while the car lurched and swayed over the uneven road. Behind them they
+heard the clatter of the oncoming horse.
+
+As they drew nearer they could see three watching figures against the
+burning building, and as they turned into the lane which led to the
+barnyard a shot rang out and one of the figures dropped and lay still.
+There was a cry of warning from somewhere, and before the detectives
+could leap from the car, the group had scattered, running wildly. The
+state policeman threw his horse back on its hunches, and fired without
+apparently taking aim at one of the running shadows. The man threw up
+his arms and fell. The state policeman galloped toward him, dismounted
+and bent over him.
+
+Firing as they ran, detectives leaped out of the car and gave chase,
+and so it was that the young gentleman in bedroom slippers and pajamas,
+standing in his car and shielding his eyes against the glare, saw a
+curious thing.
+
+First of all, the roof blazed up brightly, and he perceived a human
+figure, hanging by its hands from the eaves and preparing to drop. The
+young gentleman in pajamas was feeling rather out of things by that
+time, so he made a hasty exit from his car toward the barn, losing a
+slipper as he did so, and yelling in a slightly hysterical manner. It
+thus happened that he and the dropping figure reached the same spot at
+almost the same moment, one result of which was that the young gentleman
+in pajamas found himself struck a violent blow with a doubled-up fist,
+and at the same moment his bare right foot was tramped on with extreme
+thoroughness.
+
+The young gentleman in pajamas reeled back dizzily and gave tongue,
+while standing on one foot. The person he addressed was the state
+constable, and his instructions were to get the fugitive and kill him.
+But the fugitive here did a very strange thing. Through the handkerchief
+which it was now seen he wore tied over his mouth, he told the running
+policeman to go to perdition, and then with seeming suicidal intent
+rushed into the burning barn. From it he emerged a moment later,
+dragging a figure bound hand and foot, blackened with smoke, and with
+its clothing smoldering in a dozen places; a figure which alternately
+coughed and swore in a strangled whisper, but which found breath for
+a loud whoop almost immediately after, on its being immersed, as it
+promptly was, in a nearby horse-trough.
+
+Very soon after that the other cars arrived. They drew up and men
+emerged from them, variously clothed and even more variously armed, but
+all they saw was the ruined embers of the barn, and in the glow
+five figures. Of the five one lay, face up to the sky, as though the
+prostrate body followed with its eyes the unkillable traitor soul of
+one Cusick, lately storekeeper at Friendship. Woslosky, wounded for
+the second time, lay on an automobile rug on the ground, conscious
+but sullenly silent. On the driving seat of an automobile sat a young
+gentleman with an overcoat over a pair of silk pajamas, carefully
+inspecting the toes of his right foot by the light of a match, while
+another young gentleman with a white handkerchief around his head was
+sitting on the running board of the same car, dripping water and rather
+dazedly staring at the ruins.
+
+And beside him stood a gaunt figure, blackened of face, minus eyebrows
+and charred of hair, and considerably torn as to clothing. A figure
+which seemed disinclined to talk, and which gave its explanations
+in short, staccato sentences. Having done which, it relapsed into
+uncompromising silence again.
+
+Some time later the detectives returned. They had made no further
+captures, for the refugees had known the country, and once outside the
+light from the burning barn search was useless. The Chief of Police
+approached Willy Cameron and stood before him, eyeing him severely.
+
+“The next time you try to raid an anarchist meeting, Cameron,” he said,
+“you'd better honor me with your confidence. You've probably learned a
+lesson from all this.”
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at him, and for the first time that night, smiled.
+
+“I have,” he said; “I'll never trust a pigeon again.” The Chief thought
+him slightly unhinged by the night's experience.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Edith Boyd's child was prematurely born at the Memorial Hospital early
+the next morning. It lived only a few moments, but Edith's mother never
+knew either of its birth or of its death.
+
+When Willy Cameron reached the house at two o'clock that night he found
+Dan in the lower hall, a new Dan, grave and composed but very pale.
+
+“Mother's gone, Willy,” he said quietly. “I don't think she knew
+anything about it. Ellen heard her breathing hard and went in, but she
+wasn't conscious.” He sat down on the horse-hair covered chair by the
+stand. “I don't know anything about these things,” he observed, still
+with that strange new composure. “What do you do now?”
+
+“Don't worry about that, Dan, just now. There's nothing to do until
+morning.”
+
+He looked about him. The presence of death gave a new dignity to the
+little house. Through the open door he could see in the parlor Mrs.
+Boyd's rocking chair, in which she had traveled so many conversational
+miles. Even the chair had gained dignity; that which it had once
+enthroned had now penetrated the ultimate mystery.
+
+He was shaken and very weary. His mind worked slowly and torpidly, so
+that even grief came with an effort. He was grieved; he knew that. Some
+one who had loved him and depended on him was gone; some one who loved
+life had lost it. He ran his hand over his singed hair.
+
+“Where is Edith?”
+
+Dan's voice hardened.
+
+“She's out somewhere. It's like her, isn't it?”
+
+Willy Cameron roused himself.
+
+“Out?” he said incredulously. “Don't you know where she is?”
+
+“No. And I don't care.”
+
+Willy Cameron was fully alert now, and staring down at Dan.
+
+“I'll tell you something, Dan. She probably saved my life to-night. I'll
+tell you how later. And if she is still out there is something wrong.”
+
+“She used to stay out to all hours. She hasn't done it lately, but I
+thought--”
+
+Dan got up and reached for his hat.
+
+“Where'll I start to look for her?”
+
+But Willy Cameron had no suggestion to make. He was trying to think
+straight, but it was not easy. He knew that for some reason Edith had
+not waited until midnight to open the envelope. She had telephoned her
+message clearly, he had learned, but with great excitement, saying that
+there was a plot against his life, and giving the farmhouse and the
+message he had left in full; and she had not rung off until she knew
+that a posse would start at once. And that had been before eleven
+o'clock.
+
+Three hours. He looked at his watch. Either she had been hurt or was
+a prisoner, or--he came close to the truth then. He glanced at Dan,
+standing hat in hand.
+
+“We'll try the hospitals first, Dan,” he said. “And the best way to do
+that is by telephone. I don't like Ellen being left alone here, so you'd
+better let me do that.”
+
+Dan acquiesced unwillingly. He resumed his seat in the hail, and Willy
+Cameron went upstairs. Ellen was moving softly about, setting in order
+the little upper room. The windows were opened, and through them came
+the soft night wind, giving a semblance of life and movement under it to
+the sheet that covered the quiet figure on the bed.
+
+Willy Cameron stood by it and looked down, with a great wave of
+thankfulness in his heart. She had been saved much, and if from some new
+angle she was seeing them now it would be with the vision of eternity,
+and its understanding. She would see how sometimes the soul must lose
+here to gain beyond. She would see the world filled with its Ediths, and
+she would know that they too were a part of the great plan, and that the
+breaking of the body sometimes freed the soul.
+
+He was shy of the forms of religion, but he voiced a small inarticulate
+prayer, standing beside the bed while Ellen straightened the few toilet
+articles on the dresser, that she might have rest, and then a long and
+placid happiness. And love, he added. There would be no Heaven without
+love.
+
+Ellen was looking at him in the mirror.
+
+“Your hair looks queer, Willy,” she said. “And I declare your clothes
+are a sight.” She turned, sternly. “Where have you been?”
+
+“It's a long story, Ellen. Don't bother about it now. I'm worried about
+Edith.”
+
+Ellen's lips closed in a grim line.
+
+“The less said about her the better. She came back in a terrible state
+about something or other, ran in and up to your room, and out again. I
+tried to tell her her mother wasn't so well, but she looked as if she
+didn't hear me.”
+
+It was four o'clock in the morning when Willy Cameron located Edith. He
+had gone to the pharmacy and let himself in, intending to telephone,
+but the card on the door, edged with black, gave him a curious sense
+of being surrounded that night by death, and he stood for a moment,
+unwilling to begin for fear of some further tragedy. In that moment,
+what with reaction from excitement and weariness, he had a feeling
+of futility, of struggling to no end. One fought on, and in the last
+analysis it was useless.
+
+“So soon passeth it away, and we are gone.”
+
+He saw Mr. Davis, sitting alone in his house; he saw Ellen moving about
+that quiet upper room; he saw Cusick lying on the ground beside the
+smoldering heap that had been the barn, and staring up with eyes that
+saw only the vast infinity that was the sky. All the struggling and the
+fighting, and it came to that.
+
+He picked up the telephone book at last, and finding the hospital list
+in the directory began his monotonous calling of numbers, and still the
+revolt was in his mind. Even life lay through the gates of death; daily
+and hourly women everywhere laid down their lives that some new soul be
+born. But the revulsion came with that, a return to something nearer the
+normal. Daily and hourly women lived, having brought to pass the miracle
+of life.
+
+At half-past four he located Edith at the Memorial, and learned that her
+child had been born dead, but that she was doing well. He was suddenly
+exhausted; he sat down on a stool before the counter, and with his arms
+across it and his head on them, fell almost instantly asleep. When he
+waked it was almost seven and the intermittent sounds of early morning
+came through the closed doors, as though the city stirred but had not
+wakened.
+
+He went to the door and opened it, looking out. He had been wrong
+before. Death was a beginning and not an end; it was the morning of the
+spirit. Tired bodies lay down to sleep and their souls wakened to the
+morning, rested; the first fruits of them that slept.
+
+From the chimneys of the houses nearby small spirals of smoke began to
+ascend, definite promise of food and morning cheer behind the closed
+doors, where the milk bottles stood like small white sentinels and the
+morning paper was bent over the knob. Morning in the city, with children
+searching for lost stockings and buttoning little battered shoes; with
+women hurrying about, from stove to closet, from table to stove; with
+all burdens a little lighter and all thoughts a little kinder. Morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+In her bed in the maternity ward Edith at first lay through the days,
+watching the other women with their babies, and wondering over the
+strange instinct that made them hover, like queer mis-shaped ministering
+angels, over the tiny quivering bundles. Some of them were like herself,
+or herself as she might have been, bearing their children out of
+wedlock. Yet they faced their indefinite futures impassively, content
+in relief from pain, in the child in their arms, in present peace and
+security. She could not understand.
+
+She herself felt no sense of loss. Having never held her child in her
+arms she did not feel them empty.
+
+She had not been told of her mother's death; men were not admitted to
+the ward, but early on that first morning, when she lay there, hardly
+conscious but in an ecstasy of relief from pain, Ellen had come. A tired
+Ellen with circles around her eyes, and a bag of oranges in her arms.
+
+“How do you feel?” she had asked, sitting down self-consciously beside
+the bed. The ward had its eyes on her.
+
+“I'm weak, but I'm all right. Last night was awful, Ellen.”
+
+She had roused herself with an effort. Ellen reminded her of something,
+something that had to do with Willy Cameron. Then she remembered, and
+tried to raise herself in the bed.
+
+“Willy!” she gasped. “Did he come home? Is he all right?”
+
+“He's all right. It was him that found you were here. You lie back now;
+the nurse is looking.”
+
+Edith lay down and closed her eyes, and the ecstasy of relief and peace
+gave to her pale face an almost spiritual look. Ellen saw it, and patted
+her arm with a roughened hand.
+
+“You poor thing!” she said. “I've been as mean to you as I knew how to
+be. I'm going to be different, Edith. I'm just a cross old maid, and I
+guess I didn't understand.”
+
+“You've been all right,” Edith said.
+
+Ellen kissed her when she went away.
+
+So for three days Edith lay and rested. She felt that God had been very
+good to her, and she began to think of God as having given her another
+chance. This time He had let her off, but He had given her a warning.
+He had said, in effect, that if she lived straight and thought straight
+from now on He would forget this thing she had done. But if she did
+not--
+
+Then what about Willy Cameron? Did He mean her to hold him to that now?
+Willy did not love her. Perhaps he would grow to love her, but she was
+seeing things more clearly than she had before, and one of the things
+she saw was that Willy Cameron was a one-woman man, and that she was not
+the woman.
+
+“But I love him so,” she would cry to herself.
+
+The ward moved in its orderly routine around her. The babies were
+carried out, bathed and brought back, their nuzzling mouths open for
+the waiting mother-breast. The nurses moved about, efficient, kindly,
+whimsically maternal. Women went out when their hour came, swollen
+of feature and figure, and were wheeled back later on, etherealized,
+purified as by fire, and later on were given their babies. Their faces
+were queer then, frightened and proud at first, and later watchful and
+tenderly brooding.
+
+For three days Edith's struggle went on. She had her strong hours and
+her weak ones. There were moments when, exhausted and yet exalted,
+she determined to give him up altogether, to live the fiction of the
+marriage until her mother's death, and then to give up the house and
+never see him again. If she gave him up she must never see him again. At
+those times she prayed not to love him any longer, and sometimes, for a
+little while after that, she would have peace. It was almost as though
+she did not love him.
+
+But there were the other times, when she lay there and pictured them
+married, and dreamed a dream of bringing him to her feet. He had offered
+a marriage that was not a marriage, but he was a man, and human. He did
+not want her now, but in the end he would want her; young as she was she
+knew already the strength of a woman's physical hold on a man.
+
+Late on the afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a swollen-eyed
+Ellen, dressed in black with black cotton gloves, and a black veil
+around her hat. Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged sense of duty
+of her class, and would as soon have gone to the burying ground in her
+kitchen apron as without black. She stood in the doorway of the ward,
+hesitating, and Edith saw her and knew.
+
+Her first thought was not of her mother at all. She saw only that the
+God who had saved her had made her decision for her, and that now she
+would never marry Willy Cameron. All this time He had let her dream and
+struggle. She felt very bitter.
+
+Ellen came and sat down beside her.
+
+“She's gone. Edith,” she said; “we didn't tell you before, but you have
+to know sometime. We buried her this afternoon.”
+
+Suddenly Edith forgot Willy Cameron, and God, and Dan, and the years
+ahead. She was a little girl again, and her mother was saying:
+
+“Brush your teeth and say your prayers, Edie. And tomorrow's Saturday.
+So you don't need to get up until you're good and ready.”
+
+She lay there. She saw her mother growing older and more frail, the
+house more untidy, and her mother's bright spirit fading to the drab of
+her surroundings. She saw herself, slipping in late at night, listening
+always for that uneasy querulous voice. And then she saw those recent
+months, when her mother had bloomed with happiness; she saw her
+struggling with her beloved desserts, cheerfully unconscious of any
+failure in them; she saw her, living like a lady, as she had said, with
+every anxiety kept from her. There had been times when her thin face had
+been almost illuminated with her new content and satisfaction.
+
+Suddenly grief and remorse overwhelmed her.
+
+“Mother!” she said, huskily. And lay there, crying quietly, with Ellen
+holding her hand. All that was hard and rebellious in Edith Boyd was
+swept away in that rush of grief, and in its place there came a new
+courage and resolution. She would meet the future alone, meet it and
+overcome it. But not alone, either; there was always--
+
+It was a Sunday afternoon, and the nurse had picked up the worn ward
+Bible and was reading from it, aloud. In their rocking chairs in a
+semi-circle around her were the women, some with sleeping babies in
+their arms, others with tense, expectant faces.
+
+“Let not your heart be troubled,” read the nurse, in a grave young
+voice. “Ye believe in God. Believe also in Me. In my Father's house--”
+
+There was always God.
+
+Edith Boyd saw her mother in the Father's house, pottering about some
+small celestial duty, and eagerly seeking and receiving approval. She
+saw her, in some celestial rocking chair, her tired hands folded, slowly
+rocking and resting. And perhaps, as she sat there, she held Edith's
+child on her knee, like the mothers in the group around the nurse. Held
+it and understood at last.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+It was at this time that Doyle showed his hand, with his customary
+fearlessness. He made a series of incendiary speeches, the general theme
+being that the hour was close at hand for putting the fear of God into
+the exploiting classes for all time to come. His impassioned oratory,
+coming at the psychological moment, when the long strike had brought its
+train of debt and evictions, made a profound impression. Had he asked
+for a general strike vote then, he would have secured it.
+
+As it was, it was some time before all the unions had voted for it. And
+the day was not set. Doyle was holding off, and for a reason. Day by
+day he saw a growth of the theory of Bolshevism among the so-called
+intellectual groups of the country. Almost every university had its
+radicals, men who saw emerging from Russia the beginning of a new earth.
+Every class now had its Bolshevists. They found a ready market for their
+propaganda, intelligent and insidious as it was, among a certain liberal
+element of the nation, disgruntled with the autocracy imposed upon them
+by the war.
+
+The reaction from that autocracy was a swinging to the other extreme,
+and, as if to work into the hands of the revolutionary party, living
+costs remained at the maximum. The cry of the revolutionists, to all
+enough and to none too much, found a response not only in the anxious
+minds of honest workmen, but among an underpaid intelligentsia. Neither
+political party offered any relief; the old lines no longer held, and
+new lines of cleavage had come. Progressive Republicans and Democrats
+had united against reactionary members of both parties. There were no
+great leaders, no men of the hour.
+
+The old vicious cycle of empires threatened to repeat itself, the old
+story of the many led by the few. Always it had come, autocracy, the too
+great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that power by the
+angry mob. Out of that anarchy the gradual restoration of order by
+the people themselves, into democracy. And then in time again, by that
+steady gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who
+emerged from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was
+autocracy again, and again the vicious circle.
+
+But such movements had always been, in the last analysis, the work of
+the few. It had always been the militant minority which ruled. Always
+the great mass of the people had submitted. They had fought, one way
+or the other when the time came, but without any deep conviction behind
+them. They wanted peace, the right to labor. They warred, to find peace.
+Small concern was it, to the peasant plowing his field, whether one man
+ruled over him or a dozen. He wanted neither place nor power.
+
+It came to this, then, Willy Cameron argued to himself. This new world
+conflict was a struggle between the contented and the discontented. In
+Europe, discontent might conquer, but in America, never. There were too
+many who owned a field or had the chance to labor. There were too many
+ways legitimately to aspire. Those who wanted something for nothing were
+but a handful to those who wanted to give that they might receive.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+Three days before the election, Willy Cameron received a note from Lily,
+sent by hand.
+
+“Father wants to see you to-night,” she wrote, “and mother suggests
+that as you are busy, you try to come to dinner. We are dining alone. Do
+come, Willy. I think it is most important.”
+
+He took the letter home with him and placed it in a locked drawer of
+his desk, along with a hard and shrunken doughnut, tied with a bow of
+Christmas ribbon, which had once helped to adorn the Christmas tree they
+had trimmed together. There were other things in the drawer; a postcard
+photograph, rather blurred, of Lily in the doorway of her little hut,
+smiling; and the cigar box which had been her cash register at the camp.
+
+He stood for some time looking down at the post card; it did not seem
+possible that in the few months since those wonderful days, life could
+have been so cruel to them both. Lily married, and he himself--
+
+Ellen came up when he was tying his tie. She stood behind him, watching
+him in the mirror.
+
+“I don't know what you've done to your hair, Willy,” she said; “it
+certainly looks queer.”
+
+“It usually looks queer, so why worry, heart of my heart?” But he turned
+and put an arm around her shoulders. “What would the world be without
+women like you, Ellen?” he said gravely.
+
+“I haven't done anything but my duty,” Ellen said, in her prim voice.
+“Listen, Willy. I saw Edith again to-day, and she told me to do
+something.”
+
+“To go home and take a rest? That's what you need.”
+
+“No. She wants me to tear up that marriage license.”
+
+He said nothing for a moment. “I'll have to see her first.”
+
+“She said it wouldn't be any good, Willy. She's made up her mind.” She
+watched him anxiously. “You're not going to be foolish, are you? She
+says there's no need now, and she's right.”
+
+“Somebody will have to look after her.”
+
+“Dan can do that. He's changed, since she went.” Ellen glanced toward
+Mrs. Boyd's empty room. “You've done enough, Willy. You've seen
+them through, all of them. I--isn't it time you began to think about
+yourself?”
+
+He was putting on his coat, and she picked a bit of thread from it, with
+nervous fingers.
+
+“Where are you going to-night, Willy?”
+
+“To the Cardews. Mr. Cardew has sent for me.”
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+“Willy, I want to tell you something. The Cardews won't let that
+marriage stand, and you know it. I think she cares for you. Don't look
+at me like that. I do.”
+
+“That's because you are fond of me,” he said, smiling down at her.
+“I'm not the sort of man girls care about, Ellen. Let's face that. The
+General Manager said when he planned me, 'Here's going to be a fellow
+who is to have everything in the world, health, intelligence, wit and
+the beauty of an Adonis, but he has to lack something, so we'll make it
+that'.”
+
+But Ellen, glancing up swiftly, saw that although his tone was light,
+there was pain in his eyes.
+
+He reflected on Edith's decision as he walked through the park toward
+the Cardew house. It had not surprised him, and yet he knew it had cost
+her an effort. How great an effort, man-like, he would never understand,
+but something of what she had gone through he realized. He wondered
+vaguely whether, had there never been a Lily Cardew in his life, he
+could ever have cared for Edith. Perhaps. Not the Edith of the early
+days, that was certain. But this new Edith, with her gentleness and
+meekness, her clear, suffering eyes, her strange new humility.
+
+She had sent him a message of warning about Akers, and from it he had
+reconstructed much of the events of the night she had taken sick.
+
+“Tell him to watch Louis Akers,” she had said. “I don't know how near
+Willy was to trouble the other night, Ellen, but they're going to try to
+get him.”
+
+Ellen had repeated the message, watching him narrowly, but he had only
+laughed.
+
+“Who are they?” she had persisted.
+
+“I'll tell you all about it some day,” he had said. But he had told Dan
+the whole story, and, although he did not know it, Dan had from that
+time on been his self-constituted bodyguard. During his campaign
+speeches Dan was always near, his right hand on a revolver in his coat
+pocket, and for hours at a time he stood outside the pharmacy, favoring
+every seeker for drugs or soap or perfume with a scowling inspection.
+When he could not do it, he enlisted Joe Wilkinson in the evenings, and
+sometimes the two of them, armed, policed the meeting halls.
+
+As a matter of fact, Joe Wilkinson was following him that night. On
+his way to the Cardews Willy Cameron, suddenly remembering the uncanny
+ability of Jinx to escape and trail him, remaining meanwhile at a safe
+distance in the rear, turned suddenly and saw Joe, walking sturdily
+along in rubber-soled shoes, and obsessed with his high calling of
+personal detective.
+
+Joe, discovered, grinned sheepishly.
+
+“Thought that looked like your back,” he said. “Nice evening for a walk,
+isn't it?”
+
+“Let me look at you, Joe,” said Willy Cameron. “You look strange to me.
+Ah, now I have it. You look like a comet without a tail. Where's the
+family?”
+
+“Making taffy. How--is Edith?”
+
+“Doing nicely.” He avoided the boy's eyes.
+
+“I guess I'd better tell you. Dan's told me about her. I--” Joe
+hesitated. Then: “She never seemed like that sort of a girl,” he
+finished, bitterly.
+
+“She isn't that sort of girl, Joe.”
+
+“She did it. How could a fellow know she wouldn't do it again?”
+
+“She has had a pretty sad sort of lesson.”
+
+Joe, his real business forgotten, walked on with eyes down and shoulders
+drooping.
+
+“I might as well finish with it,” he said, “now I've started. I've
+always been crazy about her. Of course now--I haven't slept for two
+nights.”
+
+“I think it's rather like this, Joe,” Willy Cameron said, after a pause.
+“We are not one person, really. We are all two or three people, and
+all different. We are bad and good, depending on which of us is the
+strongest at the time, and now and then we pay so much for the bad we
+do that we bury that part. That's what has happened to Edith. Unless, of
+course,” he added, “we go on convincing her that she is still the thing
+she doesn't want to be.”
+
+“I'd like to kill the man,” Joe said. But after a little, as they neared
+the edge of the park, he looked up.
+
+“You mean, go on as if nothing had happened?”
+
+“Precisely,” said Willy Cameron, “as though nothing had happened.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+The atmosphere of the Cardew house was subtly changed and very friendly.
+Willy Cameron found himself received as an old friend, with no tendency
+to forget the service he had rendered, or that, in their darkest hour,
+he had been one of them.
+
+To his surprise Pink Denslow was there, and he saw at once that Pink
+had been telling them of the night at the farm house. Pink was himself
+again, save for a small shaved place at the back of his head, covered
+with plaster.
+
+“I've told them, Cameron,” he said. “If I could only tell it generally
+I'd be the most popular man in the city, at dinners.”
+
+“Pair of young fools,” old Anthony muttered, with his sardonic smile.
+But in his hand-clasp, as in Howard's, there was warmth and a sort of
+envy, envy of youth and the adventurous spirit of youth.
+
+Lily was very quiet. The story had meant more to her than to the others.
+She had more nearly understood Pink's reference to the sealed envelope
+Willy Cameron had left, and the help sent by Edith Boyd. She connected
+that with Louis Akers, and from that to Akers' threat against Cameron
+was only a step. She was frightened and somewhat resentful, that this
+other girl should have saved him from a revenge that she knew was
+directed at herself. That she, who had brought this thing about, had sat
+quietly at home while another woman, a woman who loved him, had saved
+him.
+
+She was puzzled at her own state of mind.
+
+Dinner was almost gay. Perhaps the gayety was somewhat forced, with Pink
+keeping his eyes from Lily's face, and Howard Cardew relapsing now
+and then into abstracted silence. Because of the men who served, the
+conversation was carefully general. It was only in the library later,
+the men gathered together over their cigars, that the real reason for
+Willy Cameron's summons was disclosed.
+
+Howard Cardew was about to withdraw from the contest. “I'm late in
+coming to this decision,” he said. “Perhaps too late. But after a
+careful canvas of the situation, I find you are right, Cameron. Unless
+I withdraw, Akers”--he found a difficulty in speaking the name--“will be
+elected. At least it looks that way.”
+
+“And if he is,” old Anthony put in, “he'll turn all the devils of hell
+loose on us.”
+
+It was late; very late. The Cardews stood ready to flood the papers with
+announcements of Howard's withdrawal, and urging his supporters to vote
+for Hendricks, but the time was short. Howard had asked his campaign
+managers to meet there that night, and also Hendricks and one or two of
+his men, but personally he felt doubtful.
+
+And, as it happened, the meeting developed more enthusiasm than
+optimism. Cardew's withdrawal would be made the most of by the
+opposition. They would play it up as the end of the old regime, the
+beginning of new and better things.
+
+Before midnight the conference broke up, to catch the morning editions.
+Willy Cameron, detained behind the others, saw Lily in the drawing-room
+alone as he passed the door, and hesitated.
+
+“I have been waiting for you, Willy,” she said.
+
+But when he went in she seemed to have nothing to say. She sat in a
+low chair, in a soft dark dress which emphasized her paleness. To Willy
+Cameron she had never seemed more beautiful, or more remote.
+
+“Do you remember how you used to whistle 'The Long, Long Trail,' Willy?”
+ she said at last. “All evening I have been sitting here thinking what a
+long trail we have both traveled since then.”
+
+“A long, hard trail,” he assented.
+
+“Only you have gone up, Willy. And I have gone down, into the valley.
+I wish”--she smiled faintly--“I wish you would look down from your peak
+now and then. You never come to see me.”
+
+“I didn't know you wanted me,” he said bluntly.
+
+“Why shouldn't I want to see you?”
+
+“I couldn't help reminding you of things.”
+
+“But I never forget them, anyhow. Sometimes I almost go mad,
+remembering. It isn't quite as selfish as it sounds. I've hurt them all
+so. Willy, do you mind telling me about the girl who opened that letter
+and sent you help?”
+
+“About Edith Boyd? I'd like to tell you, Lily. Her mother is dead, and
+she lost her child. She is in the Memorial Hospital.”
+
+“Then she has no one but you?”
+
+“She has a brother.”
+
+“Tell me about her sending help that night. She really saved your life,
+didn't she?”
+
+While he was telling her she sat staring straight ahead, her fingers
+interlaced in her lap. She was telling herself that all this could
+not possibly matter to her, that she had cut herself off, finally and
+forever, from the man before her; that she did not even deserve his
+friendship.
+
+Quite suddenly she knew that she did not want his friendship. She wanted
+to see again in his face the look that had been there the night he had
+told her, very simply, that he loved her. And it would never be there;
+it was not there now. She had killed his love. All the light in his face
+was for some one else, another girl, a girl more unfortunate but less
+wicked than herself.
+
+When he stopped she was silent. Then:
+
+“I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not intend
+to tell?”
+
+“That I didn't intend to tell? I have made no reservations, Lily.”
+
+“Are you sure? Or don't you realize it yourself?”
+
+“Realize what?” He was greatly puzzled.
+
+“I think, Willy,” she said, quietly, “that you care a great deal more
+for Edith Boyd than you think you do.”
+
+He looked at her in stupefaction. How could she say that? How could she
+fail to know better than that? And he did not see the hurt behind her
+careful smile.
+
+“You are wrong about that. I--” He made a little gesture of despair. He
+could not tell her now that he loved her. That was all over.
+
+“She is in love with you.”
+
+He felt absurd and helpless. He could not deny that, yet how could she
+sit there, cool and faintly smiling, and not know that as she sat there
+so she sat enshrined in his heart. She was his saint, to kneel and pray
+to; and she was his woman, the one woman of his life. More woman than
+saint, he knew, and even for that he loved her. But he did not know the
+barbarous cruelty of the loving woman.
+
+“I don't know what to say to you, Lily,” he said, at last. “She--it is
+possible that she thinks she cares, but under the circumstances--”
+
+“Ellen told Mademoiselle you were going to marry her. That's true, isn't
+it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You always said that marriage without love was wicked, Willy.”
+
+“Her child had a right to a name. And there were other things. I can't
+very well explain them to you. Her mother was ill. Can't you understand,
+Lily? I don't want to throw any heroics.” In his excitement he had
+lapsed into boyish vernacular. “Here was a plain problem, and a simple
+way to solve it. But it is off now, anyhow; things cleared up without
+that.”
+
+She got up and held out her hand.
+
+“It was like you to try to save her,” she said.
+
+“Does this mean I am to go?”
+
+“I am very tired, Willy.”
+
+He had a mad impulse to take her in his arms, and holding her close to
+rest her there. She looked so tired. For fear he might do it he held his
+arms rigidly at his sides.
+
+“You haven't asked me about him,” she said unexpectedly.
+
+“I thought you would not care to talk about him. That's over and done,
+Lily. I want to forget about it, myself.”
+
+She looked up at him, and had he had Louis Akers' intuitive knowledge of
+women he would have understood then.
+
+“I am never going back to him, Willy. You know that, don't you?”
+
+“I hoped it, of course.”
+
+“I know now that I never loved him.”
+
+But the hurt of her marriage was still too fresh in him for speech. He
+could not discuss Louis Akers with her.
+
+“No,” he said, after a moment, “I don't think you ever did. I'll come in
+some evening, if I may, Lily. I must not keep you up now.”
+
+How old he looked, for him! How far removed from those busy, cheerful
+days at the camp! And there were new lines of repression in his face;
+from the nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Above his ears his hair
+showed a faint cast of gray.
+
+“You have been having rather a hard time, Willy, haven't you'?” she
+said, suddenly.
+
+“I have been busy, of course.”
+
+“And worried?”
+
+“Sometimes. But things are clearing up now.”
+
+She was studying him with the newly opened eyes of love. What was it he
+showed that the other men she knew lacked? Sensitiveness? Kindness? But
+her father was both sensitive and kind. So was Pink, in less degree. In
+the end she answered her own question, and aloud.
+
+“I think it is patience,” she said. And to his unspoken question: “You
+are very patient, aren't you?”
+
+“I never thought about it. For heaven's sake don't turn my mind in on
+myself, Lily. I'll be running around in circles like a pup chasing his
+tail.”
+
+He made a movement to leave, but she seemed oddly reluctant to let him
+go.
+
+“Do you know that father says you have more influence than any other man
+in the city?”
+
+“That's more kind than truthful.”
+
+“And--I think he and grandfather are planning to try to get you, when
+the mills reopen. Father suggested it, but grandfather says you'd have
+the presidency of the company in six months, and he'd be sharpening your
+lead pencils.”
+
+Suddenly Willy Cameron laughed, and the tension was broken.
+
+“If he did it with his tongue they'd be pretty sharp,” he said.
+
+For just a moment, before he left, they were back to where they had been
+months ago, enjoying together their small jokes and their small mishaps.
+The present fell away, with its hovering tragedy, and they were boy and
+girl together. Exaltation and sacrifice were a part of their love, as
+of all real and lasting passion, but there was always between them also
+that soundest bond of all, liking and comradeship.
+
+“I love her. I like her. I adore her,” was the cry in Willy Cameron's
+heart when he started home that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+Elinor Doyle was up and about her room. She walked slowly and with
+difficulty, using crutches, and she spent most of the time at her
+window, watching and waiting. From Lily there came, at frequent
+intervals, notes, flowers and small delicacies. The flowers and food
+Olga brought to her, but the notes she never saw. She knew they came.
+She could see the car stop at the curb, and the chauffeur, his shoulders
+squared and his face watchful, carrying a white envelope up the walk,
+but there it ended.
+
+She felt more helpless than ever. The doctor came less often, but the
+vigilance was never relaxed, and she had, too, less and less hope of
+being able to give any warning. Doyle was seldom at home, and when he
+was he had ceased to give her his taunting information. She was quite
+sure now of his relations with the Russian girl, and her uncertainty
+as to her course was gone. She was no longer his wife. He held another
+woman in his rare embraces, a traitor like himself. It was sordid. He
+was sordid.
+
+Woslosky had developed blood poisoning, and was at the point of death,
+with a stolid policeman on guard at his bedside. She knew that from the
+newspapers she occasionally saw. And she connected Doyle unerringly with
+the tragedy at the farm behind Friendship. She recognized, too, since
+that failure, a change in his manner to her. She saw that he now both
+hated her and feared her, and that she had become only a burden and
+a menace to him. He might decide to do away with her, to kill her.
+He would not do it himself; he never did his own dirty work, but the
+Russian girl--Olga was in love with Jim Doyle. Elinor knew that, as she
+knew many things, by a sort of intuition. She watched them in the room
+together, and she knew that to Doyle the girl was an incident, the
+vehicle of his occasional passion, a strumpet and a tool. He did not
+even like her; she saw him looking at her sometimes with a sort of
+amused contempt. But Olga's somber eyes followed him as he moved, lit
+with passion and sometimes with anger, but always they followed him.
+
+She was afraid of Olga. She did not care particularly about death, but
+it must not come before she had learned enough to be able to send out a
+warning. She thought if it came it might be by poison in the food that
+was sent up, but she had to eat to live. She took to eating only
+one thing on her tray, and she thought she detected in the girl an
+understanding and a veiled derision.
+
+By Doyle's increasing sullenness she knew things were not going well
+with him, and she found a certain courage in that, but she knew him
+too well to believe that he would give up easily. And she drew certain
+deductions from the newspapers she studied so tirelessly. She saw the
+announcement of the unusual number of hunting licenses issued, for one
+thing, and she knew the cover that such licenses furnished armed men
+patrolling the country. The state permitted the sale of fire-arms
+without restriction. Other states did the same, or demanded only the
+formality of a signature, never verified.
+
+Would they never wake to the situation?
+
+She watched the election closely. She knew that if Akers were elected
+the general strike and the chaos to follow would be held back until
+he had taken office and made the necessary changes in the city
+administration, but that if he went down to defeat the Council would
+turn loose its impatient hordes at once.
+
+She waited for election day with burning anxiety. When it came it so
+happened that she was left alone all day in the house. Early in the
+morning Olga brought her a tray and told her she was going out. She was
+changed, the Russian; she had dropped the mask of sodden servility and
+stood before her, erect, cunningly intelligent and oddly powerful.
+
+“I am going to be away all day, Mrs. Doyle,” she said, in her excellent
+English. “I have work to do.”
+
+“Work?” said Elinor. “Isn't there work to do here?”
+
+“I am not a house-worker. I came to help Mr. Doyle. To-day I shall make
+speeches.”
+
+Elinor was playing the game carefully. “But--can you make speeches?” she
+asked.
+
+“Me? That is my work, here, in Russia, everywhere. In Russia it is the
+women who speak, the men who do what the women tell them to do. Here
+some day it will be the same.”
+
+Always afterwards Elinor remembered the five minutes that followed, for
+Olga, standing before her, suddenly burst into impassioned oratory.
+She cited the wrongs of the poor under the old regime. She painted in
+glowing colors the new. She was excited, hectic, powerful. Elinor in
+her chair, an aristocrat to the finger-tips, was frightened, interested,
+thrilled.
+
+Long after Olga had gone she sat there, wondering at the real
+conviction, the intensity of passion, of hate and of revenge that
+actuated this newest tool of Doyle's. Doyle and his associates might be
+actuated by self-interest, but the real danger in the movement lay not
+with the Doyles of the world, but with these fanatic liberators. They
+preached to the poor a new religion, not of creed or of Church, but
+of freedom. Freedom without laws of God or of man, freedom of love, of
+lust, of time, of all responsibility. And the poor, weighted with laws
+and cares, longed to throw off their burdens.
+
+Perhaps it was not the doctrine itself that was wrong. It was its
+imposition by force on a world not yet ready for it that was wrong;
+its imposition by violence. It might come, but not this way. Not, God
+preventing, this way.
+
+There was a polling place across the street, in the basement of a school
+house. The vote was heavy and all day men lounged on the pavements,
+smoking and talking. Once she saw Olga in the crowd, and later on Louis
+Akers drove up in an open automobile, handsome, apparently confident,
+and greeted with cheers. But Elinor, knowing him well, gained nothing
+from his face.
+
+Late that night she heard Doyle come in and move about the lower floor.
+She knew every emphasis of his walk, and when in the room underneath she
+heard him settle down to steady, deliberate pacing, she knew that he was
+facing some new situation, and, after his custom, thinking it out alone.
+
+At midnight he came up the stairs and unlocked her door. He entered,
+closing the door behind him, and stood looking at her. His face was so
+strange that she wondered if he had decided to do away with her.
+
+“To-morrow,” he said, in an inflectionless voice, “you will be moved by
+automobile to a farm I have selected in the country. You will take only
+such small luggage as the car can carry.”
+
+“Is Olga going with me?”
+
+“No. Olga is needed here.”
+
+“I suppose I am to understand from this that Louis has been defeated and
+there is no longer any reason for delay in your plans.”
+
+“You can understand what you like.”
+
+“Am I to know where I am going?”
+
+“You will find that out when you get there. I will tell you this: It is
+a lonely place, without a telephone. You'll be cut off from your family,
+I am afraid.”
+
+She gazed at him. It seemed unbelievable to her that she had once lain
+in this man's arms.
+
+“Why don't you kill me, Jim? I know you've thought about it.”
+
+“Yes, I've thought of it. But killing is a confession of fear, my dear.
+I am not afraid of you.”
+
+“I think you are. You are afraid now to tell me when you are going to
+try to put this wild plan into execution.”
+
+He smiled at her with mocking eyes.
+
+“Yes,” he agreed again. “I am afraid. You have a sort of diabolical
+ingenuity, not intelligence so much as cunning. But because I always do
+the thing I'm afraid to do, I'll tell you. Of course, if you succeed in
+passing it on--” He shrugged his shoulders. “Very well, then. With your
+usual logic of deduction, you have guessed correctly. Louis Akers has
+been defeated. Your family--and how strangely you are a Cardew!--lost
+its courage at the last moment, and a gentleman named Hendricks is now
+setting up imitation beer and cheap cigars to his friends.”
+
+Behind his mocking voice she knew the real fury of the man, kept
+carefully in control by his iron will.
+
+“As you have also correctly surmised,” he went on, “there is now nothing
+to be gained by any delay. A very few days, three or four, and--” His
+voice grew hard and terrible--“the first stone in the foundation of
+this capitalistic government will go. Inevitable law, inevitable
+retribution--” His voice trailed off. He turned like a man asleep and
+went toward the door. There he stopped and faced her.
+
+“I've told you,” he said darkly. “I am not afraid of you. You can no
+more stop this thing than you can stop living by ceasing to breathe. It
+has come.”
+
+She heard him in his room for some time after that, and she surmised
+from the way he moved, from closet to bed and back again, that he was
+packing a bag. At two o'clock she heard Olga coming in; the girl was
+singing in Russian, and Elinor had a sickening conviction that she had
+been drinking. She heard Doyle send her off to bed, his voice angry and
+disgusted, and resume his packing, and ten minutes later she heard a
+car draw up on the street, and knew that he was off, to begin the
+mobilization of his heterogeneous forces.
+
+Ever since she had been able to leave her bed Elinor had been
+formulating a plan of escape. Once the door had been left unlocked, but
+her clothing had been removed from the room, and then, too, she had
+not learned the thing she was waiting for. Now she had clothing, a dark
+dressing gown and slippers, and she had the information. But the door
+was securely locked.
+
+She had often thought of the window, In the day time it frightened her
+to look down, although it fascinated her, too. But at night it seemed
+much simpler. The void below was concealed in the darkness, a soft
+darkness that hid the hard, inhospitable earth. A darkness one could
+fall into and onto.
+
+She was not a brave woman. She had moral rather than physical courage.
+It was easier for her to face Doyle in a black mood than the gulf below
+the window-sill, but she knew now that she must get away, if she were to
+go at all. She got out of bed, and using her crutches carefully moved
+to the sill, trying to accustom herself to the thought of going over the
+edge. The plaster cast on her leg was a real handicap. She must get it
+over first. How heavy it was, and unwieldy!
+
+She found her scissors, and, stripping the bed, sat down to cut and tear
+the bedding into strips. Prisoners escaped that way; she had read about
+such things. But the knots took up an amazing amount of length. It was
+four o'clock in the morning when she had a serviceable rope, and she
+knew it was too short. In the end she tore down the window curtains and
+added them, working desperately against time.
+
+She began to suspect, too, that Olga was not sleeping. She smelled
+faintly the odor of the long Russian cigarettes the girl smoked. She put
+out her light and worked in the darkness, a strange figure of adventure,
+this middle-aged woman with her smooth hair and lined face, sitting in
+her cambric nightgown with her crutches on the floor beside her.
+
+She secured the end of the rope to the foot of her metal bed, pushing
+the bed painfully and cautiously, inch by inch, to the window. And in
+so doing she knocked over the call-bell on the stand, and almost
+immediately she heard Olga moving about.
+
+The girl was coming unsteadily toward the door. If she opened it--
+
+“I don't want anything, Olga,” she called, “I knocked the bell over
+accidentally.”
+
+Olga hesitated, muttered, moved away again. Elinor was covered with a
+cold sweat.
+
+She began to think of the window as a refuge. Surely nothing outside
+could be so terrible as this house itself. The black aperture seemed
+friendly; it beckoned to her with friendly hands.
+
+She dropped her crutches. They fell with two soft thuds on the earth
+below and it seemed to her that they were a long time in falling. She
+listened after that, but Olga made no sign. Then slowly and painfully
+she worked her injured leg over the sill, and sat there looking down and
+breathing with difficulty. Then she freed her dressing gown around her,
+and slid over the edge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+Election night found various groups in various places. In the back room
+of the Eagle Pharmacy was gathered once again the neighborhood forum, a
+wildly excited forum, which ever and anon pounded Mr. Hendricks on the
+back, and drank round after round of soda water and pop. Doctor Smalley,
+coming in rather late found them all there, calling Mr. Hendricks “Mr.
+Mayor” or “Your Honor,” reciting election anecdotes, and prophesying the
+end of the Reds. Only Willy Cameron, sitting on a table near the window,
+was silent.
+
+Mr. Hendricks, called upon for a speech, rose with his soda water glass
+in his hand.
+
+“I've got a toast for you, boys,” he said. “You've been talking all
+evening about my winning this election. Well, I've been elected, but I
+didn't win it. It was the plain people of this town who elected me, and
+they did it because my young friend on the table yonder told them to.”
+ He raised his glass. “Cameron!” he said.
+
+“Cameron! Cameron!” shouted the crowd. “Speech! Cameron!”
+
+But Willy shook his head.
+
+“I haven't any voice left,” he said, “and you've heard me say all I know
+a dozen times. The plain truth is that Mr. Hendricks got the election
+because he was the best man, and enough people knew it. That's all.”
+
+To Mr. Hendricks the night was one of splendid solemnity. He felt at
+once very strong and very weak, very proud and very humble. He would do
+his best, and if honesty meant anything, the people would have it, but
+he knew that honesty was not enough. The city needed a strong man; he
+hoped that the Good Man who made cities as He made men, both evil and
+good, would lend him a hand with things. As prayer in his mind was
+indissolubly connected with church, he made up his mind to go to church
+the next Sunday and get matters straightened out.
+
+At the same time another group was meeting at the Benedict.
+
+Louis Akers had gone home early. By five o'clock he knew that the
+chances were against him, but he felt a real lethargy as to the outcome.
+He had fought, and fought hard, but it was only the surface mind of him
+that struggled. Only the surface mind of him hated, and had ambitions,
+dreamed revenge. Underneath that surface mind was a sore that ate like a
+cancer, and that sore was his desertion by Lily Cardew. For once in his
+life he suffered, who had always inflicted pain.
+
+At six o'clock Doyle had called him on the telephone and told him that
+Woslosky was dead, but the death of the Pole had been discounted in
+advance, and already his place had been filled by a Russian agent, who
+had taken the first syllable of his name and called himself Ross. Louis
+Akers heard the news apathetically, and went back to his chair again.
+
+By eight o'clock he knew that he had lost the election, but that, too,
+seemed relatively unimportant. He was not thinking coherently, but
+certain vague ideas floated through his mind. There was a law of
+compensation in the universe: it was all rot to believe that one was
+paid or punished in the hereafter for what one did. Hell was real, but
+it was on earth and its place was in a man's mind. He couldn't get away
+from it, because each man carried his own hell around with him. It was
+all stored up there; nothing he had done was left out, and the more he
+put into it the more he got out, when the time came.
+
+This was his time.
+
+Ross and Doyle, with one or two others, found him there at nine o'clock,
+an untasted meal on the table, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes on
+the hearth. In the conference that followed he took but little part. The
+Russian urged immediate action, and Doyle by a saturnine silence tacitly
+agreed with him. But Louis only half heard them. His mind was busy with
+that matter of hell. Only once he looked up. Ross was making use of the
+phrase: “Militant minority.”
+
+“Militant minority!” he said scornfully, “you overwork that idea, Ross.
+What we've got here now is a militant majority, and that's what elected
+Hendricks. You're licked before you begin. And my advice is, don't
+begin.”
+
+But they laughed at him.
+
+“You act like a whipped dog,” Doyle said, “crawling under the doorstep
+for fear somebody else with a strap comes along.”
+
+“They're organized against us. We could have put it over six months ago.
+Not now.”
+
+“Then you'd better get out,” Doyle said, shortly.
+
+“I'm thinking of it.”
+
+But Doyle had no real fear of him. He was sulky. Well, let him sulk.
+
+Akers relapsed into silence. His interest in the conspiracy had always
+been purely self-interest; he had never had Woslosky's passion, or
+Doyle's cold fanaticism. They had carried him off his feet with their
+promises, but how much were they worth? They had failed to elect him.
+Every bit of brains, cunning and resource in their organization had been
+behind him, and they had failed.
+
+This matter of hell, now? Suppose one put by something on the other
+account? Suppose one turned square? Wouldn't that earn something?
+Suppose that one went to the Cardews and put all his cards on the table,
+asking nothing in return? Suppose one gave up the by-paths of life,
+and love in a hedgerow, and did the other thing? Wouldn't that earn
+something?
+
+He roused himself and took a perfunctory part in the conversation, but
+his mind obstinately returned to itself. He knew every rendezvous of the
+Red element in the country; he knew where their literature was printed;
+he knew the storehouses of arms and ammunition, and the plans for
+carrying on the city government by the strikers after the reign of
+terrorization which was to subdue the citizens.
+
+Suppose he turned informer? Could he set a price, and that price Lily?
+But he discarded that. He was not selling now, he was earning. He would
+set himself right first, and--provided the government got the leaders
+before those leaders got him, as they would surely try to do--he would
+have earned something, surely.
+
+Lily had come to him once when he called. She might come again, when he
+had earned her.
+
+Doyle sat back in his chair and watched him. He saw that he had gone
+to pieces under defeat, and men did strange things at those times. With
+uncanny shrewdness he gauged Akers' reaction; his loss of confidence
+and, he surmised, his loyalty. He would follow his own interest now, and
+if he thought that it lay in turning informer, he might try it. But it
+would take courage.
+
+When the conference broke up Doyle was sure of where his man stood.
+He was not worried. They did not need Akers any longer. He had been a
+presentable tool, a lay figure to give the organization front, and they
+had over-rated him, at that. He had failed them. Doyle, watching him
+contemptuously, realized in him his own fallacious judgment, and hated
+Akers for proving him wrong.
+
+Outside the building Doyle drew the Russian aside, and spoke to him.
+Ross started, then grinned.
+
+“You're wrong,” he said. “He won't try it. But of course he may, and
+we'll see that he doesn't get away with it.”
+
+From that time on Louis Akers was under espionage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+DOCTOR Smalley was by way of achieving a practice. During his morning
+and evening office hours he had less and less time to read the papers
+and the current magazines in his little back office, or to compare the
+month's earnings, visit by visit, with the same month of the previous
+year.
+
+He took to making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather to
+the outrage of various head nurses, who did not like the staff to come
+a-visiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every
+bed corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed and combed and
+temperatured, and in the exact center of the bed.
+
+Interns were different. They were like husbands. They came and went,
+seeing things at their worst as well as at their best, but mostly at
+their worst. Like husbands, too, they developed a sort of philosophy as
+to the early morning, and would only make occasional remarks, such as:
+
+“Cyclone struck you this morning, or anything?”
+
+Doctor Smalley, being a bachelor, was entirely blind to the early
+morning deficiencies of his wards. Besides, he was young and had had a
+cold shower and two eggs and various other things, and he saw the
+world at eight A.M. as a good place. He would get into his little car,
+whistling, and driving through the market square he would sometimes
+stop and buy a bag of apples for the children's ward, or a bunch of
+fall flowers. Thus armed, it was impossible for the most austere of head
+nurses to hate him.
+
+“We're not straightened up yet, doctor,” they would say.
+
+“Looks all right to me,” he would reply cheerfully, and cast an eager
+eye over the ward. To him they were all his children, large and small,
+and if he did not exactly carry healing in his wings, having no wings,
+he brought them courage and a breath of fresh morning air, slightly
+tinged with bay rum, and the feeling that this was a new day. A new
+page, on which to write such wonderful things (in the order book) as:
+“Jennie may get up this afternoon.” Or: “Lizzie Smith, small piece of
+beef steak.”
+
+On the morning after the election Doctor Smalley rose unusually early,
+and did five minutes of dumb bells, breathing very deep before his
+window, having started the cold water in the tub first. At the end of
+that time he padded in his bare feet to the top of the stairs and called
+in a huge, deep-breathing voice:
+
+“Ten minutes.”
+
+These two cryptic words seeming to be perfectly understood below,
+followed the sound of a body plunging into water, a prolonged “Wow!”
+ from the bathroom, and noisy hurried splashing. Dressing was a rapid
+process, due to a method learned during college days, which consists
+of wearing as little as possible, and arranging it at night so that two
+thrusts (trousers and under-drawers), one enveloping gesture (shirt and
+under-shirt), and a gymnastic effort of standing first on one leg and
+then on the other (socks and shoes), made a fairly completed toilet.
+
+While putting on his collar and tie the doctor stood again by the
+window, and lustily called the garage across the narrow street.
+
+“Jim!” he yelled. “Annabelle breakfasted yet?”
+
+Annabelle was his shabby little car.
+
+Annabelle had breakfasted, on gasoline, oil and water. The doctor
+finished tying his tie, singing lustily, and went to the door. At the
+door he stopped singing, put on a carefully professional air, restrained
+an impulse to slide down the stair-rail, and descended with the
+dignity of a man with a growing practice and a possible patient in the
+waiting-room.
+
+At half-past seven he was on his way to the hospital. He stopped at the
+market and bought three dozen oranges out of a ten-dollar bill he had
+won on the election, and almost bought a live rabbit because it looked
+so dreary in its slatted box. He restrained himself, because his
+housekeeper had a weakness for stewed rabbit, and turned into Cardew
+Way. He passed the Doyle house slowly, inspecting it as he went, because
+he had a patient there, and because he had felt that there was something
+mysterious about the household, quite aside from the saturnine Doyle
+himself. He knew all about Doyle, of course; all, that is, that there
+was to know, but he was a newcomer to the city, and he did not know that
+Doyle's wife was a Cardew. Sometimes he had felt that he was under
+a sort of espionage all the time he was in the house. But that was
+ridiculous, wasn't it? Because they could not know that he was on the
+Vigilance Committee.
+
+There was something curious about one of the windows. He slowed
+Annabelle and gazed at it. That was strange; there was a sort of white
+rope hanging from Mrs. Doyle's window.
+
+He stopped Annabelle and stared. Then he drew up to the curb and got out
+of the car. He was rather uneasy when he opened the gate and started up
+the walk, but there was no movement of life in the house. At the foot of
+the steps he saw something, and almost stopped breathing. Behind a clump
+of winter-bare shrubbery was what looked like a dark huddle of clothing.
+
+It was incredible.
+
+He parted the branches and saw Elinor Doyle lying there, conscious and
+white with pain. Perhaps never in his life was Doctor Smalley to be so
+rewarded as with the look in her eyes when she saw him.
+
+“Why, Mrs. Doyle!” was all he could think to say.
+
+“I have broken my other leg, doctor,” she said, “the rope gave way.”
+
+“You come down that rope?”
+
+“I tried to. I was a prisoner. Don't take me back to the house, doctor.
+Don't take me back!”
+
+“Of course I'll not take you back,” he said, soothingly. “I'll carry you
+out to my car. It may hurt, but try to be quiet. Can you get your arms
+around my neck?”
+
+She managed that, and he raised her slowly, but the pain must have been
+frightful, for a moment later he felt her arms relax and knew that she
+had fainted. He got to the car somehow, kicked the oranges into the
+gutter, and placed her, collapsed, on the seat. It was only then that
+he dared to look behind him, but the house, like the street, was without
+signs of life. As he turned the next corner, however, he saw Doyle
+getting off a streetcar, and probably never before had Annabelle made
+such speed as she did for the next six blocks.
+
+Hours later Elinor Cardew wakened in a quiet room with gray walls, and
+with the sickening sweet odor of ether over everything. Instead of Olga
+a quiet nurse sat by her bed, and standing by a window, in low-voiced
+conversation, were two men. One she knew, the doctor. The other, a tall
+young man with a slight limp as he came toward her, she had never seen
+before. A friendly young man, thin, and grave of voice, who put a hand
+over hers and said:
+
+“You are not to worry about anything, Mrs. Doyle. You understand me,
+don't you? Everything is all right. I am going now to get your people.”
+
+“My husband?”
+
+“Your own people,” he said. “I have already telephoned to your brother.
+And the leg's fixed. Everything's as right as rain.”
+
+Elinor closed her eyes. She felt no pain and no curiosity. Only there
+was something she had to do, and do quickly. What was it? But she could
+not remember, because she felt very sleepy and relaxed, and as though
+everything was indeed as right as rain.
+
+It was evening when she looked up again, and the room was dark. The
+doctor had gone, and the grave young man was still in the room. There
+was another figure there, tall and straight, and at first she thought it
+was Jim Doyle.
+
+“Jim!” she said. And then: “You must go away, Jim. I warn you. I am
+going to tell all I know.”
+
+But the figure turned, and it was Howard Cardew, a tense and strained
+Howard Cardew, who loomed amazingly tall and angry, but not with her.
+
+“I'm sorry, Nellie dear,” he said, bending over her. “If we'd only
+known--can you talk now?”
+
+Her mind was suddenly very clear.
+
+“I must. There is very little time.”
+
+“I want to tell you something first, Nellie. I think we have located the
+Russian woman, but we haven't got Doyle.”
+
+Howard was not very subtle, but Willy Cameron saw her face and
+understood. It was strange beyond belief, he felt, this loyalty of women
+to their men, even after love had gone; this feeling that, having once
+lain in a man's arms, they have taken a vow of protection over that man.
+It was not so much that they were his as that he was theirs. Jim Doyle
+had made her a prisoner, had treated her brutally, was a traitor to her
+and to his country, but--he had been hers. She was glad that he had got
+away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+It was dark when Howard Cardew and Willy Cameron left the hospital.
+Elinor's information had been detailed and exact. Under cover of the
+general strike the radical element intended to take over the city.
+On the evening of the first day of the strike, armed groups from the
+revolutionary party would proceed first to the municipal light plant,
+and, having driven out any employees who remained at their posts,
+or such volunteers as had replaced them, would plunge the city into
+darkness.
+
+Elinor was convinced that following this would come various bomb
+outrages, perhaps a great number of them, but of this she had no
+detailed information. What she did know, however, was the dependence
+that Doyle and the other leaders were placing in the foreign element
+in the nearby mill towns and from one or two mining districts in the
+county.
+
+Around the city, in the mill towns, there were more than forty thousand
+foreign laborers. Subtract from that the loyal aliens, but add a certain
+percentage of the native-born element, members of seditious societies
+and followers of the red flag, and the Reds had a potential army of
+dangerous size.
+
+As an actual fighting force they were much less impressive. Only a small
+percentage, she knew and told them, were adequately armed. There were
+a few machine guns, and some long-range rifles, but by far the greater
+number had only revolvers. The remainder had extemporized weapons, bars
+of iron, pieces of pipe, farm implements, lances of wood tipped with
+iron and beaten out on home forges.
+
+They were a rabble, not an army, without organization and with few
+leaders. Their fighting was certain to be as individualistic as their
+doctrines. They had two elements in their favor only, numbers and
+surprise.
+
+To oppose them, if the worst came, there were perhaps five thousand
+armed men, including the city and county police, the state constabulary,
+and the citizens who had signed the cards of the Vigilance Committee.
+The local post of the American Legion stood ready for instant service,
+and a few national guard troops still remained in the vicinity. “What
+they expect,” she said, looking up from her pillows with tragic eyes,
+“is that the police and the troops will join them. You don't think they
+will, do you?”
+
+They reassured her, and after a time she slept again. When she wakened,
+at midnight, the room was empty save for a nurse reading under a night
+lamp behind a screen. Elinor was not in pain. She lay there, listening
+to the night sounds of the hospital, the watchman shuffling along the
+corridor in slippers, the closing of a window, the wail of a newborn
+infant far away.
+
+There was a shuffling of feet in the street below, the sound of many
+men, not marching but grimly walking, bent on some unknown errand. The
+nurse opened the window and looked out.
+
+“That's queer!” she said. “About thirty men, and not saying a word. They
+walk like soldiers, but they're not in uniform.”
+
+Elinor pondered that, but it was not for some days that she knew that
+Pink Denslow and a picked number of volunteers from the American Legion
+had that night, quite silently and unemotionally, broken into the
+printing office where Doyle and Akers had met Cusick, and had, not so
+silently but still unemotionally, destroyed the presses and about a ton
+of inflammatory pamphlets.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+There was a little city, and few men within it; And there came a great
+king against it, and besieged it, And built great bulwarks against
+it; Now there was found in it a Poor Wise Man, And he by his wisdom
+delivered the city.--Ecclesiastes IX:14, 15.
+
+The general strike occurred two days later, at mid-day. During the
+interval a joint committee representing the workers, the employers and
+the public had held a protracted sitting, but without result, and by
+one o'clock the city was in the throes of a complete tie-up. Laundry and
+delivery wagons were abandoned where they stood. Some of the street cars
+had been returned to the barns, but others stood in the street where the
+crews had deserted them.
+
+There was no disorder, however, and the city took its difficulties with
+a quiet patience and a certain sense of humor. Bulletins similar to the
+ones used in Seattle began to appear.
+
+“Strikers, the world is the workers' for the taking, and the workers are
+the vast majority in society. Your interests are paramount to those of a
+small, useless band of parasites who exploit you to their advantage. You
+have nothing to lose but your chains and you have a world to gain. The
+world for the workers.”
+
+There was one ray of light in the darkness, however. The municipal
+employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go
+dark that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange
+psychology of the mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and by
+three o'clock that afternoon the light plant and city water supply had
+been secured against attack by effectual policing. The power plant for
+the car lines was likewise protected, and at five o'clock a line of
+street cars, stalled on Amanda Street, began to show signs of life.
+
+The first car was boarded by a half dozen youngish men, unobtrusively
+ready for trouble, and headed by a tall youth who limped slightly and
+wore an extremely anxious expression. He went forward and commenced
+a series of experiments with levers and brake, in which process
+incidentally he liberated a quantity of sand onto the rails. A moment
+later the car lurched forward, and then stopped with a jerk.
+
+Willy Cameron looked behind him and grinned. The entire guard was piled
+in an ignoble mass on the floor.
+
+By six o'clock volunteer crews were running a number of cars, and had
+been subjected to nothing worse than abuse. Strikers lined the streets
+and watched them, but the grim faces of the guards kept them back. They
+jeered from the curbs, but except for the flinging of an occasional
+stone they made no inimical move.
+
+By eight o'clock it was clear that the tie-up would be only partial.
+Volunteers from all walks of life were in line at the temporary
+headquarters of the Vigilance Committee and were being detailed, for
+police duty, to bring in the trains with the morning milk, to move
+street cars and trucks. The water plant and the reservoirs were
+protected. Willy Cameron, abandoning his car after the homeward rush of
+the evening, found a line before the Committee Building which extended
+for blocks down the street.
+
+Troops had been sent for, but it took time to mobilize and move them.
+It would be morning before they arrived. And the governor, over the long
+distance wire to the mayor, was inclined to be querulous.
+
+“We'll send them, of course,” he said. “But if the strikers are keeping
+quiet--I don't know what the country's coming to. We're holding a
+conference here now. There's rioting breaking out all over the state.”
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+There was a conference held in the Mayor's office that night: Cameron
+and Cardew and one or two others of the Vigilance Committee, two agents
+of the government secret service, the captains of the companies of state
+troops and constabulary, the Chief of Police, the Mayor himself, and
+some representatives of the conservative element of organized labor.
+Quiet men, these last, uneasy and anxious, as ignorant as the others of
+which way the black cat, the symbol of sabotage and destruction, would
+jump. The majority of their men would stand for order, they declared,
+but there were some who would go over. They urged, to offset that
+reflection on their organization that the proletariat of the city might
+go over, too.
+
+But, by midnight, it seemed as though the situation was solving itself.
+In the segregated district there had been a small riot, and another
+along the river front, disturbances quickly ended by the police and
+the volunteer deputies. The city had not gone dark. The bombs had not
+exploded. Word came in that by back roads and devious paths the most
+rabid of the agitators were leaving town. And before two o'clock Howard
+Cardew and some of the others went home to bed.
+
+At three o'clock the Cardew doorbell rang, and Howard, not asleep,
+flung on his dressing gown and went out into the hall. Lily was in her
+doorway, intent and anxious.
+
+“Don't answer it, father,” she begged. “You don't know what it may be.”
+
+Howard smiled, but went back and got his revolver. The visitor was Willy
+Cameron.
+
+“I don't like to waken you,” he said, “but word has come in of
+suspicious movements at Baxter and Friendship, and one or two other
+places. It looks like concerted action of some sort.”
+
+“What sort of concerted action?”
+
+“They still have one card to play. The foreign element outside hasn't
+been heard from. It looks as though the fellows who left town to-night
+have been getting busy up the river.”
+
+“They wouldn't be such fools as to come to the city.”
+
+“They've been made a lot of promises. They may be out of hand, you
+know.”
+
+While Howard was hastily dressing, Willy Cameron waited below. He caught
+a glimpse of himself in the big mirror and looked away. His face was
+drawn and haggard, his eyes hollow and his collar a wilted string. He
+was dusty and shabby, too, and to Lily, coming down the staircase, he
+looked almost ill.
+
+Lily was in a soft negligee garment, her bare feet thrust into slippers,
+but she was too anxious to be self-conscious.
+
+“Willy,” she said, “there is trouble after all?”
+
+“Not in the city. Things are not so quiet up the river.”
+
+She placed a hand on his arm.
+
+“Are you and father going up the river?”
+
+He explained, after a momentary hesitation. “It may crystallize into
+something, or it may not,” he finished.
+
+“You think it will, don't you?”
+
+“It will be nothing more, at the worst, than rioting.”
+
+“But you may be hurt!”
+
+“I may have one chance to fight for my country,” he said, rather grimly.
+“Don't begrudge me that.” But he added: “I'll not be hurt. The thing
+will blow up as soon as it starts.”
+
+“You don't really believe that, do you?”
+
+“I know they'll never get into the city.”
+
+But as he moved away she called him back, more breathlessly than ever,
+and quite white.
+
+“I don't want you to go without knowing--Willy, do you remember once
+that you said you cared for me?”
+
+“I remember.” He stared straight ahead.
+
+“Are you--all over that?”
+
+“You know better than that, don't you?”
+
+“But I've done so many things,” she said, wistfully. “You ought to hate
+me.” And when he said nothing, for the simple reason that he could not
+speak: “I've ruined us both, haven't I?”
+
+Suddenly he caught up her hand and, bending over it, held it to his
+lips.
+
+“Always,” he said, huskily, “I love you, Lily. I shall always love you.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+Howard went back to the municipal building, driving furiously through
+the empty streets. The news was ominous. Small bodies of men, avoiding
+the highways, were focusing at different points in the open country.
+The state police had been fired at from ambush, and two of them had been
+killed. They had ridden into and dispersed various gatherings in the
+darkness, but only to have them re-form in other places. The enemy was
+still shadowy, elusive; it was apparently saving its ammunition. It
+did little shooting, but reports of the firing of farmhouses and of
+buildings in small, unprotected towns began to come in rapidly.
+
+In a short time the messages began to be more significant, indicating
+that the groups were coalescing and that a revolutionary army, with the
+city its objective, was coming down the river, evidently making for the
+bridge at Chester Street.
+
+“They've lighted a fire they can't put out,” was Howard's comment. His
+mouth was very dry and his face twitching, for he saw, behind the frail
+barrier of the Chester Street bridge, the quiet houses of the city, the
+sleeping children. He saw Grace and Lily, and Elinor. He was among the
+first to reach the river front.
+
+All through the dawn volunteers labored at the bridge head. Members
+of the Vigilance Committee, policemen and firemen, doctors, lawyers,
+clerks, shop-keepers, they looted the river wharves with willing,
+unskillful hands. They turned coal wagons on their sides, carried
+packing cases and boxes, and, under the direction of men who wore the
+Legion button, built skillfully and well. Willy Cameron toiled with
+the others. He lifted and pulled and struggled, and in the midst of
+his labor he had again that old dream of the city. The city was a vast
+number of units, and those units were homes. Behind each of those men
+there was, somewhere, in some quiet neighborhood, a home. It was for
+their homes they were fighting, for the right of children to play in
+peaceful streets, for the right to go back at night to the rest they had
+earned by honest labor, for the right of the hearth, of lamp-light and
+sunlight, of love, of happiness.
+
+Then, in the flare of a gasoline torch, he came face to face with Louis
+Akers. The two men confronted each other, silently, with hostility.
+Neither moved aside, but it was Akers who spoke first.
+
+“Always busy, Cameron,” he said. “What'd the world do without you,
+anyhow?”
+
+“Aren't you on the wrong side of this barricade?”
+
+“Smart as ever,” Akers observed, watching him intently. “As it happens,
+I'm here because I want to be, and because I can't get where I ought to
+be.”
+
+For a furious moment Willy Cameron thought he was referring to his wife,
+but there was something strange in Akers' tone.
+
+“I could be useful to you fellows,” he was saying, “but it seems you
+don't want help. I've been trying to see the Mayor all night.”
+
+“What do you want to see him about?”
+
+“I'll tell him that.”
+
+Willy Cameron hesitated.
+
+“I think it's a trick, Akers.”
+
+“All right. Then go to the devil!”
+
+He turned away sullenly, leaving Willy Cameron still undecided. It would
+be like the man as he knew him, this turning informer when he saw the
+strength of the defense, and Cameron had a flash of intuition, too, that
+Akers might see, in this new role, some possible chance to win back with
+Lily Cardew. He saw how the man's cheap soul might dramatize itself.
+
+“Akers!” he called.
+
+Akers stopped, but he did not turn.
+
+“I've got a car here. If you mean what you say, and it's straight, I'll
+take you.”
+
+“Where's the car?”
+
+On their way to it, threading in and out among the toiling crowd,
+Willy Cameron had a chance to observe the change in the other man, his
+drooping shoulders and the almost lassitude of his walk. He went ahead,
+charging the mass and going through it by sheer bulk and weight, his
+hands in his coat pockets, his soft hat pulled low over his face.
+Neither of them noticed that one of the former clerks of the Myers
+Housecleaning Company followed close behind, or that, holding to a tire,
+he rode on the rear of the Cardew automobile as it made its way into the
+center of the city.
+
+In the car Akers spoke only once.
+
+“Where is Howard Cardew?” he asked.
+
+“With the Mayor, probably. I left him there.”
+
+It seemed to him that Akers found the answer satisfactory. He sat back
+in the deep seat, and lighted a cigarette.
+
+The Municipal Building was under guard. Willy Cameron went up the steps
+and spoke to the sentry there. It was while his back was turned that the
+sharp crack of a revolver rang out, and he whirled, in time to see Louis
+Akers fall forward on his face and lie still.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+The shadowy groups through the countryside had commenced to coalesce.
+Groups of twenty became a rabble of five hundred. The five hundred grew,
+and joined other five hundreds. From Baxter alone over two thousand
+rioters, mostly foreigners, started out, and by daylight the main body
+of the enemy reached the outskirts of the city, a long, irregular line
+of laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly renewed at the rear
+until the procession covered miles of roadway. They were of all races
+and all types; individually they were, many of them, like boys playing
+truant from school, not quite certain of themselves, smiling and yet
+uneasy, not entirely wicked in intent. But they were shepherded by men
+with cunning eyes, men who knew well that a mob is greater than the
+sum of its parts, more wicked than the individuals who compose it, more
+cruel, more courageous.
+
+As it marched it laughed. It was like a lion at play, ready to leap at
+the first scratch that brought blood.
+
+Where the street car line met the Friendship Road the advance was met
+by the Chief of Police, on horseback and followed by a guard of mounted
+men, and ordered back. The van hesitated, but it was urged ahead,
+pushed on by the irresistible force behind it, and it came on no longer
+singing, but slowly, inevitably, sullenly protesting and muttering. Its
+good nature was gone.
+
+As the Chief turned his horse was shot under him. He took another horse
+from one of his guard, and they retired, moving slowly and with drawn
+revolvers. There was no further shooting at that time, nothing but
+the irresistible advance. The police could no more have held the armed
+rabble than they could have held the invading hordes in Belgium. At the
+end of the street the Chief stopped and looked back. They had passed
+over his dead horse as though it were not there.
+
+In the mill district, which they had now reached, they received
+reenforcements, justifying the judgment of the conference that to have
+erected their barricades there would have been to expose the city's
+defenders to attack from the rear. And the mill district suffered
+comparatively little. It was the business portion of the city toward
+which they turned their covetous eyes, the great stores, the hotels and
+restaurants, the homes of the wealthy.
+
+Pleased by the lack of opposition the mob grew more cheerful. The lion
+played. They pressed forward, wanton and jeering, firing now and then at
+random, breaking windows as they passed, looting small shops which they
+stripped like locusts. Their pockets bulging, and the taste of pillage
+forecasting what was to come, they moved onward more rapidly, shooting
+at upper windows or into the air, laughing, yelling, cursing, talking.
+From the barricades, long before the miles-long column came into view,
+could be heard the ominous far-off muttering of the mob.
+
+It was when they found the bridge barricaded on the far side, however,
+that the lion bared its teeth and snarled. Temporarily checked by the
+play of machine guns which swept the bridge and kept it clear for a
+time, they commenced wild, wasteful firing, from the bridge-head and
+from along the Cardew wharves. Their leaders were prepared, and sent
+snipers into the bridge towers, but the machine guns continued to fire.
+
+That the struggle would be on the bridge Doyle and his Council had
+anticipated from the reports of the night before. They were prepared
+to take a heavy loss on the bridges, but they had not prepared for the
+thing that defeated them; that as the mob is braver than the individual,
+so also it is more cowardly.
+
+Pushed forward from the rear and unable to retreat through the dense
+mass behind that was every moment growing denser, a few hundreds
+found themselves facing the steady machine-gun fire from behind the
+barricades, and unable either to advance or to retire. Thus trapped,
+they turned on their own forces behind them, and tried to fight their
+way to safety, but the inexorable pressure kept on, and the defenders,
+watching and powerless, saw men fling themselves from the bridges and
+disappear in the water below, rather than advance into the machine-gun
+zone. The guns were not firing into the rioters, but before them, to
+hold them back, and into that leaden stream there were no brave spirits
+to hurl themselves.
+
+The trapped men turned on their own and battled for escape. With the
+same violence which had been directed toward the city they now fought
+each other, and the bridge slowly cleared. But the mob did not disperse.
+
+It spread out on the bank across, a howling, frustrated, futile mass,
+disorganized and demoralized, which fired its useless guns across the
+river, which seethed and tossed and struggled, and spent itself in its
+own wild fury. And all the time cool-eyed men, on the wharves across,
+watched and waited for the time to attack.
+
+“They're sick at their stomachs now,” said an old army sergeant,
+watching, to Willy Cameron. “The dirty devils! They'll be starting their
+filthy work over there soon, and that's the zero hour.”
+
+Willy Cameron nodded. He had seen one young Russian boy with a
+child-like face venture forward alone into the fire zone and drop. He
+still lay there, on the bridge. And all of Willy Cameron was in revolt.
+What had he been told, that boy, that had made him ready to pour out
+his young life like wine? There were others like him in that milling
+multitude on the river bank across, young men who had come to America
+with a dream in their hearts, and America had done this to them. Or had
+she? She had taken them in, but they were not her own, and now, since
+she would not take them, they would take her. Was that it? Was it that
+America had made them her servants, but not her children? He did not
+know.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+Robbed of the city proper, the mob turned on the mill district it
+had invaded. Its dream of lust and greed was over, but it could still
+destroy.
+
+Like a battle charge, as indeed it was, the mounted city and state
+police crossed the bridge. It was followed by the state troops on foot,
+by city policemen in orderly files, and then by the armed citizens.
+The bridge vibrated to the step of marching men, going out to fight for
+their homes. The real battle was fought there, around the Cardew mills,
+a battle where the loyalists were greatly outnumbered, and where the
+rioters fought, according to their teaching, with every trick they could
+devise. Posted in upper windows they fired down from comparative safety;
+ambulances crossed and re-crossed the bridges. The streets were filled
+with rioting men, striking out murderously with bars and spikes. Fires
+flamed up and burned themselves out. In one place, eight blocks of
+mill-workers' houses, with their furnishings, went in a quarter of an
+hour.
+
+Willy Cameron was fighting like a demon. Long ago his reserve of
+ammunition had given out, and he was fighting with the butt end of his
+revolver. Around him had rallied some of the men he knew best, Pink and
+Mr. Hendricks, Doctor Smalley, Dan and Joe Wilkinson, and they stayed
+together as, street by street, the revolutionists were driven back.
+There were dead and wounded everywhere, injured men who had crawled into
+the shelter of doorways and sat or lay there, nursing their wounds.
+
+Suddenly, to his amazement, Willy saw old Anthony Cardew. He had somehow
+achieved an upper window of the mill office building, and he was showing
+himself fearlessly, a rifle in his hands; in his face was a great anger,
+but there was more than that. Willy Cameron, thinking it over later,
+decided that it was perplexity. He could not understand.
+
+He never did understand. For other eyes also had seen old Anthony
+Cardew. Willy Cameron, breasting the mob and fighting madly toward the
+door of the building, with Pink behind him, heard a cheer and an angry
+roar, and, looking up, saw that the old man had disappeared. They found
+him there later on, the rifle beside him, his small and valiant figure
+looking, with eyes no longer defiant, toward the Heaven which puts, for
+its own strange purpose, both evil and good into the same heart.
+
+By eleven o'clock the revolution was over. Sodden groups of men,
+thoroughly cowed and frightened, were on their way by back roads to the
+places they had left a few hours before. They had no longer dreams of
+empire. Behind them they could see, on the horizon, the city itself,
+the smoke from its chimneys, the spires of its churches. Both, homes
+and churches, they had meant to destroy, but behind both there was the
+indestructible. They had failed.
+
+They turned, looked back, and went on.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+On the crest of a hill-top overlooking the city a man was standing,
+looking down to where the softened towers of the great steel bridges
+rose above the river mist like fairy towers. Below him lay the city,
+powerful, significant, important.
+
+The man saw the city only as a vast crucible, into which he had flung
+his all, and out of which had come only defeat and failure. But the
+city was not a crucible. The melting pot of a nation is not a thing of
+cities, but of the human soul.
+
+The city was not a melting pot. It was a sanctuary. The man stood silent
+and morose, his chin dropped on his chest, and stared down.
+
+Beside and somewhat behind him stood a woman, a somber, passionate
+figure, waiting passively. His eyes traveled from the city to her, and
+rested on her, contemptuous, thwarted, cynical.
+
+“You fool,” he said, “I hate you, and you know it.”
+
+But she only smiled faintly. “We'd better get away now, Jim,” she said.
+
+He got into the car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+Late that afternoon Joe Wilkinson and Dan came slowly up the street,
+toward the Boyd house. The light of battle was still in Dan's eyes, his
+clothes were torn and his collar missing, and he walked with the fine
+swagger of the conqueror.
+
+“Y'ask me,” he said, “and I'll tell the world this thing's done for. It
+was just as well to let them give it a try, and find out it won't work.”
+
+Joe said nothing. He was white and very tired, and a little sick.
+
+“If you don't mind I'll go in your place and wash up,” he remarked, as
+they neared the house. “I'll scare the kids to death if they see me like
+this.”
+
+Edith was in the parlor. She had sat there almost all day, in an agony
+of fear. At four o'clock the smallest Wilkinson had hammered at the
+front door, and on being admitted had made a shameless demand.
+
+“Bed and thugar,” she had said, looking up with an ingratiating smile.
+
+“You little beggar!”
+
+“Bed and thugar.”
+
+Edith had got the bread and sugar, and, having lured the baby into
+the parlor, had held her while she ate, receiving now and then an
+exceedingly sticky kiss in payment. After a little the child's head
+began to droop, and Edith drew the small head down onto her breast. She
+sat there, rocking gently, while the chair slowly traveled, according to
+its wont, about the room.
+
+The child brought her comfort. She began to understand those grave
+rocking figures in the hospital ward, women who sat, with eyes that
+seemed to look into distant places, with a child's head on their
+breasts.
+
+After all, that was life for a woman. Love was only a part of the scheme
+of life, a means to an end. And that end was the child.
+
+For the first time she wished that her child had lived.
+
+She felt no bitterness now, and no anger. He was dead. It was hard to
+think of him as dead, who had been so vitally alive. She was sorry he
+had had to die, but death was like love and children, it was a part of
+some general scheme of things. Suppose this had been his child she was
+holding? Would she so easily have forgiven him? She did not know.
+
+Then she thought of Willy Cameron. The bitterness had strangely gone
+out of that, too. Perhaps, vaguely, she began to realize that only young
+love gives itself passionately and desperately, when there is no hope of
+a return, and that the agonies of youth, although terrible enough, pass
+with youth itself.
+
+She felt very old.
+
+Joe found her there, the chair displaying its usual tendency to climb
+the chimney flue, and stood in the doorway, looking at her with haunted,
+hungry eyes. There was a sort of despair in Joe those days, and now he
+was tired and shaken from the battle.
+
+“I'll take her home in a minute,” he said, still with the strange eyes.
+
+He came into the room, and suddenly he was kneeling beside the chair,
+his head buried against the baby's warm, round body. His bent shoulders
+shook, and Edith, still with the maternal impulse strong within her, put
+her hand on his bowed head.
+
+“Don't, Joe!”
+
+He looked up.
+
+“I loved you so, Edith!”
+
+“Don't you love me now?”
+
+“God knows I do. I can't get over it. I can't. I've tried, Edith.”
+
+He sat back on the floor and looked at her.
+
+“I can't,” he repeated. “And when I saw you like that just now, with the
+kid in your arms--I used to think that maybe you and I--”
+
+“I know, Joe. No decent man would want me now.”
+
+She was still strangely composed, peaceful, almost detached.
+
+“That!” he said, astonished. “I don't mean that, Edith. I've had my
+fight about that, and got it over. That's done with. I mean--” he got up
+and straightened himself. “You don't care about me.”
+
+“But I do care for you. Perhaps not quite the way you care, Joe, but
+I've been through such a lot. I can't seem to feel anything terribly. I
+just want peace.”
+
+“I could give you that,” he said eagerly.
+
+Edith smiled. Peace, in that noisy house next door, with children and
+kittens and puppies everywhere! And yet it would be peace, after all,
+a peace of the soul, the peace of a good man's love. After a time, too,
+there might come another peace, the peace of those tired women in the
+ward, rocking.
+
+“If you want me, I'll marry you,” she said, very simply. “I'll be a good
+wife, Joe. And I want children. I want the right to have them.”
+
+He never noticed that the kiss she gave him, over the sleeping baby, was
+slightly tinged with granulated sugar.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his great
+bed. There had been a bad hour; death seems so strangely to erase faults
+and leave virtues. Something strong and vital had gone from the house,
+and the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless steps. In Grace's
+boudoir, Howard was sitting, his arms around his wife, telling her the
+story of the day. At dawn he had notified her by telephone of Akers'
+murder.
+
+“Shall I tell Lily?” she had asked, trembling.
+
+“Do you want to wait until I get back?”
+
+“I don't know how she will take it, Howard. I wish you could be here,
+anyhow.”
+
+But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end it
+was Willy Cameron who told her. He had brought back all that was mortal
+of Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession up the
+stairs, had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping to be
+useful. Howard found him there, a strange, disheveled figure, bearing
+the scars of battle, and held out his hand.
+
+“It's hard to thank you, Cameron,” he said; “you seem to be always
+about when we need help. And”--he paused--“we seem to have needed it
+considerably lately.”
+
+Willy Cameron flushed.
+
+“I feel rather like a meddler, sir.”
+
+“Better go up and wash,” Howard said. “I'll go up with you.”
+
+It happened, therefore, that it was in Howard Cardew's opulent
+dressing-room that Howard first spoke to Willy Cameron of Akers' death,
+pacing the floor as he did so.
+
+“I haven't told her, Cameron.” He was anxious and puzzled. “She'll have
+to be told soon, of course. I don't know anything about women. I don't
+know how she'll take it.”
+
+“She has a great deal of courage. It will be a shock, but not a grief.
+But I have been thinking--” Willy Cameron hesitated. “She must not feel
+any remorse,” he went on. “She must not feel that she contributed to it
+in any way. If you can make that clear to her--”
+
+“Are you sure she did not?”
+
+“It isn't facts that matter now. We can't help those. And no one can
+tell what actually led to his change of heart. It is what she is to
+think the rest of her life.”
+
+Howard nodded.
+
+“I wish you would tell her,” he said. “I'm a blundering fool when it
+comes to her. I suppose I care too much.”
+
+He caught rather an odd look in Willy Cameron's face at that, and
+pondered over it later.
+
+“I will tell her, if you wish.”
+
+And Howard drew a deep breath of relief. It was shortly after that he
+broached another matter, rather diffidently.
+
+“I don't know whether you realize it or not, Cameron,” he said, “but
+this thing to-day might have been a different story if it had not been
+for you. And--don't think I'm putting this on a reward basis. It's
+nothing of the sort--but I would like to feel that you were working with
+me. I'd hate like thunder to have you working against me,” he added.
+
+“I am only trained for one thing.”
+
+“We use chemists in the mills.”
+
+But the discussion ended there. Both men knew that it would be taken
+up later, at some more opportune time, and in the meantime both had one
+thought, Lily.
+
+So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from Willy
+Cameron. She stood, straight and erect, and heard him through, watching
+him with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain of the day.
+But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one she had known long
+ago, in some infinitely remote past.
+
+“I am sorry,” she said, when he finished. “I didn't want him to die. You
+know that, don't you? I never wished him--Willy, I say I am sorry, but I
+don't really feel anything. It's dreadful.”
+
+Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for the
+first time in her healthy young life.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She found
+Willy Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a look
+of wild despair in his eyes.
+
+Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her view-point somewhat
+since the spring. After all, what mattered was happiness. Wealth and
+worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end,
+to the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with the
+shades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers over everything.
+
+“She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron,” she said. “It was but a crisis
+of the nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands to see you.”
+
+Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure,
+which issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went up
+the stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figure
+lost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently moved
+forward on tiptoe. Grayson went into the library and sniffed at the
+unmistakable odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went and
+stood before a great portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood in
+the old man's eyes, but there was a faint smile on his lips. He saw the
+endless procession of life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Then
+death. Grayson was old, but he had lived to see young love in the Cardew
+house. Out of love, life. He addressed a little speech to the picture.
+
+“Wherever you are, sir,” he said, “you needn't worry any more. The line
+will carry on, sir. The line will carry on.”
+
+Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, and
+gathered Lily close in his arms.
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many changes. It saw,
+slowly emerging from the chaos of war, new nations, like children,
+taking their first feeble steps. It saw a socialism which, born at full
+term might have thrived, prematurely and forcibly delivered, and making
+a valiant but losing fight for life. It saw that war is never good,
+but always evil; that war takes everything and gives nothing, save that
+sometimes a man may lose the whole world and gain his own soul.
+
+It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into the vast democracy
+of heaven, and Louis Akers passed through the Traitors' Gate of eternity
+to be judged and perhaps reprieved. For a man is many men, good and bad,
+and the Judge of the Tower of Heaven is a just Judge.
+
+It saw Jim Doyle a fugitive, Woslosky dead, and the Russian, Ross,
+bland, cunning and eternally plotting, in New England under another
+name. And Mr. Hendricks ordering a new suit for the day of taking
+office. And Doctor Smalley tying a bunch of chrysanthemums on Annabelle,
+against a football game, and taking a pretty nurse to see it.
+
+It saw Ellen roasting a turkey, and a strange young man in the Eagle
+Pharmacy, a young man who did not smoke a pipe, and allowed no visitors
+in the back room. And it saw Willy Cameron in the laboratory of the
+reopened Cardew Mills, dealing in tons instead of grains and drams,
+and learning to touch any piece of metal in the mill with a moistened
+fore-finger before he sat down upon it.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+But it saw more than that.
+
+On the evening of Thanksgiving Day there was an air of repressed
+excitement about the Cardew house. Mademoiselle, in a new silk dress,
+ran about the lower floor, followed by an agitated Grayson with a cloth,
+for Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with trembling hands vases
+of flowers, and spilling water at each shift. At six o'clock had arrived
+a large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear and
+there exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers
+other excitable and emotional women to peep within.
+
+After which he tied it up again and carried it upstairs.
+
+At seven o'clock Elinor Cardew, lovely in black satin, was carried down
+the stairs and placed in a position which commanded both the hall and
+the drawing-room. For some strange reason it was essential that she
+should see both.
+
+At seven-thirty came in a rush:
+
+(a)--Mr. Alston Denslow, in evening clothes and gardenia, and feeling in
+his right waist-coat pocket nervously every few minutes.
+
+(b)--An excited woman of middle age, in a black silk dress still faintly
+bearing the creases of five days in a trunk, and accompanied by a
+mongrel dog, both being taken upstairs by Grayson, Mademoiselle,
+Pink, and Howard Cardew. (“He said Jinx was to come,” she explained
+breathlessly to her bodyguard. “I never knew such a boy!”)
+
+(c)--Mr. Davis, in a frock coat and white lawn tie, and taken upstairs
+by Grayson, who mistook him for the bishop.
+
+(d)--Aunt Caroline, in her diamond dog collar and purple velvet, and
+determined to make the best of things.
+
+(e)--The real bishop this time, and his assistant, followed by a valet
+with a suitcase, containing the proper habiliments for a prince of the
+church while functioning. (A military term, since the Bishop had been in
+the army.)
+
+(f)--A few unimportant important people, very curious, and the women
+uncertain about the proper garb for a festive occasion in a house of
+mourning.
+
+(g)--Set of silver table vases, belated.
+
+(h)--Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks, Mayor and Mayoress-elect. Extremely
+dignified.
+
+(i)--An overfull taxicab, containing inside it Ellen, Edith, Dan and
+Joe. The overflow, consisting of a tall young man, displaying repressed
+excitement and new evening clothes, with gardenia, sat on the seat
+outside beside the chauffeur and repeated to himself a sort of chant
+accompanied by furious searchings of his pockets. “Money. Checkbook.
+Tickets. Trunk checks,” was the burden of his song.
+
+(j)--Doctor Smalley and Annabelle. He left Annabelle outside.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+The city moved on about its business. In thousands of homes the lights
+shone down on little family groups, infinitely tender little groups. The
+workers of the city were there, the doors shut, the fires burning. To
+each man the thing he had earned, not the thing that he took. To all
+men the right to labor, to love, and to rest. To children, the right
+to play. To women, the hearth, and the peace of the hearth. To lovers,
+love, and marriage, and home.
+
+The city moved on about its business, and its business was homes.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+At the great organ behind the staircase the organist sat. In stiff rows
+near him were the Cardew servants, marshaled by Grayson and in their
+best.
+
+Grayson stood, very rigid, and waited. And as he waited he kept his eyes
+on the portrait of old Anthony, in the drawing-room beyond. There was a
+fixed, rapt look in Grayson's eyes, and there was reassurance. It was as
+though he would say to the portrait: “It has all come out very well, you
+see, sir. It always works out somehow. We worry and fret, we old ones,
+but the young come along, and somehow or other they manage, sir.”
+
+What he actually said was to tell a house maid to stop sniveling.
+
+Over the house was the strange hush of waiting. It had waited before
+this, for birth and for death, but never before--
+
+The Bishop was waiting also, and he too had his eyes fixed on old
+Anthony's portrait, a straight, level-eyed gaze, as of man to man, as of
+prince of the church to prince of industry. The Bishop's eyes said:
+“All shall be done properly and in order, and as befits the Cardews,
+Anthony.”
+
+The Bishop was as successful in his line as Anthony Cardew had been in
+his. He cleared his throat.
+
+The organist sat at the great organ behind the staircase, waiting. He
+was playing very softly, with his eyes turned up. He had played the
+same music many times before, and always he felt very solemn, as one who
+makes history. He sighed. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was only an
+accompaniment to life, to which others sang and prayed, were christened,
+confirmed and married. But what was the song without the music? He
+wished the scullery maid would stop crying.
+
+Grayson touched him on the arm.
+
+“All ready, sir,” he said.
+
+*****
+
+Willy Cameron stood at the foot of the staircase, looking up.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
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diff --git a/1970-0.zip b/1970-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Poor Wise Man
+
+Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+Release Date: November 3, 2008 [EBook #1970]
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR WISE MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      A POOR WISE MAN
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Mary Roberts Rinehart
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER XXXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER XXXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER XXXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER XXXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER XL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER XLI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER XLII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER XLIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0044"> CHAPTER XLIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0045"> CHAPTER XLV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0046"> CHAPTER XLVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0047"> CHAPTER XLVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0048"> CHAPTER XLVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0049"> CHAPTER XLIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0050"> CHAPTER L </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0051"> CHAPTER LI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0052"> CHAPTER LII </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened
+      walls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over all a
+      gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty.
+      Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose above the
+      river mist like fairy towers suspended between Heaven and earth. And again
+      the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold, while the city lay buried
+      in its smoke shroud, and white ghosts of river boats moved spectrally
+      along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes it was ugly, sometimes beautiful, but always the city was
+      powerful, significant, important. It was a vast melting pot. Through its
+      gates came alike the hopeful and the hopeless, the dreamers and those who
+      would destroy those dreams. From all over the world there came men who
+      sought a chance to labor. They came in groups, anxious and dumb, carrying
+      with them their pathetic bundles, and shepherded by men with cunning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raw material, for the crucible of the city, as potentially powerful as the
+      iron ore which entered the city by the same gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city took them in, gave them sanctuary, and forgot them. But the
+      shepherds with the cunning eyes remembered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily Cardew, standing in the train shed one morning early in March,
+      watched such a line go by. She watched it with interest. She had developed
+      a new interest in people during the year she had been away. She had seen,
+      in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of men, transformed in a few
+      hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers, beginning already to be actuated
+      by the same motive. These aliens, going by, would become citizens. Very
+      soon now they would appear on the streets in new American clothes of
+      extraordinary cut and color, their hair cut with clippers almost to the
+      crown, and surmounted by derby hats always a size too small.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily smiled, and looked out for her mother. She was suddenly unaccountably
+      glad to be back again. She liked the smoke and the noise, the movement,
+      the sense of things doing. And the sight of her mother, small, faultlessly
+      tailored, wearing a great bunch of violets, and incongruous in that
+      work-a-day atmosphere, set her smiling again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How familiar it all was! And heavens, how young she looked! The limousine
+      was at the curb, and a footman as immaculately turned out as her mother
+      stood with a folded rug over his arm. On the seat inside lay a purple box.
+      Lily had known it would be there. They would be ostensibly from her
+      father, because he had not been able to meet her, but she knew quite well
+      that Grace Cardew had stopped at the florist's on her way downtown and
+      bought them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little surge of affection for her mother warmed the girl's eyes. The
+      small attentions which in the Cardew household took the place of loving
+      demonstrations had always touched her. As a family the Cardews were rather
+      loosely knitted together, but there was something very lovable about her
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace Cardew kissed her, and then held her off and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mercy, Lily!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you look as old as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Older, I hope,&rdquo; Lily retorted. &ldquo;What a marvel you are, Grace dear.&rdquo; Now
+      and then she called her mother &ldquo;Grace.&rdquo; It was by way of being a small
+      joke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old Anthony,
+      her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a row about
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel horribly old, but I didn't think I looked it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her. &ldquo;From your
+      father, dear. He wanted so to come, but things are dreadful at the mill. I
+      suppose you've seen the papers.&rdquo; Lily opened the box, and smiled at her
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know. But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear?
+      Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them? But never mind about
+      that; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it. Have you broken the
+      news to grandfather that the last of the Cardews is coming home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He sent you all sorts of messages, and he'll see you at dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily laughed out at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You darling!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You know perfectly well that I am nothing in
+      grandfather's young life, but the Cardew women all have what he likes to
+      call savoir faire. What would they do, father and grandfather, if you
+      didn't go through life smoothing things for them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace looked rather stiffly ahead. This young daughter of hers, with her
+      directness and her smiling ignoring of the small subterfuges of life,
+      rather frightened her. The terrible honesty of youth! All these years of
+      ironing the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the difficulties between
+      old Anthony and Howard, and now a third generation to contend with. A
+      pitilessly frank and unconsciously cruel generation. She turned and eyed
+      Lily uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look tired,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and you need attention. I wish you had let me
+      send Castle to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered her.
+      Lovely rather than beautiful, perhaps. Her face was less childish than
+      when she had gone away; there was, in certain of her expressions, an
+      almost alarming maturity. But perhaps that was fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I've been
+      very happy, really, and very busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been very vague lately about your work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily faced her mother squarely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it would
+      drive grandfather crazy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were in a canteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not lately. I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers to
+      camps. Some of them were going to have babies, too. It was rather awful.
+      We married quite a lot of them, however.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter held
+      Grace Cardew dumb. She nodded, but her eyes had slightly hardened. So this
+      was what war had done to her. She had had no son, and had thanked God for
+      it during the war, although old Anthony had hated her all her married life
+      for it. But she had given her daughter, her clear-eyed daughter, and they
+      had shown her the dregs of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her thoughts went back over the years. To Lily as a child, with
+      Mademoiselle always at her elbow, and life painted as a thing of beauty.
+      Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents. Death was a quiet sleep,
+      with heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to age, which had wearied
+      and would rest. Then she remembered the day when Elinor Cardew, poor
+      unhappy Elinor, had fled back to Anthony's roof to have a baby, and after
+      a few rapturous weeks for Lily the baby had died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the baby isn't old,&rdquo; Lily had persisted, standing in front of her
+      mother with angry, accusing eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace was not an imaginative woman, but she turned it rather neatly, as
+      she told Howard later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was such a nice baby,&rdquo; she said, feeling for an idea. &ldquo;I think
+      probably God was lonely without it, and sent an angel for it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is still upstairs,&rdquo; Lily had insisted. She had had a curious
+      instinct for truth, even then. But there Grace's imagination had failed
+      her, and she sent for Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle was a good Catholic, and
+      very clear in her own mind, but what she left in Lily's brain was a
+      confused conviction that every person was two persons, a body and a soul.
+      Death was simply a split-up, then. One part of you, the part that bathed
+      every morning and had its toe-nails cut, and went to dancing school in a
+      white frock and thin black silk stockings and carriage boots over pumps,
+      that part was buried and would only came up again at the Resurrection. But
+      the other part was all the time very happy, and mostly singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily did not like to sing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was the matter of tears. People only cried when they hurt
+      themselves. She had been told that again and again when she threatened
+      tears over her music lesson. But when Aunt Elinor had gone away she had
+      found Mademoiselle, the deadly antagonist of tears, weeping. And here
+      again Grace remembered the child's wide, insistent eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is sorry for Aunt Elinor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because her baby's gone to God? She ought to be glad, oughtn't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that;&rdquo; said Grace, and had brought a box of chocolates and given her
+      one, although they were not permitted save one after each meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Lily had gone away to school. How carefully the school had been
+      selected! When she came back, however, there had been no more questions,
+      and Grace had sighed with relief. That bad time was over, anyhow. But Lily
+      was rather difficult those days. She seemed, in some vague way, resentful.
+      Her mother found her, now and then, in a frowning, half-defiant mood. And
+      once, when Mademoiselle had ventured some jesting remark about young
+      Alston Denslow, she was stupefied to see the girl march out of the room,
+      her chin high, not to be seen again for hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace's mind was sub-consciously remembering those things even when she
+      spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know you were having to learn about that side of life,&rdquo; she
+      said, after a brief silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That side of life is life, mother,&rdquo; Lily said gravely. But Grace did not
+      reply to that. It was characteristic of her to follow her own line of
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't tell your grandfather. You know he feels strongly
+      about some things. And he hasn't forgiven me yet for letting you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rather diffidently Lily put her hand on her mother's. She gave her rare
+      caresses shyly, with averted eyes, and she was always more diffident with
+      her mother than with her father. Such spontaneous bursts of affection as
+      she sometimes showed had been lavished on Mademoiselle. It was
+      Mademoiselle she had hugged rapturously on her small feast days,
+      Mademoiselle who never demanded affection, and so received it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor mother!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have made it hard for you, haven't I? Is he as
+      bad as ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not pinned on the violets, but sat holding them in her hands, now
+      and then taking a luxurious sniff. She did not seem to expect a reply.
+      Between Grace and herself it was quite understood that old Anthony Cardew
+      was always as bad as could be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is some sort of trouble at the mill. Your father is worried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this time it was Lily who did not reply. She said, inconsequentially:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're saved, and it's all over. But sometimes I wonder if we were worth
+      saving. It all seems such a mess, doesn't it?&rdquo; She glanced out. They were
+      drawing up before the house, and she looked at her mother whimsically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last of the Cardews returning from the wars!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Only she is
+      unfortunately a she, and she hasn't been any nearer the war than the State
+      of Ohio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice was gay enough, but she had a quick vision of the grim old house
+      had she been the son they had wanted to carry on the name, returning from
+      France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cardews had fighting traditions. They had fought in every war from the
+      Revolution on. There had been a Cardew in Mexico in '48, and in that upper
+      suite of rooms to which her grandfather had retired in wrath on his son's
+      marriage, she remembered her sense of awe as a child on seeing on the wall
+      the sword he had worn in the Civil War. He was a small man, and the
+      scabbard was badly worn at the end, mute testimony to the long forced
+      marches of his youth. Her father had gone to Cuba in '98, and had almost
+      died of typhoid fever there, contracted in the marshes of Florida.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, they had been a fighting family. And now&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mother was determinedly gay. There were flowers in the dark old hall,
+      and Grayson, the butler, evidently waiting inside the door, greeted her
+      with the familiarity of the old servant who had slipped her sweets from
+      the pantry after dinner parties in her little-girl years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Welcome home, Miss Lily,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle was lurking on the stairway, in a new lace collar over her
+      old black dress. Lily recognized in the collar a great occasion, for
+      Mademoiselle was French and thrifty. Suddenly a wave of warmth and
+      gladness flooded her. This was home. Dear, familiar home. She had come
+      back. She was the only young thing in the house. She would bring them
+      gladness and youth. She would try to make them happy. Always before she
+      had taken, but now she meant to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that she formulated such a thought. It was an emotion, rather. She ran
+      up the stairs and hugged Mademoiselle wildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You darling old thing!&rdquo; she cried. She lapsed into French. &ldquo;I saw the
+      collar at once. And think, it is over! It is finished. And all your nice
+      French relatives are sitting on the boulevards in the sun, and sipping
+      their little glasses of wine, and rising and bowing when a pretty girl
+      passes. Is it not so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so, God and the saints be praised!&rdquo; said Mademoiselle, huskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace Cardew followed them up the staircase. Her French was negligible,
+      and she felt again, as in days gone by, shut from the little world of two
+      which held her daughter and governess. Old Anthony's doing, that. He had
+      never forgiven his son his plebeian marriage, and an early conversation
+      returned to her. It was on Lily's first birthday and he had made one of
+      his rare visits to the nursery. He had brought with him a pearl in a
+      velvet case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All our women have their own pearls,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;She will have her
+      grandmother's also when she marries. I shall give her one the first year,
+      two the second, and so on.&rdquo; He had stood looking down at the child
+      critically. &ldquo;She's a Cardew,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;Which means that she will
+      be obstinate and self-willed.&rdquo; He had paused there, but Grace had not
+      refuted the statement. He had grinned. &ldquo;As you know,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Is she
+      talking yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A word or two,&rdquo; Grace had said, with no more warmth in her tone than was
+      in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. Get her a French governess. She ought to speak French before
+      she does English. It is one of the accomplishments of a lady. Get a good
+      woman, and for heaven's sake arrange to serve her breakfast in her room. I
+      don't want to have to be pleasant to any chattering French woman at eight
+      in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you wouldn't,&rdquo; Grace had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony had stamped out, but in the hall he smiled grimly. He did not like
+      Howard's wife, but she was not afraid of him. He respected her for that.
+      He took good care to see that the Frenchwoman was found, and at dinner,
+      the only meal he took with the family, he would now and then send for the
+      governess and Lily to come in for dessert. That, of course, was later on,
+      when the child was nearly ten. Then would follow a three-cornered
+      conversation in rapid French, Howard and Anthony and Lily, with
+      Mademoiselle joining in timidly, and with Grace, at the side of the table,
+      pretending to eat and feeling cut off, in a middle-class world of her own,
+      at the side of the table. Anthony Cardew had retained the head of his
+      table, and he had never asked her to take his dead wife's place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours, the
+      fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared to see
+      her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made desperate
+      efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was atrocious.
+      Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh in childish,
+      unthinking mirth. She gave it up at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She never told Howard about it. He had his own difficulties with his
+      father, and she would not add to them. She managed the house, checked over
+      the bills and sent them to the office, put up a cheerful and courageous
+      front, and after a time sheathed herself in an armor of smiling
+      indifference. But she thanked heaven when the time came to send Lily away
+      to school. The effort of concealing the armed neutrality between Anthony
+      and herself was growing more wearing. The girl was observant. And Anthony
+      had been right, she was a Cardew. She would have fought her grandfather
+      out on it, defied him, accused him, hated him. And Grace wanted peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once again as she followed Lily and Mademoiselle up the stairs she felt
+      the barrier of language, and back of it the Cardew pride and traditions
+      that somehow cut her off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in Lily's rooms she was her sane and cheerful self again. Inside the
+      doorway the girl was standing, her eyes traveling over her little domain
+      ecstatically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How lovely of you not to change a thing, mother!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I was so
+      afraid&mdash;I know how you hate my stuff. But I might have known you
+      wouldn't. All the time I've been away, sleeping in a dormitory, and taking
+      turns at the bath, I have thought of my own little place.&rdquo; She wandered
+      around, touching her familiar possessions with caressing hands. &ldquo;I've a
+      good notion,&rdquo; she declared, &ldquo;to go to bed immediately, just for the
+      pleasure of lying in linen sheets again.&rdquo; Suddenly she turned to her
+      mother. &ldquo;I'm afraid you'll find I've made some queer friends, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by 'queer'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People no proper Cardew would care to know.&rdquo; She smiled. &ldquo;Where's Ellen?
+      I want to tell her I met somebody she knows out there, the nicest sort of
+      a boy.&rdquo; She went to the doorway and called lustily: &ldquo;Ellen! Ellen!&rdquo; The
+      rustling of starched skirts answered her from down the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't call, dear.&rdquo; Grace looked anxious. &ldquo;You know how your
+      grandfather&mdash;there's a bell for Ellen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What we need around here,&rdquo; said Lily, cheerfully, &ldquo;is a little more
+      calling. And if grandfather thinks it is unbefitting the family dignity he
+      can put cotton in his ears. Come in, Ellen. Ellen, do you know that I met
+      Willy Cameron in the camp?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy!&rdquo; squealed Ellen. &ldquo;You met Willy? Isn't he a fine boy, Miss Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's wonderful,&rdquo; said Lily. &ldquo;I went to the movies with him every Friday
+      night.&rdquo; She turned to her mother. &ldquo;You would like him, mother. He couldn't
+      get into the army. He is a little bit lame. And&mdash;&rdquo; she surveyed Grace
+      with amused eyes, &ldquo;you needn't think what you are thinking. He is tall and
+      thin and not at all good-looking. Is he, Ellen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a very fine young man,&rdquo; Ellen said rather stiffly. &ldquo;He's very
+      highly thought of in the town I come from. His father was a doctor, and
+      his buggy used to go around day, and night. When he found they wouldn't
+      take him as a soldier he was like to break his heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lame?&rdquo; Grace repeated, ignoring Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a little. You forget all about it when you know him. Don't you,
+      Ellen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at Grace's tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and became again
+      a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing, rubber-heeled,
+      pink-uniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew, whose eyebrows
+      were slightly raised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, miss,&rdquo; she said. And went out, leaving Lily rather chilled and
+      openly perplexed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&rdquo; she said. Then she glanced at her mother. &ldquo;I do believe you are a
+      little shocked, mother, because Ellen and I have a mutual friend in Mr.
+      William Wallace Cameron! Well, if you want the exact truth, he hadn't an
+      atom of use for me until he heard about Ellen.&rdquo; She put an arm around
+      Grace's shoulders. &ldquo;Brace up, dear,&rdquo; she said, smilingly. &ldquo;Don't you cry.
+      I'll be a Cardew bye-and-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you really go to the moving pictures with him?&rdquo; Grace asked, rather
+      unhappily. She had never been inside a moving picture theater. To her they
+      meant something a step above the corner saloon, and a degree below the
+      burlesque houses. They were constituted of bad air and unchaperoned young
+      women accompanied by youths who dangled cigarettes from a lower lip, all
+      obviously of the lower class, including the cigarette; and of other women,
+      sometimes drab, dragged of breast and carrying children who should have
+      been in bed hours before; or still others, wandering in pairs, young,
+      painted and predatory. She was not imaginative, or she could not have
+      lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house. She never saw, in the long line
+      waiting outside even the meanest of the little theaters that had invaded
+      the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cry of every human heart
+      for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance, the call of adventure and
+      the open road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't believe it,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily made a little gesture of half-amused despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I did. And I liked it. Mother, things have changed a
+      lot in twenty years. Sometimes I think that here, in this house, you don't
+      realize that&mdash;&rdquo; she struggled for a phrase&mdash;&ldquo;that things have
+      changed,&rdquo; she ended, lamely. &ldquo;The social order, and that sort of thing.
+      You know. Caste.&rdquo; She hesitated. She was young and inarticulate, and when
+      she saw Grace's face, somewhat frightened. But she was not old Anthony's
+      granddaughter for nothing. &ldquo;This idea of being a Cardew,&rdquo; she went on,
+      &ldquo;that's ridiculous, you know. I'm only half Cardew, anyhow. The rest is
+      you, dear, and it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she paused
+      now and turned. It was to Grace that she spoke, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They come home like that, all of them,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;In France also. But in
+      time they see the wisdom of the old order, and return. It is one of the
+      fruits of war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace hardly heard her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;you are not in love with this Cameron person, are
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lily's easy laugh reassured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am not. I shall probably marry beneath me, as
+      you would call it, but not William Wallace Cameron. For one thing, he
+      wouldn't have grandfather in his family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time later Mademoiselle tapped at Grace's door, and entered. Grace
+      was reclining on a chaise longue, towels tucked about her neck and over
+      her pillows, while Castle, her elderly English maid, was applying ice in a
+      soft cloth to her face. Grace sat up. The towel, pinned around her hair
+      like a coif, gave a placid, almost nun-like appearance to her still lovely
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she demanded. &ldquo;Go out for a minute, Castle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle waited until the maid had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have spoken to Ellen,&rdquo; she said, her voice cautious. &ldquo;A young man who
+      does not care for women, a clerk in a country pharmacy. What is that, Mrs.
+      Cardew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be so dreadful, Mademoiselle. Her grandfather&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not handsome,&rdquo; insisted Mademoiselle, &ldquo;and lame! Also, I know the
+      child. She is not in love. When that comes to her we shall know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace lay back, relieved, but not entirely comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is changed, isn't she, Mademoiselle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A phase,&rdquo; she said. She had got the word from old Anthony, who regarded
+      any mental attitude that did not conform with his own as a condition that
+      would pass. &ldquo;A phase, only. Now that she is back among familiar things,
+      she will become again a daughter of the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you think this talk about marrying beneath her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She 'as had liberty,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle, who sometimes lost an aspirate.
+      &ldquo;It is like wine to the young. It intoxicates. But it, too, passes. In my
+      country&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Grace had, for a number of years, heard a great deal of Mademoiselle's
+      country. She settled herself on her pillows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call Castle, please,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And&mdash;do warn her not to voice those
+      ideas of hers to her grandfather. In a country pharmacy, you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And lame, and not fond of women,&rdquo; corroborated Mademoiselle. &ldquo;Ca ne
+      pourrait pas etre mieux, n'est-ce pas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after the Civil War Anthony Cardew had left Pittsburgh and spent a
+      year in finding a location for the investment of his small capital. That
+      was in the very beginning of the epoch of steel. The iron business had
+      already laid the foundations of its future greatness, but steel was still
+      in its infancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony's father had been an iron-master in a small way, with a monthly
+      pay-roll of a few hundred dollars, and an abiding faith in the future of
+      iron. But he had never dreamed of steel. But &ldquo;sixty-five&rdquo; saw the first
+      steel rail rolled in America, and Anthony Cardew began to dream. He went
+      to Chicago first, and from there to Michigan, to see the first successful
+      Bessemer converter. When he started east again he knew what he was to make
+      his life work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very young and his capital was small. But he had an abiding faith
+      in the new industry. Not that he dreamed then of floating steel
+      battleships. But he did foresee steel in new and various uses. Later on he
+      was experimenting with steel cable at the very time Roebling made it a
+      commercial possibility, and with it the modern suspension bridge and the
+      elevator. He never quite forgave Roebling. That failure of his, the
+      difference only of a month or so, was one of the few disappointments of
+      his prosperous, self-centered, orderly life. That, and Howard's marriage.
+      And, at the height of his prosperity, the realization that Howard's
+      middle-class wife would never bear a son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city he chose was a small city then, yet it already showed signs of
+      approaching greatness. On the east side, across the river, he built his
+      first plant, a small one, with the blast heated by passing through cast
+      iron pipes, with the furnaceman testing the temperature with strips of
+      lead and zinc, and the skip hoist a patient mule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had ore within easy hauling distance, and he had fuel, and he had, as
+      time went on, a rapidly increasing market. Labor was cheap and plentiful,
+      too, and being American-born, was willing and intelligent. Perhaps Anthony
+      Cardew's sins of later years were due to a vast impatience that the labor
+      of the early seventies was no longer to be had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cardew fortune began in the seventies. Up to that time there was a
+      struggle, but in the seventies Anthony did two things. He went to England
+      to see the furnaces there, and brought home a wife, a timid, tall
+      Englishwoman of irreproachable birth, who remained always an alien in the
+      crude, busy new city. And he built himself a house, a brick house in lower
+      East Avenue, a house rather like his tall, quiet wife, and run on English
+      lines. He soon became the leading citizen. He was one of the committee to
+      welcome the Prince of Wales to the city, and from the very beginning he
+      took his place in the social life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found it very raw at times, crude and new. He himself lived with
+      dignity and elegant simplicity. He gave now and then lengthy, ponderous
+      dinners, making out the lists himself, and handing them over to his timid
+      English wife in much the manner in which he gave the wine list and the key
+      to the wine cellar to the butler. And, at the head of his table, he let
+      other men talk and listened. They talked, those industrial pioneers,
+      especially after the women had gone. They saw the city the center of great
+      business and great railroads. They talked of its coal, its river, and the
+      great oil fields not far away which were then in their infancy. All of
+      them dreamed a dream, saw a vision. But not all of them lived to see their
+      dream come true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony lived to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the late eighties, his wife having been by that time decorously
+      interred in one of the first great mausoleums west of the mountains,
+      Anthony Cardew found himself already wealthy. He owned oil wells and coal
+      mines. His mines supplied his coke ovens with coal, and his own river
+      boats, as well as railroads in which he was a director, carried his steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He labored ably and well, and not for wealth alone. He was one of a group
+      of big-visioned men who saw that a nation was only as great as its
+      industries. It was only in his later years that he loved power for the
+      sake of power, and when, having outlived his generation, he had developed
+      a rigidity of mind that made him view the forced compromises of the new
+      regime as pusillanimous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered his son Howard's quiet strength weakness. &ldquo;You have no
+      stamina,&rdquo; he would say. &ldquo;You have no moral fiber. For God's sake, make a
+      stand, you fellows, and stick to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not mellowed with age. He viewed with endless bitterness the
+      passing of his own day and generation, and the rise to power of younger
+      men; with their &ldquo;shilly-shallying,&rdquo; he would say. He was an aristocrat, an
+      autocrat, and a survival. He tied Howard's hands in the management of the
+      now vast mills, and then blamed him for the results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had been a great man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl had been the tragedy
+      of his middle years, and Howard had been his hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the heights outside the city and overlooking the river he owned a farm,
+      and now and then, on Sunday afternoons in the eighties, he drove out
+      there, with Howard sitting beside him, a rangy boy in his teens, in the
+      victoria which Anthony considered the proper vehicle for Sunday
+      afternoons. The farmhouse was in a hollow, but always on those excursions
+      Anthony, fastidiously dressed, picking his way half-irritably through
+      briars and cornfields, would go to the edge of the cliffs and stand there,
+      looking down. Below was the muddy river, sluggish always, but a thing of
+      terror in spring freshets. And across was the east side, already a sordid
+      place, its steel mills belching black smoke that killed the green of the
+      hillsides, its furnaces dwarfed by distance and height, its rows of
+      unpainted wooden structures which housed the mill laborers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard would go with him, but Howard dreamed no dreams. He was a sturdy,
+      dependable, unimaginative boy, watching the squirrels or flinging stones
+      over the palisades. Life for Howard was already a thing determined. He
+      would go to college, and then he would come back and go into the mill
+      offices. In time, he would take his father's place. He meant to do it well
+      and honestly. He had but to follow. Anthony had broken the trail, only by
+      that time it was no longer a trail, but a broad and easy way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only once or twice did Anthony Cardew give voice to his dreams. Once he
+      said: &ldquo;I'll build a house out here some of these days. Good location.
+      Growth of the city is bound to be in this direction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What he did not say was that to be there, on that hill, overlooking his
+      activities, his very own, the things he had builded with such labor, gave
+      him a sense of power. &ldquo;This below,&rdquo; he felt, with more of pride than
+      arrogance, &ldquo;this is mine. I have done it. I, Anthony Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt, looking down, the pride of an artist in his picture, of a
+      sculptor who, secure from curious eyes, draws the sheet from the still
+      moist clay of his modeling, and now from this angle, now from that,
+      studies, criticizes, and exults.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Anthony Cardew never built his house on the cliff. Time was to come
+      when great houses stood there, like vast forts, overlooking, almost
+      menacing, the valley beneath. For, until the nineties, although the city
+      distended in all directions, huge, ugly, powerful, infinitely rich, and
+      while in the direction of Anthony's farm the growth was real and rapid, it
+      was the plain people who lined its rapidly extending avenues with their
+      two-story brick houses; little homes of infinite tenderness and quiet,
+      along tree-lined streets, where the children played on the cobble-stones,
+      and at night the horse cars, and later the cable system, brought home
+      tired clerks and storekeepers to small havens, already growing dingy from
+      the smoke of the distant mills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony Cardew did not like the plain people. Yet in the end, it was the
+      plain people, those who neither labored with their hands nor lived by the
+      labor of others&mdash;it was the plain people who vanquished him.
+      Vanquished him and tried to protect him. But could not. A smallish man,
+      hard and wiry, he neither saved himself nor saved others. He had one
+      fetish, power. And one pride, his line. The Cardews were iron masters.
+      Howard would be an iron master, and Howard's son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Howard never had a son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All through her teens Lily had wondered about the mystery concerning her
+      Aunt Elinor. There was an oil portrait of her in the library, and one of
+      the first things she had been taught was not to speak of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then, at intervals of years, Aunt Elinor came back. Her mother and
+      father would look worried, and Aunt Elinor herself would stay in her
+      rooms, and seldom appeared at meals. Never at dinner. As a child Lily used
+      to think she had two Aunt Elinors, one the young girl in the gilt frame,
+      and the other the quiet, soft-voiced person who slipped around the upper
+      corridors like a ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was not to speak of either of them to her grandfather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was not born in the house on lower East Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the late eighties Anthony built himself a home, not on the farm, but in
+      a new residence portion of the city. The old common, grazing ground of
+      family cows, dump and general eye-sore, had become a park by that time,
+      still only a potentially beautiful thing, with the trees that were to be
+      its later glory only thin young shoots, and on the streets that faced it
+      the wealthy of the city built their homes, brick houses of square
+      solidity, flush with brick pavements, which were carefully reddened on
+      Saturday mornings. Beyond the pavements were cobble-stoned streets.
+      Anthony Cardew was the first man in the city to have a rubber-tired
+      carriage. The story of Anthony Cardew's new home is the story of Elinor's
+      tragedy. Nor did it stop there. It carried on to the third generation, to
+      Lily Cardew, and in the end it involved the city itself. Because of the
+      ruin of one small home all homes were threatened. One small house, and one
+      undying hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the matter was small in itself. An Irishman named Doyle owned the site
+      Anthony coveted. After years of struggle his small grocery had begun to
+      put him on his feet, and now the new development of the neighborhood added
+      to his prosperity. He was a dried-up, sentimental little man, with two
+      loves, his wife's memory and his wife's garden, which he still tended
+      religiously between customers; and one ambition, his son. With the change
+      from common to park, and the improvement in the neighborhood, he began to
+      flourish, and he, too, like Anthony, dreamed a dream. He would make his
+      son a gentleman, and he would get a shop assistant and a horse and wagon.
+      Poverty was still his lot, but there were good times coming. He saved
+      carefully, and sent Jim Doyle away to college.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would not sell to Anthony. When he said he could not sell his wife's
+      garden, Anthony's agents reported him either mad or deeply scheming. They
+      kept after him, offering much more than the land was worth. Doyle began by
+      being pugnacious, but in the end he took to brooding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll get me yet,&rdquo; he would mutter, standing among the white phlox of his
+      little back garden. &ldquo;He'll get me. He never quits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony Cardew waited a year. Then he had the frame building condemned as
+      unsafe, and Doyle gave in. Anthony built his house. He put a brick stable
+      where the garden had been, and the night watchman for the property
+      complained that a little man, with wild eyes, often spent half the night
+      standing across the street, quite still, staring over. If Anthony gave
+      Doyle a thought, it was that progress and growth had their inevitable
+      victims. But on the first night of Anthony's occupancy of his new house
+      Doyle shot himself beside the stable, where a few stalks of white phlox
+      had survived the building operations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It never reached the newspapers, nor did a stable-boy's story of hearing
+      the dying man curse Anthony and all his works. But nevertheless the story
+      of the Doyle curse on Anthony Cardew spread. Anthony heard it, and forgot
+      it. But two days later he was dragged from his carriage by young Jim
+      Doyle, returned for the older Doyle's funeral, and beaten insensible with
+      the stick of his own carriage whip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Doyle did not run away. He stood by, a defiant figure full of
+      hatred, watching Anthony on the cobbles, as though he wanted to see him
+      revive and suffer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't do it to revenge my father,&rdquo; he said at the trial. &ldquo;He was
+      nothing to me&mdash;I did it to show old Cardew that he couldn't get away
+      with it. I'd do it again, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Any sentiment in his favor died at that, and he was given five years in
+      the penitentiary. He was a demoralizing influence there, already a
+      socialist with anarchical tendencies, and with the gift of influencing
+      men. A fluent, sneering youth, who lashed the guards to fury with his
+      unctuous, diabolical tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The penitentiary had not been moved then. It stood in the park, a grim
+      gray thing of stone. Elinor Cardew, a lonely girl always, used to stand in
+      a window of the new house and watch the walls. Inside there were men who
+      were shut away from all that greenery around them. Men who could look up
+      at the sky, or down at the ground, but never out and across, as she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was always hoping some of them would get away. She hated the sentries,
+      rifle on shoulder, who walked their monotonous beats, back and forward,
+      along the top of the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony's house was square and substantial, with high ceilings. It was
+      paneled with walnut and furnished in walnut, in those days. Its tables and
+      bureaus were of walnut, with cold white marble tops. And in the parlor was
+      a square walnut piano, which Elinor hated because she had to sit there
+      three hours each day, slipping on the top of the horsehair-covered stool,
+      to practice. In cold weather her German governess sat in the frigid room,
+      with a shawl and mittens, waiting until the onyx clock on the mantel-piece
+      showed that the three hours were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor had never heard the story of old Michael Doyle, or of his son Jim.
+      But one night&mdash;she was seventeen then, and Jim Doyle had served three
+      years of his sentence&mdash;sitting at dinner with her father, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some convicts escaped from the penitentiary today, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't believe it,&rdquo; said Anthony Cardew. &ldquo;Nothing about it in the
+      newspapers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fraulein saw the hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor had had an Alsatian governess. That was one reason why Elinor's
+      niece had a French one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hole? What do you mean by hole?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor shrank back a little. She had not minded dining with her father
+      when Howard was at home, but Howard was at college. Howard had a way of
+      good-naturedly ignoring his father's asperities, but Elinor was a
+      suppressed, shy little thing, romantic, aloof, and filled with undesired
+      affections. &ldquo;She said a hole,&rdquo; she affirmed, diffidently. &ldquo;She says they
+      dug a tunnel and got out. Last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very probably,&rdquo; said Anthony Cardew. And he repeated, thoughtfully, &ldquo;Very
+      probably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not hear Elinor when she quietly pushed back her chair and said
+      &ldquo;good-night.&rdquo; He was sitting at the table, tapping on the cloth with
+      finger-tips that were slightly cold. That evening Anthony Cardew had a
+      visit from the police, and considerable fiery talk took place in his
+      library. As a result there was a shake-up in city politics, and a change
+      in the penitentiary management, for Anthony Cardew had a heavy hand and a
+      bitter memory. And a little cloud on his horizon grew and finally settled
+      down over his life, turning it gray. Jim Doyle was among those who had
+      escaped. For three months Anthony was followed wherever he went by
+      detectives, and his house was watched at night. But he was a brave man,
+      and the espionage grew hateful. Besides, each day added to his sense of
+      security. There came a time when he impatiently dismissed the police, and
+      took up life again as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one day he received a note, in a plain white envelope. It said:
+      &ldquo;There are worse things than death.&rdquo; And it was signed: &ldquo;J. Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle was not recaptured. Anthony had iron gratings put on the lower
+      windows of his house after that, and he hired a special watchman. But
+      nothing happened, and at last he began to forget. He was building the new
+      furnaces up the river by that time. The era of structural steel for tall
+      buildings was beginning, and he bought the rights of a process for making
+      cement out of his furnace slag. He was achieving great wealth, although he
+      did not change his scale of living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then Fraulein braved the terrors of the library, small
+      neatly-written lists in her hands. Miss Elinor needed this or that. He
+      would check up the lists, sign his name to them, and Elinor and Fraulein
+      would have a shopping excursion. He never gave Elinor money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one of the lists one day he found the word, added in Elinor's hand:
+      &ldquo;Horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horse?&rdquo; he said, scowling up at Fraulein. &ldquo;There are six horses in the
+      stable now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Elinor thought&mdash;a riding horse&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; Then he thought a moment. There came back to him a picture of
+      those English gentlewomen from among whom he had selected his wife,
+      quiet-voiced, hard-riding, high-colored girls, who could hunt all day and
+      dance all night. Elinor was a pale little thing. Besides, every
+      gentlewoman should ride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can't ride around here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Elinor thought&mdash;there are bridle paths near the riding
+      academy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was odd, but at that moment Anthony Cardew had an odd sort of vision.
+      He saw the little grocer lying stark and huddled among the phlox by the
+      stable, and the group of men that stooped over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll think about it,&rdquo; was his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But within a few days Elinor was the owner of a quiet mare, stabled at the
+      academy, and was riding each day in the tan bark ring between its
+      white-washed fences, while a mechanical piano gave an air of festivity to
+      what was otherwise rather a solemn business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a week of that time the riding academy had a new instructor, a
+      tall, thin young man, looking older than he was, with heavy dark hair and
+      a manner of repressed insolence. A man, the grooms said among themselves,
+      of furious temper and cold eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in less than four months Elinor Cardew ran away from home and was
+      married to Jim Doyle. Anthony received two letters from a distant city, a
+      long, ecstatic but terrified one from his daughter, and one line on a slip
+      of paper from her husband. The one line read: &ldquo;I always pay my debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony made a new will, leaving Howard everything, and had Elinor's rooms
+      closed. Fraulein went away, weeping bitterly, and time went on. Now and
+      then Anthony heard indirectly from Doyle. He taught in a boys' school for
+      a time, and was dismissed for his radical views. He did brilliant
+      editorial work on a Chicago newspaper, but now and then he intruded his
+      slant-eyed personal views, and in the end he lost his position. Then he
+      joined the Socialist party, and was making speeches containing radical
+      statements that made the police of various cities watchful. But he managed
+      to keep within the letter of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard Cardew married when Elinor had been gone less than a year. Married
+      the daughter of a small hotel-keeper in his college town, a pretty,
+      soft-voiced girl, intelligent and gentle, and because Howard was all old
+      Anthony had left, he took her into his home. But for many years he did not
+      forgive her. He had one hope, that she would give Howard a son to carry on
+      the line. Perhaps the happiest months of Grace Cardew's married life were
+      those before Lily was born, when her delicate health was safeguarded in
+      every way by her grim father-in-law. But Grace bore a girl child, and very
+      nearly died in the bearing. Anthony Cardew would never have a grandson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was deeply resentful. The proud fabric of his own weaving would descend
+      in the fullness of time to a woman. And Howard himself&mdash;old Anthony
+      was pitilessly hard in his judgments&mdash;Howard was not a strong man. A
+      good man. A good son, better than he deserved. But amiable, kindly,
+      without force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once the cloud had lifted, and only once. Elinor had come home to have a
+      child. She came at night, a shabby, worn young woman, with great eyes in a
+      chalk-white face, and Grayson had not recognized her at first. He got her
+      some port from the dining-room before he let her go into the library, and
+      stood outside the door, his usually impassive face working, during the
+      interview which followed. Probably that was Grayson's big hour, for if
+      Anthony turned her out he intended to go in himself, and fight for the
+      woman he had petted as a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Anthony had not turned her out. He took one comprehensive glance at
+      her thin face and distorted figure. Then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So this is the way you come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He drove me out,&rdquo; she said dully. &ldquo;He sent me here. He knew I had no
+      place else to go. He knew you wouldn't want me. It's revenge, I suppose.
+      I'm so tired, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, it was revenge, surely. To send back to him this soiled and broken
+      woman, bearing the mark he had put upon her&mdash;that was deviltry,
+      thought out and shrewdly executed. During the next hour Anthony Cardew
+      suffered, and made Elinor suffer, too. But at the end of that time he
+      found himself confronting a curious situation. Elinor, ashamed, humbled,
+      was not contrite. It began to dawn on Anthony that Jim Doyle's revenge was
+      not finished. For&mdash;Elinor loved the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She both hated him and loved him. And that leering Irish devil knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent for Grace, finally, and Elinor was established in the house. Grace
+      and little Lily's governess had themselves bathed her and put her to bed,
+      and Mademoiselle had smuggled out of the house the garments Elinor had
+      worn into it. Grace had gone in the motor&mdash;one of the first in the
+      city&mdash;and had sent back all sorts of lovely garments for Elinor to
+      wear, and quantities of fine materials to be made into tiny garments.
+      Grace was a practical woman, and she disliked the brooding look in
+      Elinor's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; she said to Howard that night, &ldquo;I believe she is quite mad
+      about him still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to be drawn and quartered,&rdquo; said Howard, savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony Cardew gave Elinor sanctuary, but he refused to see her again.
+      Except once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if it is a boy, you want me to leave him with you?&rdquo; she asked,
+      bending over her sewing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave him with me! Do you mean that you intend to go back to that
+      blackguard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is my husband. He isn't always cruel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; shouted Anthony. &ldquo;How did I ever happen to have such a craven
+      creature for a daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyhow,&rdquo; said Elinor, &ldquo;it will be his child, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When he turned you out, like any drab of the streets!&rdquo; bellowed old
+      Anthony. &ldquo;He never cared for you. He married you to revenge himself on me.
+      He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child, and
+      break its spirit and ruin its body, for the same reason. The man's a
+      maniac.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But again, as on the night she came, he found himself helpless against
+      Elinor's quiet impassivity. He knew that, let Jim Doyle so much as raise a
+      beckoning finger, and she would go to him. He did not realize that Elinor
+      had inherited from her quiet mother the dog-like quality of love in spite
+      of cruelty. To Howard he stormed. He considered Elinor's infatuation
+      indecent. She was not a Cardew. The Cardew women had some pride. And
+      Howard, his handsome figure draped negligently against the library mantel,
+      would puzzle over it, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm blessed if I understand it,&rdquo; he would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor's child had been a boy, and old Anthony found some balm in Gilead.
+      Jim Doyle had not raised a finger to beckon, and if he knew of his son, he
+      made no sign. Anthony still ignored Elinor, but he saw in her child the
+      third generation of Cardews. Lily he had never counted. He took steps to
+      give the child the Cardew name, and the fact was announced in the
+      newspapers. Then one day Elinor went out, and did not come back. It was
+      something Anthony Cardew had not counted on, that a woman could love a man
+      more than her child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I simply had to do it, father,&rdquo; she wrote. &ldquo;You won't understand, of
+      course. I love him, father. Terribly. And he loves me in his way, even
+      when he is unfaithful to me. I know he has been that. Perhaps if you had
+      wanted me at home it would have been different. But it kills me to leave
+      the baby. The only reason I can bring myself to do it is that, the way
+      things are, I cannot give him the things he ought to have. And Jim does
+      not seem to want him. He has never seen him, for one thing. Besides&mdash;I
+      am being honest&mdash;I don't think the atmosphere of the way we live
+      would be good for a boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a letter to Grace, too, a wild hysterical document, filled with
+      instructions for the baby's care. A wet nurse, for one thing. Grace read
+      it with tears in her eyes, but Anthony saw in it only the ravings of a
+      weak and unbalanced woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He never forgave Elinor, and once more the little grocer's curse thwarted
+      his ambitions. For, deprived of its mother's milk, the baby died. Old
+      Anthony sometimes wondered if that, too, had been calculated, a part of
+      the Doyle revenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While Grace rested that afternoon of Lily's return, Lily ranged over the
+      house. In twenty odd years the neighborhood had changed, and only a
+      handful of the old families remained. Many of the other large houses were
+      prostituted to base uses. Dingy curtains hung at their windows, dingy
+      because of the smoke from the great furnaces and railroads. The old Osgood
+      residence, nearby, had been turned into apartments, with bottles of milk
+      and paper bags on its fire-escapes, and a pharmacy on the street floor.
+      The Methodist Church, following its congregation to the vicinity of old
+      Anthony's farm, which was now cut up into city lots, had abandoned the
+      building, and it had become a garage. The penitentiary had been moved
+      outside the city limits, and near its old site was a small cement-lined
+      lake, the cheerful rendezvous in summer of bathing children and thirsty
+      dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was idle, for the first time in months. She wandered about, even
+      penetrating to those upper rooms sacred to her grandfather, to which he
+      had retired on Howard's marriage. How strangely commonplace they were now,
+      in the full light of day, and yet, when he was in them, the doors closed
+      and only Burton, his valet, in attendance, how mysterious they became!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Increasingly, in later years, Lily had felt and resented the domination of
+      the old man. She resented her father's acquiescence in that domination,
+      her mother's good-humored tolerance of it. She herself had accepted it,
+      although unwillingly, but she knew, rather vaguely, that the Lily Cardew
+      who had gone away to the camp and the Lily Cardew who stood that day
+      before her grandfather's throne-like chair under its lamp, were two
+      entirely different people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was uneasy rather than defiant. She meant to keep the peace. She had
+      been brought up to the theory that no price was too great to pay for
+      peace. But she wondered, as she stood there, if that were entirely true.
+      She remembered something Willy Cameron had said about that very thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's wrong with your grandfather,&rdquo; he had said, truculently, and waving
+      his pipe, &ldquo;is that everybody gets down and lets him walk on them. If
+      everybody lets a man use them as doormats, you can't blame him for wiping
+      his feet on them. Tell him that sometime, and see what happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him yourself!&rdquo; said Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had smiled cheerfully. He had an engaging sort of smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe I will,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am a rising young man, and my voice may some
+      day be heard in the land. Sometimes I feel the elements of greatness in
+      me, sweet child. You haven't happened to notice it yourself, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had gazed at her with solemn anxiety through the smoke of his pipe, and
+      had grinned when she remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily drew a long breath. All that delightful fooling was over; the hard
+      work was over. The nights were gone when they would wander like children
+      across the parade grounds, or past the bayonet school, with its rows of
+      tripods upholding imitation enemies made of sacks stuffed with hay, and
+      showing signs of mortal injury with their greasy entrails protruding.
+      Gone, too, were the hours when Willy sank into the lowest abyss of
+      depression over his failure to be a fighting man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are doing your best for your country,&rdquo; she would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not fighting for it, or getting smashed up for it. I don't want to be
+      a hero, but I'd like to have had one good bang at them before I quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once she had found him in the hut, with his head on a table. He said he
+      had a toothache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, that was all over. She was back in her grandfather's house, and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll get me too, probably,&rdquo; she reflected, as she went down the stairs,
+      &ldquo;just as he's got all the others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle was in Lily's small sitting room, while Castle was unpacking
+      under her supervision. The sight of her uniforms made Lily suddenly
+      restless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How you could wear these things!&rdquo; cried Mademoiselle. &ldquo;You, who have
+      always dressed like a princess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I liked them,&rdquo; said Lily, briefly. &ldquo;Mademoiselle, what am I going to do
+      with myself, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do?&rdquo; Mademoiselle smiled. &ldquo;Play, as you deserve, Cherie. Dance, and meet
+      nice young men. You are to make your debut this fall. Then a very charming
+      young man, and marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lily, rather blankly. &ldquo;I've got to come out, have I? I'd
+      forgotten people did such things. Please run along and do something else,
+      Castle. I'll unpack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is very bad for discipline,&rdquo; Mademoiselle objected when the maid had
+      gone. &ldquo;And it is not necessary for Mr. Anthony Cardew's granddaughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's awfully necessary for her,&rdquo; Lily observed, cheerfully. &ldquo;I've been
+      buttoning my own shoes for some time, and I haven't developed a spinal
+      curvature yet.&rdquo; She kissed Mademoiselle's perplexed face lightly. &ldquo;Don't
+      get to worrying about me,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;I'll shake down in time, and be
+      just as useless as ever. But I wish you'd lend me your sewing basket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Mademoiselle, suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I am possessed with a mad desire to sew on some buttons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little later Lily looked up from her rather awkward but industrious
+      labors with a needle, and fixed her keen young eyes on Mademoiselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there any news about Aunt Elinor?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is with him,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle, shortly. &ldquo;They are here now, in the
+      city. How he dared to come back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does mother see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Certainly not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why 'certainly' not? He is Aunt Elinor's husband. She isn't doing
+      anything wicked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman who would leave a home like this,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle, &ldquo;and a
+      distinguished family. Position. Wealth. For a brute who beats her. And
+      desert her child also!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he really beat her? I don't quite believe that, Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a subject for a young girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because really,&rdquo; Lily went on, &ldquo;there is something awfully big about a
+      woman who will stick to one man like that. I am quite sure I would bite a
+      man who struck me, but&mdash;suppose I loved him terribly&mdash;&rdquo; her
+      voice trailed off. &ldquo;You see, dear, I have seen a lot of brutality lately.
+      An army camp isn't a Sunday school picnic. And I like strong men, even if
+      they are brutal sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle carefully cut a thread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This&mdash;you were speaking to Ellen of a young man. Is he a&mdash;what
+      you term brutal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Lily laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You poor dear!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And mother, too, of course! You're afraid I'm
+      in love with Willy Cameron. Don't you know that if I were, I'd probably
+      never even mention his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is he brutal?&rdquo; persisted Mademoiselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you about him. He is a thin, blond young man, tall and a bit
+      lame. He has curly hair, and he puts pomade on it to take the curl out. He
+      is frightfully sensitive about not getting in the army, and he is
+      perfectly sweet and kind, and as brutal as a June breeze. You'd better
+      tell mother. And you can tell her he isn't in love with me, or I with him.
+      You see, I represent what he would call the monied aristocracy of America,
+      and he has the most fearful ideas about us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An anarchist, then?&rdquo; asked. Mademoiselle, extremely comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. He says he belongs to the plain people. The people in
+      between. He is rather oratorical about them. He calls them the backbone of
+      the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle relaxed. She had been too long in old Anthony's house to
+      consider very seriously the plain people. Her world, like Anthony
+      Cardew's, consisted of the financial aristocracy, which invested money in
+      industries and drew out rich returns, while providing employment for the
+      many; and of the employees of the magnates, who had recently shown strong
+      tendencies toward upsetting the peace of the land, and had given old
+      Anthony one or two attacks of irritability when it was better to go up a
+      rear staircase if he were coming down the main one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment,&rdquo; said Lily, suddenly. &ldquo;I have a picture of him somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She disappeared, and Mademoiselle heard her rummaging through the drawers
+      of her dressing table. She came back with a small photograph in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It showed a young man, in a large apron over a Red Cross uniform, bending
+      over a low field range with a long-handled fork in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frying doughnuts,&rdquo; Lily explained. &ldquo;I was in this hut at first, and I
+      mixed them and cut them, and he fried them. We made thousands of them. We
+      used to talk about opening a shop somewhere, Cardew and Cameron. He said
+      my name would be fine for business. He'd fry them in the window, and I'd
+      sell them. And a coffee machine&mdash;coffee and doughnuts, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not&mdash;seriously?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the expression on Mademoiselle's face Lily laughed joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; she demanded. &ldquo;And you could be the cashier, like the ones in
+      France, and sit behind a high desk and count money all day. I'd rather do
+      that than come out,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to be a good girl, Lily, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that means letting grandfather use me for a doormat, I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's old, and I intend to be careful. But he doesn't own me, body and
+      soul. And it may be hard to make him understand that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Many times in the next few months Mademoiselle was to remember that
+      conversation, and turn it over in her shrewd, troubled mind. Was there
+      anything she could have done, outside of warning old Anthony himself?
+      Suppose she had gone to Mr. Howard Cardew?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle, trying to smile, &ldquo;do you propose to assert
+      this new independence of spirit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to see Aunt Elinor,&rdquo; observed Lily. &ldquo;There, that's eleven
+      buttons on, and I feel I've earned my dinner. And I'm going to ask Willy
+      Cameron to come here to see me. To dinner. And as he is sure not to have
+      any evening clothes, for one night in their lives the Cardew men are going
+      to dine in mufti. Which is military, you dear old thing, for the everyday
+      clothing that the plain people eat in, without apparent suffering!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle got up. She felt that Grace should be warned at once. And
+      there was a look in Lily's face when she mentioned this Cameron creature
+      that made Mademoiselle nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought he lived in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then prepare yourself for a blow,&rdquo; said Lily Cardew, cheerfully. &ldquo;He is
+      here in the city, earning twenty-five dollars a week in the Eagle
+      Pharmacy, and serving the plain people perfectly preposterous patent
+      potions&mdash;which is his own alliteration, and pretty good, I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle went out into the hall. Over the house, always silent, there
+      had come a death-like hush. In the lower hall the footman was hanging up
+      his master's hat and overcoat. Anthony Cardew had come home for dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily's return, took a walk.
+      From his boarding house near the Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew residence
+      was a half-hour's walk. There were a number of things he had meant to do
+      that evening, with a view to improving his mind, but instead he took a
+      walk. He had made up a schedule for those evenings when he was off duty,
+      thinking it out very carefully on the train to the city. And the schedule
+      ran something like this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monday: 8-11. Read History. Wednesday: 8-11. Read Politics and Economics.
+      Friday: 8-9:30. Travel. 9:30-11. French. Sunday: Hear various prominent
+      divines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because travel was with him
+      an indulgence rather than a study. The longest journey he had ever taken
+      in his life was to Washington. That was early in the war, when it did not
+      seem possible that his country would not use him, a boy who could tramp
+      incredible miles in spite of his lameness and who could shoot a frightened
+      rabbit at almost any distance, by allowing for a slight deflection to the
+      right in the barrel of his old rifle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they had refused him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't use me, mother,&rdquo; he had said when he got home, home being a
+      small neat house on a tidy street of a little country town. &ldquo;I tried every
+      branch, but the only training I've had&mdash;well, some smart kid said
+      they weren't planning to serve soda water to the army. They didn't want
+      cripples, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been frightfully sorry then and had comforted her at some length,
+      but the fact remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you the very best they've ever had for mixing prescriptions!&rdquo; she had
+      said at last. &ldquo;And a graduate in chemistry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that's that, and we won't worry about it. There's more
+      than one way of killing a cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Willy? More than one way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no light of prophecy in William Wallace Cameron's gray eyes,
+      however, when he replied: &ldquo;More than one way of serving my country. Don't
+      you worry. I'll find something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he had, and he had come out of his Red Cross work in the camp with one
+      or two things in his heart that had not been there before. One was a
+      knowledge of men. He could not have put into words what he felt about men.
+      It was something about the fundamental simplicity of them, for one thing.
+      You got pretty close to them at night sometimes, especially when the
+      homesick ones had gone to bed, and the phonograph was playing in a corner
+      of the long, dim room. There were some shame-faced tears hidden under army
+      blankets those nights, and Willy Cameron did some blinking on his own
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, under all the blasphemy, the talk about women, the surface
+      sordidness of their daily lives and thoughts, there was one instinct
+      common to all, one love, one hidden purity. And the keyword to those
+      depths was &ldquo;home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Home,&rdquo; he said one day to Lily Cardew. &ldquo;Mostly it's the home they've
+      left, and maybe they didn't think so much of it then. But they do now. And
+      if it isn't that, it's the home they want to have some day.&rdquo; He looked at
+      Lily. Sometimes she smiled at things he said, and if she had not been
+      grave he would not have gone on. &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;there's mostly
+      a girl some place. All this talk about the nation, now&mdash;&rdquo; He settled
+      himself on the edge of the pine table where old Anthony Cardew's
+      granddaughter had been figuring up her week's accounts, and lighted his
+      pipe, &ldquo;the nation's too big for us to understand. But what is the nation,
+      but a bunch of homes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy dear,&rdquo; said Lily Cardew, &ldquo;did you take any money out of the cigar
+      box for anything this week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dollar sixty-five for lard,&rdquo; replied Willy dear. &ldquo;As I was saying, we've
+      got to think of this country in terms of homes. Not palaces like yours&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; said Lily, &ldquo;I don't live in a palace. Get my pocket-book,
+      will you? I'm out three dollars somehow, and I'd rather make it up myself
+      than add these figures over again. Go on and talk, Willy. I love hearing
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not palaces like yours,&rdquo; repeated Mr. Cameron, &ldquo;and not hovels. But
+      mostly self-respecting houses, the homes of the plain people. The middle
+      class, Miss Cardew. My class. The people who never say anything, but are
+      squeezed between capital, represented by your grandfather, with its
+      parasites, represented by you, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You represent the people who never say anything,&rdquo; observed the slightly
+      flushed parasite of capital, &ldquo;about as adequately as I represent the idle
+      rich.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet not even old Anthony could have resented the actual relationship
+      between them. Lily Cardew, working alone in her hut among hundreds of men,
+      was as without sex consciousness as a child. Even then her flaming
+      interest was in the private soldiers. The officers were able to amuse
+      themselves; they had money and opportunity. It was the doughboys she loved
+      and mothered. For them she organized her little entertainments. For them
+      she played and sang in the evenings, when the field range in the kitchen
+      was cold, and her blistered fingers stumbled sometimes over the keys of
+      the jingling camp piano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, out of the chaos of her early impressions, she began to divide
+      the men in the army into three parts. There were the American born; they
+      took the war and their part in it as a job to be done, with as few words
+      as possible. And there were the foreigners to whom America was a religion,
+      a dream come true, whose flaming love for their new mother inspired them
+      to stuttering eloquence and awkward gestures. And then there was a third
+      division, small and mostly foreign born, but with a certain percentage of
+      native malcontents, who hated the war and sneered among themselves at the
+      other dupes who believed that it was a war for freedom. It was a
+      capitalists' war. They considered the state as an instrument of
+      oppression, as a bungling interference with liberty and labor; they felt
+      that wealth inevitably brought depravity. They committed both open and
+      overt acts against discipline, and found in their arrest and imprisonment
+      renewed grievances, additional oppression, tyranny. And one day a handful
+      of them, having learned Lily's identity, came into her hut and attempted
+      to bait her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; said one of them, &ldquo;we have here an example of one of the idle
+      rich, sacrificing herself to make us happy. Now, boys, be happy. Are we
+      all happy?&rdquo; He surveyed the group. &ldquo;Here, you,&rdquo; he addressed a sullen-eyed
+      squat Hungarian. &ldquo;Smile when I tell you. You're a slave in one of old
+      Cardew's mills, aren't you? Well, aren't you grateful to him? Here he goes
+      and sends his granddaughter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron had entered the room with a platter of doughnuts in his
+      hand, and stood watching, his face going pale. Quite suddenly there was a
+      crash, and the gang leader went down in a welter of porcelain and fried
+      pastry. Willy Cameron was badly beaten up, in the end, and the beaters
+      were court-martialed. But something of Lily's fine faith in humanity was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said to him, visiting him one day in the base hospital, where
+      he was still an aching, mass of bruises, &ldquo;there must be something behind
+      it. They didn't hate me. They only hated my&mdash;well, my family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, feeling very old and experienced,
+      and, it must be confessed, extremely happy, &ldquo;of course there's something
+      behind it. But the most that's behind it is a lot of fellows who want
+      without working what the other fellow's worked to get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was about that time that Lily was exchanged into the town near the
+      camp, and Willy Cameron suddenly found life a stale thing, and ashes in
+      the mouth. He finally decided that he had not been such a hopeless fool as
+      to fall in love with her, but that it would be as well not to see her too
+      much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing to do,&rdquo; he reasoned to himself, &ldquo;is, first of all, not to see
+      her. Or only on Friday nights, because she likes the movies, and it would
+      look queer to stop.&rdquo; Thus Willy Cameron speciously to himself, and
+      deliberately ignoring the fact that some twenty-odd officers stood ready
+      to seize those Friday nights. &ldquo;And then to work hard, so I'll sleep
+      better, and not lie awake making a fool of myself. And when I get a bit of
+      idiocy in the daytime, I'd better just walk it off. Because I've got to
+      live with myself a long time, probably, and I'm no love-sick Romeo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which excellent practical advice had cost him considerable shoe-leather at
+      first. In a month or two, however, he considered himself quite cured, and
+      pretended to himself that he was surprised to find it Friday again. But
+      when, after retreat, the band marched back again to its quarters playing,
+      for instance, &ldquo;There's a Long, Long Trail,&rdquo; there was something inside him
+      that insisted on seeing the years ahead as a long, long trail, and that
+      the trail did not lead to the lands of his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got to know that very well indeed during the winter that followed the
+      armistice. Because there was work to do he stayed and finished up, as did
+      Lily Cardew. But the hut was closed and she was working in the town, and
+      although they kept up their Friday evenings, the old intimacy was gone.
+      And one night she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it amazing, when you are busy, how soon Friday night comes along?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And on each day of the preceding week he had wakened and said to himself:
+      &ldquo;This is Monday&mdash;&ldquo;&mdash;or whatever it might be&mdash;&ldquo;and in four
+      more days it will be Friday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In February he was sent home. Lily stayed on until the end of March. He
+      went back to his little village of plain people, and took up life again as
+      best he could. But sometimes it seemed to him that from behind every
+      fire-lit window in the evenings&mdash;he was still wearing out
+      shoe-leather, particularly at nights&mdash;somebody with a mandolin was
+      wailing about the long, long trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother watched him anxiously. He was thinner than ever, and oddly
+      older, and there was a hollow look about his eyes that hurt her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you bring home a bottle of tonic from the store, Willy,&rdquo; she
+      said, one evening when he had been feverishly running through the city
+      newspaper. He put the paper aside hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tonic!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Why, I'm all right, mother. Anyhow, I wouldn't take any
+      of that stuff.&rdquo; He caught her eye and looked away. &ldquo;It takes a little time
+      to get settled again, that's all, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Young People's Society is having an entertainment at the church
+      to-night, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, maybe I'll go,&rdquo; he agreed to her unspoken suggestion. &ldquo;If you
+      insist on making me a society man&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But some time later he came downstairs with a book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought I'd rather read,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Got a book here on the history
+      of steel. Talk about romances! Let me read some of it to you. You sit
+      there and close your eyes and just listen to this: 'The first Cardew
+      furnace was built in 1868. At that time&mdash;'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time later he glanced up. His mother was quietly sleeping, her hands
+      folded in her lap. He closed the book and sat there, fighting again his
+      patient battle with himself. The book on his knee seemed to symbolize the
+      gulf between Lily Cardew and himself. But the real gulf, the unbridgeable
+      chasm, between Lily and himself, was neither social nor financial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if that counted, in America,&rdquo; he reflected scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No. It was not that. The war had temporarily broken down the old social
+      barriers. Some of them would never be erected again, although it was the
+      tendency of civilization for men to divide themselves, rather than to be
+      divided, into the high, the middle and the low. But in his generation
+      young Cameron knew that there would be no uncrossable bridge between old
+      Anthony's granddaughter and himself, were it not for one thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not love him. It hurt his pride to realize that she had never
+      thought of him in any terms but that of a pleasant comradeship. Hardly
+      even as a man. Men fought, in war time. They did not fry doughnuts and
+      write letters home for the illiterate. Any one of those boys in the ranks
+      was a better man than he was. All this talk about a man's soul being
+      greater than his body, that was rot. A man was as good as the weakest part
+      of him, and no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His sensitive face in the lamplight was etched with lines of tragedy. He
+      put the book on the table, and suddenly flinging his arms across it,
+      dropped his head on them. The slight movement wakened his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Willy!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a moment he looked up. &ldquo;I was almost asleep,&rdquo; he explained, more to
+      protect her than himself. &ldquo;I&mdash;I wish that fool Nelson kid would break
+      his mandolin&mdash;or his neck,&rdquo; he said irritably. He kissed her and went
+      upstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive,
+      occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the long, long trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the blood of Covenanters in Willy Cameron's mother, a high
+      courage of sacrifice, and an exceedingly shrewd brain. She lay awake that
+      night, carefully planning, and when everything was arranged in orderly
+      fashion in her mind, she lighted her lamp and carried it to the door of
+      Willy's room. He lay diagonally across his golden-oak bed, for he was very
+      long, and sleep had rubbed away the tragic lines about his mouth. She
+      closed his door and went back to her bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've seen too much of it,&rdquo; she reflected, without bitterness. She stared
+      around the room. &ldquo;Too much of it,&rdquo; she repeated. And crawled heavily back
+      into bed, a determined little figure, rather chilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with her
+      brother in California.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;and
+      James has been wanting me this long time. I don't want to leave you,
+      that's all, Willy. If you were in the city it would be different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth. He no more
+      suspected her of design than of crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you are going,&rdquo; he said, heartily. &ldquo;It's the very thing. But I
+      like the way you desert your little son!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been thinking about that, too,&rdquo; she said, pouring his coffee. &ldquo;I&mdash;if
+      you were in the city, now, there would always be something to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shot her a suspicious glance, but her face was without evidence of
+      guile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would I do in the city?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They use chemists in the mills, don't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job,&rdquo; he scoffed. &ldquo;No city for me,
+      mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she knew. She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous pause of
+      the bird whose cage door is suddenly opened. He would go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd think about it, anyhow, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But for a long time after he had gone she sat quietly rocking in her
+      rocking chair in the bay window of the sitting room. It was a familiar
+      attitude of hers, homely, middle-class, and in a way symbolic. Had old
+      Anthony Cardew ever visualized so imaginative a thing as a Nemesis, he
+      would probably have summoned a vision of a huddled figure in his
+      stable-yard, dying, and cursing him as he died. Had Jim Doyle, cunningly
+      plotting the overthrow of law and order, been able in his arrogance to
+      conceive of such a thing, it might have been Anthony Cardew he saw.
+      Neither of them, for a moment, dreamed of it as an elderly Scotch
+      Covenanter, a plain little womanly figure, rocking in a cane-seated
+      rocking chair, and making the great sacrifice of her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of which simply explains how, on a March Wednesday evening of the
+      great year of peace after much tribulation, Mr. William Wallace Cameron,
+      now a clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy, after an hour of Politics, and no
+      Economics at all, happened to be taking a walk toward the Cardew house.
+      Such pilgrimages has love taken for many years, small uncertain ramblings
+      where the fancy leads the feet and far outstrips them, and where
+      heart-hunger hides under various flimsy pretexts; a fine night, a paper to
+      be bought, a dog to be exercised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that Willy Cameron made any excuses to himself. He had a sort of idea
+      that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would through her
+      sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself with a
+      sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he addressed it
+      now and then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even a cat can look at a king,&rdquo; he said once. And again, following some
+      vague train of thought, on a crowded street: &ldquo;The People's voice is a
+      queer thing. 'It is, and it is not, the voice of God.' The people's voice,
+      old man. Only the ones that count haven't got a voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, he felt, two Lily Cardews. One lived in an army camp, and wore
+      plain clothes, and got a bath by means of calculation and persistency, and
+      went to the movies on Friday nights, and was quite apt to eat peanuts at
+      those times, carefully putting the shells in her pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And another one lived inside this great pile of brick,&mdash;he was
+      standing across from it, by the park railing, by that time&mdash;where
+      motor cars drew up, and a footman with an umbrella against a light rain
+      ushered to their limousines draped women and men in evening clothes, their
+      strong blacks and whites revealed in the light of the street door. And
+      this Lily Cardew lived in state, bowed to by flunkeys in livery, dressed
+      and undressed&mdash;his Scotch sense of decorum resented this&mdash;by
+      serving women. This Lily Cardew would wear frivolous ball-gowns, such
+      things as he saw in the shop windows, considered money only as a thing of
+      exchange, and had traveled all over Europe a number of times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his station against the park railings and reflected that it was a
+      good thing he had come, after all. Because it was the first Lily whom he
+      loved, and she was gone, with the camp and the rest, including war. What
+      had he in common with those lighted windows, with their heavy laces and
+      draperies?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing at all, old man,&rdquo; he said cheerfully to the dog, &ldquo;nothing at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But although the ache was gone when he turned homeward, the dog still at
+      his heels, he felt strangely lonely without it. He considered that very
+      definitely he had put love out of his life. Hereafter he would travel the
+      trail alone. Or accompanied only by History, Politics, Economics, and
+      various divines on Sunday evenings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, grandfather,&rdquo; said Lily Cardew, &ldquo;the last of the Cardews is home
+      from the wars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I presume,&rdquo; observed old Anthony. &ldquo;Owing, however, to your mother's
+      determination to shroud this room in impenetrable gloom, I can only
+      presume. I cannot see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone was less unpleasant than his words, however. He was in one of the
+      rare moods of what passed with him for geniality. For one thing, he had
+      won at the club that afternoon, where every day from four to six he played
+      bridge with his own little group, reactionaries like himself, men who
+      viewed the difficulties of the younger employers of labor with amused
+      contempt. For another, he and Howard had had a difference of opinion, and
+      he had, for a wonder, made Howard angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Lily,&rdquo; he inquired, &ldquo;how does it seem to be at home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily eyed him almost warily. He was sometimes most dangerous in these
+      moods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure, grandfather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not sure about what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I am glad to see everybody, of course. But what am I to do with
+      myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut.&rdquo; He had an air of benignantly forgiving her. &ldquo;You'll find plenty.
+      What did you do before you went away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was different, grandfather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm blessed,&rdquo; said old Anthony, truculently, &ldquo;if I understand what has
+      come over this country, anyhow. What is different? We've had a war. We've
+      had other wars, and we didn't think it necessary to change the
+      Constitution after them. But everything that was right before this war is
+      wrong after it. Lot of young idiots coming back and refusing to settle
+      down. Set of young Bolshevists!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had always managed to arouse a controversial spirit in the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe, if it isn't right now, it wasn't right before.&rdquo; Having said it,
+      Lily immediately believed it. She felt suddenly fired with an intense
+      dislike of anything that her grandfather advocated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meaning what?&rdquo; He fixed her with cold but attentive eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;conditions,&rdquo; she said vaguely. She was not at all sure what she
+      meant. And old Anthony realized it, and gave a sardonic chuckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I advise you to get a few arguments from your father, Lily. He is full of
+      them. If he had his way I'd have a board of my workmen running my mills,
+      while I played golf in Florida.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner was a relatively pleasant meal. In her gradual rehabilitation of
+      the house Grace had finally succeeded in doing over the dining room. Over
+      the old walnut paneling she had hung loose folds of faded blue Italian
+      velvet, with old silver candle sconces at irregular intervals along the
+      walls. The great table and high-backed chairs were likewise Italian, and
+      the old-fashioned white marble fireplace had been given an over-mantel,
+      also white, enclosing an old tapestry. For warmth of color there were
+      always flowers, and that night there were red roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily liked the luxury of it. She liked the immaculate dinner dress of the
+      two men; she liked her mother's beautiful neck and arms; she liked the
+      quiet service once more; she even liked herself, moderately, in a light
+      frock and slippers. But she watched it all with a new interest and a
+      certain detachment. She felt strange and aloof, not entirely one of them.
+      She felt very keenly that no one of them was vitally interested in this
+      wonder-year of hers. They asked her perfunctory questions, but Grace's
+      watchful eyes were on the service, Anthony was engrossed with his food,
+      and her father&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father was changed. He looked older and care-worn. For the first time
+      she began to wonder about her father. What was he, really, under that
+      calm, fastidiously dressed, handsome exterior? Did he mind the little man
+      with the sardonic smile and the swift unpleasant humor, whose glance
+      reduced the men who served into terrified menials? Her big, blond father,
+      with his rather slow speech, his honest eyes, his slight hesitation before
+      he grasped some of the finer nuances of his father's wit. No, he was not
+      brilliant, but he was real, real and kindly. Perhaps he was strong, too.
+      He looked strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the same pitiless judgment she watched her mother. Either Grace was
+      very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's tongue.
+      Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly. Like
+      Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had loved her
+      child. Quite calmly Lily decided that, as between her husband and herself,
+      her mother loved her husband. Perhaps that was as it should be, but it
+      added to her sense of aloofness. And she wondered, too, about these great
+      loves that seemed to feed on sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony, who had a most unpleasant faculty of remembering things, suddenly
+      bent forward and observed to her, across the table:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be interested to know, since you regard present conditions as
+      wrong, and, I inferred, wrong because of my mishandling of them, just what
+      you would propose to do to right them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I didn't say they were wrong, did I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't answer a question with a question. It's a feminine form of evasion,
+      because you have no answer and no remedy. Yet, heaven save the country,
+      women are going to vote!&rdquo; He pushed his plate away and glanced at Grace.
+      &ldquo;Is that the new chef's work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Isn't it right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right? The food is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came from the club.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send him back,&rdquo; ordered Anthony. And when Grace observed that it was
+      difficult to get servants, he broke into a cold fury. What had come over
+      the world, anyhow? Time was when a gentleman's servants stayed with the
+      family until they became pensioners, and their children took their places.
+      Now&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace said nothing. Her eyes sought Howard's, and seemed to find some
+      comfort there. And Lily, sorry for her mother, said the first thing that
+      came into her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old days of caste are gone, grandfather. And service, in your sense
+      of the word, went with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really?&rdquo; he eyed her. &ldquo;Who said that? Because I daresay it is not
+      original.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man I knew at camp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name was Willy Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy Cameron! Was this&mdash;er&mdash;person qualified to speak? Does he
+      know anything about what he chooses to call caste?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks a lot about things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little less thinking and more working wouldn't hurt the country any,&rdquo;
+       observed old Anthony. He bent forward. &ldquo;As my granddaughter, and the last
+      of the Cardews,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have a certain interest in the sources of
+      your political opinions. They will probably, like your father's, differ
+      from mine. You may not know that your father has not only opinions, but
+      ambitions.&rdquo; She saw Grace stiffen, and Howard's warning glance at her. But
+      she saw, too, the look in her mother's eyes, infinitely loving and
+      compassionate. &ldquo;Dear little mother,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;he is her baby, really.
+      Not I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt a vague stirring of what married love at its best must be for a
+      woman, its strange complex of passion and maternity. She wondered if it
+      would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also conscious
+      of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's tense
+      watchfulness, her father's slightly squared shoulders, and across from her
+      her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass and faintly smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's time somebody went into city politics for some purpose other than
+      graft,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;I am going to run for mayor, Lily. I probably won't
+      get it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can see,&rdquo; said old Anthony, &ldquo;why I am interested in your views, or
+      perhaps I should say, in Willy Cameron's. Does your father's passion for
+      uplift, for instance, extend to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why won't you be elected, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Partly because my name is Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;after the bath-house and gymnasium you have built
+      at the mill? And the laundries for the women&mdash;which I believe they do
+      not use. Surely, Howard, you would not accuse the dear people of
+      ingratitude?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are beginning to use them, sir.&rdquo; Howard, in his forties, still
+      addressed his father as &ldquo;Sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you admit your defeat beforehand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are rather a formidable antagonist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antagonist!&rdquo; Anthony repeated in mock protest. &ldquo;I am a quiet onlooker at
+      the game. I am amused, naturally. You must understand,&rdquo; he said to Lily,
+      &ldquo;that this is a matter of a principle with your father. He believes that
+      he should serve. My whole contention is that the people don't want to be
+      served. They want to be bossed. They like it; it's all they know. And
+      they're suspicious of a man who puts his hand into his own pocket instead
+      of into theirs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled and sipped his wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good wine, this,&rdquo; he observed. &ldquo;I'm buying all I can lay my hands on,
+      against the approaching drought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily's old distrust of her grandfather revived. Why did people sharpen
+      like that with age? Age should be mellow, like old wine. And&mdash;what
+      was she going to do with herself? Already the atmosphere of the house
+      began to depress and worry her; she felt a new, almost violent impatience
+      with it. It was so unnecessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the pipe organ which filled the space behind the staircase,
+      and played a little, but she had never been very proficient, and her own
+      awkwardness annoyed her. In the dining room she could hear the men
+      talking, Howard quietly, his father in short staccato barks. She left the
+      organ and wandered into her mother's morning room, behind the drawing
+      room, where Grace sat with the coffee tray before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I'm going to be terribly on your hands, mother,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I
+      don't know what to do with myself, so how can you know what to do with
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is going to be rather stupid for you at first, of course,&rdquo; Grace said.
+      &ldquo;Lent, and then so many of the men are not at home. Would you like to go
+      South?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I've just come home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can have some luncheons, of course. Just informal ones. And there will
+      be small dinners. You'll have to get some clothes. I saw Suzette
+      yesterday. She has some adorable things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd love them. Mother, why doesn't he want father to go into politics?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn't like change, for one thing. But I don't know anything about
+      politics. Suzette says&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he try to keep him from being elected?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't support him. Of course I hardly think he would oppose him. I
+      really don't understand about those things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean you don't understand him. Well, I do, mother. He has run
+      everything, including father, for so long&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must, mother. Why, out at the camp&mdash;&rdquo; She checked herself. &ldquo;All
+      the papers say the city is badly governed, and that he is responsible. And
+      now he is going to fight his own son! The more I think about it, the more
+      I understand about Aunt Elinor. Mother, where do they live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace looked apprehensively toward the door. &ldquo;You are not allowed to visit
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's different. And I only go once or twice a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just because she married a poor man, a man whose father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. That is all dead and buried. He is a very dangerous man. He
+      is running a Socialist newspaper, and now he is inciting the mill men to
+      strike. He is preaching terrible things. I haven't been there for months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by terrible things, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father says it amounts to a revolution. I believe he calls it a
+      general strike. I don't really know much about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily pondered that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Socialism isn't revolution, mother, is it? But even then&mdash;is all
+      this because grandfather drove his father to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't, Lily. Of course it is not that. I daresay he
+      believes what he preaches. He ought to be put into jail. Why the country
+      lets such men go around, preaching sedition, I don't understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily remembered something else Willy Cameron had said, and promptly
+      repeated it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had a muzzled press during the war,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and now we've got free
+      speech. And one's as bad as the other. She must love him terribly,
+      mother,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Grace harked back to Suzette, and the last of the Cardews harked with
+      her. Later on people dropped in, and Lily made a real attempt to get back
+      into her old groove, but that night, when she went upstairs to her
+      bedroom, with its bright fire, its bed neatly turned down, her dressing
+      gown and slippers laid out, the shaded lamps shining on the gold and ivory
+      of her dressing table, she was conscious of a sudden homesickness.
+      Homesickness for her bare little room in the camp barracks, for other
+      young lives, noisy, chattering, often rather silly, occasionally
+      unpleasant, but young. Radiantly, vitally young. The great house, with its
+      stillness and decorum, oppressed her. There was no youth in it, save hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to her window and looked out. Years ago, like Elinor, she had
+      watched the penitentiary walls from that window, with their endlessly
+      pacing sentries, and had grieved for those men who might look up at the
+      sky, or down at the earth, but never out and across, to see the spring
+      trees, for instance, or the children playing on the grass. She remembered
+      the story about Jim Doyle's escape, too. He had dug a perilous way to
+      freedom. Vaguely she wondered if he were not again digging a perilous way
+      to freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men seemed always to be wanting freedom, only they had so many different
+      ideas of what freedom was. At the camp it had meant breaking bounds,
+      balking the Military Police, doing forbidden things generally. Was that,
+      after all, what freedom meant, to do the forbidden thing? Those people in
+      Russia, for instance, who stole and burned and appropriated women, in the
+      name of freedom. Were law and order, then, irreconcilable with freedom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After she had undressed she rang her bell, and Castle answered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please find out if Ellen has gone to bed,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If she has not, I
+      would like to talk to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid looked slightly surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's your hair, Miss Lily, Mrs. Cardew has asked me to look after you
+      until she has engaged a maid for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not my hair,&rdquo; said Lily, cheerfully. &ldquo;I rather like doing it myself. I
+      just want to talk to Ellen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bewildered and rather scandalized Castle who conveyed the message
+      to Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd stop whistling that thing,&rdquo; said Miss Boyd, irritably. &ldquo;It
+      makes me low in my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;I do it because I'm low in my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you low about?&rdquo; Miss Boyd had turned toward the rear of the
+      counter, where a mirror was pasted to a card above a box of chewing gum,
+      and was carefully adjusting her hair net. &ldquo;Lady friend turned you down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron glanced at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm low because I haven't got a lady friend, Miss Boyd.&rdquo; He held up a
+      sheet of prescription paper and squinted at it. &ldquo;Also because the medical
+      profession writes with its feet, apparently. I've done everything to this
+      but dip it in acid. I've had it pinned to the wall, and tried glancing at
+      it as I went past. Sometimes you can surprise them that way. But it does
+      no good. I'm going to take it home and dream on it, like bride's cake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're awful, aren't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I get into the Legislature,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, &ldquo;I'm going to have
+      a bill passed compelling doctors to use typewriters. Take this now. Read
+      upside down, its horse liniment. Read right side up, it's poison. And it's
+      for internal use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What d'you mean you haven't got a lady friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The exact and cruel truth.&rdquo; He smiled at her, and had Miss Boyd been more
+      discerning she might have seen that the smile was slightly forced. Also
+      that his eyes were somewhat sunken in his head. Which might, of course,
+      have been due to too much political economy and history, and the eminent
+      divines on Sunday evenings. Miss Boyd, however, was not discerning, and
+      moreover, she was summoning her courage to a certain point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you ask me to go to the movies some night?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I like
+      the movies, and I get sick of going alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child,&rdquo; observed Willy Cameron, &ldquo;if that young man in the sack
+      suit who comes in to see you every day were three inches shorter and
+      twenty pounds lighter, I'd ask you this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, him!&rdquo; said Miss Boyd, with a self-conscious smile. &ldquo;I'm through with
+      him. He's a Bolshevik!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has the Bolshevist possessive eye,&rdquo; agreed Willy Cameron, readily.
+      &ldquo;Does he know you are through with him? Because that's important, too. You
+      may know it, and I may know it, but if he doesn't know it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you say right out you don't want to take me?&rdquo; Willy Cameron's
+      chivalrous soul was suddenly shocked. To his horror he saw tears in Miss
+      Boyd's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm just a plain idiot, Miss Edith,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was only fooling. It
+      will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the movies, or
+      anywhere else. We'll make it to-night, if that suits you, and I'll take a
+      look through the neighborhood at noon and see what's worth while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Eagle Pharmacy was a small one in a quiet neighborhood. During the
+      entire day, and for three evenings a week, Mr. William Wallace Cameron ran
+      it almost single-handed, having only the preoccupied assistance of Miss
+      Boyd in the candy and fancy goods. At the noon and dinner hours, and four
+      evenings a week, he was relieved by the owner, Mr. Davis, a tired little
+      man with large projecting ears and worried, child-like eyes, who was
+      nursing an invalid wife at home. A pathetic little man, carrying home with
+      unbounded faith day after day bottles of liquid foods and beef capsules,
+      and making wistful comments on them when he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She couldn't seem to keep that last stuff down, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; he would
+      say. &ldquo;I'll try something else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he would stand before his shelves, eyes upturned, searching,
+      eliminating, choosing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Boyd attended to the general merchandise, sold stationery and
+      perfumes, candy and fancy soaps, and in the intervals surveyed the world
+      that lay beyond the plate glass windows with shrewd, sophisticated young
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That new doctor across the street is getting busier,&rdquo; she would say. Or,
+      &ldquo;The people in 42 have got a Ford. They haven't got room for a garage,
+      either. Probably have to leave it out at nights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her sophistication was kindly in the main. She combined it with an easy
+      tolerance of weakness, and an invincible and cheery romanticism, as Willy
+      Cameron discovered the night they first went to a moving picture theater
+      together. She frankly wept and joyously laughed, and now and then,
+      delighted at catching some film subtlety and fearful that he would miss
+      it, she would nudge him with her elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What d'you think of that?&rdquo; she would say. &ldquo;D'you get it? He thinks he's
+      getting her&mdash;Alice Joyce, you know&mdash;on the telephone, and it's a
+      private wire to the gang.&rdquo; She was rather quiet after that particular
+      speech. Then she added: &ldquo;I know a place that's got a secret telephone.&rdquo;
+       But he was absorbed in the picture, and made no comment on that. She
+      seemed rather relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once or twice she placed an excited hand on his knee. He was very
+      uncomfortable until she removed it, because he had a helpless sort of
+      impression that she was not quite so unconscious of it as she appeared.
+      Time had been, and not so long ago, when he might have reciprocated her
+      little advance in the spirit in which it was offered, might have taken the
+      hand and held it, out of the sheer joy of youth and proximity. But there
+      was nothing of the philanderer in the Willy Cameron who sat beside Edith
+      Boyd that night in body, while in spirit he was in another state, walking
+      with his slight limp over crisp snow and sodden mud, but through magic
+      lands, to the little moving picture theater at the camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would he ever see her again? Ever again? And if he did, what good would it
+      be? He roused himself when they started toward her home. The girl was
+      chattering happily. She adored Douglas Fairbanks. She knew a girl who had
+      written for his picture but who didn't get one. She wouldn't do a thing
+      like that. &ldquo;Did they really say things when they moved their lips?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they do,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;When that chap was talking over
+      the telephone I could tell what he was saying by&mdash;Look here, what did
+      you mean when you said you knew of a place that has a secret telephone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No house has any business with a secret telephone,&rdquo; he said virtuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, forget it. I say a lot of things I don't mean.&rdquo; He was a little
+      puzzled and rather curious, but not at all disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how did you get to know about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you I was only talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let it drop at that. The street crowds held and interested him. He
+      liked to speculate about them; what life meant to them, in work and love
+      and play; to what they were going on such hurrying feet. A country boy,
+      the haste of the city impressed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do they hurry so?&rdquo; he demanded, almost irritably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrying home, most of them, because they've got to get up in the morning
+      and go to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you ever wonder about the homes they are hurrying to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me? I don't wonder. I know. Most of them have to move fast to keep up
+      with the rent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean houses,&rdquo; he explained, patiently. &ldquo;I mean&mdash;A house
+      isn't a home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet it isn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the families I'm talking about. In a small town you know all about
+      people, who they live with, and all that.&rdquo; He was laboriously talking down
+      to her. &ldquo;But here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw that she was not interested. Something he had said started an
+      unpleasant train of thought in her mind. She was walking faster, and
+      frowning slightly. To cheer her he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am keeping an eye out for the large young man in the sack suit, you
+      know. If he jumps me, just yell for the police, will you? Because I'll
+      probably not be able to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd let me forget him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will. The question is, will he?&rdquo; But he saw that the subject was
+      unpleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll have to do this again. It's been mighty nice of you to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to ask me, the next time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly will. But I think I'd better let your family look me over
+      first, just so they'll know that I don't customarily steal the silver
+      spoons when I'm asked out to dinner. Or anything like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're just&mdash;folks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I, awfully&mdash;folks! And pretty lonely folks at that. Something
+      like that pup that has adopted me, only worse. He's got me, but I haven't
+      anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll not be lonely long.&rdquo; She glanced up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's cheering. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you are the sort that makes friends,&rdquo; she said, rather vaguely.
+      &ldquo;That crowd that drops into the shop on the evenings you're there&mdash;they're
+      crazy about you. They like to hear you talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great Scott! I suppose I've been orating all over the place!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but you've got ideas. You give them something to think about when
+      they go home. I wish I had a mind like yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was so astonished that he stopped dead on the pavement. &ldquo;My Scottish
+      blood,&rdquo; he said despondently. &ldquo;A Scot is always a reformer and a preacher,
+      in his heart. I used to orate to my mother, but she liked it. She is a
+      Scot, too. Besides, it put her to sleep. But I thought I'd outgrown it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't make speeches. I didn't mean that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was very crestfallen during the remainder of the way, and rather
+      silent. He wondered, that night before he went to bed, if he had been
+      didactic to Lily Cardew. He had aired his opinions to her at length, he
+      knew. He groaned as he took off his coat in his cold little room at the
+      boarding house which lodged and fed him, both indifferently, for the sum
+      of twelve dollars per week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jinx, the little hybrid dog, occupied the seat of his one comfortable
+      chair. He eyed the animal somberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hereafter, old man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I feel a spell of oratory coming on,
+      you will have to be the audience.&rdquo; He took his dressing gown from a nail
+      behind the door, and commenced to put it on. Then he took it off again and
+      wrapped the dog in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can read in bed, which you can't,&rdquo; he observed. &ldquo;Only, I can't help
+      thinking, with all this town to pick from, you might have chosen a fellow
+      with two dressing gowns and two chairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      He was extremely quiet all the next day. Miss Boyd could hear him, behind
+      the partition with its &ldquo;Please Keep Out&rdquo; sign, fussing with bottles and
+      occasionally whistling to himself. Once it was the &ldquo;Long, Long Trail,&rdquo; and
+      a moment later he appeared in his doorway, grinning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've got in the habit of thinking to the fool thing.
+      Won't do it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be thinking hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am,&rdquo; he replied, grimly, and disappeared. She could hear the slight
+      unevenness of his steps as he moved about, but there was no more
+      whistling. Edith Boyd leaned both elbows on the top of a showcase and fell
+      into a profound and troubled thought. Mostly her thoughts were of Willy
+      Cameron, but some of them were for herself. Up dreary and sordid by-paths
+      her mind wandered; she was facing ugly facts for the first time, and a
+      little shudder of disgust shook her. He wanted to meet her family. He was
+      a gentleman and he wanted to meet her family. Well, he could meet them all
+      right, and maybe he would understand then that she had never had a chance.
+      In all her young life no man had ever proposed letting her family look him
+      over. Hardly ever had they visited her at home, and when they did they
+      seemed always glad to get away. She had met them on street corners, and
+      slipped back alone, fearful of every creak of the old staircase, and her
+      mother's querulous voice calling to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edie, where've you been all this time?&rdquo; And she had lied. How she had
+      lied!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm through with all that,&rdquo; she resolved. &ldquo;It wasn't any fun anyhow. I'm
+      sick of hating myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time later Willy Cameron heard the telephone ring, and taking pad and
+      pencil started forward. But Miss Boyd was at the telephone, conducting a
+      personal conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.... No, I think not.... Look here, Lou, I've said no twice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a rather lengthy silence while she listened. Then: &ldquo;You might as
+      well have it straight, Lou. I'm through.... No, I'm not sick. I'm just
+      through.... I wouldn't.... What's the use?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron, retreating into his lair, was unhappily conscious that the
+      girl was on the verge of tears. He puzzled over the situation for some
+      time. His immediate instinct was to help any troubled creature, and it had
+      dawned on him that this composed young lady who manicured her nails out of
+      a pasteboard box during the slack portion of every day was troubled. In
+      his abstraction he commenced again his melancholy refrain, and a moment
+      later she appeared in the doorway:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, for mercy's sake, stop,&rdquo; she said. She was very pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Miss Edith, you come in here and tell me what's wrong. Here's
+      a chair. Now sit down and talk it out. It helps a lot to get things off
+      your chest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing the matter with me. And if the boss comes in here and
+      finds me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite suddenly she put her head down on the back of the chair and began to
+      cry. He was frightfully distressed. He poured some aromatic ammonia into a
+      medicine glass and picking up her limp hand, closed her fingers around it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink that,&rdquo; he ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sick,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I'm only a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that fellow said anything over the telephone&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up drearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't him. He doesn't matter. It's just&mdash;I got to hating
+      myself.&rdquo; She stood up and carefully dabbed her eyes. &ldquo;Heavens, I must be a
+      sight. Now don't you get to thinking things, Mr. Cameron. Girls can't go
+      out and fight off a temper, or get full and sleep it off. So they cry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time later he glanced out at her. She was standing before the little
+      mirror above the chewing gum, carefully rubbing her cheeks with a small
+      red pad. After that she reached into the show case, got out a lip pencil
+      and touched her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're pretty enough without all that, Miss Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mind your own business,&rdquo; she retorted acidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life. The children of that group
+      of families which formed the monied aristocracy of the city knew only
+      their own small circle. They met at dancing classes, where governesses and
+      occasionally mothers sat around the walls, while the little girls, in
+      handmade white frocks of exquisite simplicity, their shining hair drawn
+      back and held by ribbon bows, made their prim little dip at the door
+      before entering, and the boys, in white Eton collars and gleaming pumps,
+      bowed from the waist and then dived for the masculine corner of the long
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although now and then a brave
+      spirit among the boys would wander, with assumed unconsciousness but ears
+      rather pink, to the opposite corner where the little girls were grouped
+      like white butterflies milling in the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pianist struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on one
+      side, the boys on the other, a long line, with Mrs. Van Buren in the
+      center. Another chord, rather a long one. Mrs. Van Buren curtsied to the
+      girls. The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself. Mrs. Van Buren turned.
+      Another chord. The boys bent, rather too much, from the waist, while Mrs.
+      Van Buren swept another deep curtsey. The music now, very definite as to
+      time. Glide and short step to the right. Glide and short step to the left.
+      Dancing school had commenced. Outside were long lines of motors waiting.
+      The governesses chatted, and sometimes embroidered. Mademoiselle tatted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alton Denslow was generally known as Pink, but the origin of the name was
+      shrouded in mystery. As &ldquo;Pink&rdquo; he had learned to waltz at the dancing
+      class, at a time when he was more attentive to the step than to the music
+      that accompanied it. As Pink Denslow he had played on a scrub team at
+      Harvard, and got two broken ribs for his trouble, and as Pink he now paid
+      intermittent visits to the Denslow Bank, between the hunting season in
+      October and polo at eastern fields and in California. At twenty-three he
+      was still the boy of the dancing class, very careful at parties to ask his
+      hostess to dance, and not noticeably upset when she did, having arranged
+      to be cut in on at the end of the second round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink could not remember when he had not been in love with Lily Cardew.
+      There had been other girls, of course, times when Lily seemed far away
+      from Cambridge, and some other fair charmer was near. But he had always
+      known there was only Lily. Once or twice he would have become engaged, had
+      it not been for that. He was a blond boy, squarely built, good-looking
+      without being handsome, and on rainy Sundays when there was no golf he
+      went quite cheerfully to St. Peter's with his mother, and watched a pretty
+      girl in the choir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wished at those times that he could sing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pleasant cumberer of the earth, he had wrapped his talents in a napkin
+      and buried them by the wayside, and promptly forgotten where they were. He
+      was to find them later on, however, not particularly rusty, and he
+      increased them rather considerably before he got through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was this pleasant cumberer of the earth, then, who on the morning after
+      Lily's return, stopped his car before the Cardew house and got out.
+      Immediately following his descent he turned, took a square white box from
+      the car, ascended the steps, settled his neck in his collar and his tie
+      around it, and rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second man, hastily buttoned into his coat and with a faint odor of
+      silver polish about him, opened the door. Pink gave him his hat, but
+      retained the box firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Cardew and Miss Cardew at home?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Yes? Then you might tell
+      Grayson I'm here to luncheon&mdash;unless the family is lunching out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said the footman. &ldquo;No, sir, they are lunching at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink sauntered into the library. He was not so easy as his manner
+      indicated. One never knew about Lily. Sometimes she was in a mood when she
+      seemed to think a man funny, and not to be taken seriously. And when she
+      was serious, which was the way he liked her&mdash;he rather lacked humor&mdash;she
+      was never serious about him or herself. It had been religion once, he
+      remembered. She had wanted to know if he believed in the thirty-nine
+      articles, and because he had seen them in the back of the prayer-book,
+      where they certainly would not be if there was not authority for them, he
+      had said he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't,&rdquo; said Lily. And there had been rather a bad half-hour,
+      because he had felt that he had to stick to his thirty-nine guns, whatever
+      they were. He had finished on a rather desperate note of appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, Lily,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;Why do you bother your head about such
+      things, anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I've got a head, and I want to use it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life's too short.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eternity's pretty long. Do you believe in eternity?&rdquo; And there they were,
+      off again, and of course old Anthony had come in after that, and had
+      wanted to know about his Aunt Marcia, and otherwise had shown every
+      indication of taking root on the hearth rug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink was afraid of Anthony. He felt like a stammering fool when Anthony
+      was around. That was why he had invited himself to luncheon. Old Anthony
+      lunched at his club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he heard Lily coming down the stairs, Pink's honest heart beat
+      somewhat faster. A good many times in France, but particularly on the ship
+      coming back, he had thought about this meeting. In France a fellow had a
+      lot of distractions, and Lily had seemed as dear as ever, but extremely
+      remote. But once turned toward home, and she had filled the entire western
+      horizon. The other men had seen sunsets there, and sometimes a ship, or a
+      school of porpoises. But Pink had seen only Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came in. The dear old girl! The beautiful, wonderful, dear old girl!
+      The&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pink!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H&mdash;hello, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Pink&mdash;you're a man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'd you think I'd be? A girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've grown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, now see here, Lily. I quit growing years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to think you are back all right. I was so worried, Pink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flushed at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Needn't have worried,&rdquo; he said, rather thickly. &ldquo;Didn't get to the front
+      until just before the end. My show was made a labor division in the south
+      of France. If you laugh, I'll take my flowers and go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Pink dear, I wouldn't laugh for anything. And it was the man behind
+      the lines who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won the war,&rdquo; he finished for her, rather grimly. &ldquo;All right, Lily. We've
+      heard it before. Anyhow, it's all done and over, and&mdash;I brought
+      gardenias and violets. You used to like 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was dear of you to remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't help remembering. No credit to me. I&mdash;you were always in my
+      mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was busily unwrapping the box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always,&rdquo; he repeated, unsteadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What gorgeous things!&rdquo; she buried her face in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear what I said, Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and it's sweet of you. Now sit down and tell me about things. I've
+      got a lot to tell you, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a sort of quiet obstinacy, however, and he did not sit down. When
+      she had done so he stood in front of her, looking down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've been in a camp. I know that. I heard it over there. Anne Devereaux
+      wrote me. It worried me because&mdash;we had girls in the camps over
+      there, and every one of them had a string of suitors a mile long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I didn't,&rdquo; said Lily, spiritedly. Then she laughed. He had been
+      afraid she would laugh. &ldquo;Oh, Pink, how dear and funny and masculine you
+      are! I have a perfectly uncontrollable desire to kiss you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which she did, to his amazement and consternation. Nothing she could have
+      done would more effectually have shown him the hopelessness of his
+      situation than that sisterly impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord,&rdquo; he gasped, &ldquo;Grayson's in the hall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he comes in I shall probably do it again. Pink, you darling child, you
+      are still the little boy at Mrs. Van Buren's and if you would only purse
+      your lips and count one&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;Are you staying to
+      luncheon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was suffering terribly. Also he felt strangely empty inside, because
+      something that he had carried around with him for a long time seemed to
+      have suddenly moved out and left a vacancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. I think not, Lily; I've got a lot to do to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat very still. She had had to do it, had had to show him, somehow,
+      that she loved him without loving him as he wanted her to. She had acted
+      on impulse, on an impulse born of intention, but she had hurt him. It was
+      in every line of his rigid body and set face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not angry, Pink dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing to be angry about,&rdquo; he said, stolidly. &ldquo;Things have been
+      going on, with me, and staying where they've always been, with you. That's
+      all. I'm not very keen, you know, and I used to think&mdash;Your people
+      like me. I mean, they wouldn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody likes you, Pink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll trot along.&rdquo; He moved a step, hesitated. &ldquo;Is there anybody
+      else, Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't mind if I hang around a bit, then? You can always send me off
+      when you are sick of me. Which you couldn't if you were fool enough to
+      marry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whoever does marry you, dear, will be a lucky woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end he stayed to luncheon, and managed to eat a very fair one. But
+      he had little lapses into silence, and Grace Cardew drew her own shrewd
+      conclusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's such a nice boy, Lily,&rdquo; she said, after he had gone. &ldquo;And your
+      grandfather would like it. In a way I think he expects it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not going to marry to please him, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are fond of Alston.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to marry a man, mother. Pink is a boy. He will always be a boy. He
+      doesn't think; he just feels. He is fine and loyal and honest, but I would
+      loathe him in a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; said Grace Cardew unhappily, &ldquo;I wish you had never gone to that
+      camp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All afternoon Lily and Grace shopped. Lily was fitted into shining evening
+      gowns, into bright little afternoon frocks, into Paris wraps. The Cardew
+      name was whispered through the shops, and great piles of exotic things
+      were brought in for Grace's critical eye. Lily's own attitude was joyously
+      carefree. Long lines of models walked by, draped in furs, in satins and
+      velvet and chiffon, tall girls, most of them, with hair carefully dressed,
+      faces delicately tinted and that curious forward thrust at the waist and
+      slight advancement of one shoulder that gave them an air of languorous
+      indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only way I could get that twist,&rdquo; Lily confided to her mother, &ldquo;would
+      be to stand that way and be done up in plaster of paris. It is the most
+      abandoned thing I ever saw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace was shocked, and said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, during the few hours since her arrival, Lily had wondered if
+      her year's experiences had coarsened her. There were so many times when
+      her mother raised her eyebrows. She knew that she had changed, that the
+      granddaughter of old Anthony Cardew who had come back from the war was not
+      the girl who had gone away. She had gone away amazingly ignorant; what
+      little she had known of life she had learned away at school. But even
+      there she had not realized the possibility of wickedness and vice in the
+      world. One of the girls had run away with a music master who was married,
+      and her name was forbidden to be mentioned. That was wickedness, like
+      blasphemy, and a crime against the Holy Ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never heard of prostitution. Near the camp there was a district
+      with a bad name, and the girls of her organization were forbidden to so
+      much as walk in that direction. It took her a long time to understand, and
+      she suffered horribly when she did. There were depths of wickedness, then,
+      and of abasement like that in the world. It was a bad world, a cruel,
+      sordid world. She did not want to live in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had had to reorganize all her ideas of life after that. At first she
+      was flamingly indignant. God had made His world clean and beautiful, and
+      covered it with flowers and trees that grew, cleanly begotten, from the
+      earth. Why had He not stopped there? Why had He soiled it with passion and
+      lust?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a little Red Cross nurse who helped her, finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I see what you mean. But trees and flowers are not
+      God's most beautiful gift to the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It is love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not talking about love,&rdquo; said Lily, flushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, you are. You have never loved, have you? You are talking of one
+      of the many things that go to make up love, and out of that one phase of
+      love comes the most wonderful thing in the world. He gives us the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All bodies are not whole, and not all souls. It is wrong to judge life by
+      its exceptions, or love by its perversions, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been the little nurse finally who cured her, for she secured Lily's
+      removal to that shady house on a by-street, where the tragedies of unwise
+      love and youth sought sanctuary. There were prayers there, morning and
+      evening. They knelt, those girls, in front of their little wooden chairs,
+      and by far the great majority of them quite simply laid their burdens
+      before God, and with an equal simplicity, felt that He would help them
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have
+      followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have
+      offended against Thy holy laws.... Restore Thou those who are penitent,
+      according to Thy promises.... And grant, Oh most merciful Father, that we
+      may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time Lily learned something that helped her. The soul was greater
+      and stronger than the body and than the mind. The body failed. It sinned,
+      but that did not touch the unassailable purity and simplicity of the soul.
+      The soul, which lived on, was always clean. For that reason there was no
+      hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily rose and buttoned her coat. Grace was fastening her sables, and
+      making a delayed decision in satins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother, I've been thinking it over. I am going to see Aunt Elinor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace waited until the saleswoman had moved away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like it, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking, while we were ordering all that stuff. She is a Cardew,
+      mother. She ought to be having that sort of thing. And just because
+      grandfather hates her husband, she hasn't anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is rather silly, dear. They are not in want. I believe he is quite
+      flourishing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is father's sister. And she is a good woman. We treat her like a
+      leper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace was weakening. &ldquo;If you take the car, your grandfather may hear of
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take a taxi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace followed her with uneasy eyes. For years she paid a price for peace,
+      and not a small price. She had placed her pride on the domestic altar, and
+      had counted it a worthy sacrifice for Howard's sake. And she had
+      succeeded. She knew Anthony Cardew had never forgiven her and would never
+      like her, but he gave her, now and then, the tribute of a grudging
+      admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Lily had come home, a new and different Lily, with her father's
+      lovableness and his father's obstinacy. Already Grace saw in the girl the
+      beginning of a passionate protest against things as they were. Perhaps,
+      had Grace given to Lily the great love of her life, instead of to Howard,
+      she might have understood her less clearly. As it was, she shivered
+      slightly as she got into the limousine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lily Cardew inspected curiously the east side neighborhood through which
+      the taxi was passing. She knew vaguely that she was in the vicinity of one
+      of the Cardew mills, but she had never visited any of the Cardew plants.
+      She had never been permitted to do so. Perhaps the neighborhood would have
+      impressed her more had she not seen, in the camp, that life can be
+      stripped sometimes to its essentials, and still have lost very little. But
+      the dinginess depressed her. Smoke was in the atmosphere, like a heavy
+      fog. Soot lay on the window-sills, and mingled with street dust to form
+      little black whirlpools in the wind. Even the white river steamers,
+      guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were gray with
+      soft coal smoke. The foam of the river falling in broken cataracts from
+      their stern wheels was oddly white in contrast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everywhere she began to see her own name. &ldquo;Cardew&rdquo; was on the ore hopper
+      cars that were moving slowly along a railroad spur. One of the steamers
+      bore &ldquo;Anthony Cardew&rdquo; in tall black letters on its side. There was a
+      narrow street called &ldquo;Cardew Way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Elinor lived on Cardew Way. She wondered if Aunt Elinor found that
+      curious, as she did. Did she resent these ever-present reminders of her
+      lost family? Did she have any bitterness because the very grayness of her
+      skies was making her hard old father richer and more powerful?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet there was comfort, stability and a certain dignity about Aunt Elinor's
+      house when she reached it. It stood in the district, but not of it,
+      withdrawn from the street in a small open space which gave indication of
+      being a flower garden in summer. There were two large gaunt trees on
+      either side of a brick walk, and that walk had been swept to the last
+      degree of neatness. The steps were freshly scoured, and a small brass
+      door-plate, like a doctor's sign, was as bright as rubbing could make it.
+      &ldquo;James Doyle,&rdquo; she read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she was glad she had come. The little brick house looked anything
+      but tragic, with its shining windows, its white curtains and its evenly
+      drawn shades. Through the windows on the right came a flickering light,
+      warm and rosy. There must be a coal fire there. She loved a coal fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had braced herself to meet Aunt Elinor at the door, but an elderly
+      woman opened it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Doyle is in,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;just step inside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not ask Lily's name, but left her in the dark little hall and
+      creaked up the stairs. Lily hesitated. Then, feeling that Aunt Elinor
+      might not like to find her so unceremoniously received, she pushed open a
+      door which was only partly closed, and made a step into the room. Only
+      then did she see that it was occupied. A man sat by the fire, reading. He
+      was holding his book low, to get the light from the fire, and he turned
+      slowly to glance at Lily. He had clearly expected some one else. Elinor,
+      probably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; Lily said. &ldquo;I am calling on Mrs. Doyle, and when I
+      saw the firelight&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up then, a tall, thin man, with close-cropped gray mustache and
+      heavy gray hair above a high, bulging forehead. She had never seen Jim
+      Doyle, but Mademoiselle had once said that he had pointed ears, like a
+      satyr. She had immediately recanted, on finding Lily searching in a book
+      for a picture of a satyr. This man had ears pointed at the top. Lily was
+      too startled then to analyze his face, but later on she was to know well
+      the high, intellectual forehead, the keen sunken eyes, the full but firmly
+      held mouth and pointed, satyr-like ears of that brilliant Irishman, cynic
+      and arch scoundrel, Jim Doyle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was inspecting her intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please come in,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Did the maid take your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I am Lily Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see.&rdquo; He stood quite still, eyeing her. &ldquo;You are Anthony's
+      granddaughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a moment.&rdquo; He went out, closing the door behind him, and she heard
+      him going quickly up the stairs. A door closed above, and a weight settled
+      down on the girl's heart. He was not going to let her see Aunt Elinor. She
+      was frightened, but she was angry, too. She would not run away. She would
+      wait until he came down, and if he was insolent, well, she could be
+      haughty. She moved to the fire and stood there, slightly flushed, but very
+      straight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him coming down again almost immediately. He was outside the
+      door. But he did not come in at once. She had a sudden impression that he
+      was standing there, his hand on the knob, outlining what he meant to say
+      to her when he showed the door to a hated Cardew. Afterwards she came to
+      know how right that impression was. He was never spontaneous. He was a man
+      who debated everything, calculated everything beforehand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came in it was slowly, and with his head bent, as though he still
+      debated within himself. Then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I have a right to ask what Anthony Cardew's granddaughter is
+      doing in my house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your wife's niece has come to call on her, Mr. Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you quite sure that is all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you that is all,&rdquo; Lily said haughtily. &ldquo;It had not occurred to
+      me that you would be here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say. Still, strangely enough, I do spend a certain amount of time
+      in my home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily picked up her muff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have forbidden her to come down, I shall go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;I haven't forbidden her to see you. I asked her
+      to wait. I wanted a few moments. You see, it is not often that I have a
+      Cardew in my house, and I am a selfish man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hated him. She loathed his cold eyes, his long, slim white hands. She
+      hated him until he fascinated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, and I will call Mrs. Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went out again, but this time it was the elderly maid who went up the
+      stairs. Doyle himself came back, and stood before her on the hearth rug.
+      He was slightly smiling, and the look of uncertainty was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that you've seen me, I'm not absolutely poisonous, am I, Miss Lily?
+      You don't mind my calling you that, do you? You are my niece. You have
+      been taught to hate me, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Lily, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, the truth from a Cardew!&rdquo; Then: &ldquo;That's an old habit of mine,
+      damning the Cardews. I'll have to try to get over it, if they are going to
+      reestablish family relations.&rdquo; He was laughing at her, Lily knew, and she
+      flushed somewhat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't make too great an effort, then,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled again, this time not unpleasantly, and suddenly he threw into
+      his rich Irish voice an unexpected softness. No one knew better than Jim
+      Doyle the uses of the human voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't mind me, Miss Lily. I have no reason to love your family, but
+      I am very happy that you came here to-day. My wife has missed her people.
+      If you'll run in like this now and then it will do her worlds of good. And
+      if my being here is going to keep you away I can clear out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rather liked him for that speech. He was totally unlike what she had
+      been led to expect, and she felt a sort of resentment toward her family
+      for misleading her. He was a gentleman, on the surface at least. He had
+      not been over-cordial at first, but then who could have expected
+      cordiality under the circumstances? In Lily's defense it should be said
+      that the vicissitudes of Elinor's life with Doyle had been kept from her
+      always. She had but two facts to go on: he had beaten her grandfather as a
+      young man, for a cause, and he held views as to labor which conflicted
+      with those of her family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Months later, when she learned all the truth, it was too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you're being here won't keep me away, if you care to have me
+      come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was all dignity and charm then. They needed youth in that quiet place.
+      They ought all to be able to forget the past, which was done with, anyhow.
+      He showed the first genuine interest she had found in her work at the
+      camp, and before his unexpected geniality the girl opened like a flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the time he was watching her with calculating eyes. He was a
+      gambler with life, and he rather suspected that he had just drawn a
+      valuable card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said gravely, when she had finished. &ldquo;You have done a lot
+      to bridge the gulf that lies&mdash;I am sure you have noticed it&mdash;between
+      the people who saw service in this war and those who stayed at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Lily saw that the gulf between her family and herself was just
+      that, which was what he had intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Elinor came in they were absorbed in conversation, Lily flushed and
+      eager, and her husband smiling, urbane, and genial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Lily, Elinor Doyle had been for years a figure of mystery. She had not
+      seen her for many years, and she had, remembered a thin, girlish figure,
+      tragic-eyed, which eternally stood by a window in her room, looking out.
+      But here was a matronly woman, her face framed with soft, dark hair, with
+      eyes like her father's, with Howard Cardew's ease of manner, too, but with
+      a strange passivity, either of repression or of fires early burned out and
+      never renewed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was vaguely disappointed. Aunt Elinor, in soft gray silk, matronly,
+      assured, unenthusiastically pleased to see her; Doyle himself, cheerful
+      and suave; the neat servant; the fire lit, comfortable room,&mdash;there
+      was no drama in all that, no hint of mystery or tragedy. All the hatred at
+      home for an impulsive assault of years ago, and&mdash;this!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily, dear!&rdquo; Elinor said, and kissed her. &ldquo;Why, Lily, you are a woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am twenty, Aunt Elinor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course. I keep forgetting. I live so quietly here that the days
+      go by faster than I know.&rdquo; She put Lily back in her chair, and glanced at
+      her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Louis coming to dinner, Jim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you cannot stay, Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor. Only mother knows that I am here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Elinor smiled her quiet smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand, dear. How are they all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grandfather is very well. Father looks tired. There is some trouble at
+      the mill, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor glanced at Doyle, but he said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was commencing to have an odd conviction, which was that her Aunt
+      Elinor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle. He seemed
+      inclined to make up for Elinor's lack of enthusiasm by his own. He built
+      up a larger fire, and moved her chair near it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weather's raw,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sure you are comfortable now? And why not have
+      dinner here? We have an interesting man coming, and we don't often have
+      the chance to offer our guests a charming young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily only came home yesterday, Jim,&rdquo; Elinor observed. &ldquo;Her own people
+      will want to see something of her. Besides, they do no know she is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily felt slightly chilled. For years she had espoused her Aunt Elinor's
+      cause; in the early days she had painfully hemstitched a small
+      handkerchief each fall and had sent it, with much secrecy, to Aunt
+      Elinor's varying addresses at Christmas. She had felt a childish
+      resentment of Elinor Doyle's martyrdom. And now&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her father and grandfather are dining out to-night.&rdquo; Had Lily looked up
+      she would have seen Doyle's eyes fixed on his wife, ugly and menacing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dining out?&rdquo; Lily glanced at him in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a dinner to-night, for the&mdash;&rdquo; He checked himself &ldquo;The steel
+      manufacturers are having a meeting,&rdquo; he finished. &ldquo;I believe to discuss
+      me, among other things. Amazing the amount of discussion my simple
+      opinions bring about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor Doyle, unseen, made a little gesture of despair and surrender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will stay, Lily,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can telephone, if you like. I
+      don't see you often, and there is so much I want to ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end Lily agreed. She would find out from Grayson if the men were
+      really dining out, and if they were Grayson would notify her mother that
+      she was staying. She did not quite know herself why she had accepted,
+      unless it was because she was bored and restless at home. Perhaps, too,
+      the lure of doing a forbidden thing influenced her sub-consciously, the
+      thought that her grandfather would detest it. She had not forgiven him for
+      the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Doyle left her in the back hall at the telephone, and returned to the
+      sitting room, dosing the door behind him. His face was set and angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I told you to be pleasant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried, Jim. You must remember I hardly know her.&rdquo; She got up and placed
+      her hand on his arm, but he shook it off. &ldquo;I don't understand, Jim, and I
+      wish you wouldn't. What good is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told you what I want. I want that girl to come here, and to like
+      coming here. That's plain, isn't it? But if you're going to sit with a
+      frozen face&mdash;She'll be useful. Useful as hell to a preacher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't use my family that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You and your family! Now listen, Elinor. This isn't a matter o the
+      Cardews and me. It may be nothing, but it may be a big thing. I hardly
+      know yet&mdash;&rdquo; His voice trailed off; he stood with his head bent, lost
+      in those eternal calculations with which Elinor Doyle was so familiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doorbell rang, and was immediately followed by the opening and closing
+      of the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From her station at the telephone Lily Cardew saw a man come in, little
+      more than a huge black shadow, which placed a hat on the stand and then,
+      striking a match, lighted the gas overhead. In the illumination he stood
+      before the mirror, smoothing back his shining black hair. Then he saw her,
+      stared and retreated into the sitting room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got company, I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My niece, Lily Cardew,&rdquo; said Doyle, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman seemed highly amused. Evidently he considered Lily's
+      presence in the house in the nature of a huge joke. He was conveying this
+      by pantomime, in deference to the open door, when Doyle nodded toward
+      Elinor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's customary to greet your hostess, Louis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easiest thing I do,&rdquo; boasted the new arrival cheerily. &ldquo;'Lo, Mrs. Doyle.
+      Is our niece going to dine with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know yet, Mr. Akers,&rdquo; she said, without warmth. Louis Akers knew
+      quite well that Elinor did not like him, and the thought amused him, the
+      more so since as a rule women liked him rather too well. Deep in his heart
+      he respected Jim Doyle's wife, and sometimes feared her. He respected her
+      because she had behind her traditions of birth and wealth, things he
+      professed to despise but secretly envied. He feared her because he trusted
+      no woman, and she knew too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She loved Jim Doyle, but he had watched her, and he knew that sometimes
+      she hated Doyle also. He knew that could be, because there had been women
+      he had both loved and hated himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor had gone out, and Akers sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, in a lowered tone. &ldquo;I've written it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle closed the door, and stood again with his head lowered, considering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better look over it,&rdquo; continued Lou. &ldquo;I don't want to be jailed.
+      You're better at skating over thin ice than I am. And I've been thinking
+      over the Prohibition matter, Jim. In a sense you're right. It will make
+      them sullen and angry. But they won't go the limit without booze. I'd
+      advise cache-ing a lot of it somewhere, to be administered when needed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle returned to his old place on the hearth-rug, still thoughtful. He
+      had paid no attention to Aker's views on Prohibition, nor to the paper
+      laid upon the desk in the center of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that that girl in the hall will be worth forty million
+      dollars some day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some money,&rdquo; said Akers, calmly. &ldquo;Which reminds me, Jim, that I've got to
+      have a raise. And pretty soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You get plenty, if you'd leave women alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell them to leave me alone, then,&rdquo; said Akers, stretching out his long
+      legs. &ldquo;All right. We'll talk about that, after dinner. What about this
+      forty millions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle looked at him quickly. Akers' speech about women had crystallized
+      the vague plans which Lily's arrival had suddenly given rise to. He gave
+      the young man a careful scrutiny, from his handsome head to his feet, and
+      smiled. It had occurred to him that the Cardew family would loathe a man
+      of Louis Akers' type with an entire and whole-hearted loathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might try to make her have a pleasant evening,&rdquo; he suggested dryly.
+      &ldquo;And, to do that, it might be as well to remember a number of things, one
+      of which is that she is accustomed to the society of gentlemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, old dear,&rdquo; said Akers, without resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hates her grandfather like poison,&rdquo; Doyle went on. &ldquo;She doesn't know
+      it, but she does. A little education, and it is just possible&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get Olga. I'm no kindergarten teacher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't seen her in the light yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Akers smiled and carefully settled his tie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Doyle, Akers loved the game of life, and he liked playing for high
+      stakes. He had joined forces with Doyle because the game was dangerous and
+      exciting, rather than because of any real conviction. Doyle had a fanatic
+      faith, with all his calculation, but Louis Akers had only calculation and
+      ambition. A practicing attorney in the city, a specialist in union law
+      openly, a Red in secret, he played his triple game shrewdly and with zest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle turned to go, then stopped and came back. &ldquo;I was forgetting
+      something,&rdquo; he said, slowly. &ldquo;What possessed you to take that Boyd girl to
+      the Searing Building the other night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woslosky saw you coming out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had left something there,&rdquo; Akers said sullenly. &ldquo;That's the truth,
+      whether you believe it or not. I wasn't there two minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a fool, Louis,&rdquo; Doyle said coldly. &ldquo;You'll play that game once too
+      often. What happens to you is your own concern, but what may happen to me
+      is mine. And I'll take mighty good care it doesn't happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle was all unction and hospitality when he met Lily in the hall. At
+      dinner he was brilliant, witty, the gracious host. Akers played up to him.
+      At the foot of the table Elinor sat, outwardly passive, inwardly puzzled,
+      and watched Lily. She knew the contrast the girl must be drawing, between
+      the bright little meal, with its simple service and clever talk, and those
+      dreary formal dinners at home when old Anthony sometimes never spoke at
+      all, or again used his caustic tongue like a scourge. Elinor did not hate
+      her father; he was simply no longer her father. As for Howard, she had had
+      a childish affection for him, but he had gone away early to school, and
+      she hardly knew him. But she did not want his child here, drinking in as
+      she was, without clearly understanding what they meant, Doyle's theories
+      of unrest and revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find that I am an idealist, in a way,&rdquo; he was saying. &ldquo;That is,
+      if you come often. I hope you will, by the way. I am perpetually
+      dissatisfied with things as they are, and wanting them changed. With the
+      single exception of my wife&rdquo;&mdash;he bowed to Elinor, &ldquo;and this little
+      party, which is delightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a Socialist?&rdquo; Lily demanded, in her direct way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you might call it that. I go a bit further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk politics, Jim,&rdquo; Elinor hastily interposed. He caught her eye
+      and grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not talking politics, my dear.&rdquo; He turned to Lily, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For one thing, I don't believe that any one should have a lot of money,
+      so that a taxicab could remain ticking away fabulous sums while a charming
+      young lady dines at her leisure.&rdquo; He smiled again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will it be a lot?&rdquo; Lily asked. &ldquo;I thought I'd better keep him, because&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because this neighborhood is unlikely to have a cab stand? You were
+      entirely right. But I can see that you won't like my idealistic community.
+      You see, in it everybody will have enough, and nobody will have too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't take him too seriously, Miss Cardew,&rdquo; said Akers, bending forward.
+      &ldquo;You and I know that there isn't such a thing as too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor changed the subject; as a girl she had drawn rather well, and she
+      had retained her interest in that form of art. There was an exhibition in
+      town of colored drawings. Lily should see them. But Jim Doyle countered
+      her move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot to mention,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that in this ideal world we were
+      discussing the arts will flourish. Not at once, of course, because the
+      artists will be fighting&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fighting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Per aspera ad astra,&rdquo; put in Louis Akers. &ldquo;You cannot change a world in a
+      day, without revolution&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don't believe that revolution is ever worth while, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it would drive starvation and wretchedness from the world, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily found Louis Akers interesting. Certainly he was very handsome. And
+      after all, why should there be misery and hunger in the world? There must
+      be enough for all. It was hardly fair, for instance, that she should have
+      so much, and others scarcely anything. Only it was like thinking about
+      religion; you didn't get anywhere with it. You wanted to be good, and
+      tried to be. And you wanted to love God, only He seemed so far away,
+      mostly. And even that was confusing, because you prayed to God to be
+      forgiven for wickedness, but it was to His Son our Lord one went for help
+      in trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One could be sorry for the poor, and even give away all one had, but that
+      would only help a few. It would have to be that every one who had too much
+      would give up all but what he needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily tried to put that into words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said Jim Doyle. &ldquo;Only in my new world we realize that there
+      would be a few craven spirits who might not willingly give up what they
+      have. In that case it would be taken from them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is what you call revolution?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that's not revolution. It is a sort of justice, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think very straight, young lady,&rdquo; said Jim Doyle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a fascinating theory of individualism, too; no man should impose
+      his will and no community its laws, on the individual. Laws were for
+      slaves. Ethics were better than laws, to control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Although,&rdquo; he added, urbanely, &ldquo;I daresay it might be difficult to
+      convert Mr. Anthony Cardew to such a belief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While Louis Akers saw Lily to her taxicab that night Doyle stood in the
+      hall, waiting. He was very content with his evening's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said, when Akers returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merry as a marriage bell. I'm to show her the Brunelleschi drawings
+      to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slightly flushed, he smoothed his hair in front of the mirror over the
+      stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a nice child,&rdquo; he said. In his eyes was the look of the hunting
+      animal that scents food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lily did not sleep very well that night. She was repentant, for one thing,
+      for her mother's evening alone, and for the anxiety in her face when she
+      arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been so worried,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I was afraid your grandfather would get
+      back before you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, mother dear. I know it was selfish. But I've had a wonderful
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All sorts of talk,&rdquo; Lily said, and hesitated. After all, her mother would
+      not understand, and it would only make her uneasy. &ldquo;I suppose it is rank
+      hearsay to say it, but I like Mr. Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I detest him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don't know him, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know he is stirring up all sorts of trouble for us. Lily, I want you to
+      promise not to go back there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little silence. A small feeling of rebellion was rising in the
+      girl's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why. She is my own aunt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you promise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't ask me, mother. I&mdash;oh, don't you understand? It is
+      interesting there, that's all. It isn't wrong to go. And the moment you
+      forbid it you make me want to go back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were there any other people there to dinner?&rdquo; Grace asked, with sudden
+      suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one man. A lawyer named Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The name meant nothing to Grace Cardew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very young. In his thirties, I should think,&rdquo; Lily hesitated again.
+      She had meant to tell her mother of the engagement for the next day, but
+      Grace's attitude made it difficult. To be absolutely forbidden to meet
+      Louis Akers at the gallery, and to be able to give no reason beyond the
+      fact that she had met him at the Doyle house, seemed absurd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A gentleman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly know,&rdquo; Lily said frankly. &ldquo;In your sense of the word, perhaps
+      not, mother. But he is very clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace Cardew sighed and picked up her book. She never retired until Howard
+      came in. And Lily went upstairs, uneasy and a little defiant. She must
+      live her own life, somehow; have her own friends; think her own thoughts.
+      The quiet tyranny of the family was again closing down on her. It would
+      squeeze her dry, in the end, as it had her mother and Aunt Elinor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood for a time by her window, looking out at the city. Behind her
+      was her warm, luxurious room, her deep, soft bed. Yet all through the city
+      there were those who did not sleep warm and soft. Close by, perhaps, in
+      that deteriorated neighborhood, there were children that very night going
+      to bed hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because things had always been like that, should they always be so? Wasn't
+      Mr. Doyle right, after all? Only he went very far. You couldn't, for
+      instance, take from a man the thing he had earned. What about the people
+      who did not try to earn?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rather thought she would be clearer about it if she talked to Willy
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to bed at last, a troubled young thing in a soft white
+      night-gown, passionately in revolt against the injustice which gave to her
+      so much and to others so little. And against that quiet domestic tyranny
+      which was forcing her to her first deceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the visit to the gallery was innocuous enough. Louis Akers met her
+      there, and carefully made the rounds with her. Then he suggested tea, and
+      chose a quiet tea-room, and a corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you something, now it's over,&rdquo; he said, his bold eyes fixed on
+      hers. &ldquo;I loathe galleries and pictures. I wanted to see you again. That's
+      all. You see, I am starting in by being honest with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was rather uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you like pictures?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because they are only imitations of life. I like life.&rdquo; He pushed his
+      teacup away. &ldquo;I don't want tea either. Tea was an excuse, too.&rdquo; He smiled
+      at her. &ldquo;Perhaps you don't like honesty,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you don't you won't
+      care for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness and
+      effrontery, but he made her vaguely uneasy. He knew so many things, and
+      yet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her family's sense of
+      the word. He had a curious effect on her, too, one that she resented. He
+      made her insistently conscious of her sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And of his. His very deference had something of restraint about it. She
+      thought, trying to drink her tea quietly, that he might be very terrible
+      if he loved any one. There was a sort of repressed fierceness behind his
+      suavity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he interested her, and he was undeniably handsome, not in her father's
+      way but with high-colored, almost dramatic good looks. There could be no
+      doubt, too, that he was interested in her. He rarely took his eyes off
+      hers. Afterwards she was to know well that bold possessive look of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was just before they left that he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to see you again, you know. May I come in some afternoon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments, and she raised frank eyes
+      to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid not,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You see, you are a friend of Mr. Doyle's,
+      and you must know that my people and Aunt Elinor's husband are on bad
+      terms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has that got to do with you and me?&rdquo; Then he laughed. &ldquo;Might be
+      unpleasant, I suppose. But you go to the Doyles'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was very earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother knows, but my grandfather wouldn't permit it if he knew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you put up with that sort of thing?&rdquo; He leaned closer to her. &ldquo;You
+      are not a baby, you know. But I will say you are a good sport to do it,
+      anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not very comfortable about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bosh,&rdquo; he said, abruptly. &ldquo;You go there as often as you can. Elinor
+      Doyle's a lonely woman, and Jim is all right. You pick your own friends,
+      my child, and live your own life. Every human being has that right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He helped her into a taxi at the door of the tea shop, giving her rather
+      more assistance than she required, and then standing bare-headed in the
+      March wind until the car had moved away. Lily, sitting back in her corner,
+      was both repelled and thrilled. He was totally unlike the men she knew,
+      those carefully repressed, conventional clean-cut boys, like Pink Denslow.
+      He was raw, vigorous and possibly brutal. She did not quite like him, but
+      she found herself thinking about him a great deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old life was reaching out its friendly, idle hands toward her. The
+      next day Grace gave a luncheon for her at the house, a gay little affair
+      of color, chatter and movement. But Lily found herself with little to say.
+      Her year away had separated her from the small community of interest that
+      bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to them in her
+      sitting room later, what they would all talk about when they had exchanged
+      their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It would all be
+      said so soon. And what then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small circle,
+      carefully guarded. They belonged together, they and the men who likewise
+      belonged. Now and then there would be changes. A new man, of
+      irreproachable family connections would come to live in the city, and
+      cause a small flurry. Then in time he would be appropriated. Or a girl
+      would come to visit, and by the same system of appropriation would come
+      back later, permanently. Always the same faces, the same small talk.
+      Orchids or violets at luncheons, white or rose or blue or yellow frocks at
+      dinners and dances. Golf at the country club. Travel, in the Cardew
+      private car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting.
+      Winter at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at seeing moving picture stars
+      and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand. One never had a chance to
+      meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, in quiet intervals, this still house, and grandfather shut away in
+      his upstairs room, but holding the threads of all their lives as a spider
+      clutches the diverging filaments of its web.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get in on this, Lily,&rdquo; said a clear young voice. &ldquo;We're talking about the
+      most interesting men we met in our war work. You ought to have known a lot
+      of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew a lot of men. They were not so very interesting. There was a
+      little nurse&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men, Lily dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was one awfully nice boy. He wasn't a soldier, but he was very kind
+      to the men. They adored him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he fall in love with your?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a particle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why wasn't he a soldier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a little bit lame. But he is awfully nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is extraordinary about him, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a thing, except his niceness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But they were surfeited with nice young men. They wanted something
+      dramatic, and Willy Cameron was essentially undramatic. Besides, it was
+      quite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical handicap made him
+      unacceptable to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be ridiculous, Lily. You're hiding some one behind this kind
+      person. You must have met somebody worth while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the camp. I know a perfectly nice Socialist, but he was not in the
+      army. Not a Socialist, really. Much worse. He believes in having a
+      revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That stirred them somewhat. She saw their interested faces turned toward
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With a bomb under his coat, of course, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't bulge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-looking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, rather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old is he, Lily?&rdquo; one of them asked, suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost fifty, I should say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their interest died. She could have revived it, she knew, if she mentioned
+      Louis Akers; he would have answered to their prime requisite in an
+      interesting man. He was both handsome and young. But she felt curiously
+      disinclined to mention him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The party broke up. By ones and twos luxuriously dressed little figures
+      went down the great staircase, where Grayson stood in the hall and the
+      footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle,
+      watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense of
+      comfort and well-being after they had all gone. This was as it should be.
+      Lily would take up life again where she had left it off, and all would be
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now the sixth day, and she had not yet carried out that absurd idea
+      of asking Ellen's friend to dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was, however, at that exact moment in process of carrying it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Telephone for you, Mr. Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. Coming,&rdquo; sang out Willy Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith Boyd sauntered toward his doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woman,&rdquo; corrected Willy Cameron. &ldquo;The word 'lady' is now obsolete, since
+      your sex has entered the economic world.&rdquo; He put on his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said 'lady' and that's what I mean,&rdquo; said Edith. &ldquo;'May I speak to Mr.
+      Cameron?'&rdquo; she mimicked. &ldquo;Regular Newport accent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Willy Cameron went rather pale. If it should be Lily Cardew&mdash;but
+      then of course it wouldn't be. She had been home for six days, and if she
+      had meant to call&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Lily. Something that had been like a band around his heart suddenly
+      loosened, to fasten about his throat. His voice sounded strangled and
+      strange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; he said, in the unfamiliar voice. &ldquo;I'd like to come, of
+      course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith Boyd watched and listened, with a slightly strained look in her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To dinner? But&mdash;I don't think I'd better come to dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, Willy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. William Wallace Cameron glanced around. There was no one about save
+      Miss Boyd, who was polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I come in a business suit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course. Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;I didn't know what your people would
+      think. That's all. To-morrow at eight, then. Thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hung up the receiver and walked to the door, where he stood looking out
+      and seeing nothing. She had not forgotten. He was going to see her.
+      Instead of standing across the street by the park fence, waiting for a
+      glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the room with her. There
+      would be&mdash;eight from eleven was three&mdash;three hours of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a wonderful day it was! Spring was surely near. He would like to be
+      able to go and pick up Jinx, and then take a long walk through the park.
+      He needed movement. He needed to walk off his excitement or he felt that
+      he might burst with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight o'clock!&rdquo; said Edith. &ldquo;I wish you joy, waiting until eight for
+      supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to come back a long, long way to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'May I come in a business suit?'&rdquo; she mimicked him. &ldquo;My evening clothes
+      have not arrived yet. My valet's bringing them up to town to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist, he
+      caught the bitterness under her raillery. It puzzled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a young lady I knew at camp. I was in an army camp, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is her name a secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no. It is Cardew. Miss Lily Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you&mdash;not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is,&rdquo; he said, genuinely concerned. &ldquo;Why in the world should I give
+      you a wrong name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were fixed on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You wouldn't. But it makes me laugh, because&mdash;well, it was
+      crazy, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was crazy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something I had in my mind. Just forget it. I'll tell you what will
+      happen, Mr. Cameron. You'll stay here about six weeks. Then you'll get a
+      job at the Cardew Mills. They use chemists there, and you will be&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her finger-tips and blew along them delicately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone&mdash;like that,&rdquo; she finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes Willy Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd. The large young man, for
+      instance, whose name he had learned was Louis Akers, did not come any
+      more. Not since that telephone conversation. But he had been distinctly a
+      grade above that competent young person, Edith Boyd, if there were such
+      grades these days; fluent and prosperous-looking, and probably able to
+      offer a girl a good home. But she had thrown him over. He had heard her
+      doing it, and when he had once ventured to ask her about Akers she had cut
+      him off curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sick to death of him. That's all,&rdquo; she had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on the night of Lily's invitation he was to hear more of Louis Akers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his evening in the shop. One day he came on at seven-thirty in the
+      morning and was off at six, and the next he came at ten and stayed until
+      eleven at night. The evening business was oddly increasing. Men wandered
+      in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a tooth-brush, and sat or stood
+      around for an hour or so; clerks whose families had gone to the movies,
+      bachelors who found their lodging houses dreary, a young doctor or two,
+      coming in after evening office hours to leave a prescription, and
+      remaining to talk and listen. Thus they satisfied their gregarious
+      instinct while within easy call of home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wealthy had their clubs. The workmen of the city had their balls and
+      sometimes their saloons. But in between was that vast, unorganized male
+      element which was neither, and had neither. To them the neighborhood
+      pharmacy, open in the evening, warm and bright, gave them a rendezvous.
+      They gathered there in thousands, the country over. During the war they
+      fought their daily battles there, with newspaper maps. After the war the
+      League of Nations, local politics, a bit of neighborhood scandal, washed
+      down with soft drinks from the soda fountain, furnished the evening's
+      entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Eagle Pharmacy had always been the neighborhood club, but with the
+      advent of Willy Cameron it was attaining a new popularity. The roundsman
+      on the beat dropped in, the political boss of the ward, named Hendricks,
+      Doctor Smalley, the young physician who lived across the street, and
+      others. Back of the store proper was a room, with the prescription desk at
+      one side and reserve stock on shelves around the other three. Here were a
+      table and a half dozen old chairs, a war map, still showing with colored
+      pins the last positions before the great allied advance, and an ancient
+      hat-rack, which had held from time immemorial an umbrella with three
+      broken ribs and a pair of arctics of unknown ownership.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to watch this boy,&rdquo; Hendricks confided to Doctor Smalley a night or
+      two after Lily's return, meeting him outside. &ldquo;He sure can talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Smalley grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can read my writing, too, which is more than I can do myself. What do
+      you mean, watch him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But whatever his purposes Mr. Hendricks kept them to himself. A big, burly
+      man, with a fund of practical good sense a keen knowledge of men, he had
+      gained a small but loyal following. He was a retired master plumber, with
+      a small income from careful investments, and he had a curious, almost
+      fanatic love for the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was born here,&rdquo; he would say, boastfully. &ldquo;And I've seen it grow from
+      fifty thousand to what it's got now. Some folks say it's dirty, but it's
+      home to me, all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But on the evening of Lily's invitation the drug store forum found Willy
+      Cameron extremely silent. He had been going over his weaknesses, for the
+      thought of Lily always made him humble, and one of them was that he got
+      carried away by things and talked too much. He did not intend to do that
+      the next night, at the Cardew's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something's scared him off,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks to Doctor Smalley, after
+      a half hour of almost taciturnity, while Willy Cameron smoked his pipe and
+      listened. &ldquo;Watch him rise to this, though.&rdquo; And aloud:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you fellows drop the League of Nations, which none of you knows
+      a damn about anyhow, and get to the thing that's coming in this country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bite,&rdquo; said Mr. Clarey, who sold life insurance in the daytime and
+      sometimes utilized his evenings in a similar manner. &ldquo;What's coming to
+      this country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks. &ldquo;Laugh while you can. I saw the Chief of
+      Police to-day, and he's got a line of conversation that makes a man feel
+      like taking his savings out of the bank and burying them in the back
+      yard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron took his pipe out of his mouth, but remained dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks nudged Doctor Smalley, who rose manfully to the occasion.
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Says the Russians have got a lot of paid agents here. Not all Russians
+      either. Some of our Americans are in it. It's to begin with a general
+      strike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All over the country. But this is a good field for them. The crust's
+      pretty thin here, and where that's the case there is likely to be
+      earthquakes and eruptions. The Chief says they're bringing in a bunch of
+      gunmen, wobblies and Bolshevists from every industrial town on the map.
+      Did you get that, Cameron? Gunmen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any of you men here dissatisfied with this form of government?&rdquo; inquired
+      Willy, rather truculently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so you could notice it,&rdquo; said Mr. Clarey. &ldquo;And once the Republican
+      party gets in&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there will never be a revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;Of course you are worthless now. You
+      aren't organized. You don't know how many you are or how strong you are.
+      You can't talk. You sit back and listen until you believe that this
+      country is only capital and labor. You get squeezed in between them. You
+      see labor getting more money than you, and howling for still more. You see
+      both capital and labor raising prices until you can't live on what you
+      get. There are a hundred times as many of you as represent capital and
+      labor combined, and all you do is loaf here and growl about things being
+      wrong. Why don't you do something? You ought to be running this country,
+      but you aren't. You're lazy. You don't even vote. You leave running the
+      country to men like Mr. Hendricks here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks was cheerfully unirritated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, son,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I do my bit and like it. Go on. Don't stop to
+      insult me. You can do that any time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been buying a seditious weekly since I came,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron.
+      &ldquo;It's preaching a revolution, all right. I'd like to see its foreign
+      language copies. They'll never overthrow the government, but they may try.
+      Why don't you fellows combine to fight them? Why don't you learn how
+      strong you are? Nine-tenths of the country, and milling like sheep with a
+      wolf around!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks winked at the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'd I tell you?&rdquo; whispered Hendricks. &ldquo;Got them, hasn't he? If he'd
+      suggest arming them with pop bottles and attacking that gang of anarchists
+      at the cobbler's down the street, they'd do it this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, son,&rdquo; he offered. &ldquo;We'll combine. Anything you say goes. And
+      we'll get the Jim Doyle-Woslosky-Louis Akers outfit first. I know a
+      first-class brick wall&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Akers?&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;Do you know him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Hendricks. &ldquo;But that needn't prejudice you against me any.
+      He's a bad actor, and as smooth as butter. D'you know what their plan is?
+      They expect to take the city. This city! The&mdash;&rdquo; Mr. Hendrick's voice
+      was lost in fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk!&rdquo; said the roundsman. &ldquo;Where'd the police be, I'm asking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The police,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, &ldquo;are as filled with
+      sedition as a whale with corset bones. Also the army. Also the state
+      constabulary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hell they are,&rdquo; said the roundsman aggressively. But Willy Cameron
+      was staring through the smoke from his pipe at the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They might do it, for a while,&rdquo; he said thoughtfully. &ldquo;There's a
+      tremendous foreign population in the mill towns around, isn't there? Does
+      anybody in the crowd own a revolver? Or know how to use it if he has one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got one,&rdquo; said the insurance agent. &ldquo;Don't know how it would work.
+      Found my wife nailing oilcloth with it the other day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. If we're a representative group, they wouldn't need a battery
+      of eight-inch guns, would they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little silence fell on the group. Around them the city went about its
+      business; the roar of the day had softened to muffled night sounds, as
+      though one said: &ldquo;The city sleeps. Be still.&rdquo; The red glare of the mills
+      was the fire on the hearth. The hills were its four protecting walls. And
+      the night mist covered it like a blanket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's one representative of the plain people,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks, &ldquo;who
+      is going home to get some sleep. And tomorrow I'll buy me a gun, and if I
+      can keep the children out of the yard I'll learn to use it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time after he went home that night Willy Cameron paced the
+      floor of his upper room, paced it until an irate boarder below hammered on
+      his chandelier. Jinx followed him, moving sedately back and forth, now and
+      then glancing up with idolatrous eyes. Willy Cameron's mind was active and
+      not particularly coordinate. The Cardews and Lily; Edith Boyd and Louis
+      Akers; the plain people; an army marching to the city to loot and burn and
+      rape, and another army meeting it, saying: &ldquo;You shall not pass&rdquo;; Abraham
+      Lincoln, Russia, Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His last thought, of course, was of Lily Cardew. He had neglected to cover
+      Jinx, and at last the dog leaped on the bed and snuggled close to him. He
+      threw an end of the blanket over him and lay there, staring into the
+      darkness. He was frightfully lonely. At last he fell asleep, and the March
+      wind, coming in through the open window, overturned a paper leaning
+      against his collar box, on which he had carefully written:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                     Have suit pressed.
+                     Buy new tie.
+                     Shirts from laundry.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Going home that night Mr. Hendricks met Edith Boyd, and accompanied her
+      for a block or two. At his corner he stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's your mother, Edith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mr. Hendricks' business to know his ward thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the same. She isn't really sick, Mr. Hendricks. She's just low
+      spirited, but that's enough. I hate to go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hendricks hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, home's a pretty good place,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Especially for a pretty
+      girl.&rdquo; There was unmistakable meaning in his tone, and she threw up her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to get some pleasure out of life, Mr. Hendricks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure you have,&rdquo; he agreed affably. &ldquo;But playing around with Louis Akers
+      is like playing with a hand-grenade, Edith.&rdquo; She said nothing. &ldquo;I'd cut
+      him out, little girl. He's poor stuff. Mind, I'm not saying he's a fool,
+      but he's a bad actor. Now if I was a pretty girl, and there was a nice
+      fellow around like this Cameron, I'd be likely to think he was all right.
+      He's got brains.&rdquo; Mr. Hendricks had a great admiration for brains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sick of men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned at her tone and eyed her sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don't judge them all by Akers. This is my corner. Good-night. Not
+      afraid to go on by yourself, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I ever was I've had a good many chances to get over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned the corner, but stopped and called after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell Dan I'll be in to see him soon, Edith. Haven't seen him since he
+      came back from France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went on, her steps lagging. She hated going home. When she reached the
+      little house she did not go in at once. The March night was not cold, and
+      she sat the step, hoping to see her mother's light go out in the
+      second-story front windows. But it continued to burn steadily, and at
+      last, with a gesture of despair, she rose and unlocked the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost at once she heard footsteps above, and a peevish voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you, Edie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D'you mind bringing up the chloroform liniment and rubbing my back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bring it, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She found it on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen. She could hear the
+      faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor, and then
+      silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her, and something
+      crunched under her foot. She felt like screaming. That new clerk at the
+      store was always talking about homes. What did he know of squalid city
+      houses, with their insects and rats, their damp, moldy cellars, their
+      hateful plumbing? A thought struck her. She lighted the gas and stared
+      around. It was as she had expected. The dishes had not been washed. They
+      were piled in the sink, and a soiled dish-towel had been thrown over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lowered the gas and went upstairs. The hardness had, somehow, gone out
+      of her when she thought of Willy Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back bad again, is it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's always bad. But I've got a pain in my left shoulder and down my arm
+      that's driving me crazy. I couldn't wash the dishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind the dishes. I'm not tired. Now crawl into bed and let me rub
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd complied. She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties, who
+      had set out to conquer life and had been conquered by it. The hopeless
+      drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by the incident of her
+      widowhood, and stretched ahead hopelessly. She had accepted Dan's going to
+      France resignedly, with neither protest nor undue anxiety. She had never
+      been very close to Dan, although she loved him more than she did Edith.
+      She was the sort of woman who has no fundamental knowledge of men. They
+      had to be fed and mended for, and they had strange physical wants that
+      made a great deal of trouble in the world. But mostly they ate and slept
+      and went to work in the morning, and came home at night smelling of sweat
+      and beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life, however.
+      And through it she had seen Edith well married, with perhaps a girl to do
+      the house work, and a room where Edith's mother could fold her hands and
+      sit in the long silences without thought that were her sanctuary against
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the place, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Edith's unwonted solicitude gave her courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edie, I want to ask you something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; But the girl stiffened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lou hasn't been round, lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all over, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean you've quarreled? Oh, Edie, and me planning you'd have a nice
+      home and everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never meant to marry me, if that's what you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd turned on her back impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could have had him. He was crazy about you. Trouble is with you, you
+      think you've got a fellow hard and fast, and you begin acting up. Then,
+      first thing you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl. &ldquo;Listen,
+      mother,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I give you my word, Lou'd run a mile if he thought any
+      girl wanted to marry him. I know him better than you do. If any one ever
+      does rope him in, he'll stick about three months, and then beat it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know why we have to have men, anyhow. Put out the gas, Edie. No,
+      don't open the window. The night air makes me cough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen. Something would
+      have to be done about the house. Dan was taking to staying out at nights,
+      because the untidy rooms repelled him. And there was the question of food.
+      Her mother had never learned to cook, and recently more and more of the
+      food had been something warmed out of a tin. If only they could keep a
+      girl, one who would scrub and wash dishes. There was a room on the third
+      floor, an attic, full now of her mother's untidy harborings of years, that
+      might be used for a servant. Or she could move up there, and they could
+      get a roomer. The rent would pay a woman to come in now and then to clean
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had in
+      mind was Willy Cameron. But the knowledge that he knew the Cardews had
+      somehow changed all that. She couldn't picture him going from this sordid
+      house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still, returning to it afterwards.
+      She saw him there, at the Cardews, surrounded by bowing flunkies&mdash;a
+      picture of wealth gained from the movies&mdash;and by women who moved
+      indolently, trailing through long vistas of ball room and conservatory in
+      low gowns without sleeves, and draped with ropes of pearls. Women who
+      smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge for money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hated the Cardews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On her way to her room she paused at her mother's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Asleep yet, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Feel like I'm not going to sleep at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, &ldquo;we've got to
+      change things around here. It isn't fair to Dan, for one thing. We've got
+      to get a girl to do the work. And to do that we'll have to rent a room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard the thin figure twist impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I'm not going to let
+      the neighbors begin looking down on me now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, listen, mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on away, Edie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out all
+      but three evenings a week. I don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the store
+      isn't satisfied where he is. He's got a dog, and they haven't any yard.
+      We've got a yard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't be bothered with any dog,&rdquo; said the querulous voice, from the
+      darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a gesture of despair the girl turned away. What was the use, anyhow?
+      Let them go on, then, her mother and Dan. Only let them let her go on,
+      too. She had tried her best to change herself, the house, the whole rotten
+      mess. But they wouldn't let her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mood of disgust continued the next morning. When, at eleven o'clock,
+      Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at him
+      somberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did it matter? So
+      long as something took her for a little while away from the sordidness of
+      home, its stale odors, its untidiness, its querulous inmates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's got into you lately, Edith?&rdquo; he inquired, lowering his voice. &ldquo;You
+      used to be the best little pal ever. Now the other day, when I called up&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had the headache,&rdquo; she said laconically. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want to play around this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated. Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be that
+      night, and her face hardened. Had any one told Edith that she was
+      beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, with his
+      exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and his sentimental
+      whistling, she would have laughed. But he gave her something that the
+      other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of self-respect. It was perhaps
+      not so much that she cared for him, as that he enabled her to care more
+      for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might, depending on what you've got to offer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got a car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outside
+      work, and the organization came over. I've been after it for six months.
+      We can have a ride, and supper somewhere. How's the young man with the
+      wooden leg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want to know I'll call him out and let him tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick, aren't you?&rdquo; He smiled down at where she stood, firmly entrenched
+      behind a show case. &ldquo;Well, don't fall in love with him. That's all. I'm a
+      bad man when I'm jealous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him. He did not
+      know, nor would have cared had he known, that her acceptance of his
+      invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, and of
+      the fact that Willy Cameron was dining at the Cardews that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Howard Cardew was in his dressing room, sitting before the fire. His man
+      had put out his dinner clothes and retired, and Howard was sifting before
+      the fire rather listlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Grace's room, adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices. Before
+      Lily's return, now and then when he was tired Grace and he had dined by
+      the fire in her boudoir. It had been very restful. He was still in love
+      with his wife, although, as in most marriages, there was one who gave more
+      than the other. In this case it was Grace who gave, and Howard who
+      received. But he loved her. He never thought of other women. Only his
+      father had never let him forget her weaknesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he was afraid that he was looking at Grace with his father's
+      eyes, rather than his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had put up a hard fight with his father. Not about Grace. That was over
+      and done with, although it had been bad while it lasted. But his real
+      struggle had been to preserve himself, to keep his faiths and his ideals,
+      and even his personality. In the inessentials he had yielded easily, and
+      so bought peace. Or perhaps a truce, of a sort. But for the essentials he
+      was standing with a sort of dogged conviction that if he lowered his flag
+      it would precipitate a crisis. He was not brilliant, but he was
+      intelligent, progressive and kindly. He knew that his father considered
+      him both stupid and obstinate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was going to be a strike. The quarrel now was between Anthony's curt
+      &ldquo;Let them strike,&rdquo; and his own conviction that a strike at this time might
+      lead to even worse things. The men's demands were exorbitant. No business,
+      no matter how big, could concede them and live. But Howard was debating
+      another phase of the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not all the mills would go down. A careful canvass of some of the other
+      independent concerns had shown the men eighty, ninety, even one hundred
+      per cent, loyal. Those were the smaller plants, where there had always
+      been a reciprocal good feeling between the owners and the men; there the
+      men knew the owners, and the owners knew the men, who had been with them
+      for years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Cardew Mills would go down. There had been no liaison between the
+      Cardews and the workmen. The very magnitude of the business forbade that.
+      And for many years, too, the Cardews had shown a gross callousness to the
+      welfare of the laborers. Long ago he had urged on his father the
+      progressive attitude of other steel men, but Anthony had jeered, and when
+      Howard had forced the issue and gained concessions, it was too late. The
+      old grievances remained in too many minds. To hate the Cardews bad become
+      a habit. Their past sins would damn them now. The strike was wrong, a
+      wicked thing. It was without reason and without aim. The men were knocking
+      a hole in the boat that floated them. But&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a tap at his door, and he called &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo; From her babyhood
+      Lily had had her own peculiar method of signaling that she stood without,
+      a delicate rapid tattoo of finger nails on the panel. He watched smilingly
+      for her entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Thank goodness you haven't started to dress. I tried to
+      get here earlier, but my hair wouldn't go up, I want to make a good
+      impression to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there a dinner on? I didn't know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a dinner. A young man. I came to see what you are going to wear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really! Well, I haven't a great variety. The ordinary dinner dress of a
+      gentleman doesn't lend itself to any extraordinary ornamentation. If you
+      like, I'll pin on that medal from the Iron and Steel&mdash;Who's coming,
+      Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grayson says grandfather's dining out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a piece of luck! I mean&mdash;you know what he'd say if I asked him
+      not to dress for dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I to gather that you are asking me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't mind, would you? He hasn't any evening clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Lily,&rdquo; said her father, sitting upright. &ldquo;Who is coming here
+      to-night? And why should he upset the habits of the entire family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy Cameron. You know, father. And he has the queerest ideas about us.
+      Honestly. And I want him to like us, and it's such a good chance, with
+      grandfather out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ignored that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about our liking him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you'll like him. Everybody does. You will try to make a good
+      impression, won't you, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up, and resting his hands on her shoulders, smiled down into her
+      upturned face. &ldquo;I will,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I think I should tell you that your
+      anxiety arouses deep and black suspicions in my mind. Am I to understand
+      that you have fixed your young affections on this Willy Cameron, and that
+      you want your family to help you in your dark designs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love him,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I really do. I could listen to him for hours. But
+      people don't want to marry Willy Cameron. They just love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was born in Howard's mind a vision of a nice pink and white young
+      man, quite sexless, whom people loved but did not dream of marrying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;Like a puppy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all like a puppy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I'm not subtle, my dear. Well, ring for Adams, and&mdash;you
+      think he wouldn't care for the medal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he'd love it. He'd probably think some king gave it to you. I'm
+      sure he believes that you and grandfather habitually hobnob with kings.&rdquo;
+       She turned to go out. &ldquo;He doesn't approve of kings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are making me extremely uneasy,&rdquo; was her father's shot. &ldquo;I only hope
+      I acquit myself well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry, then. He is sure to be exactly on the hour.&rdquo; Howard was still
+      smiling slightly to himself when, a half-hour later, he descended the
+      staircase. But he had some difficulty first in reconciling his
+      preconceived idea of Willy with the tall young man, with the faint
+      unevenness of step, who responded to his greeting so calmly and so easily.
+      &ldquo;We are always glad to see any of Lily's friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very good of you to let me come, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, the girl was blind. This was a man, a fine, up-standing fellow, with
+      a clean-cut, sensitive face, and honest, almost beautiful eyes. How did
+      women judge men, anyhow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, try as he would, Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willy Cameron
+      that night. He tried him out on a number of things. In religion, for
+      instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the church had not come
+      up fully during the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Religion isn't a matter only of churches any more,&rdquo; said Mr. Cameron. &ldquo;It
+      has to go out into the streets, I think, sir. It's a-well, Christ left the
+      tabernacle, you remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all right. Howard felt that himself sometimes. He was a vestryman
+      at Saint Peter's, and although he felt very devout during the service,
+      especially during the offertory, when the music filled the fine old
+      building, he was often conscious that he shed his spirituality at the
+      door, when he glanced at the sky to see what were the prospects for an
+      afternoon's golf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In politics Willy Cameron was less satisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't decided, yet,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916, but
+      although I suppose parties are necessary, I don't like to feel that I am
+      party-bound. Anyhow, the old party lines are gone. I rather look&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped. That terrible speech of Edith Boyd's still rankled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, Willy,&rdquo; said Lily. &ldquo;I told them they'd love to you talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's really all, sir,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, unhappily. &ldquo;I am a Scot, and
+      to start a Scot on reform is fatal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you believe in reform?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are not doing very well as we are, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like extremely to know how you feel about things,&rdquo; said Howard,
+      gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only this: So long as one party is, or is considered, the representative
+      of capital, the vested interests, and the other of labor, the great mass
+      of the people who are neither the one nor the other cannot be adequately
+      represented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the solution?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps a new party. Or better still, a liberalizing of the Republican.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before long,&rdquo; said Lily suddenly, &ldquo;there will be no state. There will be
+      enough for everybody, and nobody will have too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard smiled at her indulgently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you expect to accomplish this ideal condition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the difficulty about it,&rdquo; said Lily, thoughtfully. &ldquo;It means a
+      revolution. It would be peaceful, though. The thing to do is to convince
+      people that it is simple justice, and then they will divide what they
+      have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Lily!&rdquo; Grace's voice was anxious. &ldquo;That's Socialism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Howard only smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject. Every one had
+      these attacks of idealism in youth. They were the exaggerated altruism of
+      adolescence; a part of its dreams and aspirations. He changed the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the boy,&rdquo; he said to Grace, later, over the cribbage board in the
+      morning room. &ldquo;He has character, and a queer sort of magnetism. It
+      mightn't be a bad thing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace was counting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot to tell you; I think she refused Pink Denslow the other day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rather gathered, from the way she spoke of young Cameron, that she
+      isn't interested there either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit,&rdquo; said Grace, complacently. &ldquo;You needn't worry about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard smiled. He was often conscious that after all the years of their
+      common life, his wife's mind and his traveled along parallel lines that
+      never met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron was extremely happy. He had brought his pipe along, although
+      without much hope, but the moment they were settled by the library fire
+      Lily had suggested it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you can't talk unless you have it in your hand to wave around,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;And I want to know such a lot of things. Where you live, and
+      all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I live in a boarding house. More house than board, really. And the work's
+      all right. I'm going to study metallurgy some day. There are night courses
+      at the college, only I haven't many nights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had lighted his pipe, and kept his eyes on it mostly, or on the fire.
+      He was afraid to look at Lily, because there was something he could not
+      keep out of his eyes, but must keep from her. It had been both better and
+      worse than he had anticipated, seeing her in her home. Lily herself had
+      not changed. She was her wonderful self, in spite of her frock and her
+      surroundings. But the house, her people, with their ease of wealth and
+      position, Grace's slight condescension, the elaborate simplicity of
+      dining, the matter-of-course-ness of the service. It was not that Lily was
+      above him. That was ridiculous. But she was far removed from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is something wrong with you, Willy,&rdquo; she said unexpectedly. &ldquo;You
+      are not happy, or you are not well. Which is it? You are awfully thin, for
+      one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm all right,&rdquo; he said, evading her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you lonely? I don't mean now, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've got a dog. That helps. He's a helpless sort of mutt. I carry
+      his meat home from the shop in my pocket, and I feel like a butcher's
+      wagon, sometimes. But he's taken a queer sort of liking to me, and he is
+      something to talk to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't you bring him along?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dogs were forbidden in the Cardew house, by old Anthony's order, as were
+      pipes, especially old and beloved ones, but Lily was entirely reckless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did follow me. He's probably sitting on the doorstep now. I tried to
+      send him back, but he's an obstinate little beast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily got up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to bring him in,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And if you'll ring that bell
+      we'll get him some dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get him, while you ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later Anthony Cardew entered his house. He had spent a
+      miserable evening. Some young whipper snapper who employed a handful of
+      men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew, was a clog in the
+      wheel of progress. Not in so many words, but he had said: &ldquo;Tempora
+      mutantur, Mr. Cardew. And the wise employer meets those changes half-way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You young fools want to go all the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. We'll meet them half-way, and stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; said Anthony Cardew, and had left the club in a temper. The club
+      was going to the dogs, along with the rest of the world. There was only a
+      handful of straight-thinking men like himself left in it. Lot of young
+      cravens, letting their men dominate them and intimidate them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he slammed into his house, threw off his coat and hat, and&mdash;sniffed.
+      A pungent, acrid odor was floating through a partly closed door. Anthony
+      Cardew flung open the door and entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the fire, on a deep velvet couch, sat his granddaughter. Beside her
+      was a thin young man in a gray suit, and the thin young man was waving an
+      old pipe about, and saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tempora mutantur, Lily. The wise employer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, sir,&rdquo; said Anthony, in a terrible voice, &ldquo;that you are not
+      acquainted with the rules of my house. I object to pipes. There are cigars
+      in the humidor behind you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very sorry, Mr. Cardew,&rdquo; Willy Cameron explained. &ldquo;I didn't know. I'll
+      put it away, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Anthony was not listening. His eyes had traveled from an empty platter
+      on the hearth-rug to a deep chair where Jinx, both warm and fed at the
+      same time, and extremely distended with meat, lay sleeping. Anthony put
+      out a hand and pressed the bell beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather.&rdquo; Lily was rather pale, but
+      she had the Cardew poise. &ldquo;He was in the camp when I was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grayson entered on that, however, and Anthony pointed to Jinx.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put that dog out,&rdquo; he said, and left the room, his figure rigid and
+      uncompromising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grayson,&rdquo; Lily said, white to the lips, &ldquo;that dog is to remain here. He's
+      perfectly quiet. And, will you find Ellen and ask her to come here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't I made enough trouble?&rdquo; asked Willy Cameron, unhappily. &ldquo;I can
+      see her again, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's crazy to see you, Willy. And besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grayson had gone, after a moment's hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you see?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The others have always submitted. I did, too.
+      But I can't keep it up, Willy. I can't live here and let him treat me like
+      that. Or my friends. I know what will happen. I'll run away, like Aunt
+      Elinor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not do that, Lily.&rdquo; He was very grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? They think she is unhappy. She isn't. She ran away and married a
+      man she cared about. I may call you up some day and ask you to marry me!&rdquo;
+       she added, less tensely. &ldquo;You would be an awfully good husband, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up at him, still angry, but rather amused with this new
+      conceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was startled by the look on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he said painfully, &ldquo;what only amuses you in that idea is&mdash;well,
+      it doesn't amuse me, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only meant&mdash;&rdquo; she was very uncomfortable. &ldquo;You are so real and
+      dependable and kind, and I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean. Like Jinx, there. I'm sorry! I didn't mean that.
+      But you must not talk about marrying me unless you mean it. You see, I
+      happen to care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won't hurt you to know, although I hadn't meant to tell you. And of
+      course, you know, I am not asking you to marry me. Only I'd like you to
+      feel that you can count on me, always. The one person a woman can count on
+      is the man who loves her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And after a little silence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I know you are not in love with me. I cared from the beginning,
+      but I always knew that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I did.&rdquo; She was rather close to tears. She had not felt at all
+      like that with Pink. But, although she knew he was suffering, his
+      quietness deceived her. She had the theory of youth about love, that it
+      was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love
+      demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and then asks. She could not
+      know how he felt about his love for her, that it lay in a sort of
+      cathedral shrine in his heart. There were holy days when saints left their
+      niches and were shown in city streets, but until that holy day came they
+      remained in the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will remember that, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll remember, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't be a nuisance, you know. I've never had any hope, so I won't make
+      you unhappy. And don't be unhappy about me, Lily. I would rather love you,
+      even knowing I can't have you, than be loved by anybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, had he shown more hurt, he would have made it seem more real to
+      her. But he was frightfully anxious not to cause her pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm really very happy, loving you,&rdquo; he added, and smiled down at her
+      reassuringly. But he had for all that a wild primitive impulse which
+      almost overcame him for a moment, to pick her up in his arms and carry her
+      out the door and away with him. Somewhere, anywhere. Away from that grim
+      old house, and that despotic little man, to liberty and happiness and&mdash;William
+      Wallace Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired
+      painstakingly about his mother, and his uncle in California, and the
+      Presbyterian minister. But she was uncomfortable and uneasy and refused to
+      sit down, and Willy watched her furtively slipping out again with a slight
+      frown. It was not right, somehow, this dividing of the world into classes,
+      those who served and those who were served. But he had an idea that it was
+      those below who made the distinction, nowadays. It was the masses who
+      insisted on isolating the classes. They made kings, perhaps that they
+      might some day reach up and pull them off their thrones. At the top of the
+      stairs Ellen found Mademoiselle, who fixed her with cold eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you doing down there,&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Lily sent for me, to see that young man I told you about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you go down? And into the library?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've just told you,&rdquo; said Ellen, her face setting. &ldquo;She sent for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't you say you were in bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm no liar, Mademoiselle. Besides, I guess it's no crime to see a boy
+      I've known all his life, and his mother and me like sisters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a fool,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle, and turning clumped back in her
+      bedroom slippers to her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen went up to her room. Heretofore she had given her allegiance to
+      Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew, and in a more remote fashion, to Howard. But
+      Ellen, crying angry tears in her small white bed that night, sensed a new
+      division in the family, with Mademoiselle and Anthony and Howard and Grace
+      on one side, and Lily standing alone, fighting valiantly for the right to
+      live her own life, to receive her own friends, and the friends of her
+      friends, even though one of these latter might be a servant in her own
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet Ellen, with the true snobbishness of the servants' hall, disapproved
+      of Lily's course while she admired it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they're all against her,&rdquo; Ellen reflected. &ldquo;The poor thing! And just
+      because of Willy Cameron. Well, I'll stand by her, if they throw me out
+      for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her romantic head there formed strange, delightful visions. Lily
+      eloping with Willy Cameron, assisted by herself. Lily in the little
+      Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her charm,
+      and being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village, and the
+      visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first call, and were cards
+      necessary?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into Ellen's not very hard-working but monotonous life had comes its first
+      dream of romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For three weeks Lily did not see Louis Akers, nor did she go back to the
+      house on Cardew Way. She hated doing clandestine or forbidden things, and
+      she was, too, determined to add nothing to the tenseness she began to
+      realize existed at home. She went through her days, struggling to fit
+      herself again into the old environment, reading to her mother, lending
+      herself with assumed enthusiasm to such small gayeties as Lent permitted,
+      and doing penance in a dozen ways for that stolen afternoon with Louis
+      Akers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been forbidden to see him again. It had come about by Grace's
+      confession to Howard as to Lily's visit to the Doyles. He had not objected
+      to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless Doyle talks his rubbish to her,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She said something the
+      other night that didn't sound like her. Was any one else there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An attorney named Akers,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that Howard had scowled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'd better keep away altogether,&rdquo; he observed, curtly. &ldquo;She oughtn't to
+      meet men like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell her,&rdquo; he said. And tell her he did, not too tactfully, and
+      man-like shielding her by not telling her his reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not the sort of man I want you to know,&rdquo; he finished. &ldquo;That ought to
+      be sufficient. Have you seen him since?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily flushed, but she did not like to lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had tea with him one afternoon. I often have tea with men, father. You
+      know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew I wouldn't approve, or you would have mentioned it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Because he felt that he had been rather ruthless with her, he stopped in
+      at the jeweler's the next morning and sent her a tiny jeweled watch. Lily
+      was touched and repentant. She made up her mind not to see Louis Akers
+      again, and found a certain relief in the decision. She was conscious that
+      he had a peculiar attraction for her, a purely emotional appeal. He made
+      her feel alive. Even when she disapproved of him, she was conscious of
+      him. She put him resolutely out of her mind, to have him reappear in her
+      dreams, not as a lover, but as some one dominant and insistent, commanding
+      her to do absurd, inconsequential things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then she saw Willy Cameron, and they had gone back, apparently, to
+      the old friendly relationship. They walked together, and once they went to
+      the moving pictures, to Grace's horror. But there were no peanuts to eat,
+      and instead of the jingling camp piano there was an orchestra, and it was
+      all strangely different. Even Willy Cameron was different. He was very
+      silent, and on the way home he did not once speak of the plain people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Akers had both written and telephoned her, but she made excuses, and
+      did not see him, and the last time he had hung up the receiver abruptly.
+      She felt an odd mixture of relief and regret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, about the middle of April, she saw him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spring was well on by that time. Before the Doyle house on Cardew Way the
+      two horse-chestnuts were showing great red-brown buds, ready to fall into
+      leaf with the first warm day, and Elinor, assisted by Jennie, the elderly
+      maid, was finishing her spring house-cleaning. The Cardew mansion showed
+      window-boxes at each window, filled by the florist with spring flowers, to
+      be replaced later by summer ones. A potted primrose sat behind the plate
+      glass of the Eagle Pharmacy, among packets of flower seeds and spring
+      tonics, its leaves occasionally nibbled by the pharmacy cat, out of some
+      atavistic craving survived through long generations of city streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children's playground near the Lily furnace was ready; Howard Cardew
+      himself had overseen the locations of the swings and chute-the-chutes. And
+      at Friendship an army of workers was sprinkling and tamping the turf of
+      the polo field. After two years of war, there was to be polo again that
+      spring and early summer. The Cherry Hill Hunt team was still intact,
+      although some of the visiting outfits had been badly shot to pieces by the
+      war. But the war was over. It lay behind, a nightmare to be forgotten as
+      soon as possible. It had left its train of misery and debt, but&mdash;spring
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a pleasant Monday, Lily motored out to the field with Pink Denslow. It
+      had touched her that he still wanted her, and it had offered an escape
+      from her own worries. She was fighting a sense of failure that day. It
+      seemed impossible to reconcile the warring elements at home. Old Anthony
+      and his son were quarreling over the strike, and Anthony was jibing
+      constantly at Howard over the playground. It was not so much her
+      grandfather's irritability that depressed her as his tyranny over the
+      household, and his attitude toward her mother roused her to bitter
+      resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night before she had left the table after one of his scourging
+      speeches, only to have what amounted to a scene with her mother afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I cannot sit by while he insults you, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is just his way. I don't mind, really. Oh, Lily, don't destroy what I
+      have built up so carefully. It hurts your father so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; Lily said slowly, &ldquo;he makes me think Aunt Elinor's husband
+      was right. He believes a lot of things&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things?&rdquo; Grace had asked, suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, a sort of Socialism, for one thing, only it isn't exactly that.
+      It's individualism, really, or I think so; the sort of thing that this
+      house stifles.&rdquo; Grace was too horrified for speech. &ldquo;I don't want to hurt
+      you, mother, but don't you see? He tyrannizes over all of us, and it's bad
+      for our souls. Why should he bellow at the servants? Or talk to you the
+      way he did to-night?&rdquo; She smiled faintly. &ldquo;We're all drowning, and I want
+      to swim, that's all. Mr. Doyle&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are talking nonsense,&rdquo; said Grace sharply. &ldquo;You have got a lot of
+      ideas from that wretched house, and now you think they are your own. Lily,
+      I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles I shall take you
+      abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily turned and walked out of the room, and there was something suggestive
+      of old Anthony in the pitch of her shoulders. Her anger did not last long,
+      but her uneasiness persisted. Already she knew that she was older in many
+      ways than Grace; she had matured in the past year more than her mother in
+      twenty, and she felt rather like a woman obeying the mandates of a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on that pleasant Monday she was determined to be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old world begins to look pretty, doesn't it?&rdquo; said Pink, breaking in on
+      her thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not a bad place to live in, after all,&rdquo; said Pink, trying to cheer
+      his own rather unhappy humor. &ldquo;There is always spring to expect, when we
+      get low in winter. And there are horses and dogs, and&mdash;and blossoms
+      on the trees, and all that.&rdquo; What he meant was, &ldquo;If there isn't love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are perfectly satisfied with things just as they are, aren't you?&rdquo;
+       Lily asked, half enviously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'd change some things.&rdquo; He stopped. He wasn't going to go round
+      sighing like a furnace. &ldquo;But it's a pretty good sort of place. I'm for
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you sent your ponies out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only two. I want to show you one I bought from the Government almost for
+      nothing. Remount man piped me off. Light in flesh, rather, but fast.
+      Handy, light mouth&mdash;all he needs is a bit of training.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been in the open country for some time, but now they were
+      approaching the Cardew's Friendship plant. The furnaces had covered the
+      fields with a thin deposit of reddish ore dust. Such blighted grass as
+      grew had already lost its fresh green, and the trees showed stunted
+      blossoms. The one oasis of freshness was the polo field itself, carefully
+      irrigated by underground pipes. The field, with its stables and
+      grandstand, had been the gift of Anthony Cardew, thereby promoting much
+      discussion with his son. For Howard had wanted the land for certain
+      purposes of his own, to build a clubhouse for the men at the plant, with a
+      baseball field. Finding his father obdurate in that, he had urged that the
+      field be thrown open to the men and their families, save immediately
+      preceding and during the polo season. But he had failed there, too.
+      Anthony Cardew had insisted, and with some reason, that to use the grounds
+      for band concerts and baseball games, for picnics and playgrounds, would
+      ruin the turf for its legitimate purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard had subsequently found other land, and out of his own private means
+      had carried out his plans, but the location was less desirable. And he
+      knew what his father refused to believe, that the polo ground, taking up
+      space badly needed for other purposes, was a continual grievance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Pink stared ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have they changed the rule about that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pointed to the field. A diamond had been roughly outlined on it with
+      bags of sand, and a ball-game was in progress, boys playing, but a long
+      line of men watching from the side lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, but it doesn't hurt anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruins the turf, that's all.&rdquo; He stopped the car and got out. &ldquo;Look at
+      this sign. It says 'ball-playing or any trespassing forbidden on these
+      grounds.' I'll clear them off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't, Pink. They may be ugly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he only smiled at her reassuringly, and went off. She watched him go
+      with many misgivings, his sturdy young figure, his careful dress, his air
+      of the young aristocrat, easy, domineering, unconsciously insolent. They
+      would resent him, she knew, those men and boys. And after all, why should
+      they not use the field? There was injustice in that sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet her liking and real sympathy were with Pink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pink!&rdquo; she called, &ldquo;Come back here. Let them alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned toward her a face slightly flushed with indignation and set with
+      purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry. Can't do it, Lily. This sort of thing's got to be stopped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt, rather hopelessly, that he was wrong, but that he was right,
+      too. The grounds were private property. She sat back and watched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink was angry. She could hear his voice, see his gestures. He was shooing
+      them off like a lot of chickens, and they were laughing. The game had
+      stopped, and the side lines were pressing forward. There was a moment's
+      debate, with raised voices, a sullen muttering from the crowd, and the
+      line closing into a circle. The last thing she saw before it closed was a
+      man lunging at Pink, and his counter-feint. Then some one was down. If it
+      was Pink he was not out, for there was fighting still going on. The
+      laborers working on the grounds were running.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily stood up in the car, pale and sickened. She was only vaguely
+      conscious of a car that suddenly left the road, and dashed recklessly
+      across the priceless turf, but she did see, and recognize, Louis Akers as
+      he leaped from it and flinging men this way and that disappeared into the
+      storm center. She could hear his voice, too, loud and angry, and see the
+      quick dispersal of the crowd. Some of the men, foreigners, passed quite
+      near to her, and eyed her either sullenly or with mocking smiles. She was
+      quite oblivious of them. She got out and ran with shaking knees across to
+      where Pink lay on the grass, his profile white and sharply chiseled, with
+      two or three men bending over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink was dead. Those brutes had killed him. Pink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not dead. He was moving his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Akers straightened when he saw her and took off his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing to worry about, Miss Cardew,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But what sort of idiocy&mdash;!
+      Hello, old man, all right now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink sat up, then rose stiffly and awkwardly. He had a cut over one eye,
+      and he felt for his handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fouled me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Filthy lot, anyhow. Wonder they didn't walk on me
+      when I was down.&rdquo; He turned to the grounds-keeper, who had come up. &ldquo;You
+      ought to know better than to let those fellows cut up this turf,&rdquo; he said
+      angrily. &ldquo;What're you here for anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was suddenly very sick. He looked at Lily, his face drawn and
+      blanched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got me right,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get into my car,&rdquo; said Akers, not too amiably. &ldquo;I'll drive you to the
+      stables. I'll be back, Miss Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily went back to the car and sat down. She was shocked and startled, but
+      she was strangely excited. The crowd had beaten Pink, but it had obeyed
+      Louis Akers like a master. He was a man. He was a strong man. He must be
+      built of iron. Mentally she saw him again, driving recklessly over the
+      turf, throwing the men to right and left, hoarse with anger, tall,
+      dominant, powerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was more important that a man be a man than that he be a gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little he drove back across the field, sending the car forward
+      again at reckless speed. Some vision of her grandfather, watching the
+      machine careening over the still soft and spongy turf and leaving deep
+      tracks behind it, made her smile. Akers leaped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No need to worry about our young friend,&rdquo; he said cheerfully. &ldquo;He is
+      alternately being very sick at his stomach and cursing the poor working
+      man. But I think I'd better drive you back. He'll be poor company, I'll
+      say that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her, his bold eyes challenging, belying the amiable
+      gentleness of his smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd better let him know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him. He isn't strong for me. Always hate the fellow who saves you,
+      you know. But he didn't object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily moved into his car obediently. She felt a strange inclination to do
+      what this man wanted. Rather, it was an inability to oppose him. He went
+      on, big, strong, and imperious. And he carried one along. It was easy and
+      queer. But she did, unconsciously, what she had never done with Pink or
+      any other man; she sat as far away from him on the wide seat as she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He noticed that, and smiled ahead, over the wheel. He had been infuriated
+      over her avoidance of him, but if she was afraid of him&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bully engine in this car. Never have to change a gear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly made a road through the field.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll fix that, all right. Are you warm enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been treating me very badly, you know, Miss Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been frightfully busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not true, and you know it. You've been forbidden to see me,
+      haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been forbidden to go back to Cardew Way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't know about me, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn't very much to know, is there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't fence with me,&rdquo; he said impatiently. &ldquo;I told you once
+      I was frank. I want you to answer one question. If this thing rested with
+      you, would you see me again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I would, Mr. Akers,&rdquo; she said honestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she ever known a man like the one beside her, she would not have given
+      him that opportunity. He glanced sharply around, and then suddenly stopped
+      the car and turned toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm crazy about you, and you know it,&rdquo; he said. And roughly, violently,
+      he caught her to him and kissed her again and again. Her arms were pinned
+      to her sides, and she was helpless. After a brief struggle to free herself
+      she merely shut her eyes and waited for him to stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm mad about you,&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he freed her. Lily wanted to feel angry, but she felt only humiliated
+      and rather soiled. There were men like that, then, men who gave way to
+      violent impulses, who lost control of themselves and had to apologize
+      afterwards. She hated him, but she was sorry for him, too. He would have
+      to be so humble. She was staring ahead, white and waiting for his
+      explanation, when he released the brake and started the car forward
+      slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said, with a faint smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will have to apologize for that, Mr. Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm damned if I will. That man back there, Denslow&mdash;he's the sort
+      who would kiss a girl and then crawl about it afterwards. I won't. I'm not
+      sorry. A strong man can digest his own sins. I kissed you because I wanted
+      to. It wasn't an impulse. I meant to when we started. And you're only
+      doing the conventional thing and pretending to be angry. You're not angry.
+      Good God, girl, be yourself once in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I don't understand you.&rdquo; Her voice was haughty. &ldquo;And I must
+      ask you to stop the car and let me get out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do nothing of the sort, of course. Now get this straight, Miss
+      Cardew. I haven't done you any harm. I may have a brutal way of showing
+      that I'm crazy about you, but it's my way. I'm a man, and I'm no hand
+      kisser.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when she said nothing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I'm unrestrained, and I am, in a way. But if I did what I
+      really want to do, I'd not take you home at all. I'd steal you. You've
+      done something to me, God knows what.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I can only say I'm sorry,&rdquo; Lily said slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt strangely helpless and rather maternal. With all his strength
+      this sort of man needed to be protected from himself. She felt no
+      answering thrill whatever to his passion, but as though, having told her
+      he loved her, he had placed a considerable responsibility in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be good now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Mind, I'm not sorry. But I don't want to
+      worry you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no further overtures to her during the ride, but he was neither
+      sulky nor sheepish. He feigned an anxiety as to the threatened strike, and
+      related at great length and with extreme cleverness of invention his own
+      efforts to prevent it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've a good bit of influence with the A.F.L.,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Doyle's in bad
+      with them, but I'm still solid. But it's coming, sure as shooting. And
+      they'll win, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew women well, and he saw that she was forgiving him. But she would
+      not forget. He had a cynical doctrine, to the effect that a woman's first
+      kiss of passion left an ineradicable mark on her, and he was quite certain
+      that Lily had never been so kissed before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Driving through the park he turned to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please forgive me,&rdquo; he said, his mellow voice contrite and supplicating.
+      &ldquo;You've been so fine about it that you make me ashamed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like to feel that it wouldn't happen again: That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means you intend to see me again. But never is a long word. I'm
+      afraid to promise. You go to my head, Lily Cardew.&rdquo; They were halted by
+      the traffic, and it gave him a chance to say something he had been
+      ingeniously formulating in his mind. &ldquo;I've known lots of girls. I'm no
+      saint. But you are different. You're a good woman. You could do anything
+      you wanted with me, if you cared to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And because she was young and lovely, and because he was always the slave
+      of youth and beauty, he meant what he said. It was a lie, but he was lying
+      to himself also, and his voice held unmistakable sincerity. But even then
+      he was watching her, weighing the effect of his words on her. He saw that
+      she was touched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very well pleased with himself on his way home. He left the car at
+      the public garage, and walked, whistling blithely, to his small bachelor
+      apartment. He was a self-indulgent man, and his rooms were comfortable to
+      the point of luxury. In the sitting room was a desk, as clean and orderly
+      as Doyle's was untidy. Having put on his dressing gown he went to it, and
+      with a sheet of paper before him sat for some time thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found his work irksome at times. True, it had its interest. He was the
+      liaison between organized labor, which was conservative in the main, and
+      the radical element, both in and out of the organization. He played a
+      double game, and his work was always the same, to fan the discontent
+      latently smoldering in every man's soul into a flame. And to do this he
+      had not Doyle's fanaticism. Personally, Louis Akers found the world a
+      pretty good place. He hated the rich because they had more than he had,
+      but he scorned the poor because they had less. And he liked the feeling of
+      power he had when, on the platform, men swayed to his words like wheat to
+      a wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Personal ambition was his fetish, as power was Anthony Cardew's. Sometimes
+      he walked past the exclusive city clubs, and he dreamed of a time when he,
+      too, would have the entree to them. But time was passing. He was
+      thirty-three years old when Jim Doyle crossed his path, and the clubs were
+      as far away as ever. It was Doyle who found the weak place in his armor,
+      and who taught him that when one could not rise it was possible to pull
+      others down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was Woslosky, the Americanized Pole; who had put the thing in a
+      more appealing form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our friend Doyle to the contrary,&rdquo; he said cynically, &ldquo;we cannot hope to
+      contend against the inevitable. The few will always govern the many, in
+      the end. It will be the old cycle, autocracy, anarchy, and then democracy;
+      but out of this last comes always the one man who crowns himself or is
+      crowned. One of the people. You, or myself, it may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pole had smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers did not go to work immediately. He sat for some time, a cigarette in
+      his hand, his eyes slightly narrowed. He believed that he could marry Lily
+      Cardew. It would take time and all his skill, but he believed he could do
+      it. His mind wandered to Lily herself, her youth and charm, her soft red
+      mouth, the feel of her warm young body in his arms. He brought himself up
+      sharply. Where would such a marriage take him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pondered the question pro and con. On the one hand the Cardews, on the
+      other, Doyle and a revolutionary movement. A revolution would be
+      interesting and exciting, and there was strong in him the desire to pull
+      down. But revolution was troublesome. It was violent and bloody. Even if
+      it succeeded it would be years before the country would be stabilized.
+      This other, now&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat low in his chair, his long legs stretched out in his favorite
+      position, and dreamed. He would not play the fool like Doyle. He would
+      conciliate the family. In the end he would be put up at the clubs; he
+      might even play polo. His thoughts wandered to Pink Denslow at the polo
+      grounds, and he grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young fool!&rdquo; he reflected. &ldquo;If I can't beat his time&mdash;&rdquo; He ordered
+      dinner to be sent up, and mixed himself a cocktail, using the utmost care
+      in its preparation. Drinking it, he eyed himself complacently in the small
+      mirror over the mantel. Yes, life was not bad. It was damned interesting.
+      It was a game. No, it was a race where a man could so hedge his bets that
+      he stood to gain, whoever won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When there was a knock at the door he did not turn. &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not the waiter. It was Edith Boyd. He saw her through the
+      mirror, and so addressed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, sweetie,&rdquo; he said. Then he turned. &ldquo;You oughtn't to come here,
+      Edith. I've told you about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to see you, Lou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, take a good look, then,&rdquo; he said. Her coming fitted in well with
+      the complacence of his mood. Yes, life was good, so long as it held power,
+      and drink, and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped to kiss her, but although she accepted the caress, she did not
+      return it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not mad at me, Miss Boyd, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Lou, I'm frightened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On clear Sundays Anthony Cardew played golf all day. He kept his religious
+      observances for bad weather, but at such times as he attended service he
+      did it with the decorum and dignity of a Cardew, who bowed to his God but
+      to nothing else. He made the responses properly and with a certain
+      unction, and sat during the sermon with a vigilant eye on the choir boys,
+      who wriggled. Now and then, however, the eye wandered to the great stained
+      glass window which was a memorial to his wife. It said beneath: &ldquo;In
+      memoriam, Lilian Lethbridge Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought there was too much yellow in John the Baptist. On the Sunday
+      afternoon following her ride into the city with Louis Akers, Lily found
+      herself alone. Anthony was golfing and Grace and Howard had motored out of
+      town for luncheon. In a small office near the rear of the hall the second
+      man dozed, waiting for the doorbell. There would be people in for tea
+      later, as always on Sunday afternoons; girls and men, walking through the
+      park or motoring up in smart cars, the men a trifle bored because they
+      were not golfing or riding, the girls chattering about the small
+      inessentials which somehow they made so important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was wretchedly unhappy. For one thing, she had begun to feel that
+      Mademoiselle was exercising over her a sort of gentle espionage, and she
+      thought her grandfather was behind it. Out of sheer rebellion she had gone
+      again to the house on Cardew Way, to find Elinor out and Jim Doyle writing
+      at his desk. He had received her cordially, and had talked to her as an
+      equal. His deferential attitude had soothed her wounded pride, and she had
+      told him something&mdash;very little&mdash;of the situation at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are still forbidden to come here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. As if what happened years ago matters now, Mr. Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He eyed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let them break your spirit, Lily,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;Success can make
+      people very hard. I don't know myself what success would do to me. Plenty,
+      probably.&rdquo; He smiled. &ldquo;It isn't the past your people won't forgive me,
+      Lily. It's my failure to succeed in what they call success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't that,&rdquo; she had said hastily. &ldquo;It is&mdash;they say you are
+      inflammatory. Of course they don't understand. I have tried to tell them,
+      but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are fires that purify,&rdquo; he had said, smilingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had gone home, discontented with her family's lack of vision, and with
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was in a curious frame of mind. The thought of Louis Akers repelled
+      her, but she thought of him constantly. She analyzed him clearly enough;
+      he was not fine and not sensitive. He was not even kind. Indeed, she felt
+      that he could be both cruel and ruthless. And if she was the first good
+      woman he had ever known, then he must have had a hateful past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought that he had kissed her turned her hot with anger and shame at
+      such times, but the thought recurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she had occupation perhaps she might have been saved, but she had
+      nothing to do. The house went on with its disciplined service; Lent had
+      made its small demands as to church services, and was over. The weather
+      was bad, and the golf links still soggy with the spring rains. Her
+      wardrobe was long ago replenished, and that small interest gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And somehow there had opened a breach between herself and the little
+      intimate group that had been hers before the war. She wondered sometimes
+      what they would think of Louis Akers. They would admire him, at first, for
+      his opulent good looks, but very soon they would recognize what she knew
+      so well&mdash;the gulf between him and the men of their own world, so hard
+      a distinction to divine, yet so real for all that. They would know
+      instinctively that under his veneer of good manners was something coarse
+      and crude, as she did, and they would politely snub him. She had no name
+      and no knowledge for the urge in the man that she vaguely recognized and
+      resented. But she had a full knowledge of the obsession he was becoming in
+      her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could see him here,&rdquo; she reflected, more than once, &ldquo;I'd get over
+      thinking about him. It's because they forbid me to see him. It's sheer
+      contrariness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not, and she knew it. She had never heard of his theory about
+      the mark on a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was hating herself very vigorously on that Sunday afternoon.
+      Mademoiselle and she had lunched alone in Lily's sitting-room, and
+      Mademoiselle had dozed off in her chair afterwards, a novel on her knee.
+      Lily was wandering about downstairs when the telephone rang, and she had a
+      quick conviction that it was Louis Akers. It was only Willy Cameron,
+      however, asking her if she cared to go for a walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've promised Jinx one all day,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;and we might as well
+      combine, if you are not busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd love it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;In the park?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment.&rdquo; Then: &ldquo;Yes, Jinx says the park is right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wholesome nonsense was good for her. She drew a long breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are precisely the person I need to-day,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And come soon,
+      because I shall have to be back at five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came he was very neat indeed, and most scrupulous as to his heels
+      being polished. He was also slightly breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had to sew a button on my coat,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Then I found I'd sewed in
+      one of my fingers and had to start all over again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was conscious of a change in him. He looked older, she thought, and
+      thinner. His smile, when it came, was as boyish as ever, but he did not
+      smile so much, and seen in full daylight he was shabby. He seemed totally
+      unconscious of his clothes, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you do with yourself, Willy?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I mean when you are
+      free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read and study. I want to take up metallurgy pretty soon. There's a night
+      course at the college.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We use metallurgists in the mill. When you are ready I know father would
+      be glad to have you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flushed at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'd rather get in, wherever I go, by what I know, and
+      not who I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt considerably snubbed, but she knew his curious pride. After a
+      time, while he threw a stick into the park lake and Jinx retrieved it, he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you do with yourself these days, Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. I've forgotten how to work, I'm afraid. And I'm not very happy,
+      Willy. I ought to be, but I'm just&mdash;not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've learned what it is to be useful,&rdquo; he observed gravely, &ldquo;and now it
+      hardly seems worth while just to live, and nothing else. Is that it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't there anything you can do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't let me work, and I hate to study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence. Willy Cameron sat on the bench, bent and staring
+      ahead. Jinx brought the stick, and, receiving no attention, insinuated a
+      dripping body between his knees. He patted the dog's head absently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been thinking about the night I went to dinner at your house,&rdquo; he
+      said at last. &ldquo;I had no business to say what I said then. I've got a
+      miserable habit of saying just what comes into my mind, and I've been
+      afraid, ever since, that it would end in your not wanting to see me again.
+      Just try to forget it happened, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it was an impulse, but it made me very proud, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;And that's that. Now about your
+      grandfather. I've had him on my mind, too. He is an old man, and sometimes
+      they are peculiar. I am only sorry I upset him. And you are to forget
+      that, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of herself she laughed, rather helplessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything I am to remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled too, and straightened himself, like a man who has got something
+      off his chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly there is, Miss Cardew. Me. Myself. I want you to know that I'm
+      around, ready to fetch and carry like Jinx here, and about as necessary, I
+      suppose. We are a good bit alike, Jinx and I. We're satisfied with a bone,
+      and we give a lot of affection. You won't mind a bone now and then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His cheerful tone reassured the girl. There was no real hurt, then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nice of you, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said slowly, &ldquo;you know there are men who prefer a dream to
+      reality. Perhaps I'm like that. Anyhow, that's enough about me. Do you
+      know that there is a strike coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I ought to tell you, Willy. I think the men are right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Why, my dear child, most of them want to strike about
+      as much as I want delirium tremens. I've talked to them, and I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A slave may be satisfied if he has never known freedom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, fudge,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, rudely. &ldquo;Where do you get all that?
+      You're quoting; aren't you? The strike, any strike, is an acknowledgment
+      of weakness. It is a resort to the physical because the collective
+      mentality of labor isn't as strong as the other side. Or labor thinks it
+      isn't, which amounts to the same thing. And there is a fine line between
+      the fellow who fights for a principle and the one who knocks people down
+      to show how strong he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a fight for a principle, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine little Cardew you are!&rdquo; he scoffed. &ldquo;Don't make any mistake. There
+      have been fights by labor for a principle, and the principle won, as good
+      always wins over evil. But this is different. It's a direct play by men
+      who don't realize what they are doing, into the hands of a lot of&mdash;well,
+      we'll call them anarchists. It's Germany's way of winning the war. By
+      indirection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If by anarchists you mean men like my uncle&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; he said grimly. &ldquo;That's a family accident and you can't help it.
+      But I do mean Doyle. Doyle and a Pole named Woslosky, and a scoundrel of
+      an attorney here in town, named Akers, among others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Akers is a friend of mine, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they have been teaching you their dirty doctrines, Lily,&rdquo; he said at
+      last, &ldquo;I can only tell you this. They can disguise it in all the fine
+      terms they want. It is treason, and they are traitors. I know. I've had a
+      talk with the Chief of Police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How well do you know Louis Akers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very well.&rdquo; But there were spots of vivid color flaming in her
+      cheeks. He drew a long breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't retract it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn't know, of course. Shall we start
+      back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were very silent as they walked. Willy Cameron was pained and
+      anxious. He knew Akers' type rather than the man himself, but he knew the
+      type well. Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal who attracted
+      girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made passionate, pagan love
+      promiscuously, and put the responsibility for the misery they caused on
+      the Creator because He had made them as they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was agonized by another train of thought. For him Lily had always been
+      something fine, beautiful, infinitely remote. There were other girls,
+      girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less, with the
+      soil of life. Even when they kept clean they saw it all about them, and
+      looked on it with shrewd, sophisticated eyes. But Lily was&mdash;Lily. The
+      very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as he had seen him look at
+      Edith Boyd made him cold with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind if I say something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sounds disagreeable. Is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe, but I'm going to anyhow, Lily. I don't like to think of you seeing
+      Akers. I don't know anything against him, and I suppose if I did I
+      wouldn't tell you. But he is not your sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An impulse of honesty prevailed with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that as well as you do. I know him better than you do. But, he
+      stands for something, at least,&rdquo; she added rather hotly. &ldquo;None of the
+      other men I know stand for anything very much. Even you, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stand for the preservation of my country,&rdquo; he said gravely. &ldquo;I mean, I
+      represent a lot of people who&mdash;well, who don't believe that change
+      always means progress, and who do intend that the changes Doyle and Akers
+      and that lot want they won't get. I don't believe&mdash;if you say you
+      want what they want&mdash;that you know what you are talking about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I am more intelligent than you think I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of arguing
+      with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do your people know that you are seeing Louis Akers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are being rather solicitous, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am being rather anxious. I wouldn't dare, of course, if we hadn't been
+      such friends. But Akers is wrong, wrong every way, and I have to tell you
+      that, even if it means that you will never see me again. He takes a
+      credulous girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And talks bunk to her and possibly makes love to her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't we had enough of Mr. Akers?&rdquo; Lily asked coldly. &ldquo;If you cannot
+      speak of anything else, please don't talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The result of which was a frozen silence until they reached the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by,&rdquo; she said primly. &ldquo;It was very nice of you to call me up.
+      Good-by, Jinx.&rdquo; She went up the steps, leaving him bare-headed and rather
+      haggard, looking after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the dog and went out into the country on foot, tramping through
+      the mud without noticing it, and now and then making little despairing
+      gestures. He was helpless. He had cut himself off from her like a fool.
+      Akers. Akers and Edith Boyd. Other women. Akers and other women. And now
+      Lily. Good God, Lily!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jinx was tired. He begged to be carried, planting two muddy feet on his
+      master's shabby trouser leg, and pleading with low whines. Willy Cameron
+      stooped and, gathering up the little animal, tucked him under his arm.
+      When it commenced to rain he put him under his coat and plunged his head
+      through the mud and wet toward home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily had entered the house in a white fury, but a moment later she was
+      remorseful. For one thing, her own anger bewildered her. After all, he had
+      meant well, and it was like him to be honest, even if it cost him
+      something he valued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran to the door and looked around for him, but he had disappeared. She
+      went in again, remorseful and unhappy. What had come over her to treat him
+      like that? He had looked almost stricken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Akers is calling, Miss Cardew,&rdquo; said the footman. &ldquo;He is in the
+      drawing-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily went in slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Akers had been waiting for some time. He had lounged into the
+      drawing-room, with an ease assumed for the servant's benefit, and had
+      immediately lighted a cigarette. That done, and the servant departed, he
+      had carefully appraised his surroundings. He liked the stiff formality of
+      the room. He liked the servant in his dark maroon livery. He liked the
+      silence and decorum. Most of all, he liked himself in these surroundings.
+      He wandered around, touching a bowl here, a vase there, eyeing carefully
+      the ancient altar cloth that lay on a table, the old needle-work tapestry
+      on the chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw himself fitted into this environment, a part of it; coming down the
+      staircase, followed by his wife, and getting into his waiting limousine;
+      sitting at the head of his table, while the important men of the city
+      listened to what he had to say. It would come, as sure as God made little
+      fishes. And Doyle was a fool. He, Louis Akers, would marry Lily Cardew and
+      block that other game. But he would let the Cardews know who it was who
+      had blocked it and saved their skins. They'd have to receive him after
+      that; they would cringe to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, unexpectedly, he had one of the shocks of his life. He had gone to
+      the window and through it he saw Lily and Willy Cameron outside. He
+      clutched at the curtain and cursed under his breath, apprehensively. But
+      Willy Cameron did not come in; Akers watched him up the street with
+      calculating, slightly narrowed eyes. The fact that Lily Cardew knew the
+      clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an unexpected complication. His surprise
+      was lost in anxiety. But Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather
+      pale and unsmiling, found him facing the door, his manner easy, his head
+      well up, and drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height. She found
+      her poise entirely gone, and it was he who spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You didn't ask me, but I came anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her hand rather primly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very good of you to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! I couldn't stay away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her outstretched hand, smiling down at her, and suddenly made an
+      attempt to draw her to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her go at once. He had not played his little game so long without
+      learning its fine points. There were times to woo a woman with a strong
+      arm, and there were other times that required other methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right-o,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'm sorry. I've been thinking about you so much that
+      I daresay I have got farther in our friendship than I should. Do you know
+      that you haven't been out of my mind since that ride we had together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really? Would you like some tea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, yes. Do you dislike my telling you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rang the bell, and then stood Lacing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mind, no. But I am trying very hard to forget that ride, and I
+      don't want to talk about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When a beautiful thing comes into a man's life he likes to remember it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you call it beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it rather fine when two people, a man and a woman, suddenly find a
+      tremendous attraction that draws them together, in spite of the fact that
+      everything else is conspiring to keep them apart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; she said uncertainly. &ldquo;It just seemed all wrong, somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An honest impulse is never wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to discuss it, Mr. Akers. It is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was away from her, her attraction for him loomed less than the
+      things she promised, of power and gratified ambition. But he found her,
+      with her gentle aloofness, exceedingly appealing, and with the tact of the
+      man who understands women he adapted himself to her humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are making me very unhappy; Miss Lily,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you'll only
+      promise to let me see you now and then, I'll promise to be as mild as
+      dish-water. Will you promise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still struggling, still remembering Willy Cameron, still trying to
+      remember all the things that Louis Akers was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I ought not to see you at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; he said slowly, &ldquo;you are going to cut me off from the one decent
+      influence in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still revolving that in her mind when tea came. Akers, having shot
+      his bolt, watched with interest the preparation for the little ceremony,
+      the old Georgian teaspoons, the Crown Derby cups, the bell-shaped Queen
+      Anne teapot, beautifully chased, the old pierced sugar basin. Almost his
+      gaze was proprietary. And he watched Lily, her casual handling of those
+      priceless treasures, her taking for granted of service and beauty, her
+      acceptance of quality because she had never known anything else, watched
+      her with possessive eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the servant had gone, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are being very nice to me, in view of the fact that you did not ask
+      me to come. And also remembering that your family does not happen to care
+      about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that, or I should not have come. I don't want to make trouble for
+      you, child.&rdquo; His voice was infinitely caressing. &ldquo;As it happens, I know
+      your grandfather's Sunday habits, and I met your father and mother on the
+      road going out of town at noon. I knew they had not come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled down at her. &ldquo;I have ways of knowing quite a lot of things.
+      Especially when they are as vital to me as this few minutes alone with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent toward her, as he sat behind the tea table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know how vital this is to me, don't you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're not going
+      to cut me off, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood over her, big, compelling, dominant, and put his hand under her
+      chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am insane about you,&rdquo; he whispered, and waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly, irresistibly, she lifted her face to his kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the first day of May, William Wallace Cameron moved his trunk, the
+      framed photograph of his mother, eleven books, an alarm clock and Jinx to
+      the Boyd house. He went for two reasons. First, after his initial call at
+      the dreary little house, he began to realize that something had to be done
+      in the Boyd family. The second reason was his dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family as
+      soon as he had met Mrs. Boyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what's come over the children,&rdquo; Mrs. Boyd said, fretfully.
+      She sat rocking persistently in the dreary little parlor. Her chair inched
+      steadily along the dull carpet, and once or twice she brought up just as
+      she was about to make a gradual exit from the room. &ldquo;They act so queer
+      lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hitched the chair into place again. Edith had gone out. It was her
+      idea of an evening call to serve cakes and coffee, and a strong and acrid
+      odor was seeping through the doorway. &ldquo;There's Dan come home from the war,
+      and when he gets back from the mill he just sits and stares ahead of him.
+      He won't even talk about the war, although he's got a lot to tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It takes some time for the men who were over to get settled down again,
+      you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there's Edith,&rdquo; continued the querulous voice. &ldquo;You'd think the cat
+      had got her tongue, too. I tell you, Mr. Cameron, there are meals here
+      when if I didn't talk there wouldn't be a word spoken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cameron looked up. It had occurred to him lately, not precisely that a
+      cat had got away with Edith's tongue, but that something undeniably had
+      got away with her cheerfulness. There were entire days in the store when
+      she neglected to manicure her nails, and stood looking out past the fading
+      primrose in the window to the street. But there were no longer any shrewd
+      comments on the passers-by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, the house isn't very cheerful,&rdquo; sighed Mrs. Boyd. &ldquo;I'm a sick
+      woman, Mr. Cameron. My back hurts most of the time. It just aches and
+      aches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Mr. Cameron. &ldquo;My mother has that, sometimes. If you like
+      I'll mix you up some liniment, and Miss Edith can bring it to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. I've tried most everything. Edith wants to rent a room, so we can
+      keep a hired girl, but it's hard to get a girl. They want all the money on
+      earth, and they eat something awful. That's a nice friendly dog of yours,
+      Mr. Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was perhaps Jinx who decided Willy Cameron. Jinx was at that moment
+      occupying the only upholstered chair, but he had developed a strong liking
+      for the frail little lady with the querulous voice and the shabby black
+      dress. He had, indeed, insisted shortly after his entrance on leaping into
+      her lap, and had thus sat for some time, completely eclipsing his hostess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just let him sit,&rdquo; Mrs. Boyd said placidly. &ldquo;I like a dog. And he can't
+      hurt this skirt I've got on. It's on its last legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With which bit of unconscious humor Willy Cameron had sat down. Something
+      warm and kindly glowed in his heart. He felt that dogs have a curious
+      instinct for knowing what lies concealed in the human heart, and that Jinx
+      had discovered something worth while in Edith's mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was later in the evening, however, that he said, over Edith's bakery
+      cakes and her atrocious coffee:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you really mean that about a roomer, I know of one.&rdquo; He glanced at
+      Edith. &ldquo;Very neat. Careful with matches. Hard to get up in the morning,
+      but interesting, highly intelligent, and a clever talker. That's his one
+      fault. When he is interested in a thing he spouts all over the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really?&rdquo; said Mrs. Boyd. &ldquo;Well, talk would be a change here. He sounds
+      kind of pleasant. Who is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This paragon of beauty and intellect sits before you,&rdquo; said Willy
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to excuse me. I didn't recognize you by the description,&rdquo;
+       said Mrs. Boyd, unconsciously. &ldquo;Well, I don't know. I'd like to have this
+      dog around.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Edith laughed at that. She had been very silent all evening, sitting
+      most of the time with her hands in her lap, and her eyes on Willy Cameron.
+      Rather like Jinx's eyes they were, steady, unblinking, loyal, and with
+      something else in common with Jinx which Willy Cameron never suspected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't come, if I were you,&rdquo; she said, unexpectedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Edie, you've been thinking of asking him right along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't know how to keep a house,&rdquo; she persisted, to him. &ldquo;We can't even
+      cook&mdash;you know that's rotten coffee. I'll show you the room, if you
+      like, but I won't feel hurt if you don't take it, I'll be worried if you
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd watched them perplexedly as they went out, the tall young man
+      with his uneven step, and Edith, who had changed so greatly in the last
+      few weeks, and blew hot one minute and cold the next. Now that she had
+      seen Willy Cameron, Mrs. Boyd wanted him to come. He would bring new life
+      into the little house. He was cheerful. He was not glum like Dan or
+      discontented like Edie. And the dog&mdash;She got up slowly and walked
+      over to the chair where Jinx sat, eyes watchfully on the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nice Jinx,&rdquo; she said, and stroked his head with a thin and stringy hand.
+      &ldquo;Nice doggie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a cake from the plate and fed it to him, bit by bit. She felt
+      happier than she had for a long time, since her children were babies and
+      needed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant it,&rdquo; said Edith, on the stairs. &ldquo;You stay away. We're a poor lot,
+      and we're unlucky, too. Don't get mixed up with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe I'm going to bring you luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best luck for me would be to fall down these stairs and break my
+      neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her anxiously, and any doubts he might have had, born of the
+      dreariness, the odors of stale food and of the musty cellar below, of the
+      shabby room she proceeded to show him, died in an impulse to somehow, some
+      way, lift this small group of people out of the slough of despondency
+      which seemed to be engulfing them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what's the matter with the room?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just wait until I've got
+      busy in it! I'm a paper hanger and a painter, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a dear, too,&rdquo; said Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So on the first of May he moved in, and for some evenings Political
+      Economy and History and Travel and the rest gave way to anxious cuttings
+      and fittings of wall paper, and a pungent odor of paint. The old house
+      took on new life and activity, the latter sometimes pernicious, as when
+      Willy Cameron fell down the cellar stairs with a pail of paint in his
+      hand, or Dan, digging up some bricks in the back yard for a border the
+      seeds of which were already sprouting in a flat box in the kitchen, ran a
+      pickaxe into his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some changes were immediate, such as the white-washing of the cellar and
+      the unpainted fence in the yard, where Willy Cameron visualized, later on,
+      great draperies of morning glories. He papered the parlor, and coaxed Mrs.
+      Boyd to wash the curtains, although she protested that, with the mill
+      smoke, it was useless labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there were some changes that he knew only time would effect. Sometimes
+      he went to his bed worn out both physically and spiritually, as though the
+      burden of lifting three life-sodden souls was too much. Not that he
+      thought of that, however. What he did know was that the food was poor. No
+      servant had been found, and years of lack of system had left Mrs. Boyd's
+      mind confused and erratic. She would spend hours concocting expensive
+      desserts, while the vegetables boiled dry and scorched and meat turned to
+      leather, only to bring pridefully to the table some flavorless mixture
+      garnished according to a picture in the cook book, and totally unedible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would have ambitious cleaning days, too, starting late and leaving off
+      with beds unmade to prepare the evening meal. Dan, home from the mill and
+      newly adopting Willy Cameron's system of cleaning up for supper, would
+      turn sullen then, and leave the moment the meal was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hell of a way to live,&rdquo; he said once. &ldquo;I'd get married, but how can a
+      fellow know whether a girl will make a home for him or give him this? And
+      then there would be babies, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The relations between Dan and Edith were not particularly cordial. Willy
+      Cameron found their bickering understandable enough, but he was puzzled,
+      sometimes, to find that Dan was surreptitiously watching his sister. Edith
+      was conscious of it, too, and one evening she broke into irritated speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd quit staring at me, Dan Boyd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was wondering what has come over you,&rdquo; said Dan, ungraciously. &ldquo;You
+      used to be a nice kid. Now you're an angel one minute and a devil the
+      next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy spoke to him that night when they were setting out rows of
+      seedlings, under the supervision of Jinx.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't worry her, Dan,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it is the spring, probably. It gets
+      into people, you know. I'm that way myself. I'd give a lot to be in the
+      country just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan glanced at him quickly, but whatever he may have had in his mind, he
+      said nothing just then. However, later on he volunteered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's got something on her mind. I know her. But I won't have her talking
+      back to mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A week or so after Willy Cameron had moved, Mr. Hendricks rang the bell of
+      the Boyd house, and then, after his amiable custom, walked in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Cameron!&rdquo; he bawled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upstairs,&rdquo; came Willy Cameron's voice, somewhat thickened with carpet
+      tacks. So Mr. Hendricks climbed part of the way, when he found his head on
+      a level with that of the young gentleman he sought, who was nailing a rent
+      in the carpet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't stop,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks. &ldquo;Merely friendly call. And for heaven's
+      sake don't swallow a tack, son. I'm going to need you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whaffor?&rdquo; inquired Willy Cameron, through his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know yet. Make speeches, probably. If Howard Cardew, or any Cardew,
+      thinks he's going to be mayor of this town, he's got to think again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't give a tinker's dam who's mayor of this town, so long as he gives
+      it honest government.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks approvingly. &ldquo;Old Cardew's been running
+      it for years, and you could put all the honest government he's given us in
+      a hollow tooth. If you'll stop that hammering, I'd like to make a
+      proposition to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron took an admiring squint at his handiwork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry to refuse you, Mr. Hendricks, but I don't want to be mayor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks chuckled, as Willy Cameron led the way to his room. He
+      wandered around the room while Cameron opened a window and slid the dog
+      off his second chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great snakes!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Spargo's Bolshevism! Political Economy, History
+      of&mdash;. What are you planning to be? President?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't decided yet. It's a hard job, and mighty thankless. But I won't
+      be your mayor, even for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Of course if you'd wanted it!&rdquo; He took two large
+      cigars from the row in his breast pocket and held one out, but Willy
+      Cameron refused it and got his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendrick's face became serious and very thoughtful. &ldquo;I don't know that
+      I have ever made it clear to you, Cameron,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I've got a
+      peculiar feeling for this city. I like it, the way some people like their
+      families. It's&mdash;well, it's home to me, for one thing. I like to go
+      out in the evenings and walk around, and I say to myself: 'This is my
+      town.' And we, it and me, are sending stuff all over the world. I like to
+      think that somewhere, maybe in China, they are riding on our rails and
+      fighting with guns made from our steel. Maybe you don't understand that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's the way I feel about it, anyhow. And this Bolshevist stuff
+      gets under my skin. I've got a home and a family here. I started in to
+      work when I was thirteen, and all I've got I've made and saved right here.
+      It isn't much, but it's mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron was lighting his pipe. He nodded. Mr. Hendricks bent forward
+      and pointed a finger at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to govern this city, who do you think the labor element is going to
+      put up and probably elect? We're an industrial city, son, with a big labor
+      vote, and if it stands together&mdash;they're being swindled into putting
+      up as an honest candidate one of the dirtiest radicals in the country.
+      That man Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up and closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want Edith to hear me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He's a friend of hers. But he's
+      a bad actor, son. He's wrong with women, for one thing, and when I think
+      that all he's got to oppose him is Howard Cardew&mdash;&rdquo; Mr. Hendricks got
+      up, and took a nervous turn about the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe you know that Cardew has a daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hear a good many things, one way and another, and my wife likes a
+      bit of gossip. She knows them both by sight, and she ran into them one day
+      in the tea room of the Saint Elmo, sitting in a corner, and the girl had
+      her back to the room. I don't like the look of that, Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron got up and closed the window. He stood there, with his back
+      to the light, for a full minute. Then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think there must be some mistake about that, Mr. Hendricks. I have met
+      her. She isn't the sort of girl who would do clandestine things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks looked up quickly. He had made it his business to study men,
+      and there was something in Willy Cameron's voice that caught his
+      attention, and turned his shrewd mind to speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe,&rdquo; he conceded. &ldquo;Of course, anything a Cardew does is likely to be
+      magnified in this town. If she's as keen as the men in her family, she'll
+      get wise to him pretty soon.&rdquo; Willy Cameron came back then, but Mr.
+      Hendricks kept his eyes on the tip of his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got to lick Cardew,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I'm cursed if I want to do it
+      with Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When there was no comment, he looked up. Yes, the boy had had a blow. Mr.
+      Hendricks was sorry. If that was the way the wind blew it was hopeless. It
+      was more than that; it was tragic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry I said anything, Cameron. Didn't know you knew her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right. Of course I don't like to think she is being talked
+      about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Cardews are always being talked about. You couldn't drop her a hint,
+      I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows what I think about Louis Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a violent effort and pulled himself together. &ldquo;So it is Akers and
+      Howard Cardew, and one's a knave and one's a poor bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks. &ldquo;And one's Bolshevist, if I know anything,
+      and the other is capital, and has about as much chance as a rich man to
+      get through the eye of a needle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was slightly mixed, owing to a repressed excitement now making
+      itself evident in Mr. Hendricks's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not run an independent candidate?&rdquo; Willy Cameron asked quietly. &ldquo;I've
+      been shouting about the plain people. Why shouldn't they elect a mayor?
+      There is a lot of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the talk,&rdquo; said Mr. Hendricks, letting his excitement have full
+      sway. &ldquo;They could. They could run this town and run it right, if they'd
+      take the trouble. Now look here, son, I don't usually talk about myself,
+      but&mdash;I'm honest. I don't say I wouldn't get off a street-car without
+      paying my fare if the conductor didn't lift it! But I'm honest. I don't
+      lie. I keep my word. And I live clean&mdash;which you can't say for Lou
+      Akers. Why shouldn't I run on an independent ticket? I mightn't be
+      elected, but I'd make a damned good try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up, and Willy Cameron rose also and held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know that my opinion is of any value, Mr. Hendricks. But I hope
+      you get it, and I think you have a good chance. If I can do anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do anything! What do you suppose I came here for? You're going to elect
+      me. You're going to make speeches and kiss babies, and tell the ordinary
+      folks they're worth something after all. You got me started on this thing,
+      and now you've got to help me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The future maker of mayors here stepped back in his amazement, and Jinx
+      emitted a piercing howl. When peace was restored the F.M. of M. had got
+      his breath, and he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't remember my own name before an audience, Mr. Hendricks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're fluent enough in that back room of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people we're going after don't want oratory. They want good, straight
+      talk, and a fellow behind it who doesn't believe the country's headed
+      straight for perdition. We've had enough calamity bowlers. You've got the
+      way out. The plain people. The hope of the nation. And, by God, you love
+      your country, and not for what you can get out of it. That's a thing a
+      fellow's got to have inside him. He can't pretend it and get it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end the F.M. of M. capitulated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late when Mr. Hendricks left. He went away with all the old
+      envelopes in his pockets covered with memoranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just wait a minute, son,&rdquo; he would say. &ldquo;I've got to make some speeches
+      myself. Repeat that, now. 'Sins of omission are as great, even greater
+      than sins of commission. The lethargic citizen throws open the gates to
+      revolution.' How do you spell 'lethargic'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not Hendricks and his campaign that kept the F.M. of M. awake
+      until dawn. He sat in front of his soft coal fire, and when it died to
+      gray-white ash he still sat there, unconscious of the chill of the spring
+      night. Mostly he thought of Lily, and of Louis Akers, big and handsome, of
+      his insolent eyes and his self-indulgent mouth. Into that curious
+      whirlpool that is the mind came now and then other visions: His mother
+      asleep in her chair; the men in the War Department who had turned him
+      down; a girl at home who had loved him, and made him feel desperately
+      unhappy because he could not love her in return. Was love always like
+      that? If it was what He intended, why was it so often without
+      reciprocation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took to walking about the room, according to his old habit, and
+      obediently Jinx followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was four by his alarm clock when Edith knocked at his door. She was in
+      a wrapper flung over her nightgown, and with her hair flying loose she
+      looked childish and very small.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would go to bed,&rdquo; she said, rather petulantly. &ldquo;Are you sick,
+      or anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking, Edith. I'm sorry. I'll go at once. Why aren't you
+      asleep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't sleep much lately.&rdquo; Their voices were cautious. &ldquo;I never go to
+      sleep until you're settled down, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? Am I noisy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went away, a drooping, listless figure that climbed the stairs slowly
+      and left him in the doorway, puzzled and uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six that morning Dan, tip-toeing downstairs to warm his left-over
+      coffee and get his own breakfast, heard a voice from Willy Cameron's room,
+      and opened the door. Willy Cameron was sitting up in bed with his eyes
+      closed and his arms extended, and was concluding a speech to a dream
+      audience in deep and oratorical tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God, it is time the plain people know their power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather primitive, he edged his
+      way into the room and filled the orator's sponge with icy water from the
+      pitcher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, old top,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it is also time the plain people got
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he flung the sponge and departed with extreme expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers' visit to the house
+      that Lily's family learned of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily's state of mind during that week had been an unhappy one. She
+      magnified the incident until her nerves were on edge, and Grace, finding
+      her alternating between almost demonstrative affection and strange
+      aloofness, was bewildered and hurt. Mademoiselle watched her secretly,
+      shook her head, and set herself to work to find out what was wrong. It
+      was, in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated the crisis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily had not intended to make a secret of the visit, but as time went on
+      she found it increasingly difficult to tell about it. She should, she
+      knew, have spoken at once, and it would be hard to explain why she had
+      delayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She meant to go to her father with it. It was he who had forbidden her to
+      see Akers, for one thing. And she felt nearer to her father than to her
+      mother, always. Since her return she had developed an almost passionate
+      admiration for Howard, founded perhaps on her grandfather's attitude
+      toward him. She was strongly partizan, and she watched her father, day
+      after day, fighting his eternal battles with Anthony, sometimes winning,
+      often losing, but standing for a principle like a rock while the seas of
+      old Anthony's wrath washed over and often engulfed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was rather wistful those days, struggling with her own perplexities,
+      and blindly reaching out for a hand to help her. But she could not bring
+      herself to confession. She would wander into her father's dressing-room
+      before she went to bed, and, sitting on the arm of his deep chair, would
+      try indirectly to get him to solve the problems that were troubling her.
+      But he was inarticulate and rather shy with her. He had difficulty,
+      sometimes, after her long absence at school and camp, in realizing her as
+      the little girl who had once begged for his neckties to make into doll
+      frocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you love a person you didn't entirely respect, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love is founded on respect, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pondered that. She felt that he was wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it does happen, doesn't it?&rdquo; she had persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been accustomed to her searchings for interesting abstractions for
+      years. She used to talk about religion in the same way. So he smiled and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a sort of infatuation that is based on something quite
+      different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had rather floundered there. He could not discuss physical
+      attraction with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're getting rather deep for eleven o'clock at night, aren't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a short silence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind speaking about Aunt Elinor, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, dear. Although it is rather a painful subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if she is happy, why is it painful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, because Doyle is the sort of man he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean&mdash;because he is unfaithful to her? Or was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is one reason for it, of course. There are others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if he is faithful to her now, father? Don't you think, whatever a man
+      has been, if he really cares for a woman it makes him over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes, not always.&rdquo; The subject was painful to him. He did not want
+      his daughter to know the sordid things of life. But he added, gallantly:
+      &ldquo;Of course a good woman can do almost anything she wants with a man, if he
+      cares for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay awake almost all night, thinking that over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Sunday following Louis Akers' call Mademoiselle learned of it, by
+      the devious route of the servants' hall, and she went to Lily at once,
+      yearning and anxious, and in her best lace collar. She needed courage, and
+      to be dressed in her best gave her moral strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that they wish to curtail your liberty, Lily. But
+      to have that man come here, when he knows he is not wanted, to force
+      himself on you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need not have seen him. I wanted to see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle waved her hands despairingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they find it out!&rdquo; she wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will. I intend to tell them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mademoiselle made her error there. She was fearful of Grace's attitude
+      unless she forewarned her, and Grace, frightened, immediately made it a
+      matter of a family conclave. She had not intended to include Anthony, but
+      he came in on an excited speech from Howard, and heard it all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result was that instead of Lily going to them with her confession, she
+      was summoned, to find her family a unit for once and combined against her.
+      She was not to see Louis Akers again, or the Doyles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They demanded a promise, but she refused. Yet even then, standing before
+      them, forced to a defiance she did not feel, she was puzzled as well as
+      angry. They were wrong, and yet in some strange way they were right, too.
+      She was Cardew enough to get their point of view. But she was Cardew
+      enough, too, to defy them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did it rather gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must understand,&rdquo; she said, her hands folded in front of her, &ldquo;that
+      it is not so much that I care to see the people you are talking about. It
+      is that I feel I have the right to choose my own friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends!&rdquo; sneered old Anthony. &ldquo;A third-rate lawyer, a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not the point, grandfather. I went away to school when I was a
+      little girl. I have been away for five years. You cannot seem to realize
+      that I am a woman now, not a child. You bring me in here like a bad
+      child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end old Anthony had slammed out of the room. There were arguments
+      after that, tears on Grace's part, persuasion on Howard's; but Lily had
+      frozen against what she considered their tyranny, and Howard found in her
+      a sort of passive resistance, that drove him frantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said finally. &ldquo;You have the arrogance of youth, and its
+      cruelty, Lily. And you are making us all suffer without reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think I might say that too, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you in love with this man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have only seen him four times. If you would give me some reasons for
+      all this fuss&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are things I cannot explain to you. You wouldn't understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About his moral character?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard was rather shocked. He hesitated:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell me what they are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens, no!&rdquo; he exploded. &ldquo;The man's a radical, too. That in itself
+      ought to be enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't condemn a man for his political opinions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Political opinions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; she said, looking at him with her direct gaze, &ldquo;isn't there
+      some reason in what the radicals believe, father? Maybe it is a dream that
+      can't come true, but it is rather a fine dream, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Howard followed his father's example, and flung out of
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that Lily went, very deliberately and without secrecy, to the house
+      on Cardew Way. She found a welcome there, not so marked on her Aunt
+      Elinor's part as on Doyle's, but a welcome. She found approval, too, where
+      at home she had only suspicion and a solicitude based on anxiety. She
+      found a clever little circle there, and sometimes a cultured one;
+      underpaid, disgruntled, but brilliant professors from the college, a
+      journalist or two, a city councilman, even prosperous merchants, and now
+      and then strange bearded foreigners who were passing through the city and
+      who talked brilliantly of the vision of Lenine and the future of Russia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She learned that the true League of Nations was not a political alliance,
+      but a union of all the leveled peoples of the world. She had no curiosity
+      as to how this leveling was to be brought about. All she knew was that
+      these brilliant dreamers made her welcome, and that instead of the dinner
+      chat at home, small personalities, old Anthony's comments on his food, her
+      father's heavy silence, here was world talk, vast in its scope,
+      idealistic, intoxicating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost always Louis Akers was there; it pleased her to see how the other
+      men listened to him, deferred to his views, laughed at his wit. She did
+      not know the care exercised in selecting the groups she was to meet, the
+      restraints imposed on them. And she could not know that from her visits
+      the Doyle establishment was gaining a prestige totally new to it, an
+      almost respectability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because of those small open forums, sometimes noted in the papers, those
+      innocuous gatherings, it was possible to hold in that very room other
+      meetings, not open and not innocuous, where practical plans took the place
+      of discontented yearnings, and where the talk was more often of fighting
+      than of brotherhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was, by the first of May, frankly infatuated with Louis Akers, yet
+      with a curious knowledge that what she felt was infatuation only. She
+      would lie wide-eyed at night and rehearse painfully the weaknesses she saw
+      so clearly in him. But the next time she saw him she would yield to his
+      arms, passively but without protest. She did not like his caresses, but
+      the memory of them thrilled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was following the first uncurbed impulse of her life. Guarded and more
+      or less isolated from other youth, she had always lived a strong inner
+      life, purely mental, largely interrogative. She had had strong childish
+      impulses, sometimes of pure affection, occasionally of sheer contrariness,
+      but always her impulses had been curbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do be a little lady,&rdquo; Mademoiselle would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had got, somehow, to feel that impulse was wrong. It ranked with
+      disobedience. It partook of the nature of sin. People who did wicked
+      things did them on impulse, and were sorry ever after; but then it was too
+      late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she grew older, she added something to that. Impulses of the mind led
+      to impulses of the body, and impulse was wrong. Passion was an impulse of
+      the body. Therefore it was sin. It was the one sin one could not talk
+      about, so one was never quite clear about it. However, one thing seemed
+      beyond dispute; it was predominatingly a masculine wickedness. Good women
+      were beyond and above it, its victims sometimes, like those girls at the
+      camp, or its toys, like the sodden creatures in the segregated district
+      who hung, smiling their tragic smiles, around their doorways in the late
+      afternoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But good women were not like that. If they were, then they were not good.
+      They did not lie awake remembering the savage clasp of a man's arms,
+      knowing all the time that this was not love, but something quite
+      different. Or if it was love, that it was painful and certainly not
+      beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes she thought about Willy Cameron. He had had very exalted ideas
+      about love. He used to be rather oratorical about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the fundamental principle of the universe,&rdquo; he would say, waving his
+      pipe wildly. &ldquo;But it means suffering, dear child. It feeds on martyrdom
+      and fattens on sacrifice. And as the h.c. of l. doesn't affect either
+      commodity, it lives forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it do, Willy, if it hasn't any martyrdom and sacrifice to feed
+      on? Do you mean to say that when it is returned and everybody is happy, it
+      dies?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Practically,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;It then becomes domestic contentment, and
+      expresses itself in the shape of butcher's bills and roast chicken on
+      Sundays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But that had been in the old care-free days, before Willy had thought he
+      loved her, and before she had met Louis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a desperate effort one day to talk to her mother. She wanted,
+      somehow, to be set right in her own eyes. But Grace could not meet her
+      even half way; she did not know anything about different sorts of love,
+      but she did know that love was beautiful, if you met the right man and
+      married him. But it had to be some one who was your sort, because in the
+      end marriage was only a sort of glorified companionship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moral in that, so obviously pointed at Louis Akers, invalidated the
+      rest of it for Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was in a state of constant emotional excitement by that time, and it
+      was only a night or two after that she quarreled with her grandfather.
+      There had been a dinner party, a heavy, pompous affair, largely attended,
+      for although spring was well advanced, the usual May hegira to the country
+      or the coast had not yet commenced. Industrial conditions in and around
+      the city were too disturbed for the large employers to get away, and
+      following Lent there had been a sort of sporadic gayety, covering a vast
+      uneasiness. There was to be no polo after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily, doing her best to make the dinner a success, found herself
+      contrasting it with the gatherings at the Doyle house, and found it very
+      dull. These men, with their rigidity of mind, invited because they held
+      her grandfather's opinions, or because they kept their own convictions to
+      themselves, seemed to her of a bygone time. She did not see in them a safe
+      counterpoise to a people which in its reaction from the old order, was
+      ready to swing to anything that was new. She saw only a dozen or so
+      elderly gentlemen, immaculate and prosperous, peering through their
+      glasses after a world which had passed them by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were very grave that night. The situation was serious. The talk
+      turned inevitably to the approaching strike, and from that to a possible
+      attempt on the part of the radical element toward violence. The older men
+      pooh-poohed that, but the younger ones were uncertain. Isolated riotings,
+      yes. But a coordinated attempt against the city, no. Labour was greedy,
+      but it was law-abiding. Ah, but it was being fired by incendiary
+      literature. Then what were the police doing? They were doing everything.
+      They were doing nothing. The governor was secretly a radical. Nonsense.
+      The governor was saying little, but was waiting and watching. A general
+      strike was only another word for revolution. No. It would be attempted,
+      perhaps, but only to demonstrate the solidarity of labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time Lily made a discovery. She found that even into that
+      carefully selected gathering had crept a surprising spirit, based on the
+      necessity for concession; a few men who shared her father's convictions,
+      and went even further. One or two, even, who, cautiously for fear of old
+      Anthony's ears, voiced a belief that before long invested money would be
+      given a fixed return, all surplus profits to be divided among the workers,
+      the owners and the government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the lean years?&rdquo; some one asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The government's share of all business was to form a contingent fund for
+      such emergencies, it seemed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily listened attentively. Was it because they feared that if they did not
+      voluntarily divide their profits they would be taken from them? Enough for
+      all, and to none too much. Was that what they feared? Or was it a sense of
+      justice, belated but real?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered something Jim Doyle had said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Labor has learned its weakness alone, its strength united. But capital
+      has not learned that lesson. It will not take a loss for a principle. It
+      will not unite. It is suspicious and jealous, so it fights its individual
+      battles alone, and loses in the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But then to offset that there was something Willy Cameron had said one
+      day, frying doughnuts for her with one hand, and waving the fork about
+      with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't forget this, oh representative of the plutocracy,&rdquo; he had said.
+      &ldquo;Capital has its side, and a darned good one, too. It's got a sense of
+      responsibility to the country, which labor may have individually but
+      hasn't got collectively.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These men at the table were grave, burdened with responsibility. Her
+      father. Even her grandfather. It was no longer a question of profit. It
+      was a question of keeping the country going. They were like men forced to
+      travel, and breasting a strong head wind. There were some there who would
+      turn, in time, and travel with the gale. But there were others like her
+      grandfather, obstinate and secretly frightened, who would refuse. Who
+      would, to change the figure, sit like misers over their treasure, an eye
+      on the window of life for thieves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went upstairs, perplexed and thoughtful. Some time later she heard the
+      family ascending, the click of her mother's high heels on the polished
+      wood of the staircase, her father's sturdy tread, and a moment or two
+      later her grandfather's slow, rather weary step. Suddenly she felt sorry
+      for him, for his age, for his false gods of power and pride, for the
+      disappointment she was to him. She flung open her door impulsively and
+      confronted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just wanted to say good-night, grandfather,&rdquo; she said breathlessly.
+      &ldquo;And that I am sorry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry for what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry&mdash;&rdquo; she hesitated. &ldquo;Because we see things so differently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was almost certain that she caught a flash of tenderness in his eyes,
+      and certainly his voice had softened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You looked very pretty to-night,&rdquo; he said. But he passed on, and she had
+      again the sense of rebuff with which he met all her small overtures at
+      that time. However, he turned at the foot of the upper flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like to talk to you, Lily. Will you come upstairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been summoned before to those mysterious upper rooms of his, where
+      entrance was always by request, and generally such requests presaged
+      trouble. But she followed him light-heartedly enough then. His rare
+      compliment had pleased and touched her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lamp beside his high-backed, almost throne-like chair was lighted, and
+      in the dressing-room beyond his valet was moving about, preparing for the
+      night. Anthony dismissed the man, and sat down under the lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You heard the discussion downstairs, to-night, Lily. Personally I
+      anticipate no trouble, but if there is any it may be directed at this
+      house.&rdquo; He smiled grimly. &ldquo;I cannot rely on my personal popularity to
+      protect me, I fear. Your mother obstinately refuses to leave your father,
+      but I have decided to send you to your grand-aunt Caroline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Caroline! She doesn't care for me, grandfather. She never has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is hardly pertinent, is it? The situation is this: She intends to
+      open the Newport house early in June, and at my request she will bring you
+      out there. Next fall we will do something here; I haven't decided just
+      what.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sudden wild surge of revolt in Lily. She hated Newport.
+      Grand-aunt Caroline was a terrible person. She was like Anthony,
+      domineering and cruel, and with even less control over her tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need not point out the advantages of the plan,&rdquo; said Anthony suavely.
+      &ldquo;There may be trouble here, although I doubt it. But in any event you will
+      have to come out, and this seems an excellent way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it a good thing to spend a lot of money now, grandfather, when there
+      is so much discontent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony had a small jagged vein down the center of his forehead, and
+      in anger or his rare excitements it stood out like a scar. Lily saw it
+      now, but his voice was quiet enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I consider it vitally important to the country to continue its social
+      life as before the war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean, to show we are not frightened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frightened! Good God, nobody's frightened. It will take more than a
+      handful of demagogues to upset this government. Which brings me to a
+      subject you insist on reopening, by your conduct. I have reason to believe
+      that you are still going to that man's house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He never called Doyle by name if he could avoid it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been there several times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After you were forbidden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone roused every particle of antagonism in her. She flushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps because I was forbidden,&rdquo; she said, slowly. &ldquo;Hasn't it occurred
+      to you that I may consider your attitude very unjust?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If she looked for an outburst from him it did not come. He stood for a
+      moment, deep in thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand that this Doyle once tried to assassinate me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that he tried to beat you, grandfather. I am sorry, but that was
+      long ago. And there was a reason for it, wasn't there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said, slowly. &ldquo;What you are conveying to me, not too
+      delicately, is that you have definitely allied yourself with my enemies.
+      That, here in my own house, you intend to defy me. That, regardless of my
+      wishes or commands, while eating my food, you purpose to traffic with a
+      man who has sworn to get me, sooner or later. Am I correct?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have only said that I see no reason why I should not visit Aunt
+      Elinor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that you intend to. Do I understand also that you refuse to go to
+      Newport?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay I shall have to go, if you send me. I don't want to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. I am glad we have had this little talk. It makes my own course
+      quite plain. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened the door for her and she went out and down the stairs. She felt
+      very calm, and as though something irrevocable had happened. With her
+      anger at her grandfather there was mixed a sort of pity for him, because
+      she knew that nothing he could do would change the fundamental situation.
+      Even if he locked her up, and that was possible, he would know that he had
+      not really changed things, or her. She felt surprisingly strong. All these
+      years that she had feared him, and yet when it came to a direct issue, he
+      was helpless! What had he but his wicked tongue, and what did that matter
+      to deaf ears?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found her maid gone, and Mademoiselle waiting to help her undress.
+      Mademoiselle often did that. It made her feel still essential in Lily's
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A long seance!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Your mother told me to-night. It is Newport?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants me to go. Unhook me, Mademoiselle, and then run off and go to
+      bed. You ought not to wait up like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Newport!&rdquo; said Mademoiselle, deftly slipping off the white and silver
+      that was Lily's gown. &ldquo;It will be wonderful, dear. And you will be a great
+      success. You are very beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going to Newport, Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle broke into rapid expostulation, in French. Every girl wanted
+      to make her debut at Newport. Here it was all industry, money, dirt. Men
+      who slaved in offices daily. At Newport was gathered the real leisure
+      class of America, those who knew how to play, who lived. But Lily, taking
+      off her birthday pearls before the mirror of her dressing table, only
+      shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not going,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I might as well tell you, for you'll hear
+      about it later. I have quarreled with him, very badly. I think he intends
+      to lock me up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C'est impossible!&rdquo; cried Mademoiselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a glance at Lily's set face in the mirror told her it was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went away very soon, sadly troubled. There were bad times coming. The
+      old peaceful quiet days were gone, for age and obstinacy had met youth and
+      the arrogance of youth, and it was to be battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But there was a truce for a time. Lily came and went without interference,
+      and without comment. Nothing more was said about Newport. She motored on
+      bright days to the country club, lunched and played golf or tennis, rode
+      along the country lanes with Pink Denslow, accepted such invitations as
+      came her way cheerfully enough but without enthusiasm, and was very gentle
+      to her mother. But Mademoiselle found her tense and restless, as though
+      she were waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there were times when she disappeared for an hour or two in the
+      afternoons, proffering no excuses, and came back flushed, and perhaps a
+      little frightened. On the evenings that followed those small excursions
+      she was particularly gentle to her mother. Mademoiselle watched and waited
+      for the blow she feared was about to fall. She felt sure that the girl was
+      seeing Louis Akers, and that she would ultimately marry him. In her
+      despair she fell back on Willy Cameron and persuaded Grace to invite him
+      to dinner. It was meant to be a surprise for Lily, but she had telephoned
+      at seven o'clock that she was dining at the Doyles'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that evening that Willy Cameron learned that Mr. Hendricks had been
+      right about Lily. He and Grace dined alone, for Howard was away at a
+      political conference, and Anthony had dined at his club. And in the
+      morning room after dinner Grace found herself giving him her confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no right to burden you with our troubles, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; Grace
+      said, &ldquo;but she is so fond of you, and she has great respect for your
+      judgment. If you could only talk to her about the anxiety she is causing.
+      These Doyles, or rather Mr. Doyle&mdash;the wife is Mr. Cardew's sister&mdash;are
+      putting all sorts of ideas into her head. And she has met a man there, a
+      Mr. Akers, and&mdash;I'm afraid she thinks she is in love with him, Mr.
+      Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He met her eyes gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you tried not forbidding her to go to the Doyles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have forbidden her nothing. It is her grandfather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it seems to be Mr. Cardew who needs to be talked to, doesn't it?&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;I wouldn't worry too much, Mrs. Cardew. And don't hold too tight a
+      rein.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very down-hearted when he left. Grace's last words placed a heavy
+      burden on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I simply feel,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that you can do more with her than we can, and
+      that if something isn't done she will ruin her life. She is too fine and
+      wonderful to have her do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To picture Lily as willfully going her own gait at that period would be
+      most unfair. She was suffering cruelly; the impulse that led her to meet
+      Louis Akers against her family's wishes was irresistible, but there was a
+      new angle to her visits to the Doyle house. She was going there now, not
+      so much because she wished to go, as because she began to feel that her
+      Aunt Elinor needed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something mysterious about her Aunt Elinor, mysterious and very
+      sad. Even her smile had pathos in it, and she was smiling less and less.
+      She sat in those bright little gatherings, in them but not of them,
+      unbrilliant and very quiet. Sometimes she gave Lily the sense that like
+      Lily herself she was waiting. Waiting for what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily had a queer feeling too, once or twice, that Elinor was afraid. But
+      again, afraid of what? Sometimes she wondered if Elinor Doyle was afraid
+      of her husband; certainly there were times, when they were alone, when he
+      dropped his unctuous mask and held Elinor up to smiling contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can see what a clever wife I have,&rdquo; he said once. &ldquo;Sometimes I
+      wonder, Elinor, how you have lived with me so long and absorbed so little
+      of what really counts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps the difficulty,&rdquo; Elinor had said quietly, &ldquo;is because we differ
+      as to what really counts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily brought Elinor something she needed, of youth and irresponsible
+      chatter, and in the end the girl found the older woman depending on her.
+      To cut her off from that small solace was unthinkable. And then too she
+      formed Elinor's sole link with her former world, a world of dinners and
+      receptions, of clothes and horses and men who habitually dressed for
+      dinner, of the wealth and panoply of life. A world in which her interest
+      strangely persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you wear at the country club dance last night?&rdquo; she would ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rose-colored chiffon over yellow. It gives the oddest effect, like an
+      Ophelia rose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Or:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the Mainwarings? George or Albert?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Alberts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did they ever have any children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One day she told her about not going to Newport, and was surprised to see
+      Elinor troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why won't you go? It is a wonderful house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care to go away, Aunt Nellie.&rdquo; She called her that sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor had knitted silently for a little. Then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind if I say something to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say anything you like, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just&mdash;Lily, don't see too much of Louis Akers. Don't let him carry
+      you off your feet. He is good-looking, but if you marry him, you will be
+      terribly unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That isn't enough to say, Aunt Nellie,&rdquo; she said gravely. &ldquo;You must have
+      a reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like him. He is a man of very impure life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's because he has never known any good women.&rdquo; Lily rose valiantly to
+      his defense, but the words hurt her. &ldquo;Suppose a good woman came into his
+      life? Couldn't she change him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; Elinor said helplessly. &ldquo;But there is something else. It
+      will cut you off from your family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did that. You couldn't stand it, either. You know what it's like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be some other way. That is no reason for marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;suppose I care for him?&rdquo; Lily said, shyly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't live with him a year. There are different ways of caring,
+      Lily. There is such a thing as being carried away by a man's violent
+      devotion, but it isn't the violent love that lasts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily considered that carefully, and she felt that there was some truth in
+      it. When Louis Akers came to take her home that night he found her
+      unresponsive and thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Doyle's been talking to you,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;She hates me, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should she hate you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, with all her vicissitudes, she's still a snob,&rdquo; he said roughly.
+      &ldquo;My family was nothing, so I'm nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wants me to be happy, Louis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she thinks you won't be with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not at all sure that I would be.&rdquo; She made an effort then to throw
+      off the strange bond that held her to him. &ldquo;I should like to have three
+      months, Louis, to get a&mdash;well, a sort of perspective. I can't think
+      clearly when you're around, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm always around? Thanks.&rdquo; But she had alarmed him. &ldquo;You're hurting
+      me awfully, little girl,&rdquo; he said, in a different tone. &ldquo;I can't live
+      without seeing you, and you know it. You're all I have in life. You have
+      everything, wealth, friends, position. You could play for three months and
+      never miss me. But you are all I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end she capitulated
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Doyle was very content those days. There had been a time when Jim
+      Doyle was the honest advocate of labor, a flaming partizan of those who
+      worked with their hands. But he had traveled a long road since then, from
+      dreamer to conspirator. Once he had planned to build up; now he plotted to
+      tear down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His weekly paper had enormous power. To the workers he had begun to preach
+      class consciousness, and the doctrine of being true to their class. From
+      class consciousness to class hatred was but a step. Ostensibly he stood
+      for a vast equality, world wide and beneficent; actually he preached an
+      inflammable doctrine of an earth where the last shall be first. He
+      advocated the overthrow of all centralized government, and considered the
+      wages system robbery. Under it workers were slaves, and employers of
+      workers slave-masters. It was with such phrases that he had for months
+      been consistently inflaming the inflammable foreign element in and around
+      the city, and not the foreign element only. A certain percentage of
+      American-born workmen fell before the hammer-like blows of his words,
+      repeated and driven home each week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no scruples, and preached none. He preached only revolt, and in
+      that revolt defiance of all existing laws. He had no religion; Christ to
+      him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same system that
+      still crucified those who fought the established order. In his new world
+      there would be no churches and no laws. He advocated bloodshed, arson,
+      sabotage of all sorts, as a means to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fanatic he was, but practical fanatic, and the more dangerous for that. He
+      had viewed the failure of the plan to capture a city in the northwest in
+      February with irritation, but without discouragement. They had acted
+      prematurely there and without sufficient secrecy. That was all. The plan
+      in itself was right. And he had watched the scant reports of the uprising
+      in the newspapers with amusement and scorn. The very steps taken to
+      suppress the facts showed the uneasiness of the authorities and left the
+      nation with a feeling of false security.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people were always like that. Twice in a hundred years France had
+      experienced the commune. Each time she had been warned, and each time she
+      had waited too long. Ever so often in the life of every nation came these
+      periodic outbursts of discontent, economic in their origin, and ran their
+      course like diseases, contagious, violent and deadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The commune always followed long and costly wars. The people would dance,
+      but they revolted at paying the piper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plan in Seattle had been well enough conceived; the city light plant
+      was to have been taken over during the early evening of February 6, and at
+      ten o'clock that night the city was to have gone dark. But the reign of
+      terrorization that was to follow had revolted Jim Osborne, one of their
+      leaders, and from his hotel bedroom he had notified the authorities. Word
+      had gone out to &ldquo;get&rdquo; Osborne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it had not been for Osborne, and the conservative element behind him, a
+      flame would have been kindled at Seattle that would have burnt across the
+      nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle watched Gompers cynically.. He considered his advocacy of patriotic
+      cooperation between labor and the Government during the war the skillful
+      attitude of an opportunist. Gompers could do better with public opinion
+      behind him than without it. He was an opportunist, riding the wave which
+      would carry him farthest. Playing both ends against the middle, and the
+      middle, himself. He saw Gompers, watching the release of tension that
+      followed the armistice and seeing the great child he had fathered, grown
+      now and conscious of its power,&mdash;watching it, fully aware that it had
+      become stronger than he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gompers, according to Doyle, had ceased to be a leader and become a
+      follower, into strange and difficult paths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The war had made labor's day. No public move was made without consulting
+      organized labor, and a certain element in it had grown drunk with power.
+      To this element Doyle appealed. It was Doyle who wrote the carefully
+      prepared incendiary speeches, which were learned verbatim by his agents
+      for delivery. For Doyle knew one thing, and knew it well. Labor, thinking
+      along new lines, must think along the same lines. Be taught the same
+      doctrines. Be pushed in one direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, then, two Doyles, one the poseur, flaunting his outrageous
+      doctrines with a sardonic grin, gathering about him a small circle of the
+      intelligentsia, and too openly heterodox to be dangerous. And the other,
+      secretly plotting against the city, wary, cautious, practical and deadly,
+      waiting to overthrow the established order and substitute for it chaos. It
+      was only incidental to him that old Anthony should go with the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis. He meant
+      to be that. He steadily widened the breach between Lily and her family,
+      and he watched the progress of her affair with Louis Akers with relish. He
+      had not sought this particular form of revenge, but Fate had thrust it
+      into his hands, and he meant to be worthy of the opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather liked
+      sitting back and watching the slow development of his plans. It was like
+      chess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then sat
+      back waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell, with
+      slow agonizing, into the trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days after Lily had had her talk with Elinor, Doyle found a way to
+      widen the gulf between Lily and her grandfather. Elinor seldom left the
+      house, and Lily had done some shopping for her. The two women were in
+      Elinor's bedroom, opening small parcels, when he knocked and came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like to disturb the serenity of this happy family group,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;but I am inclined to think that a certain gentleman, standing not
+      far from a certain young lady's taxicab, belongs to a certain department
+      of our great city government. And from his unflattering lack of interest
+      in me, that he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor half rose, terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the police, Jim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; he said, in a tone Lily had never heard him use before. And to
+      Lily, more gently: &ldquo;I am not altogether surprised. As a matter of fact, I
+      have known it for some time. Your esteemed grandfather seems to take a
+      deep interest in your movements these days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that I am being followed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid so. You see, you are a very important person, and if you will
+      venture in the slums which surround the Cardew Mills, you should be
+      protected. At any time, for instance, Aunt Elinor and I may despoil you of
+      those pearls you wear so casually, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk like that, Jim,&rdquo; Elinor protested. She was very pale. &ldquo;Are you
+      sure he is watching Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave her an ugly look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who else?&rdquo; he inquired suavely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily sat still, frozen with anger. So this was her grandfather's method of
+      dealing with her. He could not lock her up, but he would know, day by day,
+      and hour by hour, what she was doing. She could see him reading carefully
+      his wicked little notes on her day. Perhaps he was watching her mail, too.
+      Then when he had secured a hateful total he would go to her father, and
+      together they would send her away somewhere. Away from Louis Akers. If he
+      was watching her mail too he would know that Louis was in love with her.
+      They would rake up all the things that belonged in the past he was done
+      with, and recite them to her. As though they mattered now!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the window and looked out. Yes, she had seen the detective
+      before. He must have been hanging around for days, his face unconsciously
+      impressing itself upon her. When she turned:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louis is coming to dinner, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you don't mind, Aunt Nellie, I think I'll dine out with him somewhere.
+      I want to talk to him alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the detective&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If my grandfather uses low and detestable means to spy on me, Aunt
+      Nellie, he deserves what he gets, doesn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Louis Akers came at half-past six, he found that she had been crying,
+      but she greeted him calmly enough, with her head held high. Elinor,
+      watching her, thought she was very like old Anthony himself just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron came home from a night class in metallurgy the evening after
+      the day Lily had made her declaration of independence, and let himself in
+      with his night key. There was a light in the little parlor, and Mrs.
+      Boyd's fragile silhouette against the window shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not surprised at that. She had developed a maternal affection for
+      him stronger than any she showed for either Edith or Dan. She revealed it
+      in rather touching ways, too, keeping accounts when he accused her of
+      gross extravagance, for she spent Dan's swollen wages wastefully; making
+      him coffee late at night, and forcing him to drink it, although it kept
+      him awake for hours; and never going to bed until he was safely closeted
+      in his room at the top of the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came in as early as possible, therefore, for he had had Doctor Smalley
+      in to see her, and the result had been unsatisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heart's bad,&rdquo; said the doctor, when they had retired to Willy's room.
+      &ldquo;Leaks like a sieve. And there may be an aneurism. Looks like it, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is there to do?&rdquo; Willy asked, feeling helpless and extremely
+      shocked. &ldquo;We might send her somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing to do. Don't send her away; she'd die of loneliness. Keep her
+      quiet and keep her happy. Don't let her worry. She only has a short time,
+      I should say, and you can't lengthen it. It could be shortened, of course,
+      if she had a shock, or anything like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell the family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use?&rdquo; asked Doctor Smalley, philosophically. &ldquo;If they fuss
+      over her she'll suspect something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he went down the stairs he looked about him. The hall was fresh with
+      new paper and white paint, and in the yard at the rear, visible through an
+      open door, the border of annuals was putting out its first blossoms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nice little place you've got here,&rdquo; he observed. &ldquo;I think I see the fine
+      hand of Miss Edith, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had made renewed efforts to get a servant after that, but the invalid
+      herself balked him. When he found an applicant Mrs. Boyd would sit, very
+      much the grande dame, and question her, although she always ended by
+      sending her away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looked like the sort that would be running out at nights,&rdquo; she would
+      say. Or: &ldquo;She wouldn't take telling, and I know the way you like your
+      things, Willy. I could see by looking at her that she couldn't cook at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cherished the delusion that he was improving and gaining flesh under
+      her ministrations, and there was a sort of jealousy in her care for him.
+      She wanted to yield to no one the right to sit proudly behind one of her
+      heavy, tasteless pies, and say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I made this for you, Willy, because I know country boys like pies.
+      Just see if that crust isn't nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean to say you made it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly did.&rdquo; And to please her he would clear his plate. He rather
+      ran to digestive tablets those days, and Edith, surprising him with one at
+      the kitchen sink one evening, accused him roundly of hypocrisy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know why you stay anyhow,&rdquo; she said, staring into the yard where
+      Jinx was burying a bone in the heliotrope bed. &ldquo;The food's awful. I'm used
+      to it, but you're not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't eat anything, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not hungry. Willy, I wish you'd go away. What right we got to tie you
+      up with us, anyhow? We're a poor lot. You're not comfortable and you know
+      it. D'you know where she is now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rdquo; in the vernacular of the house, was always Mrs. Boyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She forgot to make your bed, and she's doing it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ran up the stairs, and forcibly putting Mrs. Boyd in a chair, made up
+      his own bed, awkwardly and with an eye on her chest, which rose and fell
+      alarmingly. It was after that that he warned Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not strong,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She needs care and&mdash;well, to be happy.
+      That's up to the three of us. For one thing, she must not have a shock.
+      I'm going to warn Dan against exploding paper bags; she goes white every
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan was at a meeting, and Willy dried the supper dishes for Edith. She was
+      silent and morose. Finally she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not very strong for me, Willy. You needn't look so shocked. She
+      loves Dan and you, but not me. I don't mind, you know. She doesn't know
+      it, but I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is very proud of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's different. You're right, though. Pride's her middle name. It
+      nearly killed her at first to take a roomer, because she is always
+      thinking of what the neighbors will say. That's why she hates me
+      sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't talk that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's true. That fool Hodge woman at the corner came here one day last
+      winter and filled her up with a lot of talk about me, and she's been queer
+      to me ever since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a very good daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She eyed him furtively. If only he wouldn't always believe in her! It was
+      almost worse than to have him know the truth. But he went along with his
+      head in the clouds; all women were good and all men meant well. Sometimes
+      it worked out; Dan, for instance. Dan was trying to live up to him. But it
+      was too late for her. Forever too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Willy Cameron's night off, and they went, the three of them, to the
+      movies that evening. To Mrs. Boyd the movies was the acme of dissipation.
+      She would, if warned in advance, spend the entire day with her hair in
+      curlers, and once there she feasted her starved romantic soul to
+      repletion. But that night the building was stifling, and without any
+      warning Edith suddenly got up and walked toward the door. There was
+      something odd about her walk and Willy followed her, but she turned on him
+      almost fiercely outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd let me alone,&rdquo; she said, and then swayed a little. But she
+      did not faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going home,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You stay with her. And for heaven's sake
+      don't stare at me like that. I'm all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless he had taken her home, Edith obstinately silent and sullen,
+      and Willy anxious and perplexed. At the door she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now go back to her, and tell her I just got sick of the picture. It was
+      the smells in that rotten place. They'd turn a pig's stomach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd see a doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with suspicious eyes. &ldquo;If you run Smalley in on me I'll
+      leave home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you go to bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go to bed, all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had found things rather more difficult after that. Two women, both ill
+      and refusing to acknowledge it, and the prospect of Dan's being called out
+      by the union. Try as he would, he could not introduce any habit of thrift
+      into the family. Dan's money came and went, and on Saturday nights there
+      was not only nothing left, but often a deficit. Dan, skillfully worked
+      upon outside, began to develop a grievance, also, and on his rare evenings
+      at home or at the table he would voice his wrongs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's just hand to mouth all the time,&rdquo; he would grumble. &ldquo;A fellow
+      working for the Cardews never gets ahead. What chance has he got, anyhow?
+      It takes all he can get to live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron began to see that the trouble was not with Dan, but with his
+      women folks. And Dan was one of thousands. His wages went for food, too
+      much food, food spoiled in cooking. There were men, with able women behind
+      them, making less than Dan and saving money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep some of it out and bank it,&rdquo; he suggested, but Dan sneered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have a store bill a mile long! You know mother as well as I do. She
+      means well, but she's a fool with money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He counted his hours from the time he entered the mill until he left it,
+      but he revealed once that there were long idle periods when the heating
+      was going on, when he and the other men of the furnace crew sat and
+      waited, doing nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'm there, all right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm not playing golf or riding in my
+      automobile. I'm on the job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, &ldquo;I'm on the job about eleven hours a day, and
+      I wear out more shoe leather than trouser seats at that. But it doesn't
+      seem to hurt me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a question of principle,&rdquo; said Dan doggedly. &ldquo;I've got no personal
+      kick, y'understand. Only I'm not getting anywhere, and something's got to
+      be done about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration of
+      independence, Willy Cameron made his way rather heavily toward the Boyd
+      house. He was very tired. He had made one or two speeches for Hendricks
+      already, before local ward organizations, and he was working hard at his
+      night class in metallurgy. He had had a letter from his mother, too, and
+      he thought he read homesickness between the lines. He was not at all sure
+      where his duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the Boyds
+      flat, seemed impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over
+      the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice, he
+      had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had
+      pleaded a week of engagements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry,&rdquo; she had said. &ldquo;I'll call you up next week some time I have a
+      lot of things I want to talk over with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he knew she was avoiding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had learned
+      something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not the poseur, and he
+      felt she should know the nature of the accusations against him. Lily mixed
+      up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white flame of patriotism, was
+      unthinkable. She must not go to the house on Cardew Way. A man's loyalty
+      was like a woman's virtue; it could not be questionable. There was no
+      middle ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found Ellen
+      in the parlor. She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her chair, her
+      hat slightly crooked and a suit-case and brown paper bundle at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I make it a point to hold my head high,&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;I guess there
+      was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but&mdash;Is that you, Willy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Miss Ellen!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And looking as though headed for a journey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen's face did not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour,
+      letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking
+      meanwhile her own bitter thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am, Willy. Only I didn't wait for my money and the bank's closed, and I
+      came to borrow ten dollars, if you have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable and
+      reveling in a fresh audience, showed no sign of departing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She says she's been living at the Cardews,&rdquo; she put in, rocking
+      valiantly. &ldquo;I guess most any place would seem tame after that. I do hear,
+      Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes once and then
+      gives them away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every
+      indication of going up the chimney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I call that downright wasteful,&rdquo; she offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy glanced at his watch, which had been his father's, and bore the
+      inscription: &ldquo;James Duncan Cameron, 1876&rdquo; inside the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eleven o'clock,&rdquo; he said sternly. &ldquo;And me promising the doctor I'd have
+      you in bed at ten sharp every night! Now off with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Willy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;or I shall have to carry you,&rdquo; he threatened. It was an old joke
+      between them, and she rose, smiling, her thin face illuminated with the
+      sense of being looked after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's that domineering,&rdquo; she said to Ellen, &ldquo;that I can't call my soul my
+      own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; Ellen said briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up. He knew
+      she liked him to do that, that she would expect to find him there when she
+      reached the top and looked down, panting slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;Both windows open. I shall go outside to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went back to Ellen, still standing primly over her Lares and
+      Penates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now tell me about it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've left them. There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily left
+      to-night, I did too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She left her home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's awful, Willy. I don't know all of it, but they've been having her
+      followed, or her grandfather did. I think there's a man in it. Followed!
+      And her a good girl! Her grandfather's been treating her like a dog for
+      weeks. We all noticed it. And to-night there was a quarrel, with all of
+      them at her like a pack of dogs, and her governess crying in the hall. I
+      just went up and packed my things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did she go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag. I went
+      right off to the housekeeper and told her I wouldn't stay, and they could
+      send my money after me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you notice the number of the taxicab?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of course.
+      Then, if she had left her home rather than give him up, she was really in
+      love with him. He had too much common sense to believe for a moment that
+      she had fled to Louis Akers' protection, however. That was the last thing
+      she would do. She would have gone to a hotel, or to the Doyle house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She shouldn't have left home, Ellen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They drove her out, I tell you,&rdquo; Ellen cried, irritably. &ldquo;At least that's
+      what it amounted to. There are things no high-minded girl will stand. Can
+      you lend me some money, Willy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt in his pocket, producing a handful of loose money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you can have all I've got,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But you must not go
+      to-night, Miss Ellen. It's too late. I'll give you my room and go in with
+      Dan Boyd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he prevailed over her protests, in the end. It was not until he saw
+      her settled there, hiding her sense of strangeness under an impassive
+      mask, that he went downstairs again and took his hat from its hook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily must go back home, he knew. It was unthinkable that she should break
+      with her family, and go to the Doyles. He had too little
+      self-consciousness to question the propriety of his own interference, too
+      much love for her to care whether she resented that interference. And he
+      was filled with a vast anger at Jim Doyle. He saw in all this, somehow,
+      Doyle's work; how it would play into Doyle's plans to have Anthony
+      Cardew's granddaughter a member of his household. He would take her away
+      from there if he had to carry her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a long time in getting to the mill district, and a longer time
+      still in finding Cardew Way. At an all-night pharmacy he learned which was
+      the house, and his determined movements took on a sort of uncertainty. It
+      was very late. Ellen had waited for him for some time. If Lily were in
+      that sinister darkened house across the street, the family had probably
+      retired. And for the first time, too, he began to doubt if Doyle would let
+      him see her. Lily herself might even refuse to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, the urgency to get her away from there, if she were there,
+      prevailed at last, and a strip of light in an upper window, as from an
+      imperfectly fitting blind, assured him that some one was still awake in
+      the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went across the street and opening the gate, strode up the walk. Almost
+      immediately he was confronted by the figure of a man who had been
+      concealed by the trunk of one of the trees. He lounged forward, huge,
+      menacing, yet not entirely hostile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; demanded the figure blocking his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see Mr. Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell him that,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's my business, too,&rdquo; said Mr. Cameron, with disarming pleasantness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn private about your business, aren't you?&rdquo; jeered the sentry, still
+      in cautious tones. &ldquo;Well, you can write it down on a piece of paper and
+      mail it to him. He's busy now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I want to do,&rdquo; persisted Mr. William Wallace Cameron, growing
+      slightly giddy with repressed fury, &ldquo;is to ring that doorbell and ask him
+      a question. I'm going to do it, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was rather an interesting moment then, because the figure lunged at
+      Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron, stooping low and swiftly, as well as to one
+      side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting Scot, which means a
+      cool-eyed madman, got in one or two rather neat effects with his fists.
+      The first took the shadow just below his breast-bone, and the left caught
+      him at that angle of the jaw where a small cause sometimes produces a
+      large effect. The figure sat down on the brick walk and grunted, and Mr.
+      Cameron, judging that he had about ten seconds' leeway, felt in the dazed
+      person's right hand pocket for the revolver he knew would be there, and
+      secured it. The sitting figure made puffing, feeble attempts to prevent
+      him, but there was no real struggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cameron himself was feeling extremely triumphant and as strong as a
+      lion. He was rather sorry no one had seen the affair, but that of course
+      was sub-conscious. And he was more cheerful than he had been for some
+      days. He had been up against so many purely intangible obstacles lately
+      that it was a relief to find one he could use his fists on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I'll have a few words with you, my desperate friend,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've
+      got your gun, and I am hell with a revolver, because I've never fired one,
+      and there's a sort of homicidal beginner's luck about the thing. If you
+      move or speak, I'll shoot it into you first and when it's empty I'll choke
+      it down your throat and strangle you to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After which ferocious speech he strolled up the path, revolver in hand,
+      and rang the doorbell. He put the weapon in his pocket then, but he kept
+      his hand upon it. He had read somewhere that a revolver was quite useable
+      from a pocket. There was no immediate answer to the bell, and he turned
+      and surveyed the man under the tree, faintly distinguishable in the
+      blackness. It had occurred to him that the number of guns a man may carry
+      is only limited to his pockets, which are about fifteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were heavy, deliberate footsteps inside, and the door was flung
+      open. No glare of light followed it, however. There was a man there,
+      alarmingly tall, who seemed to stare at him, and then beyond him into the
+      yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you Mr. Doyle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Cameron, Mr. Doyle. I have had a small difference with your
+      watch-dog, but he finally let me by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I don't understand. I have no dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sentry you keep posted, then.&rdquo; Mr. Cameron disliked fencing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Mr. Doyle, urbanely. &ldquo;You have happened on one of my good
+      friends, I see. I have many enemies, Mr. Cameron&mdash;was that the name?
+      And my friends sometimes like to keep an eye on me. It is rather
+      touching.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was smiling, Mr. Cameron knew, and his anger rose afresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very touching,&rdquo; said Mr. Cameron, &ldquo;but if he bothers me going out you may
+      be short one friend. Mr. Doyle, Miss Lily Cardew left her home to-night. I
+      want to know if she is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sent by her family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have asked you if she is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Doyle apparently deliberated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My niece is here, although just why you should interest yourself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I regret to say she has retired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she would see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A door opened into the hall, throwing a shaft of light on the wall across
+      and letting out the sounds of voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut that door,&rdquo; said Doyle, wheeling sharply. It was closed at once.
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said, turning to his visitor, &ldquo;I'll tell you this. My niece is
+      here.&rdquo; He emphasized the &ldquo;my.&rdquo; &ldquo;She has come to me for refuge, and I
+      intend to give it to her. You won't see her to-night, and if you come from
+      her people you can tell them she came here of her own free will, and that
+      if she stays it will be because she wants to. Joe!&rdquo; he called into the
+      darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; came a sullen voice, after a moment's hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show this gentleman out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once Willy Cameron was staring at a closed door, on the inner side
+      of which a bolt was being slipped. He felt absurd and futile, and not at
+      all like a lion. With the revolver in his hand, he went down the steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't bother about the gate, Joe,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I like to open my own gates.
+      And&mdash;don't try any tricks, Joe. Get back to your kennel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fearful mutterings followed that, but the shadow retired, and he made an
+      undisturbed exit to the street. Once on the street-car, the entire episode
+      became unreal and theatrical, with only the drag of Joe's revolver in his
+      coat pocket to prove its reality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after midnight when, shoes in hand, he crept up the stairs to Dan's
+      room, and careful not to disturb him, slipped into his side of the double
+      bed. He did not sleep at all. He lay there, facing the fact that Lily had
+      delivered herself voluntarily into the hands of the enemy of her house,
+      and not only of her house, an enemy of the country. That conference that
+      night was a sinister one. Brought to book about it, Doyle might claim it
+      as a labor meeting. Organizers planning a strike might&mdash;did indeed&mdash;hold
+      secret conferences, but they did not post armed guards. They opened
+      business offices, and brought in the press men, and shouted their
+      grievances for the world to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was different. This was anarchy. And in every city it was going on,
+      this rallying of the malcontents, the idlers, the envious and the
+      dangerous, to the red flag. Organized labor gathered together the workmen,
+      but men like Doyle were organizing the riff-raff of the country. They
+      secured a small percentage of idealists and pseudo-intellectuals, and
+      taught them a so-called internationalism which under the name of
+      brotherhood was nothing but a raid on private property, a scheme of
+      pillage and arson. They allied with themselves imported laborers from
+      Europe, men with everything to gain and nothing to lose, and by magnifying
+      real grievances and inflaming them with imaginary ones, were building out
+      of this material the rank and file of an anarchist army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And against it, what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On toward morning he remembered something, and sat bolt upright in bed.
+      Edith had once said something about knowing of a secret telephone. She had
+      known Louis Akers very well. He might have told her what she knew, or have
+      shown her, in some braggart moment. A certain type of man was unable to
+      keep a secret from a woman. But that would imply&mdash;For the first time
+      he wondered what Edith's relations with Louis Akers might have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the even tenor of her days
+      there, the feeling she had of sanctuary did not offset Lily's clear
+      knowledge that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing. Even her
+      grandfather, whose anger had driven her away, she remembered now as a
+      feeble old man, fighting his losing battle in a changing world, and yet
+      with a sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors to the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had determined, that first night in Elinor's immaculate guest room, to
+      go back the next day. They had been right at home, by all the tenets to
+      which they adhered so religiously. She had broken the unwritten law not to
+      break bread with an enemy of her house. She had done what they had
+      expressly forbidden, done it over and over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On top of all this,&rdquo; old Anthony had said, after reading the tale of her
+      delinquencies from some notes in his hand, &ldquo;you dined last night openly at
+      the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a man openly my enemy,
+      and openly of impure life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not believe he is your enemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened to
+      kill me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lily, Lily!&rdquo; said her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was to her father, standing grave and still, that Lily replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe that, father. He is not a murderer. If you would let him
+      come here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never in this house,&rdquo; said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in his
+      hand. &ldquo;He will come here over my dead body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have no right to condemn a man unheard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unheard! I tell you I know all about him. The man is an anarchist, a
+      rake, a&mdash;dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a moment, father,&rdquo; Howard had put in, quietly. &ldquo;Lily, do you care
+      for this man? I mean by that, do you want to marry him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has asked me. I have not given him any answer yet. I don't want to
+      marry a man my family will not receive. It wouldn't be fair to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and led him to a bitterness
+      of language that turned Lily cold and obstinate. She heard him through,
+      with her father vainly trying to break in and save the situation; then she
+      said, coldly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry you feel that way about it,&rdquo; and turned and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had made no plan, of course. She hated doing theatrical things. But
+      shut in her bedroom with the doors locked, Anthony's furious words came
+      back, his threats, his bitter sneers. She felt strangely alone, too. In
+      all the great house she had no one to support her. Mademoiselle, her
+      father and mother, even the servants, were tacitly aligned with the
+      opposition. Except Ellen. She had felt lately that Ellen, in her humble
+      way, had espoused her cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had sent for Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the warmth of her greeting, Lily had felt a reserve in Aunt
+      Elinor's welcome. It was as though she was determinedly making the best of
+      a bad situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to do it, Aunt Elinor,&rdquo; she said, when they had gone upstairs.
+      There was a labor conference, Doyle had explained, being held below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Elinor. &ldquo;I understand. I'll pin back the curtains so you
+      can open your windows. The night air is so smoky here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid mother will grieve terribly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she will,&rdquo; said Elinor, with her quiet gravity. &ldquo;You are all she
+      has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has father. She cares more for him than for anything in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like some ice-water, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time later Lily roused from the light sleep of emotional exhaustion.
+      She had thought she heard Willy Cameron's voice. But that was absurd, of
+      course, and she lay back to toss uneasily for hours. Out of all her
+      thinking there emerged at last her real self, so long overlaid with her
+      infatuation. She would go home again, and make what amends she could. They
+      were wrong about Louis Akers, but they were right, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lying there, as the dawn slowly turned her windows to gray, she saw him
+      with a new clarity. She had a swift vision of what life with him would
+      mean. Intervals of passionate loving, of boyish dependence on her, and
+      then&mdash;a new face. Never again was she to see him with such clearness.
+      He was incapable of loyalty to a woman, even though he loved her. He was
+      born to be a wanderer in love, an experimenter in passion. She even
+      recognized in him an incurable sensuous curiosity about women, that would
+      be quite remote from his love for her. He would see nothing wrong in his
+      infidelities, so long as she did not know and did not suffer. And he would
+      come back to her from them, watchful for suspicion, relieved when he did
+      not find it, and bringing her small gifts which would be actually burnt
+      offerings to his own soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made up her mind to give him up. She would go home in the morning,
+      make her peace with them all, and never see Louis Akers again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She slept after that, and at ten o'clock Elinor wakened her with the word
+      that her father was downstairs. Elinor was very pale. It had been a shock
+      to her to see her brother in her home after all the years, and a still
+      greater one when he had put his arm around her and kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so sorry, Howard,&rdquo; she had said. The sight of him had set her lips
+      trembling. He patted her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Elinor,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Poor old girl! We're a queer lot, aren't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All but you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An obstinate, do-and-be-damned lot,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;I'd like to see my
+      little girl, Nellie. We can't have another break in the family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held Lily in much the same way when she came down, an arm around her,
+      his big shoulders thrown back as though he would guard her against the
+      world. But he was very uneasy and depressed, at that. He had come on a
+      difficult errand, and because he had no finesse he blundered badly. It was
+      some time before she gathered the full meaning of what he was saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Cornelia's!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or, if you and your mother want to go to Europe,&rdquo; he put in hastily,
+      seeing her puzzled face, &ldquo;I think I can arrange about passports.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does that mean he won't have me back, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily, dear,&rdquo; he said, hoarse with anxiety, &ldquo;we simply have to remember
+      that he is a very old man, and that his mind is not elastic. He is feeling
+      very bitter now, but he will get over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I am to travel around waiting to be forgiven! I was ready to go back,
+      but&mdash;he won't have me. Is that it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only just for the present.&rdquo; He threw out his hands. &ldquo;I have tried
+      everything. I suppose, in a way, I could insist, make a point of it, but
+      there are other things to be considered. His age, for one thing, and then&mdash;the
+      strike. If he takes an arbitrary stand against me, no concession, no
+      argument with the men, it makes it very difficult, in many ways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see. It is wicked that any one man should have such power. The city,
+      the mills, his family&mdash;it's wicked.&rdquo; But she was conscious of no deep
+      anger against Anthony now. She merely saw that between them, they, she and
+      her grandfather, had dug a gulf that could not be passed. And in Howard's
+      efforts she saw the temporizing that her impatient youth resented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid it is a final break, father,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And if he shuts me
+      out I must live my own life. But I am not going to run away to Aunt
+      Cornelia or Europe. I shall stay here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to be content with that. After all, his own sister&mdash;but he
+      wished it were not Jim Doyle's house. Not that he regarded Lily's shift
+      toward what he termed Bolshevism very seriously; all youth had a slant
+      toward socialism, and outgrew it. But he went away sorely troubled, after
+      a few words with Elinor Doyle alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't look unhappy, Nellie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things have been much better the last few years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he kind to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not always, Howard. He doesn't drink now, so that is over. And I think
+      there are no other women. But when things go wrong I suffer, of course.&rdquo;
+       She stared past him toward the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you leave him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't go home, Howard. You know what it would be. Worse than Lily.
+      And I'm too old to start out by myself. My habits are formed, and besides,
+      I&mdash;&rdquo; She checked herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could take a house somewhere for both of you, Lily and yourself,&rdquo; he
+      said eagerly; &ldquo;that would be a wonderful way out for everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll manage all right,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I'll make Lily comfortable and as
+      happy as I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt that he had to make his own case clear, or he might have noticed
+      with what care she was choosing her words. His father's age, his
+      unconscious dependence on Grace, his certainty to retire soon from the
+      arbitrary stand he had taken. Elinor hardly heard him. Months afterwards
+      he was to remember the distant look in her eyes, a sort of half-frightened
+      determination, but he was self-engrossed just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't persuade you?&rdquo; he finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But it is good of you to think of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what the actual trouble was last night? It was not her coming
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, Howard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let her marry him, Nellie! Better than any one, you ought to know
+      what that would mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew too, Howard, but I did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end he went away not greatly comforted, to fight his own battles,
+      to meet committees from the union, and having met them, to find himself
+      facing the fact that, driven by some strange urge he could not understand,
+      the leaders wished a strike. There were times when he wondered what would
+      happen if he should suddenly yield every point, make every concession.
+      They would only make further demands, he felt. They seemed determined to
+      put him out of business. If only he could have dealt with the men
+      directly, instead of with their paid representatives, he felt that he
+      would get somewhere. But always, interposed between himself and his
+      workmen, was this barrier of their own erecting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was like representative government. It did not always represent. It,
+      too, was founded on representation in good faith; but there was not always
+      good faith. The union system was wrong. It was like politics. The few
+      handled the many. The union, with its all-powerful leaders, was only
+      another form of autocracy. It was Prussian. Yet the ideal behind the union
+      was sound enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no quarrel with the union. He puzzled it out, traveling
+      unaccustomed mental paths. The country was founded on liberty. All men
+      were created free and equal. Free, yes, but equal? Was not equality a long
+      way ahead along a thorny road? Men were not equal in the effort they made,
+      nor did equal efforts bring equal result. If there was class antagonism
+      behind all this unrest, would there not always be those who rose by dint
+      of ceaseless effort? Equality of opportunity, yes. Equality of effort and
+      result, no.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To destroy the chance of gain was to put a premium on inertia; to kill
+      ambition; to reduce the high without raising the low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At noon on the same day Willy Cameron went back to the house on Cardew
+      Way, to find Lily composed and resigned, instead of the militant figure he
+      had expected. He asked her to go home, and she told him then that she had
+      no longer a home to go to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant to go, Willy,&rdquo; she finished. &ldquo;I meant to go this morning. But you
+      see how things are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stood for a long time, looking at nothing very hard. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he
+      said finally. &ldquo;Of course your grandfather will be sorry in a day or two,
+      but he may not swallow his pride very soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That rather hurt her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about my pride?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can afford to be magnanimous with all your life before you.&rdquo; Then he
+      faced her. &ldquo;Besides, Lily, you're wrong. Dead wrong. You've hurt three
+      people, and all you've got out of it has been your own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is such a thing as liberty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know about that. And a good many crimes have been committed in
+      its name.&rdquo; Even in his unhappiness he was controversial. &ldquo;We are never
+      really free, so long as we love people, and they love us. Well&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      picked up his old felt hat and absently turned down the brim; it was
+      raining. &ldquo;I'll have to get back. I've overstayed my lunch hour as it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't had any luncheon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't hungry,&rdquo; he had said, and had gone away, his coat collar turned
+      up against the shower. Lily had had a presentiment that he was taking
+      himself out of her life, that he had given her up as a bad job. She felt
+      depressed and lonely, and not quite so sure of herself as she had been;
+      rather, although she did not put it that way, as though something fine had
+      passed her way, like Pippa singing, and had then gone on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She settled down as well as she could to her new life, making no plans,
+      however, and always with the stricken feeling that she had gained her own
+      point at the cost of much suffering. She telephoned to her mother daily,
+      broken little conversations with long pauses while Grace steadied her
+      voice. Once her mother hung up the receiver hastily, and Lily guessed that
+      her grandfather had come in. She felt very bitter toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she found the small oneage interesting, in a quiet way; to make her
+      own bed and mend her stockings&mdash;Grace had sent her a trunkful of
+      clothing; and on the elderly maid's afternoon out, to help Elinor with the
+      supper. She seldom went out, but Louis Akers came daily, and on the sixth
+      day of her stay she promised to marry him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not meant to do it, but it was difficult to refuse him. She had
+      let him think she would do it ultimately, for one thing. And, however
+      clearly she might analyze him in his absences, his strange attraction
+      reasserted itself when he was near. But her acceptance of him was almost
+      stoical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not soon, Louis,&rdquo; she said, holding him off. &ldquo;And&mdash;I ought to
+      tell you&mdash;I don't think we will be happy together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;&rdquo; she found it hard to put into words&mdash;&ldquo;because love
+      with you is a sort of selfish thing, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll lie down now and let you tramp on me,&rdquo; he said exultantly, and held
+      out his arms. But even as she moved toward him she voiced her inner
+      perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never seem to be able to see myself married to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the sooner the better, so you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't like being married, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all you know about it, Lily. I'm mad about you. I'm mad for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a new air of maturity about Lily those days, and sometimes a
+      sort of aloofness that both maddened him and increased his desire to
+      possess her. She went into his arms, but when he held her closest she
+      sometimes seemed farthest away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to be engaged a long time, Louis. We have so much to learn about
+      each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought that rather childish. But whatever had been his motive in the
+      beginning, he was desperately in love with her by that time, and because
+      of that he frightened her sometimes. He was less sure of himself, too,
+      even after she had accepted him, and to prove his continued dominance over
+      her he would bully her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here,&rdquo; he would say, from the hearth rug, or by the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes she went, to be smothered in his hot embrace; sometimes she did
+      not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her infatuation persisted, although there were times when his
+      inordinate vitality and his caresses gave her a sense of physical
+      weariness, times when sheer contact revolted her. He seemed always to want
+      to touch her. Fastidiously reared, taught a sort of aloofness from
+      childhood, Lily found herself wondering if all men in love were like that,
+      always having to be held off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ellen was staying at the Boyd house. She went downstairs the morning after
+      her arrival, and found the bread&mdash;bakery bread&mdash;toasted and
+      growing cold on the table, while a slice of ham, ready to be cooked, was
+      not yet on the fire, and Mrs. Boyd had run out to buy some milk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan had already gone, and his half-empty cup of black coffee was on the
+      kitchen table. Ellen sniffed it and raised her eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rolled up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in the
+      frying pan, with much the same grimness with which she had sat the night
+      before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue. If this was the way they looked
+      after Willy Cameron, no wonder he was thin and pale. She threw out the
+      coffee, which she suspected had been made by the time-saving method of
+      pouring water on last night's grounds, and made a fresh pot of it. After
+      that she inspected the tea towels, and getting a tin dishpan, set them to
+      boil in it on the top of the range.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough to give him typhoid,&rdquo; she reflected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen disapproved of her surroundings; she disapproved of any woman who
+      did not boil her tea towels. And when Edith came down carefully dressed
+      and undeniably rouged she formed a disapproving opinion of that young
+      lady, which was that she was trying to land Willy Cameron, and that he
+      would be better dead than landed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She met Edith's stare of surprise with one of thinly veiled hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; said Edith. &ldquo;When did you blow in, and where from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to see Mr. Cameron last night, and he made me stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend of Willy's! Well, I guess you needn't pay for your breakfast by
+      cooking it. Mother's probably run out for something&mdash;she never has
+      anything in the house&mdash;and is talking somewhere. I'll take that
+      fork.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ellen proceeded to turn the ham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You might spoil your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith showed no offense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; she acceded indifferently. &ldquo;If you're going to eat it you'd
+      better cook it. We're rotten housekeepers here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think, if you're going to keep boarders, somebody would learn to
+      cook. Mr. Cameron's mother is the best housekeeper in town, and he was
+      raised on good food and plenty of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tone was truculent. Ellen's world, the world of short hours and easy
+      service, of the decorum of the Cardew servants' hall, of luxury and
+      dignity and good pay, had suddenly gone to pieces about her. She was
+      feeling very bitter, especially toward a certain chauffeur who had
+      prophesied the end of all service. He had made the statement that before
+      long all people would be equal. There would be no above and below-stairs,
+      no servants' hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll drive their own cars, then, damn them,&rdquo; he had said once, &ldquo;if
+      they can get any to drive. And answer their own bells, if they've got any
+      to ring. And get up and cook their own breakfasts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which you won't have any to cook,&rdquo; Grayson had said irritably, from the
+      head of the long table. &ldquo;Just a word, my man. That sort of talk is
+      forbidden here. One word more and I go to Mr. Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chauffeur had not sulked, however. &ldquo;All right, Mr. Grayson,&rdquo; he said
+      affably. &ldquo;But I can go on thinking, I daresay. And some of these days
+      you'll be wishing you'd climbed on the band wagon before it's too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen, turning the ham carefully, was conscious that her revolt had been
+      only partially on Lily's account. It was not so much Lily's plight as the
+      abuse of power, although she did not put it that way, that had driven her
+      out. Ellen then had carried out her own small revolution, and where had it
+      put her? She had lost a good home, and what could she do? All she knew was
+      service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith poured herself a cup of coffee, and taking a piece of toast from the
+      oven, stood nibbling it. The crumbs fell on the not over-clean floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you go into the dining-room to eat?&rdquo; Ellen demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got out of the wrong side of the bed, didn't you?&rdquo; Edith asked. &ldquo;Willy's
+      bed, I suppose. I'm not hungry, and I always eat breakfast like this. I
+      wish he would hurry. We'll be late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen stared. It was her first knowledge that this girl, this painted
+      hussy, worked in Willy's pharmacy, and her suspicions increased. She had a
+      quick vision, as she had once had of Lily, of Edith in the Cameron house;
+      Edith reading or embroidering on the front porch while Willy's mother
+      slaved for her; Edith on the same porch in the evening, with all the boys
+      in town around her. She knew the type, the sort that set an entire village
+      by the ears and in the end left home and husband and ran away with a
+      traveling salesman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen had already got Willy married and divorced when Mrs. Boyd came in.
+      She carried the milk pail, but her lips were blue and she sat down in a
+      chair and held her hand to her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm that short of breath!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;I declare I could hardly get
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you some coffee, right off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Willy Cameron had finished his breakfast she followed him into the
+      parlor. His pallor was not lost on her, or his sunken eyes. He looked
+      badly fed, shabby, and harassed, and he bore the marks of his sleepless
+      night on his face. &ldquo;Are you going to stay here?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes, Miss Ellen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother would break her heart if she knew the way you're living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very comfortable. We've tried to get a ser&mdash;&rdquo; He changed color
+      at that. In the simple life of the village at home a woman whose only
+      training was the town standard of good housekeeping might go into service
+      in the city and not lose caste. But she was never thought of as a servant.
+      &ldquo;&mdash;help,&rdquo; he substituted. &ldquo;But we can't get any one, and Mrs. Boyd is
+      delicate. It is heart trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does that girl work where you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she engaged to you? She calls you Willy.&rdquo; He smiled into her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it, or thinking of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know what she's thinking? It's all over her. It's Willy this
+      and Willy that&mdash;and men are such fools.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There flashed into his mind certain things that he had tried to forget;
+      Edith at his doorway, with that odd look in her eyes; Edith never going to
+      sleep until he had gone to bed; and recently, certain things she had said,
+      that he had passed over lightly and somewhat uncomfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's ridiculous, Miss Ellen. But even if it were true, which it isn't,
+      don't you think it would be rather nice of her?&rdquo; He smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not. I heard you going out last night, Willy. Did you find her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is at the Doyles'. I didn't see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll finish it,&rdquo; Ellen prophesied, somberly. She glanced around the
+      parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard, at the
+      unwound clock on the mantel shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you're going to stay here I will,&rdquo; she announced abruptly. &ldquo;I owe that
+      much to your mother. I've got some money. I'll take what they'd pay some
+      foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another family.&rdquo; Then, seeing
+      hesitation in his eyes: &ldquo;That woman's sick, and you've got to be looked
+      after. I could do all the work, if that&mdash;if the girl would help in
+      the evenings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He demurred at first. She would find it hard. They had no luxuries, and
+      she was accustomed to luxury. There was no room for her. But in the end he
+      called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to find Edith offering
+      to share her upper bedroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a hole,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer. But
+      there's room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith,&rdquo; he said for perhaps the
+      twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, &ldquo;and you would take
+      my room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No chance,&rdquo; she said cheerfully. &ldquo;Mother would raise the devil if you
+      tried it.&rdquo; She glanced at Ellen's face. &ldquo;If that word shocks you, you're
+      due for a few shocks, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way you talk is your business, not mine,&rdquo; said Ellen austerely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they finally departed on a half-run Ellen was established as a
+      fixture in the Boyd house, and was already piling all the cooking utensils
+      into a wash boiler and with grim efficiency was searching for lye with
+      which to clean them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two weeks later, the end of June, the strike occurred. It was not, in
+      spite of predictions, a general walk-out. Some of the mills, particularly
+      the smaller plants, did not go down at all, and with reduced forces kept
+      on, but the chain of Cardew Mills was closed. There was occasional rioting
+      by the foreign element in outlying districts, but the state constabulary
+      handled it easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan was out of work, and the loss of his pay was a serious matter in the
+      little house. He had managed to lay by a hundred dollars, and Willy
+      Cameron had banked it for him, but there was a real problem to be faced.
+      On the night of the day the Cardew Mills went down Willy called a meeting
+      of the household after supper, around the dining room table. He had been
+      in to see Mr. Hendricks, who had been laid up with bronchitis, and Mr.
+      Hendricks had predicted a long strike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The irresistible force and the immovable body, son,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They'll
+      stay set this time. And unless I miss my guess that is playing Doyle's
+      hand for him, all right. His chance will come when the men have used up
+      their savings and are growing bitter. Every strike plays into the hands of
+      the enemy, son, and they know it. The moment production ceases prices go
+      up, and soon all the money in the world won't pay them wages enough to
+      live on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a store of homely common sense, and a gift of putting things into
+      few words. Willy Cameron, going back to the little house that evening,
+      remembered the last thing he had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only way to solve this problem of living,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is to see how
+      much we can work, and not how little. Germany's working ten hours a day,
+      and producing. We're talking about six, and loafing and fighting while we
+      talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Willy went home and called his meeting, and knowing Mrs. Boyd's regard
+      for figures, set down and added or subtracted, he placed a pad and pencil
+      on the table before him. It was an odd group: Dan sullen, resenting the
+      strike and the causes that had led to it; Ellen, austere and competent;
+      Mrs. Boyd with a lace fichu pinned around her neck, now that she had
+      achieved the dignity of hired help, and Edith. Edith silent, morose and
+      fixing now and then rather haggard eyes on Willy Cameron's unruly hair.
+      She seldom met his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First of all,&rdquo; said Willy, &ldquo;we'll take our weekly assets. Of course Dan
+      will get something temporarily, but we'll leave that out for the present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The weekly assets turned out to be his salary and Edith's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Willy,&rdquo; said Mrs. Boyd, &ldquo;you can't turn all your money over to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are all the family I have just now. Why not? Anyhow, I'll have to
+      keep out lunch money and carfare, and so will Edith. Now as to expenses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen had made a great reduction in expenses, but food was high. And there
+      was gas and coal, and Dan's small insurance, and the rent. There was
+      absolutely no margin, and a sort of silence fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about your tuition at night school?&rdquo; Edith asked suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spring term ended this week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said there was a summer one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll tell you about that,&rdquo; Willy said, feeling for words. &ldquo;I'm
+      going to be busy helping Mr. Hendricks in his campaign. Then next fall&mdash;well,
+      I'll either go back or Hendricks will make me chief of police, or
+      something.&rdquo; He smiled around the table. &ldquo;I ought to get some sort of graft
+      out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother!&rdquo; Edith protested. &ldquo;He mustn't sacrifice himself for us. What are
+      we to him anyhow? A lot of stones hung around his neck. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after Willy had declared that this was his home now, and he had a
+      right to help keep it going, and after Ellen had observed that she had
+      some money laid by and would not take any wages during the strike, that
+      the meeting threatened to become emotional. Mrs. Boyd shed a few tears,
+      and as she never by any chance carried a handkerchief, let them flow over
+      her fichu. And Dan shook Willy's hand and Ellen's, and said that if he'd
+      had his way he'd be working, and not sitting round like a stiff letting
+      other people work for him. But Edith got up and went out into the little
+      back garden, and did not come back until the meeting was both actually and
+      morally broken up. When she heard Dan go out, and Ellen and Mrs. Boyd go
+      upstairs, chatting in a new amiability brought about by trouble and
+      sacrifice, she put on her hat and left the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen, rousing on her cot in Edith's upper room, heard her come in some
+      time later, and undress and get into bed. Her old suspicion of the girl
+      revived, and she sat upright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where I come from girls don't stay out alone until all hours,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, let me alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed that Mrs. Boyd had taken
+      sick and was moaning. The moaning was terrible; it filled the little
+      house. Ellen wakened suddenly. It was not moaning; it was strange, heavy
+      breathing, strangling; and it came from Edith's bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sick?&rdquo; she called, and getting up, her knees hardly holding her,
+      she lighted the gas at its unshaded bracket on the wall and ran to the
+      other bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith was lying there, her mouth open, her lips bleached and twisted. Her
+      stertorous breathing filled the room, and over all was the odor of
+      carbolic acid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith, for God's sake!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was only partially conscious. Ellen ran down the stairs and into
+      Willy's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; she cried, shaking him. &ldquo;That girl's killed herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Edith. Carbolic acid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then he remembered her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let her hear anything, It will kill her,&rdquo; he said, and ran up the
+      stairs. Almost immediately he was down again, searching for alcohol; he
+      found a small quantity and poured that down the swollen throat. He roused
+      Dan then, and sent him running madly for Doctor Smalley, with a warning to
+      bring him past Mrs. Boyd's door quietly, and to bring an intubation set
+      with him in case her throat should close. Then, on one of his innumerable
+      journeys up and down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Boyd herself, in her
+      nightgown, and terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, Willy?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Is it a fire?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith is sick. I don't want you to go up. It may be contagious. It's her
+      throat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And from that Mrs. Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairs in her
+      nightgown, a shaken helpless figure, asking countless questions of those
+      that hurried past. But they reassured her, and after a time she went
+      downstairs and made a pot of coffee. Ensconced with it in the lower hall,
+      and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid them with it as they hurried up and
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upstairs the battle went on. There were times when the paralyzed muscles
+      almost stopped lifting the chest walls, when each breath was a new
+      miracle. Her throat was closing fast, too, and at eight o'clock came a
+      brisk young surgeon, and with Willy Cameron's assistance, an operation was
+      performed. After that, and for days, Edith breathed through a tube in her
+      neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fiction of diphtheria was kept up, and Mrs. Boyd, having a childlike
+      faith in medical men, betrayed no anxiety after the first hour or two. She
+      saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going down through the house while she
+      herself was kept out of that upper room where Edith lay, conscious now but
+      sullen, disfigured, silent. She was happy, too, to have her old domain
+      hers again, while Ellen nursed; to make again her flavorless desserts, her
+      mounds of rubberlike gelatine, her pies. She brewed broths daily, and when
+      Edith could swallow she sent up the results of hours of cooking which
+      Ellen cooled, skimmed the crust of grease from the top, and heated again
+      over the gas flame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She never guessed the conspiracy against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between Ellen and Edith there was no real liking. Ellen did her duty, and
+      more; got up at night; was gentle with rather heavy hands; bathed the girl
+      and brushed and braided her long hair. But there were hours during that
+      simulated quarantine when a brooding silence held in the sick-room, and
+      when Ellen, turning suddenly, would find Edith's eyes on her, full of
+      angry distrust. At those times Ellen was glad that Edith could not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For at the end of a few days Ellen knew, and Edith knew she knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith could not speak. She wrote her wants with a stub of pencil, or made
+      signs. One day she motioned toward a mirror and Ellen took it to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't be frightened,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;When those scabs come off the
+      doctor says you'll hardly be marked at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith only glanced at herself, and threw the mirror aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another time she wrote: &ldquo;Willy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's all right. They've got a girl at the store to take your place, but I
+      guess you can go back if you want to.&rdquo; Then, seeing the hunger in the
+      girl's eyes: &ldquo;He's out a good bit these nights. He's making speeches for
+      that Mr. Hendricks. As if he could be elected against Mr. Cardew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The confinement told on Ellen. She would sit for hours, wondering what had
+      become of Lily. Had she gone back home? Was she seeing that other man?
+      Perhaps her valiant loyalty to Lily faded somewhat during those days,
+      because she began to guess Willy Cameron's secret. If a girl had no eyes
+      in her head, and couldn't see that Willy Cameron was the finest gentleman
+      who ever stepped in shoe leather, that girl had something wrong about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, sometimes, she wondered how Edith's condition was going to be kept
+      from her mother. She had measured Mrs. Boyd's pride by that time, her
+      almost terrible respectability. She rather hoped that the sick woman would
+      die some night, easily and painlessly in her sleep, because death was
+      easier than some things. She liked Mrs. Boyd; she felt a slightly
+      contemptuous but real affection for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one night Edith heard Willy's voice below, and indicated that she
+      wanted to see him. He came in, stooping under the sheet which Mrs. Boyd
+      had heard belonged in the doorway of diphtheria, and stood looking down at
+      her. His heart ached. He sat down on the bed beside her and stroked her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little girl,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We've got to make things very happy for her,
+      to make up for all this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith freed her hand, and reaching out for paper and pencil stub,
+      wrote something and gave it to Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen read it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to, Edith. You wait and do it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith made an insistent gesture, and Ellen, flushed and wretched, had
+      to tell. He made no sign, but sat stroking Edith's hand, only he stared
+      rather fixedly at the wall, conscious that the girl's eyes were watching
+      him for a single gesture of surprise or anger. He felt no anger, only a
+      great perplexity and sadness, an older-brother grief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, little sister,&rdquo; he said, and did the kindest thing he could
+      think of, bent over and kissed her on the forehead. &ldquo;Of course I know how
+      you feel, but it is a big thing to bear a child, isn't it? It is the only
+      miracle we have these days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A child with no father,&rdquo; said Ellen, stonily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even then,&rdquo; he persisted, &ldquo;it's a big thing. We would have this one come
+      under happier circumstances if we could, but we will welcome and take care
+      of it, anyhow. A child's a child, and mighty valuable. And,&rdquo; he added&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      appreciate your wanting me to know, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stayed a little while after that, but he read aloud, choosing a
+      humorous story and laughing very hard at all the proper places. In the end
+      he brought a faint smile to Edith's blistered lips, and a small lift to
+      the cloud that hung over her now, day and night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a speech that night, and into it he put all of his aching, anxious
+      soul; Edith and Dan and Lily were behind it. Akers and Doyle. It was at a
+      meeting in the hall over the city market, and the audience a new men's
+      non-partisan association.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am asked what it is that we want, we men who are
+      standing behind Hendricks as an independent candidate.&rdquo; He was supposed to
+      bring Mr. Hendricks' name in as often as possible. &ldquo;I answer that we want
+      honest government, law and order, an end to this conviction that the
+      country is owned by the unions and the capitalists, a fair deal for the
+      plain people, which is you and I, my friends. But I answer still further,
+      we want one thing more, a greater thing, and that thing we shall have. All
+      through this great country to-night are groups of men hoping and planning
+      for an incredible thing. They are not great in numbers; they are, however,
+      organized, competent, intelligent and deadly. They plow the land with
+      discord to sow the seeds of sedition. And the thing they want is civil
+      war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And against them, what? The people like you and me; the men with homes
+      they love; the men with little businesses they have fought and labored to
+      secure; the clerks; the preachers; the doctors, the honest laborers, the
+      God-fearing rich. I tell you, we are the people, and it is time we knew
+      our power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the thing we want, we the people; the greater thing, the
+      thing we shall have; that this government, this country which we love,
+      which has three times been saved at such cost of blood, shall survive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after that speech that he met Pink Denslow for the first time. A
+      square, solidly built young man edged his way through the crowd, and shook
+      hands with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Name's Denslow,&rdquo; said Pink. &ldquo;Liked what you said. Have you time to run
+      over to my club with me and have a high-ball and a talk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got all the rest of the night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right-o!&rdquo; said Pink, who had brought back a phrase or two from the
+      British.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until they were in the car that Pink said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you're a friend of Miss Cardew's, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Miss Cardew,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, guardedly. And they were both
+      rather silent for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night proved to be a significant one for them both, as it happened.
+      They struck up a curious sort of friendship, based on a humble admiration
+      on Pink's part, and with Willy Cameron on sheer hunger for the society of
+      his kind. He had been suffering a real mental starvation. He had been
+      constantly giving out and getting nothing in return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink developed a habit of dropping into the pharmacy when he happened to
+      be nearby. He was rather wistfully envious of that year in the camp, when
+      Lily Cardew and Cameron had been together, and at first it was the bond of
+      Lily that sent him to the shop. In the beginning the shop irritated him,
+      because it seemed an incongruous background for the fiery young orator.
+      But later on he joined the small open forum in the back room, and perhaps
+      for the first time in his idle years he began to think. He had made the
+      sacrifice of his luxurious young life to go to war, had slept in mud and
+      risked his body and been hungry and cold and often frightfully homesick.
+      And now it appeared that a lot of madmen were going to try to undo all
+      that he had helped to do. He was surprised and highly indignant. Even a
+      handful of agitators, it seemed, could do incredible harm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night he and Willy Cameron slipped into a meeting of a Russian
+      Society, wearing old clothes, which with Willy was not difficult, and
+      shuffling up dirty stairs without molestation. They came away thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks like it's more than talk,&rdquo; Pink said, after a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're not dangerous,&rdquo; Willy Cameron said. &ldquo;That's talk. But it shows a
+      state of mind. The real incendiaries don't show their hand like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think it's real, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some boils don't come to a head. But most do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after a mob of foreigners had tried to capture the town of
+      Donesson, near Pittsburgh, and had been turned back by a hastily armed
+      body of its citizens, doctors, lawyers and shop-keepers, that a nebulous
+      plan began to form in Willy Cameron's active mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If one could unite the plain people politically, or against a foreign war,
+      why could they not be united against an enemy at home? The South had had a
+      similar problem, and the result was the Ku Klux Klan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chief of Police was convinced that a plan was being formulated to
+      repeat the Seattle experiment against the city. The Mayor was dubious. He
+      was not a strong man; he had a conviction that because a thing never had
+      happened it never could happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mob has done it before,&rdquo; urged the Chief of Police one day. &ldquo;They
+      took Paris, and it was damned disagreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mayor was a trifle weak in history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe they did,&rdquo; he agreed. &ldquo;But this is different. This is America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was rather uneasy after that. It had occurred to him that the Chief
+      might have referred to Paris, Illinois.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then Pink coaxed Willy Cameron to his club, and for those rare
+      occasions he provided always a little group of men like themselves, young,
+      eager, loyal, and struggling with the new problems of the day. In this
+      environment Willy Cameron received as well as gave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of the men had been in the army, and he found in them an eager
+      anxiety to face the coming situation and combat it. In the end the nucleus
+      of the new Vigilance Committee was formed there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not immediately. The idea was of slow growth even with its originator, and
+      it only reached the point of speech when Mr. Hendricks stopped in one day
+      at the pharmacy and brought a bundle which he slapped down on the
+      prescription desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read that dynamite,&rdquo; he said, his face flushed and lowering. &ldquo;A man I
+      know got it translated for me. Read it and then tell me whether I'm an
+      alarmist and a plain fool, or if it means trouble around here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no question in Willy Cameron's mind as to which it meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Akers had by that time announced his candidacy for Mayor, and
+      organized labor was behind him to an alarming extent. When Willy Cameron
+      went with Pink to the club that afternoon, he found Akers under
+      discussion, and he heard some facts about that gentleman's private life
+      which left him silent and morose. Pink knew nothing of Lily's friendship
+      with Akers. Indeed, Pink did not know that Lily was in the city, and Willy
+      Cameron had not undeceived him. It had pleased Anthony Cardew to announce
+      in the press that Lily was making a round of visits, and the secret was
+      not his to divulge. But the question which was always in his mind rose
+      again. What did she see in the man? How could she have thrown away her
+      home and her family for a fellow who was so obviously what Pink would have
+      called &ldquo;a wrong one&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He roused, however, at a question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;with three candidates we're splitting the vote three
+      ways, and it's hard to predict. Mr. Cardew can't be elected, but he
+      weakens Hendricks. One thing's sure. Where's my pipe?&rdquo; Silence while Mr.
+      Cameron searched for his pipe, and took his own time to divulge the sure
+      thing. &ldquo;If Hendricks is elected he'll clear out the entire bunch of
+      anarchists. The present man's afraid. But if Akers can hypnotize labor
+      into voting for him, and he gets it, it will be up to the city to protect
+      itself, for he won't. He'll let them hold their infamous meetings and
+      spread their damnable doctrine, and&mdash;you know what they've tried to
+      do in other places.&rdquo; He explained what he had in mind then, finding them
+      expectant and eager. There ought to be some sort of citizen organization,
+      to supplement the state and city forces. Nothing spectacular; indeed, the
+      least said about it the better. He harked back then to his idea of the
+      plain people, with homes to protect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That needn't keep you fellows out,&rdquo; he said, with his whimsical smile.
+      &ldquo;But the rank and file will have to constitute the big end. We don't want
+      a lot of busybodies, pussy-footing around with guns and looking for
+      trouble. We had enough of that during the war. We would want some men who
+      would answer a riot call if they were needed. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had some of the translations Hendricks had brought him in his pocket,
+      and they circulated around the group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think they mean to attack the city?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That looks like it, doesn't it? And they are getting that sort of stuff
+      all the time. There are a hundred thousand of them in this end of the
+      state.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you make it a secret organization?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I like doing things in the open myself, but you've got to fight a
+      rat in his hole, if he won't come out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you hold office?&rdquo; Pink asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a good bit like the boy who dug post holes in the daytime and took in
+      washing at night to support the family. But I'll work, if that's what you
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd better have a constitution and all that, don't you think?&rdquo; Pink
+      asked. &ldquo;We can draw up a tentative one, and then fix it up at the first
+      meeting. This is going to be a big thing. It'll go like a fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Willy Cameron overruled that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't need that sort of stuff,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and if we begin that we
+      might as well put it in the newspapers. We want men who can keep their
+      mouths shut, and who will sign some sort of a card agreeing to stand by
+      the government and to preserve law and order. Then an office and a filing
+      case, and their addresses, so we can get at them in a hurry if we need
+      them. Get me a piece of paper, somebody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then and there, in twenty words, Willy Cameron wrote the now historic oath
+      of the new Vigilance Committee, on the back of an old envelope. It was a
+      promise, an agreement rather than an oath. There was a little hush as the
+      paper passed from hand to hand. Not a man there but felt a certain
+      solemnity in the occasion. To preserve the Union and the flag, to fight
+      all sedition, to love their country and support it; the very simplicity of
+      the words was impressive. And the mere putting of it into visible form
+      crystallized their hitherto vague anxieties, pointed to a real enemy and a
+      real danger. Yet, as Willy Cameron pointed out, they might never be
+      needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our job,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is only as a last resort. Only for real trouble.
+      Until the state troops can get here, for instance, and if the constabulary
+      is greatly outnumbered. It's their work up to a certain point. We'll fight
+      if they need us. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very surprising to him to find the enterprise financed immediately.
+      Pink offered an office in the bank building. Some one agreed to pay a
+      clerk who should belong to the committee. It was practical, businesslike,
+      and&mdash;done. And, although he had protested, he found himself made the
+      head of the organization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;without title and without pay,&rdquo; he stipulated. &ldquo;If you wish a
+      title on me, I'll resign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went home that night very exalted and very humble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a time Lily remained hidden in the house on Cardew Way, walking out
+      after nightfall with Louis occasionally, but shrinkingly keeping to quiet
+      back streets. She had a horror of meeting some one she knew, of
+      explanations and of gossip. But after a time the desire to see her mother
+      became overwhelming. She took to making little flying visits home at an
+      hour when her grandfather was certain to be away, going in a taxicab, and
+      reaching the house somewhat breathless and excited. She was driven by an
+      impulse toward the old familiar things; she was homesick for them all, for
+      her mother, for Mademoiselle, for her own rooms, for her little toilet
+      table, for her bed and her reading lamp. For the old house itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still an alien where she was. Elinor Doyle was a perpetual enigma
+      to her; now and then she thought she had penetrated behind the gentle mask
+      that was Elinor's face, only to find beyond it something inscrutable.
+      There was a dead line in Elinor's life across which Lily never stepped.
+      Whatever Elinor's battles were, she fought them alone, and Lily had begun
+      to realize that there were battles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The atmosphere of the little house had changed. Sometimes, after she had
+      gone to bed, she heard Doyle's voice from the room across the hall, raised
+      angrily. He was nervous and impatient; at times he dropped the
+      unctuousness of his manner toward her, and she found herself looking into
+      a pair of cold blue eyes which terrified her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brilliant little dinners had entirely ceased, with her coming. A sort
+      of early summer lethargy had apparently settled on the house. Doyle wrote
+      for hours, shut in the room with the desk; the group of intellectuals, as
+      he had dubbed them, had dispersed on summer vacations. But she discovered
+      that there were other conferences being held in the house, generally late
+      at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She learned to know the nights when those meetings were to occur. On those
+      evenings Elinor always made an early move toward bed, and Lily would
+      repair to her hot low-ceiled room, to sit in the darkness by the window
+      and think long, painful thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was how she learned of the conferences. She had no curiosity about
+      them at first. They had something to do with the strike, she considered,
+      and with that her interest died. Strikes were a symptom, and ultimately,
+      through great thinkers like Mr. Doyle, they would discover the cure for
+      the disease that caused them. She was quite content to wait for that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, one night, she went downstairs for a glass of ice water, and found
+      the lower floor dark, and subdued voices coming from the study. The
+      kitchen door was standing open, and she closed and locked it, placing the
+      key, as was Elinor's custom, in a table drawer. The door was partly glass,
+      and Elinor had a fear of the glass being broken and thus the key turned in
+      the lock by some intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On toward morning there came a violent hammering at her bedroom door, and
+      Doyle's voice outside, a savage voice that she scarcely recognized. When
+      she had thrown on her dressing gown and opened the door he had instantly
+      caught her by the shoulder, and she bore the imprints of his fingers for
+      days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you lock the kitchen door?&rdquo; he demanded, his tones thick with fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Why not?&rdquo; She tried to shake off his hand, but failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None of your business why not,&rdquo; he said, and gave her an angry shake.
+      &ldquo;Hereafter, when you find that door open, you leave it that way. That's
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your hands off me!&rdquo; She was rather like her grandfather at that
+      moment, and his lost caution came back. He freed her at once and laughed a
+      little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I get a bit emphatic at times. But there are times when
+      a locked door becomes a mighty serious matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day he removed the key from the door, and substituted a bolt.
+      Elinor made no protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another night Elinor was taken ill, and Lilly had been forced to knock at
+      the study door and call Doyle. She had an instant's impression of the room
+      crowded with strange figures. The heavy odors of sweating bodies, of
+      tobacco, and of stale beer came through the half-open door and revolted
+      her. And Doyle had refused to go upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to feel that she could not remain there very long. The
+      atmosphere was variable. It was either cynical or sinister, and she hated
+      them both. She had a curious feeling, too, that Doyle both wanted her
+      there and did not want her, and that he was changing his attitude toward
+      her Aunt Elinor. Sometimes she saw him watching Elinor from under
+      half-closed eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she could not fill her days with anxieties and suspicions, and she
+      turned to Louis Akers as a flower to the open day. He at least was what he
+      appeared to be. There was nothing mysterious about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came in daily, big, dominant and demonstrative, filling the house with
+      his presence, and demanding her in a loud, urgent voice. Hardly had the
+      door slammed before he would call:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily! Where are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he lifted her off her feet and held her to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You little whiffet!&rdquo; he would say. &ldquo;I could crush you to death in my
+      arms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had his wooing all been violent she might have tired sooner, because those
+      phases of his passion for her tired her. But there were times when he put
+      her into a chair and sat on the floor at her feet, his handsome face
+      uplifted to hers in a sort of humble adoration, his arms across her knees.
+      It was not altogether studied. He was a born wooer, but he had his hours
+      of humility, of vague aspirations. His insistent body was always greater
+      than his soul, but now and then, when he was physically weary, he had a
+      spiritual moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you, little girl,&rdquo; he would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in one of those moments that she extracted a promise from him. He
+      had been, from his position on the floor, telling her about the campaign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like your running against my father, Louis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He couldn't have got it, anyhow. And he doesn't want it. I do, honey. I
+      need it in my business. When the election's over you're going to marry
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She ignored that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like the men who come here, Louis. I wish they were not friends
+      of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends of mine! That bunch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are always with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I draw a salary for being with them, honey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do you draw a salary for?&rdquo; He was immediately on the alert, but
+      her eyes were candid and unsuspicious. &ldquo;They are strikers, aren't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it legal business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Partly that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louis, is there going to be a general strike?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be some bad times coming, honey.&rdquo; He bent his head and kissed
+      her hands, lying motionless in her lap. &ldquo;I wish you would marry me soon. I
+      want you. I want to keep you safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew her hands away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Safe from what, Louis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat back and looked up into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must remember, dear, that for all your theories, which are very
+      sweet, this is a man's world, and men have rather brutal methods of
+      settling their differences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you advocate brutality?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the war was brutal, wasn't it? And you were in a white heat
+      supporting it, weren't you? How about another war,&rdquo;&mdash;he chose his
+      words carefully&mdash;&ldquo;just as reasonable and just? You've heard Doyle.
+      You know what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was amazed at her horror, a horror that made her recoil from him and
+      push his hands away when he tried to touch her. He got up angrily and
+      stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil did you think all this talk meant?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;You've
+      heard enough of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Aunt Elinor know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she approves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know and I don't care.&rdquo; Suddenly, with one of the quick changes
+      she knew so well, he caught her hands and drawing her to her feet, put his
+      arms around her. &ldquo;All I know is that I love you, and if you say the word
+      I'll cut the whole business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He amended his offer somewhat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry me, honey,&rdquo; he begged. &ldquo;Marry me now. Do you think I'll let
+      anything in God's world come between us? Marry me, and I'll do more than
+      leave them.&rdquo; He was whispering to her, stroking her hair. &ldquo;I'll cut the
+      whole outfit. And on the day I go into your house as your husband I'll
+      tell your people some things they want to know. That's a promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will they do to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew himself to his full height, and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll try to do plenty, old girl,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I'm not afraid of
+      them, and they know it. Marry me, Lily,&rdquo; he urged. &ldquo;Marry me now. And
+      we'll beat them out, you and I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave her a sense of power, over him and over evil. She felt suddenly an
+      enormous responsibility, that of a human soul waiting to be uplifted and
+      led aright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can save me, honey,&rdquo; he whispered, and kneeling suddenly, he kissed
+      the toe of her small shoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was strong. But he was weak too. He needed her. &ldquo;I'll do it, Louis,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;You&mdash;you will be good to me, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm crazy about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mood of exaltation upheld her through the night, and into the next
+      day. Elinor eyed her curiously, and with some anxiety. It was a long time
+      since she had been a girl, going about star-eyed with power over a man,
+      but she remembered that lost time well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At noon Louis came in for a hasty luncheon, and before he left he drew
+      Lily into the little study and slipped a solitaire diamond on her
+      engagement finger. To Lily the moment was almost a holy one, but he seemed
+      more interested in the quality of the stone and its appearance on her hand
+      than in its symbolism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got you cinched now, honey. Do you like it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me feel that I don't belong to myself any longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you've passed into good hands,&rdquo; he said, and laughed his great,
+      vibrant laugh. &ldquo;Costing me money already, you mite!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little of her exaltation died then. But perhaps men were like that,
+      shyly covering the things they felt deepest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was rather surprised when he suggested keeping the engagement a
+      secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except the Doyles, of course,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am not taking any chances on
+      losing you, child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not unless you want to be kidnaped and taken home. It's only a matter of
+      a day or two, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want more time than that. A month, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he found her curiously obstinate and determined. She did not quite
+      know herself why she demanded delay, except that she shrank from
+      delivering herself into hands that were so tender and might be so cruel.
+      It was instinctive, purely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A month,&rdquo; she said, and stuck to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was rather sulky when he went away, and he had told her the exact
+      amount he had paid for her ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having forced him to agree to the delay, she found her mood of exaltation
+      returning. As always, it was when he was not with he that she saw him most
+      clearly, and she saw his real need for her. She had a sense of peace, too,
+      now that at last something was decided. Her future, for better or worse,
+      would no longer be that helpless waiting which had been hers for so long.
+      And out of her happiness came a desire to do kind things, to pat children
+      on the head, to give alms to beggars, and&mdash;to see Willy Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came downstairs that afternoon, dressed for the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going out for a little while, Aunt Nellie,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and when I
+      come back I want to tell you something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. I can guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was singing to herself as she went out the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor went back heavy-hearted to her knitting. It was very difficult
+      always to sit by and wait. Never to raise a hand. Just to wait and watch.
+      And pray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was rather surprised, when she reached the Eagle Pharmacy, to find
+      Pink Denslow coming out. It gave her a little pang, too; he looked so
+      clean and sane and normal, so much a part of her old life. And it hurt
+      her, too, to see him flush with pleasure at the meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Lily!&rdquo; he said, and stood there, gazing at her, hat in hand, the sun
+      on his gleaming, carefully brushed hair. He was quite inarticulate with
+      happiness. &ldquo;I&mdash;when did you get back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not been away, Pink. I left home&mdash;it's a long story. I am
+      staying with my aunt, Mrs. Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Doyle? You are staying there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? My father's sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His young face took on a certain sternness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you knew what I suspect about Doyle, Lily, you wouldn't let the same
+      roof cover you.&rdquo; But he added, rather wistfully, &ldquo;I wish I might see you
+      sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily's head had gone up a trifle. Why did her old world always try to put
+      her in the wrong? She had had to seek sanctuary, and the Doyle house had
+      been the only sanctuary she knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you feel as you do, I'm afraid that's impossible. Mr. Doyle's roof
+      is the only roof I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a home,&rdquo; he said, sturdily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now. I left, and my grandfather won't have me back. You mustn't blame
+      him, Pink. We quarreled and I left. I was as much responsible as he was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment after she turned and disappeared inside the pharmacy door he
+      stood there, then he put on his hat and strode down the street, unhappy
+      and perplexed. If only she had needed him, if she had not looked so
+      self-possessed and so ever so faintly defiant, as though she dared him to
+      pity her, he would have known what to do. All he needed was to be needed.
+      His open face was full of trouble. It was unthinkable that Lily should be
+      in that center of anarchy; more unthinkable that Doyle might have filled
+      her up with all sorts of wild ideas. Women were queer; they liked
+      theories. A man could have a theory of life and play with it and boast
+      about it, but never dream of living up to it. But give one to a woman, and
+      she chewed on it like a dog on a bone. If those Bolshevists had got hold
+      of Lily&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The encounter had hurt Lily, too. The fine edge of her exaltation was
+      gone, and it did not return during her brief talk with Willy Cameron. He
+      looked much older and very thin; there were lines around his eyes she had
+      never seen before, and she hated seeing him in his present surroundings.
+      But she liked him for his very unconsciousness of those surroundings. One
+      always had to take Willy Cameron as he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like it, Willy?&rdquo; she asked. It had dawned on her, with a sort of
+      panic, that there was really very little to talk about. All that they had
+      had in common lay far in the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's my daily bread, and with bread costing what it does, I cling
+      to it like a limpet to a rock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought you were studying, so you could do something else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to give up the night school. But I'll get back to it sometime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was lost again. She glanced around the little shop, where once Edith
+      Boyd had manicured her nails behind the counter, and where now a
+      middle-aged woman stood with listless eyes looking out over the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You still have Jinx, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily glanced up as he stopped. She had drawn off her gloves, and his eyes
+      had fallen on her engagement ring. To Lily there had always been a feeling
+      of unreality about his declaration of love for her. He had been so
+      restrained, so careful to ask nothing in exchange, so without expectation
+      of return, that she had put it out of her mind as an impulse. She had not
+      dreamed that he could still care, after these months of silence. But he
+      had gone quite white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to be married, Willy,&rdquo; she said, in a low tone. It is doubtful
+      if he could have spoken, just then. And as if to add a finishing touch of
+      burlesque to the meeting, a small boy with a swollen jaw came in just then
+      and demanded something to &ldquo;make it stop hurting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He welcomed the interruption, she saw. He was very professional instantly,
+      and so absorbed for a moment in relieving the child's pain that he could
+      ignore his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's see it,&rdquo; he said in a businesslike, slightly strained voice.
+      &ldquo;Better have it out, old chap. But I'll give you something just to ease it
+      up a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which he proceeded to do. When he came back to Lily he was quite calm and
+      self-possessed. As he had never thought of dramatizing himself, nor
+      thought of himself at all, it did not occur to him that drama requires
+      setting, that tragedy required black velvet rather than tooth-brushes, and
+      that a small boy with an aching tooth was a comedy relief badly
+      introduced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All he knew was that he had somehow achieved a moment in which to steady
+      himself, and to find that a man can suffer horribly and still smile. He
+      did that, very gravely, when he came back to Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you tell me about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is not very much to tell. It is Louis Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The middle-aged clerk had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you have thought over what that means, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants me to marry him. He wants it very much, Willy. And&mdash;I know
+      you don't like him, but he has changed. Women always think they have
+      changed men, I know. But he is very different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure of that,&rdquo; he said, steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something childish about her, he thought. Childish and
+      infinitely touching. He remembered a night at the camp, when some of the
+      troops had departed for over-seas, and he had found her alone and crying
+      in her hut. &ldquo;I just can't let them go,&rdquo; she had sobbed. &ldquo;I just can't.
+      Some of them will never come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wasn't there something of that spirit in her now, the feeling that she
+      could not let Akers go, lest worse befall him? He did not know. All he
+      knew was that she was more like the Lily Cardew he had known then than she
+      had been since her return. And that he worshiped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was anger in him, too. Anger at Anthony Cardew. Anger at the
+      Doyles. And a smoldering, bitter anger at Louis Akers, that he should take
+      the dregs of his life and offer them to her as new wine. That he should
+      dare to link his scheming, plotting days to this girl, so wise and yet so
+      ignorant, so clear-eyed and yet so blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they know at home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to tell mother to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; he said, slowly, &ldquo;there is one thing you ought to do. Go home,
+      make your peace there, and get all this on the right footing. Then have
+      him there. You have never seen him in that environment, yet that is the
+      world he will have to live in, if you marry him. See how he fits there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has that got to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think a minute. Am I quite the same to you here, as I was in the camp?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw her honest answer in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The new movement was growing rapidly, and with a surprising catholicity of
+      range. Already it included lawyers and doctors, chauffeurs, butchers,
+      clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truck gardeners from the surrounding
+      county, railroad employees, and some of the strikers from the mills, men
+      who had obeyed their union order to quit work, but had obeyed it
+      unwillingly; men who resented bitterly the invasion of the ranks of labor
+      by the lawless element which was fomenting trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan had joined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers, one of
+      the cards of the new Vigilance Committee was being inspected with cynical
+      amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices in the Searing
+      Building. They studied it with interest, while the man who had brought it
+      stood by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where'd you pick it up, Cusick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of our men brought it into the store. Said you might want to see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three men bent over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. During the day
+      two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made a pretense of
+      business at such times as the door opened, or when an occasional client,
+      seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates. At such times the clerks
+      were politely regretful. The firm's contracts were all they could handle
+      for months ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably
+      professional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls,
+      waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved to be
+      accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or less fluency, with
+      Croats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pails and
+      brushes, soap and ladders. But there was a great safe also, and its
+      compartments were filled with pamphlets in many tongues, a supply
+      constantly depleted and yet never diminishing. Workmen, carrying out the
+      pails of honest labor, carried them loaded down with the literature it was
+      their only business to circulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrine of no
+      God; of no government, and of no church; of the confiscation of private
+      property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape, arson and pillage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Its theatres
+      were crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels. Two classes of people were
+      spending money prodigally; women with shawls over their heads, women who
+      in all their peasant lives had never owned a hat, drove in automobiles to
+      order their winter supply of coal, and vast amounts of liquors were being
+      bought by the foreign element against the approaching prohibition law, and
+      stored in untidy cellars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reaction from
+      war. The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of the wealthy, and
+      with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall. Among the list of
+      debutantes Lily's name always appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were being ground the
+      professional and salaried men with families, the women clerks, the vast
+      army who asked nothing but the right to work and live. They went through
+      their days doggedly, with little anxious lines around their eyes,
+      suffering a thousand small deprivations, bewildered, tortured with
+      apprehension of to-morrow, and yet patiently believing that, as things
+      could not be worse, they must soon commence to improve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's bound to clear up soon,&rdquo; said Joe Wilkinson over the back fence one
+      night late in June, to Willy Cameron. Joe supported a large family of
+      younger brothers and sisters in the house next door, and was employed in a
+      department store. &ldquo;I figure it this way&mdash;both sides need each other,
+      don't they? Something like marriage, you know. It'll all be over in six
+      months. Only I'm thanking heaven just now it's summer, because our kids
+      are hell on shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;What are you doing over there, anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait and see,&rdquo; said Joe, cryptically. &ldquo;If you think you're going to be
+      the only Central Park in this vicinity you've got to think again.&rdquo; He
+      hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons were searching for
+      worms in the overturned garden mold. &ldquo;How's Edith?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's all right, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seeing anybody yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet. In a day or so she'll be downstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might tell her I've been asking about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in Joel's voice that caught Willy Cameron's attention.
+      He thought about Joe a great deal that night. Joe was another one who must
+      never know about Edith's trouble. The boy had little enough, and if he had
+      built a dream about Edith Boyd he must keep his dream. He was rather
+      discouraged that night, was Willy Cameron, and he began to think that
+      dreams were the best things in life. They were a sort of sanctuary to
+      which one fled to escape realities. Perhaps no reality was ever as
+      beautiful as one's dream of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily had passed very definitely out of his life. Sometimes during his rare
+      leisure he walked to Cardew Way through the warm night, and past the Doyle
+      house, but he never saw her, and because it did not occur to him that she
+      might want to see him he never made an attempt to call. Always after those
+      futile excursions he was inclined to long silences, and only Jinx could
+      have told how many hours he sat in his room at night, in the second-hand
+      easy chair he had bought, pipe in hand and eyes on nothing in particular,
+      lost in a dream world where the fields bore a strong resemblance to the
+      parade ground of an army camp, and through which field he and Lily
+      wandered like children, hand in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had many things to think of. So grave were the immediate problems,
+      of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd and Edith, that a little of his fine frenzy
+      as to the lurking danger of revolution departed from him. The meetings in
+      the back room at the pharmacy took on a political bearing, and Hendricks
+      was generally the central figure. The ward felt that Mr. Hendricks was
+      already elected, and called him &ldquo;Mr. Mayor.&rdquo; At the same time the steel
+      strike pursued a course of comparative calm. At Friendship and at Baxter
+      there had been rioting, and a fatality or two, but the state constabulary
+      had the situation well in hand. On a Sunday morning Willy Cameron went out
+      to Baxter on the trolley, and came home greatly comforted. The cool-eyed
+      efficiency of the state police reassured him. He compared them,
+      disciplined, steady, calm with the calmness of their dangerous calling,
+      with the rabble of foreigners who shuffled along the sidewalks, and he
+      felt that his anxiety had been rather absurd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentioned in
+      the newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spent much
+      time in searching for these notices, and then in painfully cutting them
+      out and pasting them in a book. On those days when there was nothing about
+      him she felt thwarted, and was liable to sharp remarks on newspapers in
+      general, and on those of the city in particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off like other
+      strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd, having plowed the field for
+      sedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a talk with
+      Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early in
+      July, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches, and he placed
+      her, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor. Dan had brought her
+      down and had made a real effort to be kind, but his suspicion of the
+      situation made it difficult for him to dissemble, and soon he went out.
+      Ellen was on the doorstep, and through the open window came the shrieks of
+      numerous little Wilkinsons wearing out expensive shoe-leather on the brick
+      pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Cameron talking
+      with a sort of determined optimism. After a time he realized that she was
+      not even listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd close the window,&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;Those crazy Wilkinson
+      kids make such a racket. I want to tell you something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo; He closed the window and stood looking down at her. &ldquo;Are you
+      sure you want me to hear it?&rdquo; he asked gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It is not about myself. I've been reading the newspapers while I've
+      been shut away up there, Willy. It kept me from thinking. And if things
+      are as bad as they say I'd better tell you, even if I get into trouble
+      doing it. I will, probably. Murder's nothing to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are 'them'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You get the police to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, in the
+      Searing Building.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that? The police will want
+      something definite to go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know very much. I met somebody there, once or twice, at night.
+      And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer of the desk in the
+      back room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn't matter now. Tell them to
+      examine the safe, too. I don't know what's in it. Dynamite, maybe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn't much
+      to go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk,&rdquo; she said
+      briefly, and before that sordid picture Willy Cameron was silent. After a
+      time he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't tell me the name of the man you met there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Don't ask me, Willy. That's between him and me.&rdquo; He got up and took a
+      restless turn or two about the little rooms. Edith's problem had begun to
+      obsess him. Not for long would it be possible to keep her condition from
+      Mrs. Boyd. He was desperately at a loss for some course to pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever thought,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;that this man, whoever he is,
+      ought to marry you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith's face set like a flint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to marry him,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I wouldn't marry him if he was the
+      last man on earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixed on Louis
+      Akers, but he could not be sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't tell you his name, either,&rdquo; Edith added, shrewishly. Then her
+      voice softened. &ldquo;I will tell you this, Willy,&rdquo; she said wistfully. &ldquo;I was
+      a good girl until I knew him. I'm not saying that to let myself out. It's
+      the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a good girl now,&rdquo; he said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he was going out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And we may go
+      on and have a talk with the Chief of Police. If you are right it may be
+      important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen now and
+      then looked in to see if she was comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse at
+      that. But suppose they trapped Louis Akers in the Searing Building?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back with her the
+      news of the family. At first she had sternly refused to talk about the
+      Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room had been long and
+      monotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken the form, when she
+      could talk, of incessant questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leaving home,
+      and called her a poor thing in her heart. Quite lately she had heard that
+      if Lily was not already engaged she probably would be, soon. Now her
+      motives were mixed, and her emotions confused. She had wanted to tell
+      Willy Cameron what she knew, but she wanted Lily to marry Louis Akers. She
+      wanted that terribly. Then Lily would be out of the way, and&mdash;Willy
+      was not like Dan; he did not seem to think her forever lost. He had always
+      been thoughtful, but lately he had been very tender with her. Men did
+      strange things sometimes. He might be willing to forget, after a long
+      time. She could board the child out somewhere, if it lived. Sometimes they
+      didn't live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if they arrested Louis, Lily Cardew would fling him aside like an old
+      shoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She closed her eyes. That opened a vista of possibilities she would not
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs, moved to
+      sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its close. If that were life
+      she did not want it, with its drab days and futile effort, its incessant
+      deprivations, its hands, gnarled with work that got nowhere, its greatest
+      blessing sleep and forgetfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother,&rdquo; she said from the
+      doorway. &ldquo;How's the pain down your arm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring me the mucilage, Edie,&rdquo; requested Mrs. Boyd. She was propped up in
+      bed and surrounded by newspapers. &ldquo;I've found Willy's name again. I've got
+      fourteen now. Where's the scissors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know, and still sit
+      among her pillows, snipping?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Mrs. Boyd, &ldquo;did anybody feed Jinx? That Ellen is so
+      saving that she grudges him a bone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looks all right,&rdquo; said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe the Lord
+      did that for people, when they reached a certain point. Maybe He took away
+      the fear of death, by showing after years of it that life was not so
+      valuable after all. She remembered her own facing of eternity, and her
+      dread of what lay beyond. She had prayed first, because she wanted to have
+      some place on the other side. She had prayed to be received young and
+      whole and without child. And her mother&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater than life,
+      and that was love. Her mother was upheld by love. That was what the
+      eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the love of her
+      starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing death, because his hand was
+      close by to hold to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw what
+      love might be, and might do. She held out both hands in the darkness, but
+      no strong and friendly clasp caught them close. If she could only have him
+      to cling to, to steady her wavering feet along the gray path that
+      stretched ahead, years and years of it. Youth. Middle age. Old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd only drag him down,&rdquo; she muttered bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's story,
+      and together late that evening they saw the Chief of Police at his house.
+      Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated putting a watch on the
+      offices of the Myers Housecleaning Company and thus ultimately getting the
+      heads of the organization. But the Chief was unwilling to delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every day means more of their infernal propaganda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and if this
+      girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to get the outfit now.
+      Those clerks, for instance&mdash;we'll get some information out of them.
+      That sort always squeals. They're a cheap lot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to ball it up, of course,&rdquo; Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly, on the
+      way home. &ldquo;Won't wait, because if Akers gets in he's out, and he wants to
+      make a big strike first. I'll drop in to-morrow evening and tell you
+      what's happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came into the pharmacy the next evening, with a bundle of red-bound
+      pamphlets under his arm, and a look of disgust on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did I tell you, Cameron?&rdquo; he demanded, breathing heavily. &ldquo;Yes, they
+      got them all right. Got a safe full of stuff so inflammable that, since
+      I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow up myself. It's worse than that
+      first lot I showed you. They got the two clerks, and a half-dozen
+      foreigners, too. And that's all they got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't talk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the Myers
+      Housecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault, and
+      they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false arrest.
+      They'll have to let them go, son. Here. You can do most everything. Can
+      you read Croatian? No? Well, here's something in English to cut your
+      wisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the government is where these fellows
+      start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was intelligent, that propaganda. Willy Cameron thought he saw behind
+      it Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew the discontents of the
+      world, and would fatten by them; men who, secretly envious of the upper
+      classes and unable to attain to them, would pull all men to their own
+      level, or lower. Men who cloaked their own jealousies with the garb of
+      idealism. Intelligent it was, dangerous, and imminent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pamphlets spoke of &ldquo;the day.&rdquo; It was a Prussian phrase. The revolution
+      was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered loot as a reward. They
+      appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust and greed and
+      idleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a signal the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and rule itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out at the
+      city he loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Will our
+      people take it up? Is the American nation going crazy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron stoutly. &ldquo;They're about as able to
+      overthrow the government as you are to shove over the Saint Elmo Hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could do that, with a bomb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizeable hole in it. It's
+      the hole we don't want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To old Anthony the early summer had been full of humiliations, which he
+      carried with an increased arrogance of bearing that alienated even his own
+      special group at his club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound the man,&rdquo; said Judge Peterson, holding forth on the golf links
+      one Sunday morning while Anthony Cardew, hectic with rage, searched for a
+      lost ball and refused to drop another. &ldquo;He'll hold us up all morning, for
+      that ball, just as he tries to hold up all progress.&rdquo; He lowered his
+      voice. &ldquo;What's happened to the granddaughter, anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Senator Lovell lighted a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Turned Bolshevist,&rdquo; he said, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge gazed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a pretty serious indictment, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's what I hear. She's living in Jim Doyle's house. I guess
+      that's the answer. Hey, Cardew! D'you want these young cubs behind us to
+      play through, or are you going to show some sense and come on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard, fighting his father tooth and nail, was compelled to a reluctant
+      admiration of his courage. But there was no cordiality between them. They
+      were in accord again, as to the strike, although from different angles.
+      Both of them knew that they were fighting for very life; both of them felt
+      that the strikers' demands meant the end of industry, meant that the man
+      who risked money in a business would eventually cease to control that
+      business, although if losses came it would be he, and not the workmen, who
+      bore them. Howard had gone as far as he could in concessions, and the
+      result was only the demand for more. The Cardews, father and son, stood
+      now together, their backs against a wall, and fought doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But only anxiety held them together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty, but he was
+      rather late with his support, and in private he retained his cynical
+      attitude. He had not come over at all until he learned that Louis Akers
+      was an opposition candidate. At that his wrath knew no bounds and the next
+      day he presented a large check to the campaign committee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks, hearing of it, was moved to a dry chuckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you hear him?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;He'd stalk into headquarters as
+      important as an office boy who's been sent to the bank for money, and he'd
+      slam down his check and say just two words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which would be?&rdquo; inquired Willy Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Buy 'em',&rdquo; quoted Mr. Hendricks. &ldquo;The old boy doesn't know that things
+      have changed since the 80's. This city has changed, my lad. It's voting
+      now the way it thinks, right or wrong. That's why these foreign language
+      papers can play the devil with us. The only knowledge the poor wretches
+      have got of us is what they're given to read. And most of it stinks of
+      sedition. Queer thing, this thinking. A fellow can think himself into
+      murder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The strike was going along quietly enough. There had been rioting through
+      the country, but not of any great significance. It was in reality a sort
+      of trench warfare, with each side dug in and waiting for the other to show
+      himself in the open. The representatives of the press, gathered in the
+      various steel cities, with automobiles arranged for to take them quickly
+      to any disturbance that might develop, found themselves with little news
+      for the telegraph, and time hung heavy on their hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner, and
+      realized with a shock that she was looking thin and much older. He kissed
+      her and then held her off and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got to keep your courage up, dear,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don't think it
+      will be long now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But something has happened. Don't look like that, Grace. It's not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hasn't married that man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't stay there.
+      Even Elinor&mdash;&rdquo; he checked himself. &ldquo;I'll tell you after dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one speech
+      rather at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far as I can make out, Howard,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this man Hendricks is
+      getting pretty strong. He has a young fellow talking for him who gets over
+      pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had better be bought off. He
+      goes around shouting that he's a plain man, after the support of the plain
+      people. Although I'm damned if I know what he means by that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. He placed the
+      blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings away from home as
+      possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to the
+      city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over to his
+      enemy, his own son, so long his tool and his creature, merely staying in
+      his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to his lawyers
+      with new protests almost daily! A man was no longer master even in his own
+      home. His employees would not work for him, his family disobeyed him, his
+      government held him up and shook him. In the good old days&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going out,&rdquo; he said, as he rose from the table. &ldquo;Grace, that chef is
+      worse than the last. You'd better send him off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't get any one else. I have tried for weeks. There are no servants
+      anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried&mdash;it is useless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No cooks, either. No servants. Even Anthony recognized that, with the
+      exception of Grayson, the servants in his house were vaguely hostile to
+      the family. They gave grudging service, worked short hours, and, the only
+      class of labor to which the high cost of food was a negligible matter,
+      demanded wages he considered immoral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what the world's coming to,&rdquo; he snarled. &ldquo;Well, I'm off.
+      Thank God, there are still clubs for a man to go to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to have a talk with you, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't. I want you to listen, and I want Grace to hear, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Grayson had
+      brought liqueurs and coffee and had gone, Howard drew the card from his
+      pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I met young Denslow to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He came in to see me. As a matter
+      of fact, I signed a card he had brought along, and I brought one for you,
+      sir. Shall I read it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You evidently intend to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard read the card slowly. Its very simplicity was impressive, as
+      impressive as it had been when Willy Cameron scrawled the words on the
+      back of an old envelope. Anthony listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what does that mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That the men behind this movement believe that there is going to be a
+      general strike, with an endeavor to turn it into a revolution. Perhaps
+      only local, but these things have a tendency to spread. Denslow had some
+      literature which referred to an attempt to take over the city. They have
+      other information, too, all pointing the same way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strikers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born. Their plans are
+      fairly comprehensive; they mean to dynamite the water works, shut down the
+      gas and electric plants, and cut off all food supplies. Then when they
+      have starved and terrorized us into submission, we'll accept their terms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What terms?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose. They intend to take over the banks,
+      for one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe it. It's incredible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They meant to do it in Seattle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And didn't. Don't forget that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They may have learned some things from Seattle,&rdquo; Howard said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have the state troops.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the same time?
+      Or rioting in other places, carefully planned to draw the troops and
+      constabulary away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced. But he
+      had no faith in the plain people, and said so. &ldquo;They'll see property
+      destroyed and never lift a hand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Didn't I stand by in
+      Pittsburgh during the railroad riots, and watch them smile while the yards
+      burned? Because the railroads meant capital to them, and they hate
+      capital.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely,&rdquo; said Howard, &ldquo;but after twenty-four hours they were fighting
+      like demons to restore law and order. It is&rdquo;&mdash;he fingered the card&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      save that twenty-four hours that this organization is being formed. It is
+      secret. Did I tell you that? And the idea originated with the young man
+      you spoke about as supporting Hendricks&mdash;you met him here once, a
+      friend of Lily's. His name is Cameron&mdash;William Wallace Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony remained silent, but the small jagged vein on his forehead
+      swelled with anger. After a time:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose Doyle is behind this?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;It sounds like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the supposition. But they have nothing on him yet; he is too
+      shrewd for that. And that leads to something else. Lily cannot continue to
+      stay there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't send her there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Actually, no. In effect&mdash;but we needn't go into that now. The
+      situation is very serious. I can imagine that nothing could fit better
+      into his plans than to have her there. She gives him a cachet of
+      respectability. Do you want that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is probably one of them now. God knows how much of his rotten
+      doctrine she has absorbed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard flushed, but he kept his temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His theories, possibly. His practice, no. She certainly has no idea... it
+      has come to this, father. She must have a home somewhere, and if it cannot
+      be here, Grace and I must make one for her elsewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably Anthony Cardew had never respected Howard more than at that
+      moment, or liked him less.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both you and Grace are free to make a home where you please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We prefer it here, but you must see yourself that things cannot go on as
+      they are. We have waited for you to see that, all three of us, and now
+      this new situation makes it imperative to take some action.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't have that fellow Akers coming here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would hardly come, under the circumstances. Besides, her friendship
+      with him is only a part of her revolt. If she comes home it will be with
+      the understanding that she does not see him again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Revolt?&rdquo; said old Anthony, raising his eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what it actually was. She found her liberty interfered with, and
+      she staged her own small rebellion. It was very human, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very Cardew,&rdquo; said old Anthony, and smiled faintly. He had, to
+      tell the truth, developed a grudging admiration for his granddaughter in
+      the past two months. He saw in her many of his own qualities, good and
+      bad. And, more than he cared to own, he had missed her and the young life
+      she had brought into the quiet house. Most important of all, she was the
+      last of the Cardews. Although his capitulation when it came was curt, he
+      was happier than he had been for weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring her home,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but tell her about Akers. If she says that is
+      off, I'll forget the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On her way to her room that night Grace Cardew encountered Mademoiselle, a
+      pale, unhappy Mademoiselle, who seemed to spend her time mostly in Lily's
+      empty rooms or wandering about corridors. Whenever the three members of
+      the family were together she would retire to her own quarters, and there
+      feverishly with her rosary would pray for a softening of hearts. She did
+      not comprehend these Americans, who were so kind to those beneath them and
+      so hard to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to see you, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; Grace said, not very steadily. &ldquo;I
+      have good news for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle began to tremble. &ldquo;She is coming? Lily is coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Will you have some fresh flowers put in her rooms in the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Mademoiselle forgot her years of repression, and flinging her
+      arms around Grace's neck she kissed her. Grace held her for a moment,
+      patting her shoulder gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must try to make her very happy, Mademoiselle. I think things will be
+      different now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle stood back and wiped her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she must be different, too,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She is sweet and good, but
+      she is strong of will, too. The will to do, to achieve, that is one thing,
+      and very good. But the will to go one's own way, that is another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young are always headstrong, Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, alone later on, her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered. If
+      youth were the indictment against Lily, was she not still young? It took
+      years, or suffering, or sometimes both, to break the will of youth and
+      chasten its spirit. God grant Lily might not have suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself, and
+      thus save her the humiliation of coming back alone. All morning housemaids
+      were busy in Lily's rooms. Rugs were shaken, floors waxed and rubbed, the
+      silver frames and vases in her sitting room polished to refulgence. And
+      all morning Mademoiselle scolded and ran suspicious fingers into corners,
+      and arranged and re-arranged great boxes of flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long before the time she had ordered the car Grace was downstairs, dressed
+      for the street, and clad in cool shining silk, was pacing the shaded hall.
+      There was a vague air of expectation about the old house. In a room off
+      the pantry the second man was polishing the buttons of his livery, using a
+      pasteboard card with a hole in it to save the fabric beneath. Grayson
+      pottered about in the drawing room, alert for the parlor maid's sins of
+      omission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The telephone in the library rang, and Grayson answered it, while Grace
+      stood in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A message from Miss Lily,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Mrs. Doyle has telephoned that Miss
+      Lily is on her way here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace was vaguely disappointed. She had wanted to go to Lily with her good
+      news, to bring her home bag and baggage, to lead her into the house and to
+      say, in effect, that this was home, her home. She had felt that they, and
+      not Lily, should take the first step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went upstairs, and taking off her hat, smoothed her soft dark hair.
+      She did not want Lily to see how she had worried; she eyed herself
+      carefully for lines. Then she went down, to more waiting, and for the
+      first time, to a little doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been. There was no doubt
+      about her close embrace of her mother, her happiness at seeing her. She
+      did not remove her gloves, however, and after she had put Grace in a chair
+      and perched herself on the arm of it, there was a little pause. Each was
+      preparing to tell something, each hesitated. Because Grace's task was the
+      easier it was she who spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&mdash;we
+      want you to come home to us again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a queer, strained silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who wants me?&rdquo; Lily asked, unsteadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All of us. Your grandfather, too. He expects to find you here to-night. I
+      can explain to your Aunt Elinor over the telephone, and we can send for
+      your clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room. When she came back
+      her eyes were filled with tears, and her left hand was bare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It nearly kills me to hurt you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but&mdash;what about this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace seemed frozen in her chair. At the sight of her mother's face Lily
+      flung herself on her knees beside the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother, mother,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you must know how I love you. Love you both.
+      Don't look like that. I can't bear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace turned away her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't love us. You can't. Not if you are going to marry that man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; Lily begged, desperately, &ldquo;let me come home. Let me bring him
+      here. I'll wait, if you'll only do that. He is different; I know all that
+      you want to say about his past. He has never had a real chance in all his
+      life. He won't belong at first, but&mdash;he's a man, mother, a strong
+      man. And it's awfully important. He can do so much, if he only will. And
+      he says he will, if I marry him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand you,&rdquo; Grace said coldly. &ldquo;What can a man like that do,
+      but wreck all our lives?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down. &ldquo;I'll tell you
+      about that later,&rdquo; she said, and slowly got to her feet. &ldquo;Is that all,
+      mother? You won't see him? I can't bring him here? Isn't there any
+      compromise? Won't you meet me half-way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you say half-way, you mean all the way, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted you so,&rdquo; Lily said, drearily, &ldquo;I need you so just now. I am
+      going to be married, and I have no one to go to. Aunt Elinor doesn't
+      understand, either. Every way I look I find&mdash;I suppose I can't come
+      back at all, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your grandfather's condition was that you never see this Louis Akers
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily's resentment left her. Anger was a thing for small matters, trivial
+      affairs. This that was happening, an irrevocable break with her family,
+      was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears. She wondered dully if any
+      man were worth all this. Perhaps she knew, sub-consciously, that Louis
+      Akers was not. All her exaltation was gone, and in its stead was a sort of
+      dogged determination to see the thing through now, at any cost; to re-make
+      Louis into the man he could be, to build her own house of life, and having
+      built it, to live in it as best she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a condition I cannot fulfill, mother. I am engaged to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you love him more than you do any of us, or all of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. It is different,&rdquo; she said vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kissed her mother very tenderly when she went away, but there was a
+      feeling of finality in them both. Mademoiselle, waiting at the top of the
+      stairs, heard the door close and could not believe her ears. Grace went
+      upstairs, her face a blank before the servants, and shut herself in her
+      room. And in Lily's boudoir the roses spread a heavy, funereal sweetness
+      over the empty room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder. In some
+      cities there had been rioting, but half-hearted and easily controlled.
+      Almost without exception it was the foreign and unassimilated element that
+      broke the peace. Alien women spat on the state police, and flung stones at
+      them. Here and there property was destroyed. A few bomb outrages filled
+      the newspapers with great scare-heads, and sent troops and a small army of
+      secret service men here and there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the American Federation of Labor a stocky little man grimly fought to
+      oppose the Radical element, which was slowly gaining ground, and at the
+      same time to retain his leadership. The great steel companies, united at
+      last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded, stood doggedly
+      and courageously together, waiting for a return of sanity to the world.
+      The world seemed to have gone mad. Everywhere in the country production
+      was reduced by the cessation of labor, and as a result the cost of living
+      was mounting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And every strike lost in the end. Labor had yet to learn that to cease to
+      labor may express a grievance, but that in itself it righted no wrongs.
+      Rather, it turned that great weapon, public opinion, without which no
+      movement may succeed, against it. And that to stand behind the country in
+      war was not enough. It must stand behind the country in peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
+      The weak link in the labor chain was its Radical element. Rioters were
+      arrested with union cards in their pockets. In vain the unions protested
+      their lack of sympathy with the unruly element. The vast respectable
+      family of union labor found itself accused of the sins of the minority,
+      and lost standing thereby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Friendship the unruly element was very strong. For a time it held its
+      meetings in a hall. When that was closed it resorted to the open air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused polo
+      field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers, and to find a
+      high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being built around the
+      field, with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In a few days
+      the fence was finished, only to be partly demolished the next night,
+      secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to hold
+      meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly held in
+      the woods near the town, but the rendezvous was not located.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found one
+      morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate was shot
+      through the heart, from ambush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic riotings
+      began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause, and to end as
+      suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts, but
+      one or two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not all foreign
+      strikers from the mills. They were garment workers, hotel waiters, a
+      rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to no end,
+      apparently. They began with a chance word, fought their furious way for an
+      hour or so, and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and torn clothing
+      behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable size.
+      The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majority of the
+      rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons, lengths of pipe
+      and short, wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until the police
+      found themselves suddenly and mysteriously reenforced by a cool-headed
+      number of citizens, led by a tall thin man who limped slightly, and who
+      disposed his heterogeneous support with a few words and considerable
+      skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to investigate an
+      arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard a conversation between two
+      roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the battle, for comfort and a little
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you beat that, Henry?&rdquo; said one. &ldquo;Where the hell'd they come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Search me,&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too. D'you
+      notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how to
+      fight, I'll tell the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee. Willy
+      Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or intention,
+      purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contrary to the plans of
+      their leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black eye at home after the
+      recent outburst, sized up the situation shrewdly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can boil a kettle too hard,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and then the lid pops off.
+      Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire a little high,
+      that's all. They'll quit now, because they want to get us off guard later.
+      You and your committee can take a vacation, unless you can set them to
+      electioneering for me. They've had enough for a while, the devils. They'll
+      wait now for Akers to get in and make things easy for them. Mind my words,
+      boy. That's the game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of order still occurred,
+      but no big ones. To the headquarters in the Denslow Bank came an
+      increasing volume of information, to be duly docketed and filed. Some of
+      it was valueless. Now and then there came in something worth following up.
+      Thus one night Pink and a picked band, following a vague clew, went in
+      automobiles to the state borderline, and held up and captured two trucks
+      loaded with whiskey and destined for Friendship and Baxter. He reported to
+      Willy Cameron late that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Hurt like sin to
+      do it, though. Felt like the fellow who shot the last passenger pigeon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, in the Boyd
+      house things were rapidly approaching a climax, and that through Dan. He
+      was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched. The strike was on his
+      nerves; he felt his position keenly, resented Willy Cameron supporting the
+      family, and had developed a curious jealousy of his mother's affection for
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an open break
+      came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go to work again.
+      They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to and from the kitchen,
+      carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift could not make it other than
+      scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plate away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going back to work, are you?&rdquo; he sneered. &ldquo;And how long do you think
+      you'll be able to work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You keep quiet,&rdquo; Edith flared at him. &ldquo;I'm going to work. That's all you
+      need to know. I can't sit here and let a man who doesn't belong to us
+      provide every bite we eat, if you can.&rdquo; Willy Cameron got up and closed
+      the door, for Mrs. Boyd an uncanny ability to hear much that went on
+      below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said when he came back, &ldquo;we might as well have this out. Dan has
+      a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plan something.&rdquo; He turned
+      to Dan. &ldquo;It must be kept from your mother, Dan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plan something!&rdquo; Dan snarled. &ldquo;I know what to plan, all right. I'll find
+      the&mdash;&rdquo; he broke into foul, furious language, but suddenly Willy
+      Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know who it is,&rdquo; Dan said, more quietly, &ldquo;and he's got to marry her, or
+      I'll kill him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, do you? Well, you don't,&rdquo; Edith said, &ldquo;and I won't marry him
+      anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will marry him. Do you think I'm going to see mother disgraced, sick
+      as she is, and let you get away with it? Where does Akers live? You know,
+      don't you? You've been there, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All Edith's caution was forgotten in her shame and anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; she said, hysterically, &ldquo;but I won't tell you. And I won't
+      marry him. I hate him. If you go to him he'll beat you to death.&rdquo; Suddenly
+      the horrible picture of Dan in Akers' brutal hands overwhelmed her. &ldquo;Dan,
+      you won't go?&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;He'll kill you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lot you'd care,&rdquo; he said, coldly. &ldquo;As if we didn't have enough already!
+      As if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson, next door, and been a
+      decent woman. And instead, you're a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet, Dan,&rdquo; Willy Cameron interrupted him. &ldquo;That sort of talk doesn't
+      help any. Edith is right. If you go to Akers there will be a fight. And
+      that's no way to protect her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God!&rdquo; Dan muttered. &ldquo;With all the men in the world, to choose that rotten
+      anarchist!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there in the
+      badly lighted little room around the disordered table, with Ellen grimly
+      listening in the doorway, and the odors of cooking still heavy in the air.
+      Edith sat there, her hands on the table, staring ahead, and recounted her
+      wrongs. She had never had a chance. Home had always been a place to get
+      away from. Nobody had cared what became of her. And hadn't she tried to
+      get out of the way? Only they all did their best to make her live. She
+      wished she had died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan, huddled low in his chair, his legs sprawling, stared at nothing with
+      hopeless eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards Willy Cameron could remember nothing of the scene in detail. He
+      remembered its setting, but of all the argument and quarreling only one
+      thing stood out distinctly, and that was Edith's acceptance of Dan's
+      accusation. It was Akers, then. And Lily Cardew was going to marry him.
+      Was in love with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he know how things are?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he offer to do anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him? He does not. And don't you go to him and try to get him to marry me.
+      I tell you I'd die first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left them there, sitting in the half light, and going out into the hall
+      picked up his hat. Mrs. Boyd heard him and called to him, and before he
+      went out he ran upstairs to her room. It seemed to him, as he bent over
+      her, that her lips were bluer than ever, her breath a little shallower and
+      more difficult. Her untouched supper tray was beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't hungry,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;Seems to me, Willy, if you'd let me go
+      downstairs so I could get some of my own cooking I'd eat better. Ellen's
+      all right, but I kind o' crave sweet stuff, and she don't like making
+      desserts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be down before long,&rdquo; he assured her. &ldquo;And making me pies.
+      Remember those pies you used to bake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always were a great one for my pies,&rdquo; she said, complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her when he left. He had always marveled at the strange lack of
+      demonstrativeness in the household, and he knew that she valued his small
+      tendernesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now remember,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;light out at ten o'clock, and no going
+      downstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke. When you
+      do, it's my pipe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think you hardly ever go to bed, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me? Get too much sleep. I'm getting fat with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stale little joke was never stale with her. He left her smiling, and
+      went down the stairs and out into the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to find out from
+      him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd's accusation. He
+      believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty before he did
+      anything. Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men. If he could get the
+      facts from Louis Akers&mdash;but he had no idea of what he would do then.
+      He couldn't very well tell Lily, but her people might do something. Or
+      Mrs. Doyle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than marry
+      Akers, under the circumstances. That her failure to marry Louis Akers
+      would mean anything as to his own relationship with her he never even
+      considered. All that had been settled long ago, when she said she did not
+      love him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for an hour
+      or two he walked the streets. The city seemed less majestic to him than
+      usual; its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, it is true, but those
+      very streets hid also vice and degradation, and ugly passions. They
+      sheltered, but also they concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told that Mr.
+      Akers had come in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Akers himself who opened the door. Because the night was hot he had
+      shed coat and shirt, and his fine torso, bare to the shoulders and at the
+      neck, gleamed in the electric light. Willy Cameron had not seen him since
+      those spring days when he had made his casual, bold-eyed visits to Edith
+      at the pharmacy, and he had a swift insight into the power this man must
+      have over women. He himself was tall; but Akers was taller, fully muscled,
+      his head strongly set on a neck like a column. But he surmised that the
+      man was soft, out of condition. And he had lost the first elasticity of
+      youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness when
+      he opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Making a late call, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I had to say wouldn't wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in. The
+      room was very hot, for a small fire, littered as to its edges with papers,
+      burned in the grate. Although he knew that Akers had guessed the meaning
+      of his visit at once and was on guard, there was a moment or two when each
+      sparred for an opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down. Have a cigarette?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thanks.&rdquo; He remained standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or a high-ball? I still have some fairly good whiskey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I came to ask you a question, Mr. Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, answering questions is one of the best little things I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know about Edith Boyd's condition. She says you are responsible. Is
+      that true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Akers was not unprepared. Sooner or later he had known that Edith
+      would tell. But what he had not counted on was that she would tell any one
+      who knew Lily. He had felt that her leaving the pharmacy had eliminated
+      that chance. &ldquo;What do you mean, her condition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know. She says she has told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're pretty thick with her yourself, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I happen to live at the Boyd house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was keeping himself well under control, but Akers saw his hand clench,
+      and resorted to other tactics. He was not angry himself, but he was wary
+      now; he considered that life was unnecessarily complicated, and that he
+      had a distinct grievance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have asked you a question, Mr. Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't expect me to answer it, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have come here to talk to me about marrying her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won't marry you,&rdquo; Willy Cameron said steadily. &ldquo;That's not the point
+      I want your own acknowledgment of responsibility, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved. He lighted a cigarette
+      and over the match stared at the other man's quiet face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he said suddenly. &ldquo;I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility. She
+      knew her way around long before I ever saw her. Ask her. She can't lie
+      about it. I can produce other men to prove what I say. I played around
+      with her, but I don't know whose child that is, and I don't believe she
+      does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are lying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. But I can produce the goods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron went very pale. His hands were clenched again, and Akers
+      eyed him warily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None of that,&rdquo; he cautioned. &ldquo;I don't know what interest you've got in
+      this, and I don't give a God-damn. But you'd better not try any funny
+      business with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron smiled. Much the sort of smile he had worn during the
+      rioting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like to soil my hands on you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I don't mind telling
+      you that any man who ruins a girl's life and then tries to get out of it
+      by defaming her, is a skunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers lunged at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time later Mr. William Wallace Cameron descended to the street. He
+      wore his coat collar turned up to conceal the absence of certain articles
+      of wearing apparel which he had mysteriously lost. And he wore, too, a
+      somewhat distorted, grim and entirely complacent smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The city had taken the rioting with a weary philosophy. It was tired of
+      fighting. For two years it had labored at high tension for the European
+      war. It had paid taxes and bought bonds, for the war. It had saved and
+      skimped and denied itself, for the war. And for the war it had made steel,
+      steel for cannon and for tanks, for ships and for railroads. It had
+      labored hard and well, and now all it wanted was to be allowed to get back
+      to normal things. It wanted peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It said, in effect: &ldquo;I have both fought and labored, sacrificed and
+      endured. Give me now my rest of nights, after a day's work. Give me
+      marriage and children. Give me contentment. Give me the things I have
+      loved long since, and lost awhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And because the city craved peace, it was hard to rouse it to its danger.
+      It was war-weary, and its weariness was not of apathy, but of exhaustion.
+      It was not yet ready for new activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, the same night that had seen Willy Cameron's encounter with Akers,
+      it was roused from its lethargy. A series of bomb outrages shook the
+      downtown district. The Denslow Bank was the first to go. Willy Cameron,
+      inspecting a cut lip in his mirror, heard a dull explosion, and ran down
+      to the street. There he was joined by Joe Wilkinson, in trousers over his
+      night shirt, and as they looked, a dull red glare showed against the sky.
+      Joe went back for more clothing, but Willy Cameron ran down the street. At
+      the first corner he heard a second explosion, further away and to the
+      east, but apparently no fire followed it. That, he learned later, was the
+      City Club, founded by Anthony Cardew years before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Denslow Bank was burning. The facade had been shattered and from the
+      interior already poured a steady flow of flame and smoke. He stood among
+      the crowd, while the engines throbbed and the great fire hose lay along
+      the streets, and watched the little upper room where the precious records
+      of the Committee were burning brightly. The front wall gone, the small
+      office stood open to the world, a bright and shameless thing, flaunting
+      its nakedness to the crowd below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered why Providence should so play into the hands of the enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time he happened on Pink Denslow, wandering alone on the outskirts
+      of the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just about kill the governor, this,&rdquo; said Pink, heavily. &ldquo;Don't suppose
+      the watchmen got out, either. Not that they'd care,&rdquo; he added, savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about the vaults? I suppose they are fireproof?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Do you realize that every record we've got has gone? D'you suppose
+      those fellows knew about them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron had been asking himself the same question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble is,&rdquo; Pink went on, &ldquo;you don't know who to trust. They're not all
+      foreigners. Let's get away from here; it makes me sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They wandered through the night together, almost unconsciously in the
+      direction of the City Club, but within a block of it they realized that
+      something was wrong. A hospital ambulance dashed by, its gong ringing
+      wildly, and a fire engine, not pumping, stood at the curb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; Pink said suddenly. &ldquo;There were two explosions. It's just
+      possible&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The club was more sinister than the burning bank; it was a mass of grim
+      wreckage, black and gaping, with now and then the sound of settling
+      masonry, and already dotted with the moving flash-lights of men who
+      searched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Pink this catastrophe was infinitely greater than that of the bank. Men
+      he knew had lived there. There were old club servants who were like family
+      retainers; one or two employees were ex-service men for whom he had found
+      employment. He stood there, with Willy Cameron's hand on his arm, with a
+      new maturity and a vast suffering in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before God,&rdquo; he said solemnly, &ldquo;I swear never to rest until the fellows
+      behind this are tried, condemned and hanged. You've heard it, Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The death list for that night numbered thirteen, the two watchmen at the
+      bank and eleven men at the club, two of them members. Willy Cameron, going
+      home at dawn, exhausted and covered with plaster dust, bought an extra and
+      learned that a third bomb, less powerful, had wrecked the mayor's house.
+      It had been placed under the sleeping porch, and but for the accident of a
+      sick baby the entire family would have been wiped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even his high courage began to waver. His records were gone; that was all
+      to do over again. But what seemed to him the impasse was this fighting in
+      the dark. An unseen enemy, always. And an enemy which combined with skill
+      a total lack of any rules of warfare, which killed here, there and
+      everywhere, as though for the sheer joy of killing. It struck at the high
+      but killed the low. And it had only begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Dominant family traits have a way of skipping one generation and appearing
+      in the next. Lily Cardew at that stage of her life had a considerable
+      amount of old Anthony's obstinacy and determination, although it was
+      softened by a long line of Cardew women behind her, women who had loved,
+      and suffered dominance because they loved. Her very infatuation for Louis
+      Akers, like Elinor's for Doyle, was possibly an inheritance from her
+      fore-mothers, who had been wont to overlook the evil in a man for the
+      strength in him. Only Lily mistook physical strength for moral fibre,
+      insolence and effrontery for courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In both her virtues and her faults, however, irrespective of heredity,
+      Lily represented very fully the girl of her position and period. With no
+      traditions to follow, setting her course by no compass, taught to think
+      but not how to think, resentful of tyranny but unused to freedom, she
+      moved ahead along the path she had elected to follow, blindly and
+      obstinately, yet unhappy and suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her infatuation for Louis Akers had come to a new phase of its rapid
+      development. She had reached that point where a woman realizes that the
+      man she loves is, not a god of strength and wisdom, but a great child who
+      needs her. It is at that point that one of two things happens: the weak
+      woman abandons him, and follows her dream elsewhere. The woman of
+      character, her maternal instinct roused, marries him, bears him children,
+      is both wife and mother to him, and finds in their united weaknesses such
+      strength as she can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her youth and self-sufficiency Lily stood ready to give, rather than to
+      receive. She felt now that he needed her more than she needed him. There
+      was something unconsciously patronizing those days in her attitude toward
+      him, and if he recognized it he did not resent it. Women had always been
+      &ldquo;easy&rdquo; for him. Her very aloofness, her faint condescension, her air of a
+      young grande dame, were a part of her attraction for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when it
+      gains sight, it dies. Already Lily was seeing him with the critical eyes
+      of youth, his loud voice, his over-fastidious dress, his occasional
+      grossnesses. To offset these she placed vast importance on his promise to
+      leave his old associates when she married him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time was very close now. She could not hold him off much longer, and
+      she began to feel, too, that she must soon leave the house on Cardew Way.
+      Doyle's attitude to her was increasingly suspicious and ungracious. She
+      knew that he had no knowledge of Louis's promise, but he began to feel
+      that she was working against him, and showed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in Louis Akers too she began to discern an inclination not to pull out
+      until after the election. He was ambitious, and again and again he urged
+      that he would be more useful for the purpose in her mind if he were
+      elected first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That issue came to a climax the day she had seen her mother and learned
+      the terms on which she might return home. She was alarmed by his noisy
+      anger at the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do sit down, Louis, and be quiet,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You have known their
+      attitude all along, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll show them,&rdquo; he said, thickly. &ldquo;Damned snobs!&rdquo; He glanced at her then
+      uneasily, and her expression put him on his guard. &ldquo;I didn't mean that,
+      little girl. Honestly I didn't. I don't care for myself. It's you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must understand that they think they are acting for my good. And I am
+      not sure,&rdquo; she added, her clear eyes on him, &ldquo;that they are not right. You
+      frighten me sometimes, Louis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But a little later he broke out again. If he wasn't good enough to enter
+      their house, he'd show them something. The election would show them
+      something. They couldn't refuse to receive the mayor of the city. She saw
+      then that he was bent on remaining with Doyle until after the election.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily sat back, listening and thinking. Sometimes she thought that he did
+      not love her at all. He always said he wanted her, but that was different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you love yourself more than you love me, Louis,&rdquo; she said, when
+      he had exhausted himself. &ldquo;I don't believe you know what love is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That brought him to his knees, his arms around her, kissing her hands,
+      begging her not to give him up, and once again her curious sense of
+      responsibility for him triumphed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will marry me soon, dear, won't you?&rdquo; he implored her. But she
+      thought of Willy Cameron, oddly enough, even while his arms were around
+      her; of the difference in the two men. Louis, big, crouching, suppliant
+      and insistent; Willy Cameron, grave, reserved and steady, taking what she
+      now knew was the blow of her engagement like a gentleman and a soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions of men
+      in love, the men who offer much and give little, the others who, out of a
+      deep humility, offer little and give everything they have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end, nothing was settled. After he had gone Lily, went up to
+      Elinor's room. She had found in Elinor lately a sort of nervous tension
+      that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily told her of
+      her visit home, and of her determination to marry Louis within the next
+      few days. Elinor had dropped her sewing and clenched her hands in her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not soon, Lily!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Oh, not soon. Wait a little&mdash;wait two
+      months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two months?&rdquo; Lily said wonderingly. &ldquo;Why two months?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, at the end of two months, nothing would make you marry him,&rdquo;
+       Elinor said, almost violently. &ldquo;I have sat by and waited, because I
+      thought you would surely see your mistake. But now&mdash;Lily, do you envy
+      me my life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Lily said truthfully; &ldquo;but you love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor sat, her eyes downcast and brooding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are different,&rdquo; she said finally. &ldquo;You will break, where I have only
+      bent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she said no more about a delay. She had been passive too long to be
+      able to take any strong initiative now. And all her moral and physical
+      courage she was saving for a great emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cardew Way was far from the center of town, and Lily knew nothing of the
+      bomb outrages of that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she went down to breakfast the next morning she found Jim Doyle
+      pacing the floor of the dining room in a frenzy of rage, a newspaper
+      clenched in his hand. By the window stood Elinor, very pale and with
+      slightly reddened eyes. They had not heard her, and Doyle continued a
+      furious harangue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fools!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Damn such material as I have to work with! This
+      isn't the time, and they know it. I've warned them over and over. The
+      fools!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor saw her then, and made a gesture of warning. But it was too late.
+      Lily had a certain quality of directness, and it did not occur to her to
+      dissemble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is anything wrong?&rdquo; she asked, and went at once to Elinor. She had once
+      or twice before this stood between them for Elinor's protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything is as happy as a May morning,&rdquo; Doyle sneered. &ldquo;Your Aunt
+      Elinor has an unpleasant habit of weeping for joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily stiffened, but Elinor touched her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down and eat your breakfast, Lily,&rdquo; she said, and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle stood staring at Lily angrily. He did not know how much she had
+      heard, how much she knew. At the moment he did not care. He had a reckless
+      impulse to tell her the truth, but his habitual caution prevailed. He
+      forced a cold smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't bother your pretty head about politics,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was equally cold. Her dislike of him had been growing for weeks,
+      coupled to a new and strange distrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Politics? You seem to take your politics very hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; he said urbanely. &ldquo;Particularly when I am fighting my wife's
+      family. May I pour you some coffee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And pour it he did, eyeing her furtively the while, and brought it to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I give you a word of advice, Lily?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Don't treat your
+      husband to tears at breakfast&mdash;unless you want to see him romping off
+      to some other woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he cared to do that I shouldn't want him anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a self-sufficient child, aren't you? Well, the best of us do it,
+      sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had successfully changed the trend of her thoughts, and he went out,
+      carrying the newspaper with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, he began to feel that her presence in the house was a
+      menace. With all her theories he knew that a word of the truth would send
+      her flying, breathless with outrage, out of his door. He could quite
+      plainly visualize that home-coming of hers. The instant steps that would
+      be taken against him, old Anthony on the wire appealing to the governor,
+      Howard closeted with the Chief of Police, an instant closing of the net.
+      And he was not ready for the clash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No. She must stay. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling
+      and mouthing! In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced
+      the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and
+      not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in the
+      hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself the
+      head, not of the nation&mdash;there would be no nation, as such&mdash;but
+      of the country. The very incidents of the night before, blundering as they
+      were, showed him the ease with which the new force could be applied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was drunk with power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon, in the person of Pink
+      Denslow. She had assumed some of Elinor's cares for the day, for Elinor
+      herself had not been visible since breakfast. It soothed the girl to
+      attend to small duties, and she was washing and wiping Elinor's small
+      stock of fine china when the bell rang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Denslow is calling,&rdquo; said Jennie. &ldquo;I didn't know if you'd see him, so
+      I said I didn't know if you were in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him. He was
+      covered with plaster dust, even to the brim of his hat, and his hands were
+      scratched and rough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pink!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Why, what is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the first
+      time in his life perhaps, entirely indifferent to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been digging in the ruins,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Is that man Doyle in the
+      house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her color faded. Suddenly she noticed a certain wildness about Pink's
+      eyes, and the hard strained look of his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ruins, Pink?&rdquo; she managed to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the ruins,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You know, don't you? The bank, our bank, and
+      the club?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw it all,
+      a dreadful picture which had somehow superimposed upon it a vision of Jim
+      Doyle with the morning paper, and the thing that this was not the time
+      for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all,&rdquo; he finished. &ldquo;Eleven at the club, two of them my own
+      fellows. In France, you know. I found one of them myself, this morning.&rdquo;
+       He stared past her, over her head. &ldquo;Killed for nothing, the way the
+      Germans terrorized Belgium. Haven't you seen the papers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course. Lily, I want you to leave
+      here. If you don't, if you stay now, you're one of them, whether you
+      believe what they preach or not. Don't you see that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not listening. Her faith was dying hard, and the mental shock had
+      brought her dizziness and a faint nausea. He stood watching her, and when
+      she glanced up at him it seemed to her that Pink was hard. Hard and
+      suspicious, and the suspicion was for her. It was incredible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you believe what they preach?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;I've got to know, Lily.
+      I've suffered the tortures of the damned all night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know it meant this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You ought to know me better than that. But I don't believe that it
+      started here, Pink. He was very angry this morning, and he wouldn't let me
+      see the paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's behind it all right,&rdquo; Pink said grimly. &ldquo;Maybe he didn't plant the
+      bombs, but his infernal influence did it, just the same. Do you mean to
+      say you've lived here all this time and don't know he is plotting a
+      revolution? What if he didn't authorize these things last night? He is
+      only waiting, to place a hundred bombs instead of three. A thousand,
+      perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got their own statements. Department of Justice found them. The
+      fools, to think they can overthrow the government! Can you imagine men
+      planning to capture this city and hold it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn't be possible, Pink?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't possible now, but they'll make a try at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short pause, with Lily struggling to understand. Pink's set
+      face relaxed somewhat. All that night he had been fighting for his belief
+      in her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never dreamed of it, Pink. I suppose all the talk I've heard meant
+      that, but I never&mdash;are you sure? About Jim Doyle, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know he is behind it. We haven't got the goods on him yet, but we
+      know. Cameron knows. You ask him and he'll tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy Cameron?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. He's had some vision, while the rest of us&mdash;! He's got a lot of
+      us working now, Lily. We are on the right trail, too, although we lost
+      some records last night that put us back a couple of months. We'll get
+      them, all right. We'll smash their little revolution into a cocked hat.&rdquo;
+       It occurred to him, then, that this house was a poor place for such a
+      confidence. &ldquo;I'll tell you about it later. Get your things now, and let me
+      take you home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lily's problem was too complex for Pink's simple remedy. She was
+      stricken with sudden conviction; the very mention of Willy Cameron gave
+      Pink's statements authority. But to go like that, to leave Elinor in that
+      house, with all that it implied, was impossible. And there was her own
+      private problem to dispose of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go this afternoon, Pink. I'll promise you that. But I can't go with
+      you now. I can't. You'll have to take my word, that's all. And you must
+      believe I didn't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you didn't know,&rdquo; he said, sturdily. &ldquo;But I hate like thunder
+      to go and leave you here.&rdquo; He picked up his hat, reluctantly. &ldquo;If I can do
+      anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily's mind was working more clearly now. This was the thing Louis Akers
+      had been concerned with, then, a revolution against his country. But it
+      was the thing, too, that he had promised to abandon. He was not a killer.
+      She knew him well, and he was not a killer. He had got to a certain point,
+      and then the thing had sickened him. Even without her he would never have
+      gone through with it. But it would be necessary now to get his information
+      quickly. Very quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose,&rdquo; she said, hesitatingly, &ldquo;suppose I tell you that I think I am
+      going to be able to help you before long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help? I want you safe. This is not work for women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But suppose I can bring you a very valuable ally?&rdquo; she persisted. &ldquo;Some
+      one who knows all about certain plans, and has changed his views about
+      them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he selling his information?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a way, yes,&rdquo; said Lily, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ware the fellow who sells information,&rdquo; Pink said. &ldquo;But we'll be glad to
+      have it. We need it, God knows. And&mdash;you'll leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't stay, could I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her hand when he went away, doing it awkwardly and
+      self-consciously, but withal reverently. She wondered, rather dully, why
+      she could not love Pink. A woman would be so safe with him, so sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not even then gathered the full force of what he had told her. But
+      little by little things came back to her; the man on guard in the garden;
+      the incident of the locked kitchen door; Jim Doyle once talking angrily
+      over a telephone in his study, although no telephone, so far as she knew,
+      was installed in the room; his recent mysterious absences, and the
+      increasing visits of the hateful Woslosky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went back to Louis. This was what he had meant. He had known all
+      along, and plotted with them; even if his stomach had turned now, he had
+      been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him; she saw him,
+      misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding phrases, lured on by one
+      of those wild dreams of empire to which men were sometimes given. She did
+      not love him any more; she was sorry for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw her position with the utmost clearness. To go home was to abandon
+      him, to lose him for those who needed what he could give, to send him back
+      to the enemy. She had told Pink she could secure an ally for a price, and
+      she was the price. There was not an ounce of melodrama in her, as she
+      stood facing the situation. She considered, quite simply, that she had
+      assumed an obligation which she must carry out. Perhaps her pride was
+      dictating to her also. To go crawling home, bowed to the dust, to admit
+      that life had beaten her, to face old Anthony's sneers and her mother's
+      pity&mdash;that was hard for any Cardew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered Elinor's home-comings of years ago, the strained air of the
+      household, the whispering servants, and Elinor herself shut away, or
+      making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father was out
+      of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, she could not face that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass; she faced that
+      uncompromisingly. She would marry Louis, and hold him to his promise, and
+      so perhaps out of all this misery some good would come. But at the thought
+      of marriage she found herself trembling violently. With no love and no
+      real respect to build on, with an intuitive knowledge of the man's
+      primitive violences, the reluctance toward marriage with him which she had
+      always felt crystallized into something very close to dread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and fully
+      determined. At Elinor's door she tapped lightly, and she heard movements
+      within. Then Elinor opened the door wide. She had been lying on her bed,
+      and automatically after closing the door she began to smooth it. Lily felt
+      a wave of intense pity for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would go away from here, Aunt Elinor,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor glanced up, without surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where could I go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you left him definitely, you could go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly to
+      desperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what is going on,&rdquo; she said, her voice strained. &ldquo;You don't
+      believe it is right; you know it is wicked. Clothe it in all the fine
+      language in the world, Aunt Elinor, and it is still wicked. If you stay
+      here you condone it. I won't. I am going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you had never come, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too late for that,&rdquo; Lily said, stonily. &ldquo;But it is not too late for
+      you to get away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall stay,&rdquo; Elinor said, with an air of finality. But Lily made one
+      more effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is killing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he is killing himself.&rdquo; Suddenly Elinor flared into a passionate
+      outburst. &ldquo;Don't you think I know where all this is leading? Do you
+      believe for a moment that I think all this can lead to anything but death?
+      It is a madness, Lily; they are all mad, these men. Don't you know that I
+      have talked and argued and prayed, against it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then come away. You have done all you could, and you have failed, haven't
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not time for me to go,&rdquo; Elinor said. And Lily, puzzled and baffled,
+      found herself again looking into Elinor's quiet, inscrutable eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor had taken it for granted that the girl was going home, and together
+      they packed almost in silence. Once Elinor looked up from folding a
+      garment, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you had not understood before, but that now you do. What did you
+      mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pink Denslow was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor? It isn't that I don't
+      trust you. You must believe that, but don't you see that so long as you
+      stay here&mdash;he said that to me&mdash;you are one of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor resumed her folding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I suppose I am one of them,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;And you are right.
+      You must not tell me anything. Pink is Henry Denslow's son, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they&mdash;still live in the old house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor continued her methodical work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron was free that evening. Although he had not slept at all the
+      night before, he felt singularly awake and active. The Committee had made
+      temporary quarters of his small back room at the pharmacy, and there had
+      sat in rather depressed conclave during a part of the afternoon. Pink
+      Denslow had come in late, and had remained, silent and haggard, through
+      the debate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get files and
+      card indexes. Greater secrecy was to be preserved and enjoined, the
+      location of the office to be known only to a small inner circle, and
+      careful policing of it and of the building which housed it to be
+      established. As a further safeguard, two duplicate files would be kept in
+      other places. The Committee groaned over its own underestimate of the
+      knowledge of the radicals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the bank
+      building where their file was kept, and the club, where nine-tenths of the
+      officers of the Committee were members. The significance of the double
+      outrage was unquestionable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the meeting broke up Pink remained behind. He found it rather
+      difficult to broach the matter in his mind. It was always hard for him to
+      talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had had a growing conviction that
+      Willy Cameron found it equally difficult. He wondered if Cameron, too, was
+      in love with Lily. There had been a queer look in his face on those rare
+      occasions when Pink had mentioned her, a sort of exaltation, and an odd
+      difficulty afterwards in getting back to the subject in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for Willy Cameron,
+      a strange, loyal, half wistful, totally unselfish devotion. It had
+      steadied him, when the loss of Lily might have made him reckless, and had
+      taken the form in recent weeks of finding innumerable business
+      opportunities, which Willy Cameron cheerfully refused to take.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll stay here until this other thing is settled,&rdquo; was Willy's invariable
+      answer. &ldquo;I have a certain amount of time here, and the fellows can drop in
+      to see me without causing suspicion. In an office it would be different.
+      And besides, I can't throw Mr. Davis down. His wife is in bad shape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, that afternoon, Pink waited until the Committee had dispersed, and
+      then said, with some difficulty:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her, Cameron. She has promised to leave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This afternoon. I wanted to take her away, but she had some things to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she hadn't known before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She thought it was just talk. And they'd kept the papers from her.
+      She hadn't heard about last night. Well, that's all. I thought you'd want
+      to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink started out, but Willy Cameron called him back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have any of your people any influence with the Cardews?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one has any influence with the Cardews, if you mean the Cardew men.
+      Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because Cardew has got to get out of the mayoralty campaign. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a-plenty,&rdquo; said Pink, grinning. &ldquo;Why don't you go and tell him
+      so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm thinking of it. He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll defeat
+      Hendricks by splitting the vote, and let the other side in. And you know
+      what that means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; Pink observed, &ldquo;but Mr. Cardew doesn't, and he won't after
+      you've told him. They've put a lot of money in, and once a Cardew has
+      invested in a thing he holds on like death. Especially the old man.
+      Wouldn't wonder he was the fellow who pounded the daylights out of Akers
+      last night,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door into the
+      shop, and opened a window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Akers?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noon edition has it,&rdquo; Pink said. &ldquo;Claims to have been attacked in his
+      rooms by two masked men. Probably wouldn't have told it, but the doctor
+      talked. Looks as though he could wallop six masked men, doesn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, reflectively. &ldquo;Yes; he does, rather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt more hopeful than he had for days. Lily on her way home, clear
+      once more of the poisonous atmosphere of Doyle and his associates; Akers
+      temporarily out of the way, perhaps for long enough to let the normal
+      influences of her home life show him to her in a real perspective; and a
+      rather unholy but very human joy that he had given Akers a part of what
+      was coming to him&mdash;all united to cheer him. He saw Lily going home,
+      and a great wave of tenderness flooded him. If only they would be tactful
+      and careful, if only they would be understanding and kind. If they would
+      only be normal and every-day, and accept her as though she had never been
+      away. These people were so hedged about with conventions and restrictions,
+      they put so much emphasis on the letter and so little on the spirit. If
+      only&mdash;God, if only they wouldn't patronize her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother would have known how to receive her. He felt, that afternoon, a
+      real homesickness for his mother. He saw her, ample and comfortable and
+      sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed to ignore the
+      soul, and yet bringing healing with her every matter-of-fact movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If only Lily could have gone back to her, instead of to that great house,
+      full of curious eyes and whispering voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper. Mr. Hendricks
+      had lost flesh and some of his buoyancy, but he was persistently
+      optimistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to last night I'd have said we were done, son,&rdquo; he observed. &ldquo;But this
+      bomb business has settled them. The labor vote'll split on it, sure as
+      whooping cough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've bought a half-page in all the morning papers, disclaiming all
+      responsibility and calling on all citizens to help them in protecting
+      private property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have they, now,&rdquo; said Hendricks, with grudging admiration. &ldquo;Can you beat
+      that? Where do they get the money, anyhow? If I lost my watch these days
+      I'd have to do some high-finance before I'd be able to advertise for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, see Cardew,&rdquo; were his parting words. &ldquo;But he doesn't want this
+      election any more than I want my right leg. He'll stick. You can talk,
+      Cameron, I'll say it. But you can't pry him off with kind words, any more
+      than you can a porous plaster.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind Mr. Hendricks' colloquialisms there was something sturdy and fine.
+      His very vernacular made him popular; his honesty was beyond suspicion. If
+      he belonged to the old school in politics, he had most of its virtues and
+      few of its vices. He would take care of his friends, undoubtedly, but he
+      was careful in his choice of friends. He would make the city a good place
+      to live in. Like Willy Cameron, he saw it, not a center of trade so much
+      as a vast settlement of homes. Business supported the city in his mind,
+      not the city business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of a
+      desperate remedy for a desperate disease that Willy Cameron, after a
+      careful toilet, rang the bell of the Cardew house that night. He had no
+      hope of seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were under one roof
+      gave him a sense of nearness and of comfort in her safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner was recently over, and he found both the Cardews, father and son,
+      in the library smoking. He had arrived at a bad moment, for the bomb
+      outrage, coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home under the given
+      conditions, had roused Anthony to a cold rage, and left Howard with a
+      feeling of helplessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and offered
+      him a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You made me wish
+      I could have had your support.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to talk about that. I am sorry to have to come in the evening, but
+      I am not free at any other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we go into politics,&rdquo; said old Anthony in his jibing voice, &ldquo;the
+      ordinary amenities have to go. When you are elected, Howard, I shall live
+      somewhere else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think you will be put to that inconvenience, Mr. Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; Old Anthony's voice was incredulous. Here, in his own
+      house, this whipper-snapper&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure Mr. Howard Cardew realizes he cannot be elected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal for the
+      family. Howard glanced at him, and said urbanely:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron? Or a liqueur?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, thank you. If I can have a few minutes' talk with you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you that I
+      am heavily interested in this matter myself,&rdquo; said old Anthony. &ldquo;I have
+      put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out, I want
+      to hear it. You've played the devil with us already, with your independent
+      candidate who can't talk English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron kept his temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, slowly. &ldquo;It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks withdrawing.
+      It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like this,&rdquo; Willy Cameron said. &ldquo;Your son knows it. Even if we drop
+      out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly&mdash;and I mean that&mdash;nobody
+      with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city.
+      There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you a
+      fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard had listened attentively and without anger. &ldquo;For a long time, Mr.
+      Cameron,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have been urging men of&mdash;of position in the
+      city, to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the
+      professional politician. I went in, without much hope of election, to&mdash;well,
+      you can say to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me,
+      so much as to show my willingness to serve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony recovered his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Cardews made this town, sir,&rdquo; he barked. &ldquo;Willingness to serve,
+      piffle! We need a business man to run the city, and by God, we'll get it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll get an anarchist,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, slightly flushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick.
+      And how do we know that your Vigilance Committee isn't a trick, too? You
+      try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do heaven knows
+      what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals to the
+      public imagination. You don't say anything about votes, but you see that
+      they vote for your man. Isn't that true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Akers is an anarchist.
+      He calls himself something else, but that's what it amounts to. And those
+      bombs last night were not imaginary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on Anthony
+      Cardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Akers defeated. The
+      discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough, in Willy
+      Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard. What Willy
+      Cameron told about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of his daughter's
+      husband, and there was something very convincing about Cameron himself.
+      Something of fearlessness and honesty that began, slowly, to dispose
+      Anthony in his favor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Howard who held out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking,&rdquo; he
+      said, quietly obstinate. &ldquo;Grant your point, that I'm defeated. All right,
+      I'll be defeated&mdash;but I won't quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Anthony Cardew, confronted by that very quality of obstinacy which had
+      been his own weapon for so many years, retired in high dudgeon to his
+      upper rooms. He was living in a strange new world, a reasonable soul on an
+      unreasonable earth, an earth where a man's last sanctuary, his club, was
+      blown up about him, and a man's family apparently lived only to thwart
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Anthony gone, Howard dropped the discussion with the air of a man who
+      has made a final stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly,&rdquo; he observed,
+      &ldquo;because&mdash;you probably do not know this&mdash;my sister married him
+      some years ago. It was a most unhappy affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know it. For that reason I am glad that Miss Lily has come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has come home? She has not come home, Mr. Cameron. There was a condition
+      we felt forced to make, and she refused to agree to it. Perhaps we were
+      wrong. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron got up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that to-day?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she was coming home to-day. She was to leave there this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Denslow saw her there this afternoon. She agreed to leave at once. He had
+      told her of the bombs, and of other things. She hadn't understood before,
+      and she was horrified. It is just possible Doyle wouldn't let her go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;that's ridiculous. She can't be a prisoner in my sister's
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you telephone and find out if she is there?&rdquo; Howard went to the
+      telephone at once. It seemed to Willy Cameron that he stood there for
+      uncounted years, and as though, through all that eternity of waiting, he
+      knew what the answer would be. And that he knew, too, what that answer
+      meant, where she had gone, what she had done. If only she had come to him.
+      If only she had come to him. He would have saved her from herself. He&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not there,&rdquo; Howard Cardew said, in a voice from which all life had
+      gone. &ldquo;She left this afternoon, at four o'clock. Of course she has
+      friends. Or she may have gone to a hotel. We had managed to make it
+      practically impossible for her to come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron glanced at his watch. He had discounted the worst before it
+      came, and unlike the older man, was ready for action. It was he who took
+      hold of the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And if you will
+      drop me downtown&mdash;I'll tell you where&mdash;I'll follow up something
+      that has just occurred to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In one way Howard had been correct in his surmise. It had been Lily's idea
+      to go to a hotel until she had made some definite plan. She would
+      telephone Louis then, and the rest&mdash;she did not think beyond that.
+      She called a taxi and took a small bag with her, but in the taxicab she
+      suddenly realized that she could not go to any of the hotels she knew. She
+      would be recognized at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wanted a little time to herself, time to think. And before it was
+      discovered that she had left Cardew Way she must see Louis, and judge
+      again if he intended to act in good faith. While he was with her,
+      reiterating his promises, she believed him, but when he was gone, she
+      always felt, a curious doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought then of finding a quiet room somewhere, and stopping the cab,
+      bought a newspaper. It was when she was searching for the &ldquo;rooms for rent&rdquo;
+       column that she saw he had been attacked and slightly injured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had got him. He had said that if they ever suspected him of playing
+      them false they would get him, and now they had done so. That removed the
+      last doubt of his good faith from her mind. She felt indignation and
+      dismay, and a sort of aching consciousness that always she brought only
+      trouble to the people who cared for her; she felt that she was going
+      through her life, leaving only unhappiness behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had suffered, and for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told the chauffeur to go to the Benedict Apartments, and sitting back
+      read the notice again. He had been attacked by two masked men and badly
+      bruised, after putting up a terrific resistance. They would wear masks, of
+      course. They loved the theatrical. Their very flag was theatrical. And he
+      had made a hard fight That was like him, too; he was a fighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a Cardew, and she loved strength. There were other men, men like
+      Willy Cameron, for instance, who were lovable in many ways, but they were
+      not fighters. They sat back, and let life beat them, and they took the
+      hurt bravely and stoically. But they never got life by the throat and
+      shook it until it gave up what they wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never been in a bachelors' apartment house before, and she was
+      both frightened and self-conscious. The girl at the desk eyed her
+      curiously while she telephoned her message, and watched her as she moved
+      toward the elevator. &ldquo;Ever seen her before?&rdquo; she said to the hall boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She's a new one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Face's kind of familiar to me,&rdquo; said the telephone girl, reflectively.
+      &ldquo;Looks worried, doesn't she? Two masked men! Huh! All Sam took up there
+      last night was a thin fellow with a limp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hall boy grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then his limp didn't bother him any. Sam says y'ought to seen that
+      place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime, outside the door of Akers' apartment, Lily's fine courage
+      almost left her. Had it not been for the eyes of the elevator man, fixed
+      on her while he lounged in his gateway, she might have gone away, even
+      then. But she stood there, committed to a course of action, and rang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis himself admitted her, an oddly battered Louis, in a dressing gown
+      and slippers; an oddly watchful Louis, too, waiting, after the manner of
+      men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat would jump. He
+      had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge. All day he had sat there,
+      unable to go out, and had wondered just when Cameron would see her and
+      tell her about Edith Boyd. For, just as Willy Cameron rushed him for the
+      first time, there had been something from between clenched teeth about
+      marrying another girl, under the given circumstances. Only that had not
+      been the sort of language in which it was delivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just saw about it in the newspaper,&rdquo; Lily said. &ldquo;How dreadful, Louis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He straightened himself and drew a deep breath. The game was still his, if
+      he played it right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad enough, dear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I gave them some trouble, too.&rdquo; He
+      pushed a chair toward her. &ldquo;It was like you to come. But I don't like your
+      seeing me all mussed up, little girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a move then to kiss her, but she drew back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Not here. And I can't sit down. I can't stay. I only
+      came because I wanted to tell you something and I didn't want to telephone
+      it. Louis, Jim Doyle knew about those bombs last night. He didn't want it
+      to happen before the election, but&mdash;that doesn't alter the fact, does
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know he knew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know. That's all. And I have left Aunt Elinor's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't stay, could I?&rdquo; She looked up at him, the little wistful
+      glance that Willy always found so infinitely touching, like the appeal of
+      a willful but lovable child, that has somehow got into trouble. &ldquo;And I
+      can't go home, Louis, unless I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless you give me up,&rdquo; he finished for her. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated. She hated making terms with him, and yet somehow she must
+      make terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Are you going to throw me over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently merely putting the thought into words crystallized all his
+      fears of the past hours; seeing her there, too, had intensified his want
+      of her. She stood there, where he had so often dreamed of seeing her, but
+      still holding him off with the aloofness that both chilled and inflamed
+      him, and with a question in her eyes. He held out his arms, but she drew
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them, if I marry
+      you, and doing all you can to stop them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I mean it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;I'll not go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to marry me? Now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whenever you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she was trembling violently, and her lips felt dry and stiff. He
+      pushed her into a chair, and knelt down beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You poor little kid,&rdquo; he said, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts; Lily his, in his arms,
+      in spite of that white-faced drug clerk with the cold eyes; himself in the
+      Cardew house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardew at his own cynical
+      game; and persistently held back and often rising again to the surface,
+      Woslosky and Doyle and the others, killers that they were, pursuing him
+      with their vengeance over the world. They would have to be counted in;
+      they were his price, as he, had he known it, was Lily's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stiffened in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go, Louis,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I can't stay here. I felt very queer
+      downstairs. They all stared so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a clock on the mantel shelf, and he looked at it. It was a
+      quarter before five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing is sure, Lily,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You can't wander about alone, and you
+      are right&mdash;you can't stay here. They probably recognized you
+      downstairs. You are pretty well known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised herself,
+      and that the net, of her own making, was closing fast about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I hadn't come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? We can fix that all right in a jiffy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final struggle. In
+      a few days, even to-morrow, but not just then. He listened, impatiently,
+      his eyes on the clock. Beside it in the mirror he saw his own marred face,
+      and it added to his anger. In the end he took control of the situation;
+      went into his bedroom, changed into a coat, and came out again, ready for
+      the street. He telephoned down for a taxicab, and then confronted her, his
+      face grim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;Now I'm in charge. It won't be to-morrow or next week or next month. It
+      will be now. You're here. You've given them a chance to talk downstairs.
+      You've nowhere to go, and you're going to marry me at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the cab he explained more fully. They would get a license, and then go
+      to one of the hotels. There they could be married, in their own suite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All regularly and in order, honey,&rdquo; he said, and kissed her hand. She had
+      hardly heard. She was staring ahead, not thinking, not listening, not
+      seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man before her, of his sheer
+      physical proximity, of his increasing exuberance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm mad about you, girl,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Mad. And now you are going to be
+      mine, until death do us part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shivered and drew away, and he laughed a little. Girls were like that,
+      at such times. They always took a step back for every two steps forward.
+      He let her hand go, and took a careful survey of his face in the mirror of
+      the cab. The swelling had gone down, but that bruise below his eye would
+      last for days. He cursed under his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after nine o'clock when one of the Cardew cars stopped not far from
+      the Benedict Apartments, and Willy Cameron got out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was quite certain that Louis Akers would know where Lily was, and he
+      anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor. There might be
+      another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the night
+      before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if he had to
+      choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white throat. His
+      arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more than a ripple
+      of excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, look who's here!&rdquo; muttered the telephone girl, and watched his
+      approach, with its faint limp, over the top of her desk. Behind, from his
+      cage, the elevator man was staring with avid interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose Mr. Akers is in?&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, politely. The girl smiled
+      up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll say he ought to be, after last night! What're you going to do now?
+      Kill him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his anxiety there was a faint twinkle in Willy Cameron's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;No. I think not. I want to talk to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sam,&rdquo; called the telephone girl, &ldquo;take this gentleman up to forty-three.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forty-three's out.&rdquo; Sam partly shut the elevator door; he had seen
+      Forty-three's rooms the night before, and he had the discretion of his
+      race. &ldquo;Went out with a lady at quarter to five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron took a step or two toward the cage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't happen to be lying, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir!&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;I'll take you up to look, if you like. And about an
+      hour ago he sent a boy here with a note, to get some of his clothes. The
+      young lady at the desk was out at the movies at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was getting my supper, Sam.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron had gone very white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did the boy say where he was taking the things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the Saint Elmo Hotel, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the street again Willy Cameron took himself fiercely in hand. There
+      were a half-dozen reasons why Akers might go to the Saint Elmo. He might,
+      for one thing, have thought that he, Cameron, would go back to the
+      Benedict. He might be hiding from Dan, or from reporters. But there had
+      been, apparently, no attempt to keep his new quarters secret. If Lily was
+      at the Saint Elmo&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found a taxicab, and as it drew up at the curb before the hotel he saw
+      the Cardew car moving away. It gave him his first real breath for twenty
+      minutes. Lily was not there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Louis Akers was. He got his room number from a clerk and went up,
+      still determinedly holding on to himself. Afterwards he had no clear
+      recollection of any interval between the Benedict and the moment he found
+      himself standing outside a door on an upper floor of the Saint Elmo. From
+      that time on it was as clear as crystal, his own sudden calm, the
+      overturning of a chair inside, a man's voice, slightly raised, which he
+      recognized, and then the thin crash of a wineglass dropped or thrown to
+      the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened the door and went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the center of the sitting room a table was set, and on it the remains
+      of a dinner for two. Akers was standing by the table, his chair overturned
+      behind him, a splintered glass at his feet, staring angrily at the window.
+      Even then Willy Cameron saw that he had had too much to drink, and that he
+      was in an ugly mood. He was in dinner clothes, but with his bruised face
+      and scowling brows he looked a sinister imitation of a gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the window, her back to the room, was Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of them glanced at the door. Evidently the waiter had been moving
+      in and out, and Akers considered him as little as he would a dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and sit down,&rdquo; he said angrily. &ldquo;I've quit drinking, I tell you.
+      Good God, just because I've had a little wine&mdash;and I had the hell of
+      a time getting it&mdash;you won't eat and won't talk. Come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay where you are, Lily,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, from inside the closed
+      door. &ldquo;Or perhaps you'd better get your wraps. I came to take you home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers had wheeled at the voice, and now stood staring incredulously. First
+      anger, and then a grin of triumph, showed in his face. Drink had made him
+      not so much drunk as reckless. He had lost last night, but to-day he had
+      won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Cameron,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron ignored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come?&rdquo; he said to Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, Lily dear,&rdquo; he said gravely. &ldquo;Your father is searching the city
+      for you. Do you know what that means? Don't you see that you must go home
+      at once? You can't dine here in a private suite, like this, and not expose
+      yourself to all sorts of talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said Akers, leering. &ldquo;I like to hear you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially,&rdquo; continued Willy Cameron, &ldquo;with a man like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers took a step toward him, but he was not too sure of himself, and he
+      knew now that the other man had a swing to his right arm like the driving
+      rod of a locomotive. He retreated again to the table, and his hand closed
+      over a knife there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louis!&rdquo; Lily said sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked up the knife and smiled at her, his eyes cunning. &ldquo;Not going to
+      kill him, my dear,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Merely to give him a hint that I'm not as
+      easy as I was last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was a slip, and he knew it. Lily had left the window and come
+      forward, a stricken slip of a girl, and he turned to her angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go into the other room and close the door,&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;When I've thrown
+      this fellow out, you can come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lily's eyes were fixed on Willy Cameron's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was you last night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; Willy Cameron said steadily, &ldquo;he had got a girl into trouble,
+      and then insulted her. I wouldn't tell you, but you've got to know the
+      truth before it's too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily threw out both hands dizzily, as though catching for support. But she
+      steadied herself. Neither man moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too late, Willy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have just married him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At midnight Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired and broken man.
+      Grace had been lying awake in her bedroom, puzzled by his unexplained
+      absence, and brooding, as she now did continually, over Lily's absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half past eleven she heard Anthony Cardew come in and go upstairs, and
+      for some time after that she heard him steadily pacing back and forth
+      overhead. Sometimes Grace felt sorry for Anthony. He had made himself at
+      such cost, and now when he was old, he had everything and yet nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had never understood women, these Cardews. Howard was gentle with
+      them where Anthony was hard, but he did not understand, either. She
+      herself, of other blood, got along by making few demands, but the Cardew
+      women were as insistent in their demands as the men. Elinor, Lily&mdash;She
+      formed a sudden resolution, and getting up, dressed feverishly. She had no
+      plan in her mind, nothing but a desperate resolution to put Lily's case
+      before her grandfather, and to beg that she be brought home without
+      conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was frightened as she went up the stairs. Never before had she
+      permitted things to come to an issue between herself and Anthony. But now
+      it must be done. She knocked at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony Cardew opened it. The room was dark, save for one lamp burning
+      dimly on a great mahogany table, and Anthony's erect figure was little
+      more than a blur of black and white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you walking about,&rdquo; she said breathlessly. &ldquo;May I come in and
+      talk to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; he said, with a sort of grave heaviness. &ldquo;Shall I light the
+      other lamps?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you sit down? No? Do you mind if I do? I am very tired. I suppose it
+      is about Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I can't stand it any longer. I can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sitting under the lamp she saw that he looked very old and very weary. A
+      tired little old man, almost a broken one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won't come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not under the conditions. But she must come back, father. To let her stay
+      on there, in that house, after last night&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never called him &ldquo;father&rdquo; before. It seemed to touch him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a good woman, Grace,&rdquo; he said, still heavily. &ldquo;We Cardews all
+      marry good women, but we don't know how to treat them. Even Howard&mdash;&rdquo;
+       His voice trailed off. &ldquo;No, she can't stay there,&rdquo; he said, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;I must tell you&mdash;she refuses to give up that man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a woman, Grace. You ought to know something about girls. Does she
+      actually care for him, or is it because he offers the liberty she thinks
+      we fail to give her? Or&rdquo;&mdash;he smiled faintly&mdash;&ldquo;is it Cardew
+      pig-headedness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace made a little gesture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. She wanted to come home. She begged&mdash;it was dreadful.&rdquo;
+       Grace hesitated. &ldquo;Even that couldn't be as bad as this, father,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;We have all lived our own lives, you and Howard and myself, and now we
+      won't let her do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a pretty mess we have made of them!&rdquo; His tone was grim. &ldquo;No, I can't
+      say that we offer her any felicitous examples. But the fellow's plan is
+      transparent enough. He is ambitious. He sees himself installed here, one
+      of us. Mark my words, Grace, he may love the child, but his real actuating
+      motive is that. He's a Radical, because since he can't climb up, he'll
+      pull down. But once let him get his foot on the Cardew ladder, and he'll
+      climb, over her, over all of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat after that, his head dropped on his chest, his hands resting on the
+      arms of his chair, in a brooding reverie. Grace waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better bring her home,&rdquo; he said finally. &ldquo;Tell her I surrender. I want
+      her here. Let her bring that fellow here, too, if she has to see him. But
+      for God's sake, Grace,&rdquo; he added, with a flash of his old fire, &ldquo;show her
+      some real men, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Grace bent over and kissed him. He put up his hand, and patted
+      her on the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good woman, Grace,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and a good daughter to me. I'm sorry.
+      I'll try to do better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Grace straightened she heard the door close below, and Howard's voice.
+      Almost immediately she heard him coming up the staircase, and going out
+      into the hall she called softly to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you?&rdquo; he asked, looking up. &ldquo;Is father there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you both to come down to the library, Grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him turn and go slowly down the stairs. His voice had been
+      strained and unnatural. As she turned she found Anthony behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something has happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rather think so,&rdquo; said old Anthony, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went together down the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the library Lily was standing, facing the door, a quiet figure,
+      listening and waiting. Howard had dropped into a chair and was staring
+      ahead. And beyond the circle of lights was a shadowy figure, vaguely
+      familiar, tall, thin, and watchful. Willy Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The discovery that Lily had left his house threw Jim Doyle into a frenzy.
+      The very manner of her going filled him with dark suspicion. Either she
+      had heard more that morning than he had thought, or&mdash;In his cunning
+      mind for weeks there had been growing a smoldering suspicion of his wife.
+      She was too quiet, too acquiescent. In the beginning, when Woslosky had
+      brought the scheme to him, and had promised it financial support from
+      Europe, he had taken a cruel and savage delight in outlining it to her, in
+      seeing her cringe and go pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not feared her then. She had borne with so much, endured,
+      tolerated, accepted, that he had not realized that she might have a
+      breaking point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plan had appealed to his cynical soul from the first. It was the
+      apotheosis of cynicism, this reducing of a world to its lowest level. And
+      it had amused him to see his wife, a gentlewoman born, bewildered before
+      the chaos he depicted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;it is German!&rdquo; she had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bow before intelligence. It is German. Also it is Russian. Also it is
+      of all nations. All this talk now, of a League of Nations, a few dull
+      diplomats acting as God over the peoples of the earth!&rdquo; His eyes blazed.
+      &ldquo;While the true league, of the workers of the world, is already in
+      effect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he watched her after that, not that he was afraid of her, but because
+      her re-action as a woman was important. He feared women in the movement.
+      It had its disciples, fervent and eloquent, paid and unpaid women
+      agitators, but he did not trust them. They were invariably women without
+      home ties, women with nothing to protect, women with everything to gain
+      and nothing to lose. The woman in the home was a natural anti-radical. Not
+      the police, not even the army, but the woman in the home was the deadly
+      enemy of the great plan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to hate Elinor, not so much for herself, as for the women she
+      represented. She became the embodiment of possible failure. She stood in
+      his path, passively resistant, stubbornly brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not a clever woman, and she was slow in gathering the full
+      significance of a nation-wide general strike, that with an end of all
+      production the non-producing world would be beaten to its knees. And then
+      she waited for a world movement, forgetting that a flame must start
+      somewhere and then spread. But she listened and learned. There was a great
+      deal of talk about class and mass. She learned that the mass, for
+      instance, was hungry for a change. It would welcome any change. Woslosky
+      had been in Russia when the Kerensky regime was overthrown, and had seen
+      that strange three days when the submerged part of the city filled the
+      streets, singing, smiling, endlessly walking, exalted and without guile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No problems troubled them. They had ceased to labor, and that was enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had it not been for its leaders, the mass would have risen like a tide,
+      and ebbed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor had struggled to understand. This was not Socialism. Jim had been a
+      Socialist for years. He had believed that the gradual elevation of the
+      few, the gradual subjection of the many, would go on until the majority
+      would drag the few down to their own level. But this new dream was
+      something immediate. At her table she began to hear talk of substituting
+      for that slow process a militant minority. She was a long time, months, in
+      discovering that Jim Doyle was one of the leaders of that militant
+      minority, and that the methods of it were unspeakably criminal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then had begun Elinor Doyle's long battle, at first to hold him back, and
+      that failing, the fight between her duty to her husband and that to her
+      country. He had been her one occupation and obsession too long to be
+      easily abandoned, but she was sturdily national, too. In the end she made
+      her decision. She lived in his house, mended his clothing, served his
+      food, met his accomplices, and&mdash;watched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hated herself for it. Every fine fiber of her revolted. But as time
+      went on, and she learned the full wickedness of the thing, her days became
+      one long waiting. She saw one move after another succeed, strike after
+      strike slowing production, and thus increasing the cost of living. She saw
+      the growing discontent and muttering, the vicious circle of labor striking
+      for more money, and by its own ceasing of activity making the very
+      increases they asked inadequate. And behind it all she saw the ceaseless
+      working, the endless sowing, of a grim-faced band of conspirators.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was obliged to wait. A few men talking in secret meetings, a hidden
+      propaganda of crime and disorder&mdash;there was nothing to strike at. And
+      Elinor, while not clever, had the Cardew shrewdness. She saw that, like
+      the crisis in a fever, the thing would have to come, be met, and defeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no hope that the government would take hold. Government was aloof,
+      haughty, and secure in its own strength. Just now, too, it was objective,
+      not subjective. It was like a horse set to win a race, and unconscious of
+      the fly on its withers. But the fly was a gadfly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor knew Doyle was beginning to suspect her. Sometimes she thought he
+      would kill her, if he discovered what she meant to do. She did not greatly
+      care. She waited for some inkling of the day set for the uprising in the
+      city, and saved out of her small house allowance by innumerable economies
+      and subterfuges. When she found out the time she would go to the Governor
+      of the State. He seemed to be a strong man, and she would present him
+      facts. Facts and names. Then he must act&mdash;and quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cut off from her own world, and with no roots thrown out in the new, she
+      had no friends, no one to confide in or of whom to ask assistance. And she
+      was afraid to go to Howard. He would precipitate things. The leaders would
+      escape, and a new group would take their places. Such a group, she knew,
+      stood ready for that very emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the afternoon of Lily's departure she heard Doyle come in. He had not
+      recovered from his morning's anger, and she heard his voice, raised in
+      some violent reproof to Jennie. He came up the stairs, his head sagged
+      forward, his every step deliberate, heavy, ominous. He had an evening
+      paper in his hand, and he gave it to her with his finger pointing to a
+      paragraph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might show that to the last of the Cardews,&rdquo; he sneered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the paragraph about Louis Akers. Elinor read it. &ldquo;Who were the
+      masked men?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to God I did. I'd&mdash;Makes him a laughing stock, of course. And
+      just now, when&mdash;Where's Lily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor put down the paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not here. She went home this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her, angrily incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She passed him and went out into the hall. But he followed her and caught
+      her by the arm as she reached the top of the staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made her go home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't hold me like that. No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to free her arm, but he held her, his face angry and suspicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are lying to me,&rdquo; he snarled. &ldquo;She gave you a reason. What was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor was frightened, but she had not lost her head. She was thinking
+      rapidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had a visitor this afternoon, a young man. He must have told her
+      something about last night. She came up and told me she was going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know he told her something, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Elinor had cowered against the wall. &ldquo;Jim, don't look like that.
+      You frighten me. I couldn't keep her here. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he tell her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He accused you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was eyeing her coldly, calculatingly. All his suspicions of the past
+      weeks suddenly crystallized. &ldquo;And you let her go, after that,&rdquo; he said
+      slowly. &ldquo;You were glad to have her go. You didn't deny what she said. You
+      let her run back home, with what she had guessed and what you told her
+      to-day. You&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He struck her then. The blow was as remorseless as his voice, as
+      deliberate. She fell down the staircase headlong, and lay there, not
+      moving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The elderly maid came running from the kitchen, and found him half-way
+      down the stairs, his eyes still calculating, but his body shaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She fell,&rdquo; he said, still staring down. But the servant faced him, her
+      eyes full of hate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You devil!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If she's dead, I'll see you hang for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Elinor was not dead. Doctor Smalley, making rounds in a nearby
+      hospital and answering the emergency call, found her lying on her bed,
+      fully conscious and in great pain, while her husband bent over her in
+      seeming agony of mind. She had broken her leg. He sent Doyle out during
+      the setting. It was a principle of his to keep agonized husbands out of
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Life had beaten Lily Cardew. She went about the house, pathetically
+      reminiscent of Elinor Doyle in those days when she had sought sanctuary
+      there; but where Elinor had seen those days only as interludes in her
+      stormy life, Lily was finding a strange new peace. She was very tender,
+      very thoughtful, insistently cheerful, as though determined that her own
+      ill-fortune should not affect the rest of the household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to Lily this peace was not an interlude, but an end. Life for her was
+      over. Her bright dreams were gone, her future settled. Without so putting
+      it, even to herself, she dedicated herself to service, to small
+      kindnesses, and little thoughtful acts. She was, daily and hourly, making
+      reparation to them all for what she had cost them, in hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the thing that had gone out of life. Hope. Her loathing of Louis
+      Akers was gone. She did not hate him. Rather she felt toward him a sort of
+      numbed indifference. She wished never to see him again, but the revolt
+      that had followed her knowledge of the conditions under which he had
+      married her was gone. She tried to understand his viewpoint, to make
+      allowances for his lack of some fundamental creed to live by. But as the
+      days went on, with that healthy tendency of the mind to bury pain, she
+      found him, from a figure that bulked so large as to shut out all the
+      horizon of her life, receding more and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But always he would shut off certain things. Love, and marriage, and of
+      course the hope of happiness. Happiness was a thing one earned, and she
+      had not earned it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the scene at the Saint Elmo, when he had refused to let her go, and
+      when Willy Cameron had at last locked him in the bedroom of the suite and
+      had taken her away, there had followed a complete silence. She had waited
+      for some move or his part, perhaps an announcement of the marriage in the
+      newspapers, but nothing had appeared. He had commenced a whirlwind
+      campaign for the mayoralty and was receiving a substantial support from
+      labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The months at the house on Cardew Way seemed more and more dream-like, and
+      that quality of remoteness was accentuated by the fact that she had not
+      been able to talk to Elinor. She had telephoned more than once during the
+      week, but a new maid had answered. Mrs. Doyle was out. Mrs. Doyle was
+      unable to come to the telephone. The girl was a foreigner, with something
+      of Woslosky's burr in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily had not left the house since her return. During that family conclave
+      which had followed her arrival, a stricken thing of few words and long
+      anxious pauses, her grandfather had suggested that. He had been curiously
+      mild with her, her grandfather. He had made no friendly overtures, but he
+      had neither jibed nor sneered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's done,&rdquo; he had said briefly. &ldquo;The thing now is to keep her out of his
+      clutches.&rdquo; He had turned to her. &ldquo;I wouldn't leave the house for few days,
+      Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Willy Cameron had gone. Afterwards she thought that he
+      must have been waiting, patiently protective, to see how the old man
+      received her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her inability to reach Elinor began to dismay her, at last. There was
+      something sinister about it, and finally Howard himself went to the Doyle
+      house. Lily had come back on Thursday, and on the following Tuesday he
+      made his call, timing it so that Doyle would probably be away from home.
+      But he came back baffled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was not at home,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had to take the servant's word for it,
+      but I think the girl was lying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may be ill. She almost never goes out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What possible object could they have in concealing her illness?&rdquo; Howard
+      said impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was very uneasy, and what Lily had told him since her return only
+      increased his anxiety. The house was a hotbed of conspiracy, and for her
+      own reasons Elinor was remaining there. It was no place for a sister of
+      his. But Elinor for years had only touched the outer fringes of his life,
+      and his days were crowded with other things; the increasing arrogance of
+      the strikers, the utter uselessness of trying to make terms with them, his
+      own determination to continue to fight his futile political campaign. He
+      put her out of his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, at the end of another week, a curious thing happened. Anthony and
+      Lily were in the library. Old Anthony without a club was Old Anthony lost,
+      and he had developed a habit, at first rather embarrassing to the others,
+      of spending much of his time downstairs. He was no sinner turned saint. He
+      still let the lash of his tongue play over the household, but his old zest
+      in it seemed gone. He made, too, small tentative overtures to Lily,
+      intended to be friendly, but actually absurdly self-conscious. Grace,
+      watching him, often felt him rather touching. It was obvious to her that
+      he blamed himself, rather than Lily, for what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this occasion he had asked Lily to read to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And leave out the politics,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;I get enough of that wherever
+      I go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she read she felt him watching her, and in the middle of a paragraph he
+      suddenly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's become of Cameron?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must be very busy. He is supporting Mr. Hendricks, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supporting him! He's carrying him on his back,&rdquo; grunted Anthony. &ldquo;What is
+      it, Grayson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lady&mdash;a woman&mdash;calling on Miss Cardew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily rose, but Anthony motioned her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she give any name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said to say it was Jennie, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jennie! It must be Aunt Elinor's Jennie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send her in,&rdquo; said Anthony, and stood waiting Lily noticed his face
+      twitching; it occurred to her then that this strange old man might still
+      love his daughter, after all the years, and all his cruelty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the elderly servant from the Doyle house who came in, a tall gaunt
+      woman, looking oddly unfamiliar to Lily in a hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Jennie!&rdquo; she said. And then: &ldquo;Is anything wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is and there isn't,&rdquo; Jennie said, somberly. &ldquo;I just wanted to tell
+      you, and I don't care if he kills me for it. It was him that threw her
+      downstairs. I heard him hit her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony stiffened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He threw Aunt Elinor downstairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's how she broke her leg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheer amazement made Lily inarticulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they said&mdash;we didn't know&mdash;do you mean that she has been
+      there all this time, hurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean just that,&rdquo; said Jennie, stolidly. &ldquo;I helped set it, with him
+      pretending to be all worked up, for the doctor to see. He got rid of me
+      all right. He's got one of his spies there now, a Bolshevik like himself.
+      You can ask the neighbors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard was out, and when the woman had gone Anthony ordered his car. Lily,
+      frightened by the look on his face, made only one protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't go alone,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let me go, too. Or take Grayson&mdash;anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he went alone; in the hall he picked up his hat and stick, and drew on
+      his gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the house number?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily told him and he went out, moving deliberately, like a man who has
+      made up his mind to follow a certain course, but to keep himself well in
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Acting on Willy Cameron's suggestion, Dan Boyd retained his membership in
+      the union and frequented the meetings. He learned various things, that the
+      strike vote had been padded, for instance, and that the Radicals had taken
+      advantage of the absence of some of the conservative leaders to secure
+      such support as they had received. He found the better class of workmen
+      dissatisfied and unhappy. Some of them, men who loved their tools, had
+      resented the order to put them down where they were and walk out, and this
+      resentment, childish as it seemed, was an expression of their general
+      dissatisfaction with the autocracy they had themselves built up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally Dan's persistent attendance and meek acquiescence, added to his
+      war record, brought him reward. He was elected member of a conference to
+      take to the Central Labor Council the suggestion for a general strike. It
+      was arranged that the delegates take the floor one after the other, and
+      hold it for as long as possible. Then they were to ask the President of
+      the Council to put the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arguments were carefully prepared. The general strike was to be urged
+      as the one salvation of the labor movement. It would prove the solidarity
+      of labor. And, at the Council meeting a few days later, the rank and file
+      were impressed by the arguments. Dan, gnawing his nails and listening,
+      watched anxiously. The idea was favorably received, and the delegates went
+      back to their local unions, to urge, coerce and threaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not once, during the meeting, had there been any suggestion of violence,
+      but violence was in the air, nevertheless. The quantity of revolutionary
+      literature increased greatly during the following ten days, and now it was
+      no longer furtively distributed. It was sold or given away at all
+      meetings; it flooded the various headquarters with its skillful compound
+      of lies and truth. The leaders notified of the situation, pretended that
+      it was harmless raving, a natural and safe outlet for suppressed
+      discontents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan gathered up an armful of it and took it home. On a Sunday following,
+      there was a mass meeting at the Colosseum, and a business agent of one of
+      the unions made an impassioned speech. He recited old and new grievances,
+      said that the government had failed to live up to its promises, that the
+      government boards were always unjust to the workers, and ended with a
+      statement of the steel makers' profits. Dan turned impatiently to a man
+      beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why doesn't he say how much of that profit the government gets?&rdquo; he
+      demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the man only eyed him suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan fell silent. He knew it was wrong, but he had no gift of tongue. It
+      was at that meeting that for the first time he heard used the word
+      &ldquo;revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony's excursion to his daughter's house had not prospered. During
+      the drive to Cardew Way he sat forward on the edge of the seat of his
+      limousine, his mouth twitching with impatience and anger, his stick
+      tightly clutched in his hand. Almost before the machine stopped he was out
+      on the pavement, scanning the house with hostile eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The building was dark. Paul, the chauffeur, watching curiously, for the
+      household knew that Anthony Cardew had sworn never to darken his
+      daughter's door, saw his erect, militant figure enter the gate and lose
+      itself in the shadow of the house. There followed a short interval of
+      nothing in particular, and then a tall man appeared in the rectangle of
+      light which was the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Doyle was astounded when he saw his visitor. Astounded and alarmed.
+      But he recovered himself quickly, and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is something I never expected to see,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Mr. Anthony Cardew
+      on my doorstep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't give a damn what you expected to see,&rdquo; said Mr. Anthony Cardew.
+      &ldquo;I want to see my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your daughter? You have said for a good many years that you have no
+      daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand aside, sir. I didn't come here to quibble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I love to quibble,&rdquo; sneered Doyle. &ldquo;However, if you insist&mdash;I
+      might as well tell you, I haven't the remotest intention of letting you
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll ask you a question,&rdquo; said old Anthony. &ldquo;Is it true that my daughter
+      has been hurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife is indisposed. I presume we are speaking of the same person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You infernal scoundrel,&rdquo; shouted Anthony, and raising his cane, brought
+      it down with a crack on Doyle's head. The chauffeur was half-way up the
+      walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the light,
+      reel, recover and raise his fist, but he did not bring it down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop that!&rdquo; yelled the chauffeur, and came on like a charging steer. When
+      he reached the steps old Anthony was hanging his stick over his left
+      forearm, and Doyle was inside the door, trying to close it. This was
+      difficult, however, because Anthony had quietly put his foot over the
+      sill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to see my daughter, Paul,&rdquo; said Anthony Cardew. &ldquo;Can you open
+      the door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open it!&rdquo; Paul observed truculently. &ldquo;Watch me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent him
+      sprawling inside at Doyle's feet. He was up in an instant, squared to
+      fight, but he only met Jim Doyle's mocking smile. Doyle stood, arms
+      folded, and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house. Whatever he feared he
+      covered with the cynical mask that was his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no move, offered no speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she upstairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is asleep. Do you intend to disturb her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said old Anthony grimly. &ldquo;I'll go first, Paul. You follow me, but
+      I'd advise you to come up backwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Doyle laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble
+      home, and anticipating violence! You underestimate the honor you are doing
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the two
+      men had reached the top. Then he followed them. The mask had dropped from
+      his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it. If she talked, he would
+      kill her. But she knew that. She was not a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor lay in the bed, listening. She had recognized her father's voice,
+      and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief. They had found
+      her. They had come to take her away. For she knew now that she was a
+      prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner. The
+      girl downstairs was one of them, and her jailer. A jailer who fed her, and
+      gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the
+      night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his suspicions. He had
+      found first her little store of money, and that had angered him. In the
+      end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook in which
+      for months she had kept her careful records. Here and there, scattered
+      among house accounts, were the names of the radical members of The Central
+      Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and carefully
+      remembered. He had read them out to her as he came to them, suffering as
+      she was, and she had expected death then. But he had not killed her. He
+      had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a mad-eyed fanatic
+      named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once daily. In his anger
+      and triumph over her he devised the most cunning of all punishments; he
+      told her of the movement's progress, of its ingeniously contrived
+      devilments in store, of its inevitable success. What buildings and homes
+      were to be bombed, the Cardew house first among them; what leading
+      citizens were to be held as hostages, with all that that implied; and
+      again the Cardews headed the list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present, solicitous
+      and attentive. She got out of her bed one day, and dragging her splinted
+      leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing a note and finding some
+      opportunity of giving it to the doctor. Only to discover that they had
+      taken away her pen, pencils and paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment. Olga
+      had helped her back into bed without a word, but from that time on had
+      spent most of her day on the upper floor. Not until Doyle came in would
+      she go downstairs to prepare his food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor lay in her bed and listened to her father coming up the stairs. She
+      knew, before he reached the top, that Doyle would never let her be taken
+      away. He would kill her first. He might kill Anthony Cardew. She had a
+      sickening sense of tragedy coming up the staircase, tragedy which took the
+      form of her father's familiar deliberate step. Perhaps had she known of
+      the chauffeur's presence she might have chanced it, for every fiber of her
+      tired body was crying for release. But she saw only her father, alone in
+      that house with Doyle and the smoldering Russian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The key turned in the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anthony Cardew stood in the doorway, looking at her. With her long hair in
+      braids, she seemed young, almost girlish. She looked like the little girl
+      who had gone to dancing school in short white frocks and long black silk
+      stockings, so many years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've just learned about it, Elinor,&rdquo; he said. He moved to the bed and
+      stood beside it, looking down, but he did not touch her. &ldquo;Are you able to
+      be taken away from here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew that Doyle was outside, listening, and she hardened her heart for
+      the part she had to play. It was difficult; she was so infinitely moved by
+      her father's coming, and in the dim light he, too, looked like himself of
+      years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Taken away? Where?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't want to stay here, do you?&rdquo; he demanded bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is my home, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God, home! Do you mean to tell me that, with all you must know about
+      this man, you still want to stay with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no other home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am offering you one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony was bewildered and angry. Elinor put out a hand to touch him,
+      but he drew back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After he has thrown you downstairs and injured you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you hear that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The servant you had here came to see me to-night, Elinor. She said that
+      that blackguard outside there had struck you and you fell down the stairs.
+      If you tell me that's the truth I'll break every bone in his body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheer terror for Anthony made her breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it isn't true,&rdquo; she said wildly. &ldquo;You mustn't think that. I fell. I
+      slipped and fell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Anthony, speaking slowly, &ldquo;you are not a prisoner here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A prisoner? I'd be a prisoner anywhere, father. I can't walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That door was locked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was fighting valiantly for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't walk, father. I don't require a locked door to keep me in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too confused and puzzled to notice the evasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say that you won't let me have you taken home? You are
+      still going to stay with this man? You know what he is, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you think he is.&rdquo; She tried to smile, and he looked away from
+      her quickly and stared around the room, seeing nothing, however. Suddenly
+      he turned and walked to the door; but he stopped there, his hand on the
+      knob, and us face twitching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once more, Elinor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I ask you if you will let me take you back
+      with me. This is the last time. I have come, after a good many years of
+      bad feeling, to make my peace with you and to offer you a home. Will you
+      come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her courage almost failed her. She lay back, her eyes closed and her face
+      colorless. The word itself was little more than a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father opened the door and went out. She heard him going down the
+      stairs, heard other footsteps that followed him, and listened in an agony
+      of fear that Doyle would drop him in the hall below. But nothing happened.
+      The outside door closed, and after a moment she opened her eyes. Doyle was
+      standing by the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you intend to give me the pleasure of your society for
+      some time, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said nothing. She was past any physical fear for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You liar!&rdquo; he said softly. &ldquo;Do you think I don't understand why you want
+      to remain here? You are cleverer than I thought you were, but you are not
+      as clever as I am. You'd have done better to have let him take you away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would have killed him first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I would.&rdquo; He lighted a cigarette. &ldquo;But it is a pleasant thought
+      to play with, and I shall miss it when the thing is fait accompli. I see
+      Olga has left you without ice water. Shall I bring you some?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still smiling faintly when he brought up the pitcher, some time
+      later, and placed it on the stand beside the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the Boyd house things went on much as before, but with a new heaviness.
+      Ellen, watching keenly, knew why the little house was so cheerless and
+      somber. It had been Willy Cameron who had brought to it its gayer moments,
+      Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming doors and whistling; Willy racing up
+      the stairs with something hot for Mrs. Boyd's tray; Willy at the table,
+      making them forget the frugality of the meals with campaign anecdotes;
+      Willy, lamenting the lack of a chance to fish, and subsequently eliciting
+      a rare smile from Edith by being discovered angling in the kitchen sink
+      with a piece of twine on the end of his umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rather forced, some of it, but eminently good for all of them. And then
+      suddenly it ceased. He made an effort, but there was no spontaneity in
+      him. He came in quietly, never whistled, and ate very little. He began to
+      look almost gaunt, too, and Edith, watching him with jealous, loving eyes,
+      gave voice at last to the thought that was in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd go away,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and let us fight this thing out
+      ourselves. Dan would have to get something to do, then, for one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't want to go away, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you're a fool,&rdquo; she observed, bitterly. &ldquo;You can't help me any, and
+      there's no use hanging mother around your neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won't be around any one's neck very long, Edith dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After that, will you go away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if you still want me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan was out, and Ellen had gone up for the invalid's tray. They were alone
+      together, standing in the kitchen doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Edith, beside him, ran her hand through his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had been a different sort of girl, Willy, do you think&mdash;could
+      you ever have cared for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought about you that way,&rdquo; he said, simply. &ldquo;I do care for you.
+      You know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are in love with Lily Cardew. That's why you don't&mdash;I've known
+      it all along, Willy. I used to think you'd get over it, never seeing her
+      and all that. But you don't, do you?&rdquo; She looked up at him. &ldquo;The real
+      thing lasts, I suppose. It will with me. I wish to heaven it wouldn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was most uncomfortable, but he drew her hand within his arm again and
+      held it there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get to thinking that you care anything about me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There's
+      not as much love in the world as there ought to be, and we all need to
+      hold hands, but&mdash;don't fancy anything like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to tell you. If I hadn't known about her I wouldn't have told
+      you, but&mdash;you said it when you said there's not as much love as there
+      ought to be. I'm gone, but I guess my caring for you hasn't hurt me any.
+      It's the only reason I'm alive to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She freed her hand, and stood staring out over the little autumn garden.
+      There was such brooding trouble in her face that he watched her anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think mother suspects,&rdquo; she said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she does. She watches me all the time, and she asked to see Dan
+      to-night. Only he didn't come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must deny it, Edith,&rdquo; he said, almost fiercely. &ldquo;She must not know,
+      ever. That is one thing we can save her, and must save her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, going upstairs as usual before he went out, he realized that Edith
+      was right, and that matters had reached a crisis. The sick woman had eaten
+      nothing, and her eyes were sunken and anxious. There was an unspoken
+      question in them, too, as she turned them on him. Most significant of all,
+      the little album was not beside her, nor the usual litter of newspapers on
+      the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you weren't going out, Willy,&rdquo; she said querulously. &ldquo;I want to
+      talk to you about something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't we discuss it in the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't sleep till I get it off my mind, Willy.&rdquo; But he could not face
+      that situation then. He needed time, for one thing. Surely there must be
+      some way out, some way to send this frail little woman dreamless to her
+      last sleep, life could not be so cruel that death would seem kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke at three different meetings that night, for the election was
+      close at hand. Pink Denslow took him about in his car, and stood waiting
+      for him at the back of the crowd. In the intervals between hall and hall
+      Pink found Willy Cameron very silent and very grave, but he could not know
+      that the young man beside him was trying to solve a difficult question.
+      Which was: did two wrongs ever make a right?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the last meeting Willy Cameron decided to walk home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have some things to think over. Pink,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Thanks for the car. It
+      saves a lot of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink sat at the wheel, carefully scrutinizing Willy. It struck him then
+      that Cameron looked fagged and unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing I can do, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink knew nothing of Lily's marriage, nor of the events that had followed
+      it. To his uninquiring mind all was as it should be with her; she was at
+      home again, although strangely quiet and very sweet, and her small world
+      was at peace with her. It was all right with her, he considered, although
+      all wrong with him. Except that she was strangely subdued, which rather
+      worried him. It was not possible, for instance, to rouse her to one of
+      their old red-hot discussions on religion, or marriage, or love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw Lily Cardew this afternoon, Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she all right?&rdquo; asked Willy Cameron, in a carefully casual tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know.&rdquo; Pink's honest voice showed perplexity. &ldquo;She looks all
+      right, and the family's eating out of her hand.. But she's changed
+      somehow. She asked for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. Well, good-night, old man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron was facing the decision of his life that night, as he walked
+      home. Lily was gone, out of his reach and out of his life. But then she
+      had never been within either. She was only something wonderful and far
+      away, like a star to which men looked and sometimes prayed. Some day she
+      would be free again, and then in time she would marry. Some one like Pink,
+      her own sort, and find happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he knew that he would always love her, to the end of his days, and
+      even beyond, in that heaven in which he so simply believed. All the things
+      that puzzled him would be straightened out there, and perhaps a man who
+      had loved a woman and lost her here would find her there, and walk hand in
+      hand with her, through the bright days of Paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that that satisfied him. He was a very earthly lover, with the hungry
+      arms of youth. He yearned unspeakably for her. He would have died for her
+      as easily as he would have lived for her, but he could do neither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was one side of him. The other, having put her away in that warm
+      corner of his heart which was hers always, was busy with the practical
+      problem of the Boyds. He saw only one way out, and that way he had been
+      seeing with increasing clearness for several days. Edith's candor that
+      night, and Mrs. Boyd's suspicions, clearly pointed to it. There was one
+      way by which to save Edith and her child, and to save the dying woman the
+      agony of full knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith was sitting on the doorstep, alone. He sat down on the step below
+      her, rather silent, still busy with his problem. Although the night was
+      warm, the girl shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not asleep. She's waiting for me to go up, Willy. She means to call
+      me in and ask me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'd better say what I have to say quickly. Edith, will you marry
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew off and looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd better explain what I mean,&rdquo; he said, speaking with some difficulty.
+      &ldquo;I mean&mdash;go through the ceremony with me. I don't mean actual
+      marriage. That wouldn't be fair to either of us, because you know that I
+      care for some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you mean a real marriage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. Your child has the right to a name, dear. And, if you don't
+      mind telling a lie to save our souls, and for her peace of mind, we can
+      say that it took place some time ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gazed at him dazedly. Then something like suspicion came into her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it because of what I told you to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had thought of it before. That helped, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed so surprisingly simple, put into words, and the light on the
+      girl's face was his answer. A few words, so easily spoken, and two lives
+      were saved. No, three, for Edith's child must be considered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are like God,&rdquo; said Edith, in a low voice. &ldquo;Like God.&rdquo; And fell to
+      soft weeping. She was unutterably happy and relieved. She sat there, not
+      daring to touch him, and looked out into the quiet street. Before her she
+      saw all the things that she had thought were gone; honor, a place in the
+      world again, the right to look into her mother's eyes; she saw marriage
+      and happy, golden days. He did not love her, but he would be hers, and
+      perhaps in His own good time the Manager of all destinies would make him
+      love her. She would try so hard to deserve that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd was asleep when at last Edith went up the staircase, and Ellen,
+      lying sleepless on her cot in the hot attic room, heard the girl softly
+      humming to herself as she undressed, and marveled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Lily had been at home for some time, and Louis Akers had made no
+      attempt to see her, or to announce the marriage, the vigilance of the
+      household began to relax. Howard Cardew had already consulted the family
+      lawyer about an annulment, and that gentleman had sent a letter to Akers,
+      which had received no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one afternoon Grayson, whose instructions had been absolute as to
+      admitting Akers to the house, opened the door to Mrs. Denslow, who was
+      calling, and found behind that lady Louis Akers himself. He made an effort
+      to close the door behind the lady, but Akers was too quick for him, and a
+      scene at the moment was impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ushered Mrs. Denslow into the drawing room, and coming out, closed the
+      doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My instructions, sir, are to say to you that the ladies are not at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Akers held out his hat and gloves with so ugly a look that Grayson
+      took them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come to see my wife,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Tell her that, and that if she
+      doesn't see me here I'll go upstairs and find her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Grayson still hesitated he made a move toward the staircase, and the
+      elderly servant, astounded at the speech and the movement, put down the
+      hat and faced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not recognize any one in the household by that name, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't, don't you? Very well. Tell Miss Cardew I am here, and that
+      either she will come down or I'll go up. I'll wait in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He watched Grayson start up the stairs, and then went into the library. He
+      was very carefully dressed, and momentarily exultant over the success of
+      his ruse, but he was uneasy, too, and wary, and inclined to regard the
+      house as a possible trap. He had made a gambler's venture, risking
+      everything on the cards he held, and without much confidence in them. His
+      vanity declined to believe that his old power over Lily was gone, but he
+      had held a purely physical dominance over so many women that he knew both
+      his strength and his limitations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What he could not understand, what had kept him awake so many nights since
+      he had seen her, was her recoil from him on Willy Cameron's announcement.
+      She had known he had led the life of his sort; he had never played the
+      plaster saint to her. And she had accepted her knowledge of his connection
+      with the Red movement, on his mere promise to reform. But this other, this
+      accident, and she had turned from him with a horror that made him furious
+      to remember. These silly star-eyed virgins, who accepted careful
+      abstractions and then turned sick at life itself, a man was a fool to put
+      himself in their hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle was with Lily in her boudoir when Grayson came up, a thin,
+      tired-faced, suddenly old Mademoiselle, much given those days to early
+      masses, during which she prayed for eternal life for the man who had
+      ruined Lily's life, and that soon. To Mademoiselle marriage was a final
+      thing and divorce a wickedness against God and His establishment on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily, rather like Willy Cameron, was finding on her spirit at that time a
+      burden similar to his, of keeping up the morale of the household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grayson came in and closed the door behind him. Anger and anxiety were in
+      his worn old face, and Lily got up quickly. &ldquo;What is it, Grayson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, Miss Lily. He was in the vestibule behind Mrs. Denslow, and I
+      couldn't keep him out. I think he had waited for some one to call, knowing
+      I couldn't make a scene.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle turned to Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not see him,&rdquo; she said in rapid French. &ldquo;Remain here, and I
+      shall telephone for your father. Lock your door. He may come up. He will
+      do anything, that man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going down,&rdquo; Lily said quietly. &ldquo;I owe him that. You need not be
+      frightened. And don't tell mother; it will only worry her and do no good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her heart was beating fast as she went down the stairs. From the drawing
+      room came the voices of Grace and Mrs. Denslow, chatting amiably. The
+      second man was carrying in tea, the old silver service gleaming. Over all
+      the lower floor was an air of peace and comfort, the passionless
+      atmosphere of daily life running in old and easy grooves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Lily entered the library she closed the door behind her. She had, on
+      turning, a swift picture of Grayson, taking up his stand in the hall, and
+      it gave her a sense of comfort. She knew he would remain there,
+      impassively waiting, so long as Akers was in the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she faced the man standing by the center table. He made no move
+      toward her, did not even speak at once. It left on her the burden of the
+      opening, of setting the key of what was to come. She was steady enough
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it is as well that you came, Louis,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I suppose we must
+      talk it over some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he agreed, his eyes on her. &ldquo;We must. I have married a wife, and I
+      want her, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because of something that happened before I knew you? I never made any
+      pretensions about my life before we met. But I did promise to go straight
+      if you'd have me, and I have. I've lived up to my bargain. What about
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not a part of my bargain to marry you while you&mdash;I have
+      thought and thought, Louis. There is only one thing to be done. You will
+      have to divorce me, and marry her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry her? A girl of the streets, who chooses to say that I am the father
+      of her child! It's the oldest trick in the word. Besides&mdash;&rdquo; He played
+      his best card&mdash;&ldquo;she won't marry me. Ask Cameron, who chose to make
+      himself so damned busy about my affairs. He's in love with her. Ask him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of herself Lily winced. Out of the wreckage of the past few weeks
+      one thing had seemed to remain, something to hold to, solid and dependable
+      and fine, and that had been Willy Cameron. She had found, in these last
+      days, something infinitely comforting in the thought that he cared for
+      her. It was because he had cared that he had saved her from herself. But,
+      if this were true&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going back to you, Louis. I think you know that. No amount of
+      talking about things can change that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you face life and try to understand it?&rdquo; he demanded, brutally.
+      &ldquo;Men are like that. Women are like that&mdash;sometimes. You can't measure
+      human passions with a tape line. That's what you good women try to do, and
+      you make life a merry little hell.&rdquo; He made an effort, and softened his
+      voice. &ldquo;I'll be true to you, Lily, if you'll come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you would mean to be, but you would not. You have no
+      foundation to build on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meaning that I am not a gentleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that. I know you, that's all. I understand so much that I didn't
+      before. What you call love is only something different. When that was gone
+      there would be the same thing again. You would be sorry, but I would be
+      lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her coolness disconcerted him. Two small triangular bits of color showed
+      in his face. He had been prepared for tears, even for a refusal to return,
+      but this clear-eyed appraisal of himself, and the accuracy of it, confused
+      him. He took refuge in the only method he knew; he threw himself on her
+      pity; he made violent, passionate love to her, but her only expression was
+      one of distaste. When at last he caught her to him she perforce submitted,
+      a frozen thing that told him, more than any words, how completely he had
+      lost her. He threw her away from him, then, baffled and angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You little devil!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You cold little devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't love you. That's all. I think now that I never did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You pretended damned well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think you'd better go?&rdquo; Lily said wearily. &ldquo;I don't like to
+      hurt you. I am to blame for a great deal. But there is no use going on, is
+      there? I'll give you your freedom as soon as I can. You will want that, of
+      course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My freedom! Do you think I am going to let you go like that? I'll fight
+      you and your family in every court in the country before I give you up.
+      You can't bring Edith Boyd up against me, either. If she does that I'll
+      bring up other witnesses, other men, and she knows it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was very pale, but still calm. She made a movement toward the bell,
+      but he caught her hand before she could ring it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get your Willy Cameron, too,&rdquo; he said, his face distorted with
+      anger. &ldquo;I'll get him good. You've done a bad thing for your friends and
+      your family to-day, Lily. I'll go the limit on getting back at them. I've
+      got the power, and by God, I'll use it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung out into the hall, and toward the door. There he encountered
+      Grayson, who reminded him of his hat and gloves, or he would have gone
+      without them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grayson, going into the library a moment later, found Lily standing there,
+      staring ahead and trembling violently. He brought her a cup of tea, and
+      stood by, his old face working, while she drank it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The strike had apparently settled down to the ordinary run of strikes. The
+      newspaper men from New York were gradually recalled, as the mill towns
+      became orderly, and no further acts of violence took place. Here and there
+      mills that had gone down fired their furnaces again and went back to work,
+      many with depleted shifts, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the strikers had lost, and knew it. Howard Cardew, facing the
+      situation with his customary honesty, saw in the gradual return of the men
+      to work only the urgency of providing for their families, and realized
+      that it was not peace that was coming, but an armed neutrality. The Cardew
+      Mills were still down, but by winter he was confident they would be open
+      again. To what purpose? To more wrangling and bickering, more strikes?
+      Where was the middle ground? He was willing to give the men a percentage
+      of the profits they made. He did not want great wealth, only an honest
+      return for his invested capital. But he wanted to manage his own business.
+      It was his risk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coal miners were going out. The Cardews owned coal mines. The miners
+      wanted to work a minimum day for a maximum wage, but the country must have
+      coal. Shorter hours meant more men for the mines, and they would have to
+      be imported. But labor resented the importation of foreign workers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, what was the answer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, he was grateful for peace. The strike dragged on, with only
+      occasional acts of violence. From the hill above Baxter a sniper daily
+      fired with a long range rifle at the toluol tank in the center of one of
+      the mills, and had so far escaped capture, as the tank had escaped damage.
+      But he knew well enough that a long strike was playing into the hands of
+      the Reds. It was impossible to sow the seeds of revolution so long as a
+      man's dinner-pail was full, his rent paid, and his family contented. But a
+      long strike, with bank accounts becoming exhausted and credit curtailed,
+      would pave the way for revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Anthony had had a drastic remedy for strikes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let all the storekeepers, the country over, refuse credit to the
+      strikers, and we'd have an end to this mess,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd have an end to the storekeepers, too,&rdquo; Howard had replied, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One good thing had come out of the bomb outrages. They had had a salutary
+      effect on the honest labor element. These had no sympathy with such
+      methods and said so. But a certain element, both native and foreign born,
+      secretly gloated and waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing surprised and irritated Howard. Public sentiment was not so much
+      with the strikers, as against the mill owners. The strike worked a
+      hardship to the stores and small businesses dependent on the great mills;
+      they forgot the years when the Cardews had brought them prosperity, had
+      indeed made them possible, and they felt now only bitter resentment at the
+      loss of trade. In his anger Howard saw them as parasites, fattening on the
+      conceptions and strength of those who had made the city. They were men who
+      built nothing, originated nothing. Men who hated the ladder by which they
+      had climbed, who cared little how shaky its foundation, so long as it
+      stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In September, lured by a false security, the governor ordered the
+      demobilization of the state troops, save for two companies. The men at the
+      Baxter and Friendship plants, owned by the Cardews, had voted to remain
+      out, but their leaders appeared to have them well in hand, and no trouble
+      was anticipated. The agents of the Department of Justice, however, were
+      still suspicious. The foreigners had plenty of money. Given as they were
+      to hoarding their savings in their homes, the local banks were unable to
+      say if they were drawing on their reserves or were being financed from the
+      outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly before the mayoralty election trouble broke out in the western end
+      of the state, and in the north, in the steel towns. There were ugly
+      riotings, bombs were sent through the mails, the old tactics of night
+      shootings and destruction of property began. In the threatening chaos
+      Baxter and Friendship, and the city nearby, stood out by contrast for
+      their very orderliness. The state constabulary remained in diminished
+      numbers, a still magnificent body of men but far too few for any real
+      emergency, and the Federal agents, suspicious but puzzled, were removed to
+      more turbulent fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men constituting the Vigilance Committee began to feel a sense of
+      futility, almost of absurdity. They had armed and enrolled themselves&mdash;against
+      what? The growth of the organization slowed down, but it already numbered
+      thousands of members. Only its leaders retained their faith in its
+      ultimate necessity, and they owed perhaps more than they realized to Willy
+      Cameron's own conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was owing to him that the city was divided into a series of zones, so
+      that notification of an emergency could be made rapidly by telephone and
+      messenger. Owing to him, too, was a new central office, with some one on
+      duty day and night. Rather ironically, the new quarters were the
+      dismantled rooms of the Myers Housecleaning Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day after his proposal to Edith, Willy Cameron received an
+      unexpected holiday. Mrs. Davis, the invalid wife of the owner of the Eagle
+      Pharmacy, died and the store was closed. He had seen Edith for only a few
+      moments that morning, but it was understood then that the marriage would
+      take place either that day or the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been physically so weary the night before that he had slept, but
+      the morning found him with a heaviness of spirit that he could not throw
+      off. The exaltation of the night before was gone, and all that remained
+      was a dogged sense of a duty to be done. Although he smiled at Edith, his
+      face remained with her all through the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll make it up to him,&rdquo; she thought, humbly. &ldquo;I'll make it up to him
+      somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, with Ellen out doing her morning marketing, she heard the feeble
+      thump of a cane overhead which was her mother's signal. She was determined
+      not to see her mother again until she could say that she was married, but
+      the thumping continued, and was followed by the crash of a broken glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's trying to get up!&rdquo; Edith thought, panicky. &ldquo;If she gets up it will
+      kill her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood at the foot of the stairs, scarcely breathing, and listened.
+      There was a dreadful silence above. She stole up, finally, to where she
+      could see her mother. Mrs. Boyd was still in her bed, but lying with open
+      eyes, unmoving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; she called, and ran in. &ldquo;Mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd glanced at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought that glass would bring you,&rdquo; she said sharply, but with
+      difficulty. &ldquo;I want you to stand over there and let me look at you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith dropped on her knees beside the bed, and caught her mother's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't! Don't talk like that, mother,&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;I know what you mean.
+      It's all right, mother. Honestly it is. I&mdash;I'm married, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't lie to me, Edith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I'm telling you. I've been married a long time. You&mdash;don't you
+      worry, mother. You just lie there and quit worrying. It's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sudden light in the sick woman's eyes, an eager light that
+      flared up and died away again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who to?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;If it's some corner loafer, Edie&mdash;&rdquo; Edith had
+      gained new courage and new facility. Anything was right that drove the
+      tortured look from her mother's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can ask him when he comes home this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edie! Not Willy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've guessed it,&rdquo; said Edith, and burying her face in the bed clothing,
+      said a little prayer, to be forgiven for the lie and for all that she had
+      done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end to earn the love of the
+      man who was like God to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one on
+      the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable suffering,
+      or has made well and happy a sick soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd lay back and closed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't been so tickled since the day you were born,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head. When Edith
+      moved, a little later, her mother was asleep, with a new look of peace on
+      her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she had
+      done. She shrank from doing it. It was one thing for Willy to have done
+      it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly afraid of Ellen. And
+      Ellen's reception of the news justified her fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you'd take him that way!&rdquo; she said, scornfully. &ldquo;You'd hide behind
+      him, besides spoiling his life for him! It sounds like him to offer, and
+      it's like you to accept.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's to save mother,&rdquo; said Edith, meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's to save yourself. You can't fool me. And if you think I'm going to
+      sit by and let him do it, you can think again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's as good as done,&rdquo; Edith flashed. &ldquo;I've told mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you're going to be, or that you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That we are married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; Ellen said triumphantly. &ldquo;She's quiet and peaceful now, isn't
+      she? You don't have to get married now, do you? You take my advice, and
+      let it go at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Edith realized what she had done. He would still marry
+      her, of course, but behind all his anxiety to save her had been the real
+      actuating motive of his desire to relieve her mother's mind. That was done
+      now. Then, could she let him sacrifice himself for her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could. She could and she would. She set her small mouth firmly, and
+      confronted the future; she saw herself, without his strength to support
+      her, going down and down. She remembered those drabs of the street on whom
+      she had turned such cynical eyes in her virtuous youth, and she saw
+      herself one of that lost sisterhood, sodden, hectic, hopeless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Willy Cameron left the pharmacy that day it was almost noon. He went
+      to the house of mourning first, and found Mr. Davis in a chair in a closed
+      room, a tired little man in a new black necktie around a not over-clean
+      collar, his occupation of years gone, confronting a new and terrible
+      leisure that he did not know how to use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know how it is, Willy,&rdquo; he said, blinking his reddened eyelids. &ldquo;You
+      kind of wish sometimes that you had somebody to help you bear your burden,
+      and then it's taken away, but you're kind of bent over and used to it. And
+      you'd give your neck and all to have it back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron pondered that on his way up the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one great longing in him, to see Lily again. In a few hours now
+      he would have taken a wife, and whatever travesty of marriage resulted, he
+      would have to keep away from Lily. He meant to play square with Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered if it would hurt Lily to see him, remind her of things she
+      must be trying to forget. He decided in the end that it would hurt her, so
+      he did not go. But he walked, on his way to see Pink Denslow at the
+      temporary bank, through a corner of the park near the house, and took a
+      sort of formal and heart-breaking farewell of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time had been when life had seemed only a long, long trail, with Lily at
+      the end of it somewhere, like water to the thirsty traveler, or home to
+      the wanderer; like a camp fire at night. But now, life seemed to him a
+      broad highway, infinitely crowded, down which he must move, surrounded yet
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at least he could walk in the middle of the road, in the sunlight. It
+      was the weaklings who were crowded to the side. He threw up his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had never occurred to him that he was in any, danger, either from Louis
+      Akers or from the unseen enemy he was fighting. He had a curious lack of
+      physical fear. But once or twice that day, as he went about, he happened
+      to notice a small man, foreign in appearance and shabbily dressed. He saw
+      him first when he came out of the marriage license office, and again when
+      he entered the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had decided to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask him to
+      be present. He meant to tell him the facts. The intimacy between them was
+      now very close, and he felt that Pink would understand. He neither wanted
+      nor expected approval, but he did want honesty between them. He had based
+      his life on honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to. It would be hard to set
+      before any outsider the conditions at the Boyd house, or his own sense of
+      obligation to help. Put into everyday English the whole scheme sounded
+      visionary and mock-heroic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with excitement
+      written large all over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sent for you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;because I think we've got something at last.
+      One of our fellows has just been in, that storekeeper I told you about
+      from Friendship, Cusick. He says he has found out where they're meeting,
+      back in the hills. He's made a map of it. Look, here's the town, and
+      here's the big hill. Well, behind it, about a mile and a half, there's a
+      German outfit, a family, with a farm. They're using the barn, according to
+      this chap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The barn wouldn't hold very many of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the point. It's the leaders. The family has an alibi. It goes in
+      to the movies in the town on meeting nights. The place has been searched
+      twice, but he says they have a system of patrols that gives them warning.
+      The hills are heavily wooded there, and he thinks they have rigged up
+      telephones in the trees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence. Willy Cameron studied the rug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to swear to keep it to ourselves,&rdquo; Pink said at last. &ldquo;Cusick won't
+      let the Federal agents in on it. They've raided him for liquor twice, and
+      he's sick as a poisoned pup.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about the county detectives?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know them. They'll go in and fight like hell when the time comes, but
+      they're likely to gum the game where there's any finesse required. We'd
+      better find out for ourselves first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you mean is, that it's too good a thing to throw to the other
+      fellow. Well, I'm on, if you want me. But I'm no detective.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink had come armed for such surrender. He produced a road map of the
+      county and spread it on the desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's the main road to Friendship,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and here's the road they
+      use. But there's another way, back of the hills. Cusick said it was a dirt
+      lane, but dry. It's about forty miles by it to a point a mile or so behind
+      the farm. He says he doesn't think they use that road. It's too far
+      around.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;We use that road, and get to the farm,
+      and what then? Surrender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not on your life. We hide in the barn. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's enough. They'll search the place, automatically. You're talking
+      suicide, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his mind was working rapidly. He was a country boy, and he knew barns.
+      There would be other outbuildings, too, probably a number of them. The
+      Germans always had plenty of them. And the information was too detailed to
+      be put aside lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When does he think they will meet again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the point,&rdquo; Pink said eagerly. &ldquo;The family has been all over the
+      town this morning. It is going on a picnic, and he says those picnics of
+      theirs last half the night. What he got from the noise they were making
+      was that they were raising dust again, and something's on for to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll leave somebody there. Their stock has to be looked after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This fellow says they drop everything and go. The whole outfit. They're
+      as busy raising an alibi as the other lot is raising the devil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Willy Cameron was a Scot, and hard-headed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks too simple, Pink,&rdquo; he said reflectively. He sat for some time,
+      filling and lighting his pipe, and considering as he did so. He was older
+      than Pink; not much, but he felt extremely mature and very responsible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do we know about Cusick?&rdquo; he asked, finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the best men we've got. They've fired his place once, and he's
+      keen to get them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're anxious to go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going,&rdquo; said Pink, cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'd better go along and look after you. But I tell you how I see it.
+      After I've done that I'll go as far as you like. Either there is nothing
+      to it and we're fools for our pains, or there's a lot to it, and in that
+      case we are a pair of double-distilled lunatics to go there alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pink laughed joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life had been very dull for him since his return from France. He had done
+      considerable suffering and more thinking than was usual with him, but he
+      had had no action. But behind his boyish zest there was something more,
+      something he hid as he did the fact that he sometimes said his prayers; a
+      deep and holy thing, that always gave him a lump in his throat at Retreat,
+      when the flag came slowly down and the long lines of men stood at
+      attention. Something he was half ashamed and half proud of, love of his
+      country.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of a
+      small printing shop in the heart of the city. It went on to the
+      accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two
+      printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the front and rear
+      entrances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him, smoking
+      a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper from Friendship, Cusick. In a corner on
+      the table, scowling, sat Louis Akers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know why you're so damned suspicious, Jim,&rdquo; he was saying.
+      &ldquo;Cusick says the stall about the Federal agents went all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a house a-fire,&rdquo; said Cusick, complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, Akers,&rdquo; Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, &ldquo;that you are
+      letting your desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with your
+      judgment. If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready to take
+      their places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron is the brains of the outfit,&rdquo; Akers said sulkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know Cameron will go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers rose lazily and stretched himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got a hunch. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her hand.
+      With one hand Akers took the sheets from her; with the other he settled
+      his tie. He smiled down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ellen was greatly disturbed. At three o'clock that afternoon she found
+      Edith and announced her intention of going out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess you can get the supper for once,&rdquo; she said ungraciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith looked up at her with wistful eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you didn't hate me so, Ellen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't hate you.&rdquo; Ellen was slightly mollified. &ldquo;But when I see you
+      trying to put your burdens on other people&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith got up then and rather timidly put her arms around Ellen's neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love him so, Ellen,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;and I'll try so hard to make him
+      happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unexpected tears came into Ellen's eyes. She stroked the girl's fair hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The Good Man's got a way of fixing things to suit
+      Himself. And I guess He knows best. We do what it's foreordained we do,
+      after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Boyd was sleeping. Edith went back to her sewing. She had depended
+      all her life on her mother's needle, and now that that had failed her she
+      was hastily putting some clothing into repair. In the kitchen near the
+      stove the suit she meant to be married in was hung to dry, after pressing.
+      She was quietly happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron found her there. He told her of Mrs. Davis' death, and then
+      placed the license on the table at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it would be better to-morrow, Edith,&rdquo; he said. He glanced down at
+      the needle in her unaccustomed fingers; she seemed very appealing, with
+      her new task and the new light in her eyes. After all, it was worth while,
+      even if it cost a lifetime, to take a soul out of purgatory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to tell mother, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right Did it cheer her any?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderfully. She's asleep now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up to his room, and for some time she heard him moving about. Then
+      she heard the scraping of his chair as he drew it to his desk, and vaguely
+      wondered. When he came down he had a sealed envelope in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going out, Edith,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I shall be late getting back, and&mdash;I
+      am going to ask you to do something for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She loved doing things for him. She flushed slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I am not back here by two o'clock to-night,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I want you to
+      open that letter and read it. Then go to the nearest telephone, and call
+      up the number I've written down. Ask for the man whose name is given, and
+      read him the message.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;You are doing something dangerous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I really expect,&rdquo; he said, smiling down at her, &ldquo;is to be back,
+      feeling more or less of a fool, by eleven o'clock. I'm providing against
+      an emergency that will almost surely never happen, and I am depending on
+      the most trustworthy person I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Very soon after that he went away. She sat for some time after he had
+      gone, fingering the blank white envelope and wondering, a little
+      frightened but very proud of his trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan came in and went up the stairs. That reminded her of the dinner, and
+      she sat down in the kitchen with a pan of potatoes on her knee. As she
+      pared them she sang. She was still singing when Ellen came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something had happened to Ellen. She stood in the kitchen, her hat still
+      on, drawing her cotton gloves through her fingers and staring at Edith
+      without seeing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not sick, are you, Ellen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen put down her gloves and slowly took off her hat, still with the
+      absorbed eyes of a sleep-walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sick,&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;I've had bad news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down and I'll make you a cup of tea. Then maybe you'll feel like
+      talking about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want any tea. Do you know that that man Akers has married Lily
+      Cardew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil out of hell that he is.&rdquo; Ellen's voice was terrible. &ldquo;And all
+      the time knowing that you&mdash;She's at home, the poor child, and
+      Mademoiselle just sat and cried when she told me. It's a secret,&rdquo; she
+      added, fiercely. &ldquo;You keep your mouth shut about it. She never lived with
+      him. She left him right off. I wouldn't know it now but the servants were
+      talking about the house being forbidden to him, and I went straight to
+      Mademoiselle. I said: 'You keep him away from Miss Lily, because I know
+      something about him.' It was when I told her that she said they were
+      married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went out and up the stairs, moving slowly and heavily. Edith sat
+      still, the pan on her knee, and thought. Did Willy know? Was that why he
+      was willing to marry her? She was swept with bitter jealousy, and added to
+      that came suspicion. Something very near the truth flashed into her mind
+      and stayed there. In her bitterness she saw Willy telling Lily of Akers
+      and herself, and taking her away, or having her taken. It must have been
+      something like that, or why had she left him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her anger slowly subsided; in the end she began to feel that the new
+      situation rendered her own position more secure, even justified her own
+      approaching marriage. Since Lily was gone, why should she not marry Willy
+      Cameron? If what Ellen had said was true she knew him well enough to know
+      that he would deliberately strangle his love for Lily. If it were true,
+      and if he knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She moved about the kitchen, making up the fire, working automatically in
+      that methodless way that always set Ellen's teeth on edge, and thinking.
+      But subconsciously she was listening, too. She had heard Dan go into his
+      mother's room and close the door. She was bracing herself against his
+      coming down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan was difficult those days, irritable and exacting. Moody, too, and much
+      away from home. He hated idleness at its best, and the strike was idleness
+      at its worst. Behind the movement toward the general strike, too, he felt
+      there was some hidden and sinister influence at work, an influence that
+      was determined to turn what had commenced as a labor movement into a class
+      uprising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That very afternoon, for the first time, he had heard whispered the
+      phrase: &ldquo;when the town goes dark.&rdquo; There was a diabolical suggestion in it
+      that sent him home with his fists clenched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not go to his mother's room at once. Instead, he drew a chair to
+      his window and sat there staring out on the little street. When the town
+      went dark, what about all the little streets like this one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After an hour or so of ominous quiet Edith heard him go into his mother's
+      room. Her hands trembled as she closed her door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him coming down at last, and suddenly remembering the license,
+      hid it in a drawer. She knew that he would destroy it if he saw it. And
+      Dan's face justified the move. He came in and stood glowering at her, his
+      hands in his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you tell that lie to mother?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was worried, Dan. And it will be true to-morrow. You&mdash;Dan, you
+      didn't tell her it was a lie, did you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have, but I didn't. What do you mean, it will be true
+      to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going to be married to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll lock you up first,&rdquo; he said, angrily. &ldquo;I've been expecting something
+      like that. I've watched you, and I've seen you watching him. You'll not do
+      it, do you hear? D'you think I'd let you get away with that? Isn't it
+      enough that he's got to support us, without your coaxing him to marry
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no reply, but went on with a perfunctory laying of the table. Her
+      mouth had gone very dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor fish,&rdquo; Dan snarled. &ldquo;I thought he had some sense. Letting
+      himself in for a nice life, isn't he? We're not his kind, and you know it.
+      He knows more in a minute than you'll know all your days. In about three
+      months he'll hate the very sight of you, and then where'll you be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she made no reply, he called to the dog and went out into the yard.
+      She saw him there, brooding and sullen, and she knew that he had not
+      finished. He would say no more to her, but he would wait and have it out
+      with Willy himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Supper was silent. No one ate much, and Ellen, coming down with the tray,
+      reported Mrs. Boyd as very tired, and wanting to settle down early.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks bad to me,&rdquo; she said to Edith. &ldquo;I think the doctor ought to see
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go and send him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith was glad to get out of the house. She had avoided the streets
+      lately, but as it was the supper hour the pavements were empty. Only Joe
+      Wilkinson, bare-headed, stood in the next doorway, and smiled and flushed
+      slightly when he saw her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's your mother?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not so well. I'm going to get the doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind if I get my hat and walk there with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going somewhere else from there, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll walk a block or two, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited impatiently. She liked Joe, but she did not want him then. She
+      wanted to think and plan alone and in the open air, away from the little
+      house with its odors and its querulous thumping cane upstairs; away from
+      Ellen's grim face and Dan's angry one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came out almost immediately, followed by a string of little Wilkinsons,
+      clamoring to go along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind?&rdquo; he asked her. &ldquo;They can trail along behind. The poor kids
+      don't get out much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring them along, of course,&rdquo; she said, somewhat resignedly. And with a
+      flash of her old spirit: &ldquo;I might have brought Jinx, too. Then we'd have
+      had a real procession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They moved down the street, with five little Wilkinsons trailing along
+      behind, and Edith was uncomfortably aware that Joe's eyes were upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't look well,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;You're wearing yourself out
+      taking care of your mother, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't do much for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd say that, of course. You're very unselfish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I?&rdquo; She laughed a little, but the words touched her. &ldquo;Don't think I'm
+      better than I am, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're the most wonderful girl in the world. I guess you know how I feel
+      about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't Joe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that moment a very little Wilkinson fell headlong and burst into
+      loud, despairing wails. Joe set her on her feet, brushed her down with a
+      fatherly hand, and on her refusal to walk further picked her up and
+      carried her. The obvious impossibility of going on with what he had been
+      saying made him smile sheepishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you beat it?&rdquo; he said helplessly, &ldquo;these darn kids&mdash;!&rdquo; But he
+      held the child close.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the next corner he turned toward home. Edith stopped and watched his
+      valiant young back, his small train of followers. He was going to be very
+      sad when he knew, poor Joe, with his vicarious fatherhood, his cluttered,
+      noisy, anxious life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life was queer. Queer and cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the doctor's office, the waiting room lined with patient figures, she
+      went on. She had a very definite plan in mind, but it took all her courage
+      to carry it through. Outside the Benedict Apartments she hesitated, but
+      she went in finally, upheld by sheer determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chair at the telephone desk was empty, but Sam remembered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's out, miss,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He's out most all the time now, with the
+      election coming on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What time does he usually get in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes early, sometimes late,&rdquo; said Sam, watching her. Everything
+      pertaining to Louis Akers was of supreme interest those days to the
+      Benedict employees. The beating he had received, the coming election, the
+      mysterious young woman who had come but once, and the black days that had
+      followed his return from the St. Elmo&mdash;out of such patchwork they
+      were building a small drama of their own. Sam was trying to fit in Edith's
+      visit with the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Benedict was neither more moral nor less than its kind. An unwritten
+      law kept respectable women away, but the management showed no inclination
+      to interfere where there was no noise or disorder. Employees were supposed
+      to see that no feminine visitors remained after midnight, that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might go up and wait for him,&rdquo; Sam suggested. &ldquo;That is, if it's
+      important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw open the gate of the elevator hospitably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half past ten that night Louis Akers went back to his rooms. The
+      telephone girl watched him sharply as he entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a lady waiting for you, Mr. Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung toward her eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lady? Did she give any name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Sam let her in and took her up. He said he thought you wouldn't mind.
+      She'd been here before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought of Edith never entered Akers' head. It was Lily, Lily
+      miraculously come back to him. Lily, his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Going up in the elevator he hastily formulated a plan of action. He would
+      not be too ready to forgive; she had cost him too much. But in the end he
+      would take her in his arms and hold her close. Lily! Lily!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the bitterness of his disappointment that made him brutal. Wicked
+      and unscrupulous as he was with men, with women he was as gentle as he was
+      cruel. He put them from him relentlessly and kissed them good-by. It was
+      his boast that any one of them would come back to him if he wanted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith, listening for his step, was startled at the change in his face when
+      he saw her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he said thickly. &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been waiting all evening. I want to ask you something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung his hat into a chair and faced her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true that you are married to Lily Cardew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I am, what are you going to do about it?&rdquo; His eyes were wary, but his
+      color was coming back. He was breathing more easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only heard it to-day. I must know, Lou. It's awfully important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you hear?&rdquo; He was watching her closely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you were married, but that she had left you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to him incredible that she had come there to taunt him, she who
+      was responsible for the shipwreck of his marriage. That she could come
+      there and face him, and not expect him to kill her where she stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled himself together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's true enough.&rdquo; He swore under his breath. &ldquo;She didn't leave me. She
+      was taken away. And I'll get her back if I&mdash;You little fool, I ought
+      to kill you. If you wanted a cheap revenge, you've got it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want revenge, Lou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught her by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what brought you here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to be sure Lily Cardew was married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she is. What about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not all. What about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up at him gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, if she is, I am going to marry Mr. Cameron tomorrow.&rdquo; At the
+      sight of his astounded face she went on hastily: &ldquo;He knows, Lou, and he
+      offered anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what,&rdquo; he said slowly, &ldquo;has my wife to do with that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to be fair to him. And I think he is&mdash;I think he used to be
+      terribly in love with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite apart from his increasing fear of Willy Cameron and his Committee,
+      there had been in Akers for some time a latent jealousy of him. In a flash
+      he saw the room at the Saint Elmo, and a cold-eyed man inside the doorway.
+      The humiliation of that scene had never left him, of his own maudlin
+      inadequacy, of hearing from beyond a closed and locked door, the closing
+      of another door behind Lily and the man who had taken her away from him. A
+      mad anger and jealousy made him suddenly reckless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;he is terribly in love with my wife, and he intends to
+      marry you. That's&mdash;interesting. Because, my sweet child, he's got a
+      damn poor chance of marrying you, or anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lou!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; he said deliberately. &ldquo;Men who stick their heads into the lion's
+      jaws are apt to lose them. Our young friend Cameron has done that. I'll
+      change the figure. When a man tries to stop a great machine by putting his
+      impudent fingers into the cog wheels, the man's a fool. He may lose his
+      hand, or he may lose his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately for Edith he moved on that speech to the side table, and mixed
+      himself a highball. It gave her a moment to summon her scattered wits, to
+      decide on a plan of action. Her early training on the streets, her recent
+      months of deceit, helped her now. If he had expected any outburst from her
+      it did not come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that he is in danger, I don't believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, old girl. I've told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the whiskey restored his equilibrium again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is,&rdquo; he added slowly, &ldquo;I've warned you. You'd better warn him. He's
+      doing his best to get into trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew him well, saw the craftiness come back into his eyes, and met it
+      with equal strategy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell him,&rdquo; she said, moving toward the door. &ldquo;You haven't scared me
+      for a minute and you won't scare him. You and your machine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dared not seem to hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a boaster,&rdquo; she said, with the door open. &ldquo;You always were. And
+      you'll never lay a hand on him. You're like all bullies; you're a coward!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was through the doorway by that time, and in terror for fear, having
+      told her so much, he would try to detain her. She saw the idea come into
+      his face, too, just as she slipped outside. He made a move toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She slammed the door and ran down the hallway toward the stairs. She heard
+      him open the door and come out into the hall, but she was well in advance
+      and running like a deer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith!&rdquo; he called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stumbled on the second flight of stairs and fell a half-dozen steps,
+      but she picked herself up and ran on. At the bottom of the lower flight
+      she stopped and listened, but he had gone back. She heard the slam of his
+      door as he closed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the insistent need of haste drove her on, headlong. She shot through
+      the lobby, past the staring telephone girl, and into the street, and there
+      settled down into steady running, her elbows close to her sides, trying to
+      remember to breathe slowly and evenly. She must get home somehow, get the
+      envelope and follow the directions inside. Her thoughts raced with her. It
+      was almost eleven o'clock and Willy had been gone for hours. She tried to
+      pray, but the words did not come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At something after seven o'clock that night Willy Cameron and Pink Denslow
+      reached that point on the Mayville Road which had been designated by the
+      storekeeper, Cusick. They left the car there, hidden in a grove, and
+      struck off across country to the west. Willy Cameron had been thoughtful
+      for some time, and as they climbed a low hill, going with extreme caution,
+      he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm still skeptical about Cusick, Pink. Do you think he's straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the best men we've got,&rdquo; Pink replied, confidently. &ldquo;He's put us
+      on to several things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's foreign born, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's his value. They don't suspect him for a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;what does he get out of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good citizen,&rdquo; said Pink, with promptness. &ldquo;You've got to remember,
+      Cameron, that a lot of these fellows are better Americans than we are.
+      They're like religious converts, stronger than the ones born in the fold.
+      They're Americans because they want to be. Anyhow, you ought to be strong
+      for him, Cameron. He said to tell you, but no one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you how strong I am for him later,&rdquo; Willy Cameron said, grimly.
+      &ldquo;Just at this minute I'm waiting to be shown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They advanced with infinite caution, for the evening was still light.
+      Going slowly, it was well after eight and fairly dark before they came
+      within sight of the farm buildings in the valley below. Long unpainted,
+      they were barely discernable in the shadows of the hills. The land around
+      had been carefully cleared, and both men were dismayed at the difficulty
+      of access without being seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't look very good, does it?&rdquo; Pink observed. &ldquo;I will say this, for
+      seclusion and keeping away unwanted visitors, it has it all over any
+      dug-out I ever saw in France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; Willy Cameron said, tensely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood on the alert, but only the evening sounds of country and forest
+      rewarded them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it?&rdquo; Pink inquired, after perhaps two minutes of waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plain scare on my part, probably. I don't so much mind this little
+      excursion, Pink, as I hate the idea that a certain gentleman named Cusick
+      may have a chance to come to our funerals and laugh himself to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When real darkness had fallen, they had reached the lower fringe of the
+      woods. Pink had the fault of the city dweller, however, of being unable to
+      step lightly in the dark, and their progress had been less silent than it
+      should have been. In spite of his handicap, Willy Cameron made his way
+      with the instinctive knowledge of the country bred boy, treading like a
+      cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty poor,&rdquo; Pink said in a discouraged whisper, after a twig had burst
+      under his foot with a report like the shot of a pistol. &ldquo;You travel like a
+      spook, while I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, Pink. I'm going in alone to look around. Stop muttering and
+      listen to me. It's poor strategy not to have a reserve somewhere, isn't
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a poor prune at the best,&rdquo; Pink said stubbornly, &ldquo;but I am not going
+      to let you go into that place alone. You can rave all you want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. Then we'll both stay here. You are about as quiet as a horse
+      going through a corn patch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After some moments Pink spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you insist on stealing the whole show,&rdquo; he said, sulkily, &ldquo;what am I
+      to do? Run to town for help, if you need it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not going to round up the outfit, if there is one. I haven't lost my
+      mind. I'll see what is going on, or about to go on. Then I'll come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron considered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better meet at the machine,&rdquo; he decided, after a glance at the sky. &ldquo;In
+      half an hour you won't be able to see your hand in front of you. Wait here
+      for a half-hour or so, and then start back, and for heaven's sake don't
+      shoot at anything you see moving. As a matter of fact, I might as well
+      have your revolver. I won't need it, but it may avoid any accidental
+      shooting by a youth I both love and admire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I hear any shooting, I'll come in,&rdquo; Pink said, still sulky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in and welcome,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, and Pink knew he was smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the revolver and slipped away into the darkness, leaving Pink both
+      melancholy and disturbed. Unaccustomed to night in the woods, he found his
+      nerves twitching at every sound. In the war there had been a definite
+      enemy, definitely placed. Even when he had gone into that vile strip
+      between the trenches, there had been a general direction for the inimical.
+      Here&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved carefully, and stood with his back against a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a sound came from the farm buildings. Willy Cameron's progress, too,
+      was noiseless. With no way to tell the lapse of time, and gauging it by
+      his war experience, when an hour had apparently passed by, he knew that
+      Cameron had been gone about ten minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time dragged on. A cow, unmilked, lowed plaintively once or twice. A
+      September night breeze set the dying leaves on the trees to rustling, and
+      stirred the dried ones about his feet. Pink's mind, gradually reassured,
+      turned to other things. He thought of Lily Cardew, for one. Like Willy
+      Cameron, he knew he would always love her, but unlike Willy, the first
+      pain of her loss was gone. He was glad that time was over. He was glad
+      that she was at home again, safe from those&mdash;Some one was moving near
+      him, passing within twenty feet. Whoever it was was stepping cautiously
+      but blunderingly. It was not Cameron, then. He was a footfall only, not
+      even an outline. Before Pink could decide on a line of action, the sound
+      was lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every sense acute, he waited. He had decided that if the incident were
+      repeated, he would make an effort to get the fellow from behind, but there
+      was no return. The wind had died again, and there was no longer even the
+      rustling of the leaves to break the utter stillness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he saw a red flash near the barn, and an instant later heard the
+      report of a pistol. Came immediately after that a brief fusillade of
+      shots, a pause, then two or three scattering ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the first shot Pink started running. He was vaguely conscious of
+      other steps near him, running also, but he could see nothing. His whole
+      mind was set on finding Willy Cameron. Alone he had not a chance, but two
+      of them together could put up a fight. He pelted along, stumbling,
+      recovering, stumbling again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another shot was fired. They hadn't got him yet, or they wouldn't be
+      shooting. He raised his voice in a great call.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron! Here! Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ran into a low fence then, and it threw him. He had hardly got to his
+      knees before the other running figure had hurled itself on him, and struck
+      him with the butt of a revolver. He dropped flat and lay still.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      For weeks Woslosky had known of the growing strength of the Vigilance
+      Committee, and that it was arming steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It threatened absolutely the success of his plans. Even the election of
+      Akers and the changes he would make in the city police; even the ruse of
+      other strikes and machine-made riotings to call away the state troops,&mdash;none
+      of these, or all of them, would be effectual against an organized body of
+      citizens, duly called to the emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And such an organization was already effected. Within a week, when the
+      first card reached his hands, it had grown to respectable proportions.
+      Woslosky went to Doyle, and they made their counter-moves quickly. No more
+      violence. A seemingly real but deceptive orderliness. They were dealing
+      with inflammatory material, however, and now and then it got out of hand.
+      Unlike Doyle the calculating, who made each move slowly and watched its
+      results with infinite zest, the Pole chafed under delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can't hold them much longer,&rdquo; he complained, bitterly. &ldquo;This thing of
+      holding them off until after the election&mdash;and until Akers takes
+      office&mdash;it's got too many ifs in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was haste lost Seattle,&rdquo; said Doyle, as unmoved as Woslosky was
+      excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky did not like Louis Akers. What was more important, he distrusted
+      him. When he heard of his engagement to Lily Cardew he warned Doyle about
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in this thing for what he can get out of it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He'll go as
+      far as he can, with safety, to be accepted by the Cardews.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; was Doyle's dry comment, &ldquo;with safety, you said. Well, he knows
+      you and he knows me, and he'll he straight because he's afraid not to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When there's a woman in it!&rdquo; said the Pole, skeptically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Doyle only smiled. He had known many women and loved none of them, and
+      he was temperamentally unable to understand the type of man who saw the
+      world through a woman's eyes and in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Woslosky was compelled to watch the growth of Willy Cameron's
+      organization, and to hold in check the violent passions he had himself
+      roused, and to wait, gnawing his nails with inaction and his heart with
+      rage. But these certain things he discovered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the organization's growth was coincident with a new interest in local
+      politics, as though some vital force had wakened the plain people to a
+      sense of responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That a drug clerk named Cameron was the founder and moving spirit of the
+      league, and that he was, using Hendricks' candidacy as a means, rousing
+      the city to a burning patriotic activity that Mr. Woslosky regarded as
+      extremely pernicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that this same Willy Cameron had apparently a knowledge of certain
+      plans, which was rather worse than pernicious. Mr. Woslosky's name for it
+      was damnable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For instance, there were the lists of the various city stores and their
+      estimated contents, missing from Mr. Woslosky's own inconspicuous trunk in
+      a storage house. On that had been based the plan for feeding the
+      revolution, by the simple expedient of exchanging by organized pillage the
+      contents of the city stores for food stuffs from the farmers in outlying
+      districts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Revolution, according to Mr. Woslosky, could only be starved out. He had
+      no anxiety as to troops which would be sent against them, because he had a
+      cynical belief that a man's country was less to him than various other
+      things, including his stomach. He believed that all armies were riddled
+      with sedition and fundamentally opposed to law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copies of other important matters, too, were missing. Lists of officials
+      for the revolutionary city government and of deputies to take the places
+      of the disbanded police, plans for manning, by the radicals, the city
+      light, water and power plants; a schedule of public eating houses to take
+      the place of the restaurants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky began to find this drug clerk with the ridiculous given name
+      getting on his nerves. He considered him a dangerous enemy to progress,
+      that particular form of progress which Mr. Woslosky advocated, and he
+      suspected him of a lack of ethics regarding trunks in storage. Mr.
+      Woslosky had the old-world idea that the best government was a despotism
+      tempered by assassination. He thought considerably about Willy Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the plan concerning the farm house was, in the end, devised by Louis
+      Akers. Woslosky was skeptical. It was true that Cameron might stick his
+      head into the lion's jaws, but precautions had been known to be taken at
+      such times to prevent their closing. However, the Pole was desperate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took six picked men with him that afternoon to the farm, and made a
+      strategic survey of the situation. The house was closed and locked, but he
+      was not concerned with the house. Cusick had told Denslow the meetings
+      were held late at night in the barn, and to the barn Woslosky repaired,
+      sawed-off shotgun under his coat and cigarette in mouth, and inspected it
+      with his evil smile. Two men, young and reckless, might easily plan to
+      conceal themselves under the hay in the loft, and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky put down his gun and went down into the cow barn below, whistling
+      softly to himself. He began to enjoy the prospect. He gathered some eggs
+      from the feed boxes, carrying them in his hat, and breaking the lock of
+      the kitchen door he and his outfit looted the closet there and had an
+      early supper, being careful to extinguish the fire afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not until dusk was falling did he post his men, three outside among the
+      outbuildings, one as a sentry near the woods, and two in the barn itself.
+      He himself took up his station inside the barn door, sitting on the floor
+      with his gun across his knees. Looking out from there, he saw the sharp
+      flash of a hastily extinguished match, and snarled with anger. He had
+      forbidden smoking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to go out,&rdquo; he said cautiously. &ldquo;Don't you fools shoot me when I
+      come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped out into what was by that time complete blackness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some five minutes later he came back, still noiselessly, and treading like
+      a cat. He could only locate the barn door by feeling for it, and above the
+      light scraping of his fingers he could hear, inside, cautious footsteps
+      over the board floor. He scowled again. Damn this country quiet, anyhow!
+      But he had found the doorway, and was feeling his way through when he
+      found himself caught and violently thrown. The fall and the surprise
+      stunned him. He lay still for an infuriated helpless second, with a knee
+      on his chest and both arms tightly held, to hear one of his own men above
+      him saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got him, all right. Woslosky, you've got the rope, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fool!&rdquo; snarled Woslosky from the floor, &ldquo;let me up. You've half
+      killed me. Didn't I tell you I was going out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He scrambled to his feet, and to an astounded silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you came in a couple of minutes ago. Somebody came in. You heard him,
+      Cusick, didn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost with
+      the same movement drew a searchlight and flashed it over the place. It was
+      apparently empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp questions.
+      Both men had heard the cautious entrance they had taken for his own, both
+      men had remained silent and unsuspicious, and both were positive whoever
+      had come in had not gone out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search. The
+      summer's hay filled one end, but it was closely packed below and offered
+      no refuge. Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash in his pocket,
+      Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going softly. He listened at the
+      top, and then searched it with the light, holding it far to the left for a
+      possible bullet. The loft was empty. He climbed into it and walked over
+      it, gun in one hand and flash in the other, searching for some buried
+      figure. But there was nothing. The loft was fragrant with the newly dried
+      hay, sweet and empty. Woslosky descended the ladder again, the flash
+      extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering. Cusick was a
+      man without imagination, and he had sworn that some one had come in. Then&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited flutterings
+      first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who roosted on the roof.
+      Woslosky listened and slowly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got him, boys,&rdquo; he said, without excitement. &ldquo;Outside, and call the
+      others. He's on the roof.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others coming
+      pell-mell toward him. He flung a guard of all five of them around the
+      barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward. The
+      very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore softly.
+      In the hope of drawing an answering flash he fired, but without result.
+      The explosion echoed and reechoed, died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He called to Cusick, and had him try the same experiment, following the
+      line of the gutter as nearly as possible in the darkness, on that side,
+      and emptying his revolver. Still silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky began to doubt. The pigeons might have seen his flashlight, might
+      have heard his own stealthy movements. He was intensely irritated. The
+      shooting, if the alarm had been false, had ruined everything. He saw, as
+      in a vision, Doyle's sneering face when he told him. Beside him Cusick was
+      reloading his revolver in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, out of the night, came a call from the direction of the woods, and
+      unintelligible at that distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; Cusick said hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky made no reply. He was listening. Some one was approaching, now
+      running, now stopping as though confused. Woslosky held his gun ready, and
+      waited. Then, from a distance, he heard his name called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped inside the door of the barn and showed the light for a moment.
+      Soon after the sentry floundered in, breathless and excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got one of them,&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;Hit him with my gun. He's lying back by
+      the stone fence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you call out, or did he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did. That's how I knew it wasn't one of our fellows. He called
+      Cameron, so he's the other one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky drew a deep breath. Then it was Cameron on the roof. It was
+      Cameron they wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll sleep for an hour or two, if he ever wakes up,&rdquo; Pink's assailant
+      boasted. But Woslosky was taking no chances that night. He sent two men
+      after Pink, and began to pace the floor thoughtfully. If he could have
+      waited for daylight it would have been simple enough, but he did not know
+      how much time he had. He did not underestimate young Cameron's
+      intelligence, and it had occurred to him that that young Scot might
+      cannily have provided against his failure to return. Then, too, the state
+      constabulary had an uncomfortable habit of riding lonely back roads at
+      night, and shots could be heard a long distance off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had never surveyed the barn roof closely, but he knew that it was
+      steeply pitched. Cameron, then, was probably braced somewhere in the
+      gutter. The departure of the two men had left him short-handed, and he
+      waited impatiently for their return. With a ladder, provided it could be
+      quietly placed, a man could shoot from a corner along two sides of the
+      roof. With two ladders, at diagonal corners, they could get him. But a
+      careful search discovered no ladders on the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went out, and standing close against the wall for protection, called
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know you're there, Cameron,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you come down we won't hurt
+      you. If you don't, we'll get you, and you know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he received no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after that the two men carried in Pink Denslow, and laid him on the
+      floor of the barn. Then Woslosky tried again, more reckless this time with
+      anger. He stood out somewhat from the wall and called:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One more chance, Cameron, or we'll put a bullet through your friend here.
+      Come down, or we'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something struck him heavily and he fell, with a bullet in the shoulder.
+      He struggled to his feet and gained the shelter of the wall, his face
+      twisted with pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if that's the way you feel about it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He regained the barn and had his arm supported in an extemporized sling.
+      Then he ordered Pink to be tied, and fighting down his pain considered the
+      situation. Cameron was on the roof, and armed. Even if he had no extra
+      shells he still had five shots in reserve, and he would not waste any of
+      them. Whoever tried to scale the walls would be done in at once; whoever
+      attempted to follow him to the roof by way of the loft would be shot
+      instantly. And his own condition demanded haste; the bullet, striking from
+      above, had broken his arm. Every movement was torture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought of setting fire to the barn. Then Cameron would have the choice
+      of two things, to surrender or to be killed. He might get some of them
+      first, however. Well, that was a part of the game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He delivered a final ultimatum from the shelter of the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've just thought of something, Cameron,&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;We're going to fire
+      the barn. Your young friend is here, tied, and we'll leave him here. Do
+      you get that? Either throw down that gun of yours, and come down, or I'm
+      inclined to think you'll be up against it. I'll give you a minute or so to
+      think it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At half-past eleven o'clock that night the first of four automobiles drove
+      into Friendship. It was driven by a hatless young man in a raincoat over a
+      suit of silk pajamas, and it contained four County detectives and the city
+      Chief of Police. Behind it, but well outdistanced, came the other cars,
+      some of them driven by leading citizens in a state of considerable
+      deshabille.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a cross street in Friendship the lead car drew up, and flashlights were
+      turned on a road map in the rear of the car. There was some argument over
+      the proper road, and a member of the state constabulary, riding up to
+      investigate, showed a strong inclination to place them under arrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took a moment to put him right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wish I could go along,&rdquo; he said, wistfully. &ldquo;The place you want is back
+      there. I can't leave the town, but I'll steer you out. You'll probably run
+      into some of our fellows back there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rode on ahead, his big black horse restive in the light from the lamps
+      behind him. At the end of a lane he stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Straight ahead up there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You'll find&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off and stared ahead to where a dull red glare, reflected on the
+      low hanging clouds, had appeared over the crest of the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something doing up there,&rdquo; he called suddenly. &ldquo;Let's go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He jerked his revolver free, dug his heels into the flanks of his horse,
+      and was off on a dead run. Half way up the hill the car passed him, the
+      black going hard, and its rider's face, under the rim of his uniform hat,
+      a stern profile. His reins lay loose on the animal's neck, and he was
+      examining his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road mounted to a summit, and dipped again. They were in a long
+      valley, and the burning barn was clearly outlined at the far end of it.
+      One side was already flaming, and tongues of fire leaped out through the
+      roof. The men in the car were standing now, doors open, ready to leap,
+      while the car lurched and swayed over the uneven road. Behind them they
+      heard the clatter of the oncoming horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they drew nearer they could see three watching figures against the
+      burning building, and as they turned into the lane which led to the
+      barnyard a shot rang out and one of the figures dropped and lay still.
+      There was a cry of warning from somewhere, and before the detectives could
+      leap from the car, the group had scattered, running wildly. The state
+      policeman threw his horse back on its hunches, and fired without
+      apparently taking aim at one of the running shadows. The man threw up his
+      arms and fell. The state policeman galloped toward him, dismounted and
+      bent over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Firing as they ran, detectives leaped out of the car and gave chase, and
+      so it was that the young gentleman in bedroom slippers and pajamas,
+      standing in his car and shielding his eyes against the glare, saw a
+      curious thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First of all, the roof blazed up brightly, and he perceived a human
+      figure, hanging by its hands from the eaves and preparing to drop. The
+      young gentleman in pajamas was feeling rather out of things by that time,
+      so he made a hasty exit from his car toward the barn, losing a slipper as
+      he did so, and yelling in a slightly hysterical manner. It thus happened
+      that he and the dropping figure reached the same spot at almost the same
+      moment, one result of which was that the young gentleman in pajamas found
+      himself struck a violent blow with a doubled-up fist, and at the same
+      moment his bare right foot was tramped on with extreme thoroughness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young gentleman in pajamas reeled back dizzily and gave tongue, while
+      standing on one foot. The person he addressed was the state constable, and
+      his instructions were to get the fugitive and kill him. But the fugitive
+      here did a very strange thing. Through the handkerchief which it was now
+      seen he wore tied over his mouth, he told the running policeman to go to
+      perdition, and then with seeming suicidal intent rushed into the burning
+      barn. From it he emerged a moment later, dragging a figure bound hand and
+      foot, blackened with smoke, and with its clothing smoldering in a dozen
+      places; a figure which alternately coughed and swore in a strangled
+      whisper, but which found breath for a loud whoop almost immediately after,
+      on its being immersed, as it promptly was, in a nearby horse-trough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very soon after that the other cars arrived. They drew up and men emerged
+      from them, variously clothed and even more variously armed, but all they
+      saw was the ruined embers of the barn, and in the glow five figures. Of
+      the five one lay, face up to the sky, as though the prostrate body
+      followed with its eyes the unkillable traitor soul of one Cusick, lately
+      storekeeper at Friendship. Woslosky, wounded for the second time, lay on
+      an automobile rug on the ground, conscious but sullenly silent. On the
+      driving seat of an automobile sat a young gentleman with an overcoat over
+      a pair of silk pajamas, carefully inspecting the toes of his right foot by
+      the light of a match, while another young gentleman with a white
+      handkerchief around his head was sitting on the running board of the same
+      car, dripping water and rather dazedly staring at the ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And beside him stood a gaunt figure, blackened of face, minus eyebrows and
+      charred of hair, and considerably torn as to clothing. A figure which
+      seemed disinclined to talk, and which gave its explanations in short,
+      staccato sentences. Having done which, it relapsed into uncompromising
+      silence again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time later the detectives returned. They had made no further
+      captures, for the refugees had known the country, and once outside the
+      light from the burning barn search was useless. The Chief of Police
+      approached Willy Cameron and stood before him, eyeing him severely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The next time you try to raid an anarchist meeting, Cameron,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;you'd better honor me with your confidence. You've probably learned a
+      lesson from all this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron glanced at him, and for the first time that night, smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I'll never trust a pigeon again.&rdquo; The Chief thought
+      him slightly unhinged by the night's experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Edith Boyd's child was prematurely born at the Memorial Hospital early the
+      next morning. It lived only a few moments, but Edith's mother never knew
+      either of its birth or of its death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Willy Cameron reached the house at two o'clock that night he found
+      Dan in the lower hall, a new Dan, grave and composed but very pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother's gone, Willy,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;I don't think she knew anything
+      about it. Ellen heard her breathing hard and went in, but she wasn't
+      conscious.&rdquo; He sat down on the horse-hair covered chair by the stand. &ldquo;I
+      don't know anything about these things,&rdquo; he observed, still with that
+      strange new composure. &ldquo;What do you do now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't worry about that, Dan, just now. There's nothing to do until
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked about him. The presence of death gave a new dignity to the
+      little house. Through the open door he could see in the parlor Mrs. Boyd's
+      rocking chair, in which she had traveled so many conversational miles.
+      Even the chair had gained dignity; that which it had once enthroned had
+      now penetrated the ultimate mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was shaken and very weary. His mind worked slowly and torpidly, so that
+      even grief came with an effort. He was grieved; he knew that. Some one who
+      had loved him and depended on him was gone; some one who loved life had
+      lost it. He ran his hand over his singed hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Edith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan's voice hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's out somewhere. It's like her, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron roused himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out?&rdquo; he said incredulously. &ldquo;Don't you know where she is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. And I don't care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron was fully alert now, and staring down at Dan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you something, Dan. She probably saved my life to-night. I'll
+      tell you how later. And if she is still out there is something wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She used to stay out to all hours. She hasn't done it lately, but I
+      thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan got up and reached for his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where'll I start to look for her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Willy Cameron had no suggestion to make. He was trying to think
+      straight, but it was not easy. He knew that for some reason Edith had not
+      waited until midnight to open the envelope. She had telephoned her message
+      clearly, he had learned, but with great excitement, saying that there was
+      a plot against his life, and giving the farmhouse and the message he had
+      left in full; and she had not rung off until she knew that a posse would
+      start at once. And that had been before eleven o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three hours. He looked at his watch. Either she had been hurt or was a
+      prisoner, or&mdash;he came close to the truth then. He glanced at Dan,
+      standing hat in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll try the hospitals first, Dan,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And the best way to do
+      that is by telephone. I don't like Ellen being left alone here, so you'd
+      better let me do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan acquiesced unwillingly. He resumed his seat in the hail, and Willy
+      Cameron went upstairs. Ellen was moving softly about, setting in order the
+      little upper room. The windows were opened, and through them came the soft
+      night wind, giving a semblance of life and movement under it to the sheet
+      that covered the quiet figure on the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron stood by it and looked down, with a great wave of
+      thankfulness in his heart. She had been saved much, and if from some new
+      angle she was seeing them now it would be with the vision of eternity, and
+      its understanding. She would see how sometimes the soul must lose here to
+      gain beyond. She would see the world filled with its Ediths, and she would
+      know that they too were a part of the great plan, and that the breaking of
+      the body sometimes freed the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was shy of the forms of religion, but he voiced a small inarticulate
+      prayer, standing beside the bed while Ellen straightened the few toilet
+      articles on the dresser, that she might have rest, and then a long and
+      placid happiness. And love, he added. There would be no Heaven without
+      love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen was looking at him in the mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hair looks queer, Willy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And I declare your clothes are
+      a sight.&rdquo; She turned, sternly. &ldquo;Where have you been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a long story, Ellen. Don't bother about it now. I'm worried about
+      Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen's lips closed in a grim line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The less said about her the better. She came back in a terrible state
+      about something or other, ran in and up to your room, and out again. I
+      tried to tell her her mother wasn't so well, but she looked as if she
+      didn't hear me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was four o'clock in the morning when Willy Cameron located Edith. He
+      had gone to the pharmacy and let himself in, intending to telephone, but
+      the card on the door, edged with black, gave him a curious sense of being
+      surrounded that night by death, and he stood for a moment, unwilling to
+      begin for fear of some further tragedy. In that moment, what with reaction
+      from excitement and weariness, he had a feeling of futility, of struggling
+      to no end. One fought on, and in the last analysis it was useless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So soon passeth it away, and we are gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw Mr. Davis, sitting alone in his house; he saw Ellen moving about
+      that quiet upper room; he saw Cusick lying on the ground beside the
+      smoldering heap that had been the barn, and staring up with eyes that saw
+      only the vast infinity that was the sky. All the struggling and the
+      fighting, and it came to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked up the telephone book at last, and finding the hospital list in
+      the directory began his monotonous calling of numbers, and still the
+      revolt was in his mind. Even life lay through the gates of death; daily
+      and hourly women everywhere laid down their lives that some new soul be
+      born. But the revulsion came with that, a return to something nearer the
+      normal. Daily and hourly women lived, having brought to pass the miracle
+      of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half-past four he located Edith at the Memorial, and learned that her
+      child had been born dead, but that she was doing well. He was suddenly
+      exhausted; he sat down on a stool before the counter, and with his arms
+      across it and his head on them, fell almost instantly asleep. When he
+      waked it was almost seven and the intermittent sounds of early morning
+      came through the closed doors, as though the city stirred but had not
+      wakened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the door and opened it, looking out. He had been wrong before.
+      Death was a beginning and not an end; it was the morning of the spirit.
+      Tired bodies lay down to sleep and their souls wakened to the morning,
+      rested; the first fruits of them that slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the chimneys of the houses nearby small spirals of smoke began to
+      ascend, definite promise of food and morning cheer behind the closed
+      doors, where the milk bottles stood like small white sentinels and the
+      morning paper was bent over the knob. Morning in the city, with children
+      searching for lost stockings and buttoning little battered shoes; with
+      women hurrying about, from stove to closet, from table to stove; with all
+      burdens a little lighter and all thoughts a little kinder. Morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In her bed in the maternity ward Edith at first lay through the days,
+      watching the other women with their babies, and wondering over the strange
+      instinct that made them hover, like queer mis-shaped ministering angels,
+      over the tiny quivering bundles. Some of them were like herself, or
+      herself as she might have been, bearing their children out of wedlock. Yet
+      they faced their indefinite futures impassively, content in relief from
+      pain, in the child in their arms, in present peace and security. She could
+      not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She herself felt no sense of loss. Having never held her child in her arms
+      she did not feel them empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not been told of her mother's death; men were not admitted to the
+      ward, but early on that first morning, when she lay there, hardly
+      conscious but in an ecstasy of relief from pain, Ellen had come. A tired
+      Ellen with circles around her eyes, and a bag of oranges in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you feel?&rdquo; she had asked, sitting down self-consciously beside the
+      bed. The ward had its eyes on her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm weak, but I'm all right. Last night was awful, Ellen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had roused herself with an effort. Ellen reminded her of something,
+      something that had to do with Willy Cameron. Then she remembered, and
+      tried to raise herself in the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Did he come home? Is he all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's all right. It was him that found you were here. You lie back now;
+      the nurse is looking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith lay down and closed her eyes, and the ecstasy of relief and peace
+      gave to her pale face an almost spiritual look. Ellen saw it, and patted
+      her arm with a roughened hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You poor thing!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I've been as mean to you as I knew how to be.
+      I'm going to be different, Edith. I'm just a cross old maid, and I guess I
+      didn't understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've been all right,&rdquo; Edith said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen kissed her when she went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So for three days Edith lay and rested. She felt that God had been very
+      good to her, and she began to think of God as having given her another
+      chance. This time He had let her off, but He had given her a warning. He
+      had said, in effect, that if she lived straight and thought straight from
+      now on He would forget this thing she had done. But if she did not&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then what about Willy Cameron? Did He mean her to hold him to that now?
+      Willy did not love her. Perhaps he would grow to love her, but she was
+      seeing things more clearly than she had before, and one of the things she
+      saw was that Willy Cameron was a one-woman man, and that she was not the
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I love him so,&rdquo; she would cry to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ward moved in its orderly routine around her. The babies were carried
+      out, bathed and brought back, their nuzzling mouths open for the waiting
+      mother-breast. The nurses moved about, efficient, kindly, whimsically
+      maternal. Women went out when their hour came, swollen of feature and
+      figure, and were wheeled back later on, etherealized, purified as by fire,
+      and later on were given their babies. Their faces were queer then,
+      frightened and proud at first, and later watchful and tenderly brooding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three days Edith's struggle went on. She had her strong hours and her
+      weak ones. There were moments when, exhausted and yet exalted, she
+      determined to give him up altogether, to live the fiction of the marriage
+      until her mother's death, and then to give up the house and never see him
+      again. If she gave him up she must never see him again. At those times she
+      prayed not to love him any longer, and sometimes, for a little while after
+      that, she would have peace. It was almost as though she did not love him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there were the other times, when she lay there and pictured them
+      married, and dreamed a dream of bringing him to her feet. He had offered a
+      marriage that was not a marriage, but he was a man, and human. He did not
+      want her now, but in the end he would want her; young as she was she knew
+      already the strength of a woman's physical hold on a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late on the afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a swollen-eyed
+      Ellen, dressed in black with black cotton gloves, and a black veil around
+      her hat. Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged sense of duty of her
+      class, and would as soon have gone to the burying ground in her kitchen
+      apron as without black. She stood in the doorway of the ward, hesitating,
+      and Edith saw her and knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her first thought was not of her mother at all. She saw only that the God
+      who had saved her had made her decision for her, and that now she would
+      never marry Willy Cameron. All this time He had let her dream and
+      struggle. She felt very bitter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen came and sat down beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's gone. Edith,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;we didn't tell you before, but you have to
+      know sometime. We buried her this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Edith forgot Willy Cameron, and God, and Dan, and the years
+      ahead. She was a little girl again, and her mother was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brush your teeth and say your prayers, Edie. And tomorrow's Saturday. So
+      you don't need to get up until you're good and ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay there. She saw her mother growing older and more frail, the house
+      more untidy, and her mother's bright spirit fading to the drab of her
+      surroundings. She saw herself, slipping in late at night, listening always
+      for that uneasy querulous voice. And then she saw those recent months,
+      when her mother had bloomed with happiness; she saw her struggling with
+      her beloved desserts, cheerfully unconscious of any failure in them; she
+      saw her, living like a lady, as she had said, with every anxiety kept from
+      her. There had been times when her thin face had been almost illuminated
+      with her new content and satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly grief and remorse overwhelmed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother!&rdquo; she said, huskily. And lay there, crying quietly, with Ellen
+      holding her hand. All that was hard and rebellious in Edith Boyd was swept
+      away in that rush of grief, and in its place there came a new courage and
+      resolution. She would meet the future alone, meet it and overcome it. But
+      not alone, either; there was always&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a Sunday afternoon, and the nurse had picked up the worn ward Bible
+      and was reading from it, aloud. In their rocking chairs in a semi-circle
+      around her were the women, some with sleeping babies in their arms, others
+      with tense, expectant faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let not your heart be troubled,&rdquo; read the nurse, in a grave young voice.
+      &ldquo;Ye believe in God. Believe also in Me. In my Father's house&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was always God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith Boyd saw her mother in the Father's house, pottering about some
+      small celestial duty, and eagerly seeking and receiving approval. She saw
+      her, in some celestial rocking chair, her tired hands folded, slowly
+      rocking and resting. And perhaps, as she sat there, she held Edith's child
+      on her knee, like the mothers in the group around the nurse. Held it and
+      understood at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was at this time that Doyle showed his hand, with his customary
+      fearlessness. He made a series of incendiary speeches, the general theme
+      being that the hour was close at hand for putting the fear of God into the
+      exploiting classes for all time to come. His impassioned oratory, coming
+      at the psychological moment, when the long strike had brought its train of
+      debt and evictions, made a profound impression. Had he asked for a general
+      strike vote then, he would have secured it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was, it was some time before all the unions had voted for it. And
+      the day was not set. Doyle was holding off, and for a reason. Day by day
+      he saw a growth of the theory of Bolshevism among the so-called
+      intellectual groups of the country. Almost every university had its
+      radicals, men who saw emerging from Russia the beginning of a new earth.
+      Every class now had its Bolshevists. They found a ready market for their
+      propaganda, intelligent and insidious as it was, among a certain liberal
+      element of the nation, disgruntled with the autocracy imposed upon them by
+      the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reaction from that autocracy was a swinging to the other extreme, and,
+      as if to work into the hands of the revolutionary party, living costs
+      remained at the maximum. The cry of the revolutionists, to all enough and
+      to none too much, found a response not only in the anxious minds of honest
+      workmen, but among an underpaid intelligentsia. Neither political party
+      offered any relief; the old lines no longer held, and new lines of
+      cleavage had come. Progressive Republicans and Democrats had united
+      against reactionary members of both parties. There were no great leaders,
+      no men of the hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old vicious cycle of empires threatened to repeat itself, the old
+      story of the many led by the few. Always it had come, autocracy, the too
+      great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that power by the
+      angry mob. Out of that anarchy the gradual restoration of order by the
+      people themselves, into democracy. And then in time again, by that steady
+      gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who emerged
+      from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was autocracy
+      again, and again the vicious circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But such movements had always been, in the last analysis, the work of the
+      few. It had always been the militant minority which ruled. Always the
+      great mass of the people had submitted. They had fought, one way or the
+      other when the time came, but without any deep conviction behind them.
+      They wanted peace, the right to labor. They warred, to find peace. Small
+      concern was it, to the peasant plowing his field, whether one man ruled
+      over him or a dozen. He wanted neither place nor power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came to this, then, Willy Cameron argued to himself. This new world
+      conflict was a struggle between the contented and the discontented. In
+      Europe, discontent might conquer, but in America, never. There were too
+      many who owned a field or had the chance to labor. There were too many
+      ways legitimately to aspire. Those who wanted something for nothing were
+      but a handful to those who wanted to give that they might receive.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Three days before the election, Willy Cameron received a note from Lily,
+      sent by hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father wants to see you to-night,&rdquo; she wrote, &ldquo;and mother suggests that
+      as you are busy, you try to come to dinner. We are dining alone. Do come,
+      Willy. I think it is most important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the letter home with him and placed it in a locked drawer of his
+      desk, along with a hard and shrunken doughnut, tied with a bow of
+      Christmas ribbon, which had once helped to adorn the Christmas tree they
+      had trimmed together. There were other things in the drawer; a postcard
+      photograph, rather blurred, of Lily in the doorway of her little hut,
+      smiling; and the cigar box which had been her cash register at the camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood for some time looking down at the post card; it did not seem
+      possible that in the few months since those wonderful days, life could
+      have been so cruel to them both. Lily married, and he himself&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen came up when he was tying his tie. She stood behind him, watching
+      him in the mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what you've done to your hair, Willy,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it
+      certainly looks queer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It usually looks queer, so why worry, heart of my heart?&rdquo; But he turned
+      and put an arm around her shoulders. &ldquo;What would the world be without
+      women like you, Ellen?&rdquo; he said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't done anything but my duty,&rdquo; Ellen said, in her prim voice.
+      &ldquo;Listen, Willy. I saw Edith again to-day, and she told me to do
+      something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To go home and take a rest? That's what you need.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She wants me to tear up that marriage license.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said nothing for a moment. &ldquo;I'll have to see her first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said it wouldn't be any good, Willy. She's made up her mind.&rdquo; She
+      watched him anxiously. &ldquo;You're not going to be foolish, are you? She says
+      there's no need now, and she's right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Somebody will have to look after her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dan can do that. He's changed, since she went.&rdquo; Ellen glanced toward Mrs.
+      Boyd's empty room. &ldquo;You've done enough, Willy. You've seen them through,
+      all of them. I&mdash;isn't it time you began to think about yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was putting on his coat, and she picked a bit of thread from it, with
+      nervous fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you going to-night, Willy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the Cardews. Mr. Cardew has sent for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy, I want to tell you something. The Cardews won't let that marriage
+      stand, and you know it. I think she cares for you. Don't look at me like
+      that. I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's because you are fond of me,&rdquo; he said, smiling down at her. &ldquo;I'm
+      not the sort of man girls care about, Ellen. Let's face that. The General
+      Manager said when he planned me, 'Here's going to be a fellow who is to
+      have everything in the world, health, intelligence, wit and the beauty of
+      an Adonis, but he has to lack something, so we'll make it that'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ellen, glancing up swiftly, saw that although his tone was light,
+      there was pain in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reflected on Edith's decision as he walked through the park toward the
+      Cardew house. It had not surprised him, and yet he knew it had cost her an
+      effort. How great an effort, man-like, he would never understand, but
+      something of what she had gone through he realized. He wondered vaguely
+      whether, had there never been a Lily Cardew in his life, he could ever
+      have cared for Edith. Perhaps. Not the Edith of the early days, that was
+      certain. But this new Edith, with her gentleness and meekness, her clear,
+      suffering eyes, her strange new humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had sent him a message of warning about Akers, and from it he had
+      reconstructed much of the events of the night she had taken sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him to watch Louis Akers,&rdquo; she had said. &ldquo;I don't know how near
+      Willy was to trouble the other night, Ellen, but they're going to try to
+      get him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellen had repeated the message, watching him narrowly, but he had only
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are they?&rdquo; she had persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you all about it some day,&rdquo; he had said. But he had told Dan
+      the whole story, and, although he did not know it, Dan had from that time
+      on been his self-constituted bodyguard. During his campaign speeches Dan
+      was always near, his right hand on a revolver in his coat pocket, and for
+      hours at a time he stood outside the pharmacy, favoring every seeker for
+      drugs or soap or perfume with a scowling inspection. When he could not do
+      it, he enlisted Joe Wilkinson in the evenings, and sometimes the two of
+      them, armed, policed the meeting halls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, Joe Wilkinson was following him that night. On his
+      way to the Cardews Willy Cameron, suddenly remembering the uncanny ability
+      of Jinx to escape and trail him, remaining meanwhile at a safe distance in
+      the rear, turned suddenly and saw Joe, walking sturdily along in
+      rubber-soled shoes, and obsessed with his high calling of personal
+      detective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe, discovered, grinned sheepishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought that looked like your back,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Nice evening for a walk,
+      isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me look at you, Joe,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron. &ldquo;You look strange to me.
+      Ah, now I have it. You look like a comet without a tail. Where's the
+      family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Making taffy. How&mdash;is Edith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doing nicely.&rdquo; He avoided the boy's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'd better tell you. Dan's told me about her. I&mdash;&rdquo; Joe
+      hesitated. Then: &ldquo;She never seemed like that sort of a girl,&rdquo; he finished,
+      bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She isn't that sort of girl, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did it. How could a fellow know she wouldn't do it again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has had a pretty sad sort of lesson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe, his real business forgotten, walked on with eyes down and shoulders
+      drooping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might as well finish with it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;now I've started. I've always
+      been crazy about her. Of course now&mdash;I haven't slept for two nights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it's rather like this, Joe,&rdquo; Willy Cameron said, after a pause.
+      &ldquo;We are not one person, really. We are all two or three people, and all
+      different. We are bad and good, depending on which of us is the strongest
+      at the time, and now and then we pay so much for the bad we do that we
+      bury that part. That's what has happened to Edith. Unless, of course,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;we go on convincing her that she is still the thing she doesn't
+      want to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to kill the man,&rdquo; Joe said. But after a little, as they neared
+      the edge of the park, he looked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean, go on as if nothing had happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely,&rdquo; said Willy Cameron, &ldquo;as though nothing had happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The atmosphere of the Cardew house was subtly changed and very friendly.
+      Willy Cameron found himself received as an old friend, with no tendency to
+      forget the service he had rendered, or that, in their darkest hour, he had
+      been one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his surprise Pink Denslow was there, and he saw at once that Pink had
+      been telling them of the night at the farm house. Pink was himself again,
+      save for a small shaved place at the back of his head, covered with
+      plaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told them, Cameron,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I could only tell it generally I'd
+      be the most popular man in the city, at dinners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pair of young fools,&rdquo; old Anthony muttered, with his sardonic smile. But
+      in his hand-clasp, as in Howard's, there was warmth and a sort of envy,
+      envy of youth and the adventurous spirit of youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was very quiet. The story had meant more to her than to the others.
+      She had more nearly understood Pink's reference to the sealed envelope
+      Willy Cameron had left, and the help sent by Edith Boyd. She connected
+      that with Louis Akers, and from that to Akers' threat against Cameron was
+      only a step. She was frightened and somewhat resentful, that this other
+      girl should have saved him from a revenge that she knew was directed at
+      herself. That she, who had brought this thing about, had sat quietly at
+      home while another woman, a woman who loved him, had saved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was puzzled at her own state of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner was almost gay. Perhaps the gayety was somewhat forced, with Pink
+      keeping his eyes from Lily's face, and Howard Cardew relapsing now and
+      then into abstracted silence. Because of the men who served, the
+      conversation was carefully general. It was only in the library later, the
+      men gathered together over their cigars, that the real reason for Willy
+      Cameron's summons was disclosed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard Cardew was about to withdraw from the contest. &ldquo;I'm late in coming
+      to this decision,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Perhaps too late. But after a careful canvas
+      of the situation, I find you are right, Cameron. Unless I withdraw, Akers&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      found a difficulty in speaking the name&mdash;&ldquo;will be elected. At least
+      it looks that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he is,&rdquo; old Anthony put in, &ldquo;he'll turn all the devils of hell
+      loose on us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late; very late. The Cardews stood ready to flood the papers with
+      announcements of Howard's withdrawal, and urging his supporters to vote
+      for Hendricks, but the time was short. Howard had asked his campaign
+      managers to meet there that night, and also Hendricks and one or two of
+      his men, but personally he felt doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, as it happened, the meeting developed more enthusiasm than optimism.
+      Cardew's withdrawal would be made the most of by the opposition. They
+      would play it up as the end of the old regime, the beginning of new and
+      better things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before midnight the conference broke up, to catch the morning editions.
+      Willy Cameron, detained behind the others, saw Lily in the drawing-room
+      alone as he passed the door, and hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been waiting for you, Willy,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he went in she seemed to have nothing to say. She sat in a low
+      chair, in a soft dark dress which emphasized her paleness. To Willy
+      Cameron she had never seemed more beautiful, or more remote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember how you used to whistle 'The Long, Long Trail,' Willy?&rdquo;
+       she said at last. &ldquo;All evening I have been sitting here thinking what a
+      long trail we have both traveled since then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A long, hard trail,&rdquo; he assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only you have gone up, Willy. And I have gone down, into the valley. I
+      wish&rdquo;&mdash;she smiled faintly&mdash;&ldquo;I wish you would look down from your
+      peak now and then. You never come to see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know you wanted me,&rdquo; he said bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why shouldn't I want to see you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't help reminding you of things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I never forget them, anyhow. Sometimes I almost go mad, remembering.
+      It isn't quite as selfish as it sounds. I've hurt them all so. Willy, do
+      you mind telling me about the girl who opened that letter and sent you
+      help?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About Edith Boyd? I'd like to tell you, Lily. Her mother is dead, and she
+      lost her child. She is in the Memorial Hospital.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she has no one but you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has a brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about her sending help that night. She really saved your life,
+      didn't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was telling her she sat staring straight ahead, her fingers
+      interlaced in her lap. She was telling herself that all this could not
+      possibly matter to her, that she had cut herself off, finally and forever,
+      from the man before her; that she did not even deserve his friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite suddenly she knew that she did not want his friendship. She wanted
+      to see again in his face the look that had been there the night he had
+      told her, very simply, that he loved her. And it would never be there; it
+      was not there now. She had killed his love. All the light in his face was
+      for some one else, another girl, a girl more unfortunate but less wicked
+      than herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he stopped she was silent. Then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not intend to
+      tell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I didn't intend to tell? I have made no reservations, Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure? Or don't you realize it yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Realize what?&rdquo; He was greatly puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, Willy,&rdquo; she said, quietly, &ldquo;that you care a great deal more for
+      Edith Boyd than you think you do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her in stupefaction. How could she say that? How could she
+      fail to know better than that? And he did not see the hurt behind her
+      careful smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wrong about that. I&mdash;&rdquo; He made a little gesture of despair.
+      He could not tell her now that he loved her. That was all over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is in love with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt absurd and helpless. He could not deny that, yet how could she sit
+      there, cool and faintly smiling, and not know that as she sat there so she
+      sat enshrined in his heart. She was his saint, to kneel and pray to; and
+      she was his woman, the one woman of his life. More woman than saint, he
+      knew, and even for that he loved her. But he did not know the barbarous
+      cruelty of the loving woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what to say to you, Lily,&rdquo; he said, at last. &ldquo;She&mdash;it
+      is possible that she thinks she cares, but under the circumstances&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellen told Mademoiselle you were going to marry her. That's true, isn't
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always said that marriage without love was wicked, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her child had a right to a name. And there were other things. I can't
+      very well explain them to you. Her mother was ill. Can't you understand,
+      Lily? I don't want to throw any heroics.&rdquo; In his excitement he had lapsed
+      into boyish vernacular. &ldquo;Here was a plain problem, and a simple way to
+      solve it. But it is off now, anyhow; things cleared up without that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She got up and held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was like you to try to save her,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does this mean I am to go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very tired, Willy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a mad impulse to take her in his arms, and holding her close to
+      rest her there. She looked so tired. For fear he might do it he held his
+      arms rigidly at his sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't asked me about him,&rdquo; she said unexpectedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you would not care to talk about him. That's over and done,
+      Lily. I want to forget about it, myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up at him, and had he had Louis Akers' intuitive knowledge of
+      women he would have understood then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am never going back to him, Willy. You know that, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hoped it, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know now that I never loved him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the hurt of her marriage was still too fresh in him for speech. He
+      could not discuss Louis Akers with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, after a moment, &ldquo;I don't think you ever did. I'll come in
+      some evening, if I may, Lily. I must not keep you up now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How old he looked, for him! How far removed from those busy, cheerful days
+      at the camp! And there were new lines of repression in his face; from the
+      nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Above his ears his hair showed a
+      faint cast of gray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been having rather a hard time, Willy, haven't you'?&rdquo; she said,
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been busy, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And worried?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes. But things are clearing up now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was studying him with the newly opened eyes of love. What was it he
+      showed that the other men she knew lacked? Sensitiveness? Kindness? But
+      her father was both sensitive and kind. So was Pink, in less degree. In
+      the end she answered her own question, and aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is patience,&rdquo; she said. And to his unspoken question: &ldquo;You are
+      very patient, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought about it. For heaven's sake don't turn my mind in on
+      myself, Lily. I'll be running around in circles like a pup chasing his
+      tail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a movement to leave, but she seemed oddly reluctant to let him go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that father says you have more influence than any other man
+      in the city?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's more kind than truthful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;I think he and grandfather are planning to try to get you, when
+      the mills reopen. Father suggested it, but grandfather says you'd have the
+      presidency of the company in six months, and he'd be sharpening your lead
+      pencils.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Willy Cameron laughed, and the tension was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he did it with his tongue they'd be pretty sharp,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For just a moment, before he left, they were back to where they had been
+      months ago, enjoying together their small jokes and their small mishaps.
+      The present fell away, with its hovering tragedy, and they were boy and
+      girl together. Exaltation and sacrifice were a part of their love, as of
+      all real and lasting passion, but there was always between them also that
+      soundest bond of all, liking and comradeship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love her. I like her. I adore her,&rdquo; was the cry in Willy Cameron's
+      heart when he started home that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Elinor Doyle was up and about her room. She walked slowly and with
+      difficulty, using crutches, and she spent most of the time at her window,
+      watching and waiting. From Lily there came, at frequent intervals, notes,
+      flowers and small delicacies. The flowers and food Olga brought to her,
+      but the notes she never saw. She knew they came. She could see the car
+      stop at the curb, and the chauffeur, his shoulders squared and his face
+      watchful, carrying a white envelope up the walk, but there it ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt more helpless than ever. The doctor came less often, but the
+      vigilance was never relaxed, and she had, too, less and less hope of being
+      able to give any warning. Doyle was seldom at home, and when he was he had
+      ceased to give her his taunting information. She was quite sure now of his
+      relations with the Russian girl, and her uncertainty as to her course was
+      gone. She was no longer his wife. He held another woman in his rare
+      embraces, a traitor like himself. It was sordid. He was sordid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woslosky had developed blood poisoning, and was at the point of death,
+      with a stolid policeman on guard at his bedside. She knew that from the
+      newspapers she occasionally saw. And she connected Doyle unerringly with
+      the tragedy at the farm behind Friendship. She recognized, too, since that
+      failure, a change in his manner to her. She saw that he now both hated her
+      and feared her, and that she had become only a burden and a menace to him.
+      He might decide to do away with her, to kill her. He would not do it
+      himself; he never did his own dirty work, but the Russian girl&mdash;Olga
+      was in love with Jim Doyle. Elinor knew that, as she knew many things, by
+      a sort of intuition. She watched them in the room together, and she knew
+      that to Doyle the girl was an incident, the vehicle of his occasional
+      passion, a strumpet and a tool. He did not even like her; she saw him
+      looking at her sometimes with a sort of amused contempt. But Olga's somber
+      eyes followed him as he moved, lit with passion and sometimes with anger,
+      but always they followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was afraid of Olga. She did not care particularly about death, but it
+      must not come before she had learned enough to be able to send out a
+      warning. She thought if it came it might be by poison in the food that was
+      sent up, but she had to eat to live. She took to eating only one thing on
+      her tray, and she thought she detected in the girl an understanding and a
+      veiled derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By Doyle's increasing sullenness she knew things were not going well with
+      him, and she found a certain courage in that, but she knew him too well to
+      believe that he would give up easily. And she drew certain deductions from
+      the newspapers she studied so tirelessly. She saw the announcement of the
+      unusual number of hunting licenses issued, for one thing, and she knew the
+      cover that such licenses furnished armed men patrolling the country. The
+      state permitted the sale of fire-arms without restriction. Other states
+      did the same, or demanded only the formality of a signature, never
+      verified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would they never wake to the situation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She watched the election closely. She knew that if Akers were elected the
+      general strike and the chaos to follow would be held back until he had
+      taken office and made the necessary changes in the city administration,
+      but that if he went down to defeat the Council would turn loose its
+      impatient hordes at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for election day with burning anxiety. When it came it so
+      happened that she was left alone all day in the house. Early in the
+      morning Olga brought her a tray and told her she was going out. She was
+      changed, the Russian; she had dropped the mask of sodden servility and
+      stood before her, erect, cunningly intelligent and oddly powerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to be away all day, Mrs. Doyle,&rdquo; she said, in her excellent
+      English. &ldquo;I have work to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Work?&rdquo; said Elinor. &ldquo;Isn't there work to do here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not a house-worker. I came to help Mr. Doyle. To-day I shall make
+      speeches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor was playing the game carefully. &ldquo;But&mdash;can you make speeches?&rdquo;
+       she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me? That is my work, here, in Russia, everywhere. In Russia it is the
+      women who speak, the men who do what the women tell them to do. Here some
+      day it will be the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Always afterwards Elinor remembered the five minutes that followed, for
+      Olga, standing before her, suddenly burst into impassioned oratory. She
+      cited the wrongs of the poor under the old regime. She painted in glowing
+      colors the new. She was excited, hectic, powerful. Elinor in her chair, an
+      aristocrat to the finger-tips, was frightened, interested, thrilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long after Olga had gone she sat there, wondering at the real conviction,
+      the intensity of passion, of hate and of revenge that actuated this newest
+      tool of Doyle's. Doyle and his associates might be actuated by
+      self-interest, but the real danger in the movement lay not with the Doyles
+      of the world, but with these fanatic liberators. They preached to the poor
+      a new religion, not of creed or of Church, but of freedom. Freedom without
+      laws of God or of man, freedom of love, of lust, of time, of all
+      responsibility. And the poor, weighted with laws and cares, longed to
+      throw off their burdens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was not the doctrine itself that was wrong. It was its
+      imposition by force on a world not yet ready for it that was wrong; its
+      imposition by violence. It might come, but not this way. Not, God
+      preventing, this way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a polling place across the street, in the basement of a school
+      house. The vote was heavy and all day men lounged on the pavements,
+      smoking and talking. Once she saw Olga in the crowd, and later on Louis
+      Akers drove up in an open automobile, handsome, apparently confident, and
+      greeted with cheers. But Elinor, knowing him well, gained nothing from his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late that night she heard Doyle come in and move about the lower floor.
+      She knew every emphasis of his walk, and when in the room underneath she
+      heard him settle down to steady, deliberate pacing, she knew that he was
+      facing some new situation, and, after his custom, thinking it out alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At midnight he came up the stairs and unlocked her door. He entered,
+      closing the door behind him, and stood looking at her. His face was so
+      strange that she wondered if he had decided to do away with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; he said, in an inflectionless voice, &ldquo;you will be moved by
+      automobile to a farm I have selected in the country. You will take only
+      such small luggage as the car can carry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Olga going with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Olga is needed here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I am to understand from this that Louis has been defeated and
+      there is no longer any reason for delay in your plans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can understand what you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I to know where I am going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find that out when you get there. I will tell you this: It is a
+      lonely place, without a telephone. You'll be cut off from your family, I
+      am afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gazed at him. It seemed unbelievable to her that she had once lain in
+      this man's arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you kill me, Jim? I know you've thought about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I've thought of it. But killing is a confession of fear, my dear. I
+      am not afraid of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are. You are afraid now to tell me when you are going to try
+      to put this wild plan into execution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled at her with mocking eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he agreed again. &ldquo;I am afraid. You have a sort of diabolical
+      ingenuity, not intelligence so much as cunning. But because I always do
+      the thing I'm afraid to do, I'll tell you. Of course, if you succeed in
+      passing it on&mdash;&rdquo; He shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;Very well, then. With
+      your usual logic of deduction, you have guessed correctly. Louis Akers has
+      been defeated. Your family&mdash;and how strangely you are a Cardew!&mdash;lost
+      its courage at the last moment, and a gentleman named Hendricks is now
+      setting up imitation beer and cheap cigars to his friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind his mocking voice she knew the real fury of the man, kept carefully
+      in control by his iron will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you have also correctly surmised,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;there is now nothing
+      to be gained by any delay. A very few days, three or four, and&mdash;&rdquo; His
+      voice grew hard and terrible&mdash;&ldquo;the first stone in the foundation of
+      this capitalistic government will go. Inevitable law, inevitable
+      retribution&mdash;&rdquo; His voice trailed off. He turned like a man asleep and
+      went toward the door. There he stopped and faced her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told you,&rdquo; he said darkly. &ldquo;I am not afraid of you. You can no more
+      stop this thing than you can stop living by ceasing to breathe. It has
+      come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him in his room for some time after that, and she surmised from
+      the way he moved, from closet to bed and back again, that he was packing a
+      bag. At two o'clock she heard Olga coming in; the girl was singing in
+      Russian, and Elinor had a sickening conviction that she had been drinking.
+      She heard Doyle send her off to bed, his voice angry and disgusted, and
+      resume his packing, and ten minutes later she heard a car draw up on the
+      street, and knew that he was off, to begin the mobilization of his
+      heterogeneous forces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since she had been able to leave her bed Elinor had been formulating
+      a plan of escape. Once the door had been left unlocked, but her clothing
+      had been removed from the room, and then, too, she had not learned the
+      thing she was waiting for. Now she had clothing, a dark dressing gown and
+      slippers, and she had the information. But the door was securely locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had often thought of the window, In the day time it frightened her to
+      look down, although it fascinated her, too. But at night it seemed much
+      simpler. The void below was concealed in the darkness, a soft darkness
+      that hid the hard, inhospitable earth. A darkness one could fall into and
+      onto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not a brave woman. She had moral rather than physical courage. It
+      was easier for her to face Doyle in a black mood than the gulf below the
+      window-sill, but she knew now that she must get away, if she were to go at
+      all. She got out of bed, and using her crutches carefully moved to the
+      sill, trying to accustom herself to the thought of going over the edge.
+      The plaster cast on her leg was a real handicap. She must get it over
+      first. How heavy it was, and unwieldy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found her scissors, and, stripping the bed, sat down to cut and tear
+      the bedding into strips. Prisoners escaped that way; she had read about
+      such things. But the knots took up an amazing amount of length. It was
+      four o'clock in the morning when she had a serviceable rope, and she knew
+      it was too short. In the end she tore down the window curtains and added
+      them, working desperately against time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to suspect, too, that Olga was not sleeping. She smelled faintly
+      the odor of the long Russian cigarettes the girl smoked. She put out her
+      light and worked in the darkness, a strange figure of adventure, this
+      middle-aged woman with her smooth hair and lined face, sitting in her
+      cambric nightgown with her crutches on the floor beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She secured the end of the rope to the foot of her metal bed, pushing the
+      bed painfully and cautiously, inch by inch, to the window. And in so doing
+      she knocked over the call-bell on the stand, and almost immediately she
+      heard Olga moving about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was coming unsteadily toward the door. If she opened it&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want anything, Olga,&rdquo; she called, &ldquo;I knocked the bell over
+      accidentally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Olga hesitated, muttered, moved away again. Elinor was covered with a cold
+      sweat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to think of the window as a refuge. Surely nothing outside could
+      be so terrible as this house itself. The black aperture seemed friendly;
+      it beckoned to her with friendly hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped her crutches. They fell with two soft thuds on the earth below
+      and it seemed to her that they were a long time in falling. She listened
+      after that, but Olga made no sign. Then slowly and painfully she worked
+      her injured leg over the sill, and sat there looking down and breathing
+      with difficulty. Then she freed her dressing gown around her, and slid
+      over the edge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0045" id="link2HCH0045">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Election night found various groups in various places. In the back room of
+      the Eagle Pharmacy was gathered once again the neighborhood forum, a
+      wildly excited forum, which ever and anon pounded Mr. Hendricks on the
+      back, and drank round after round of soda water and pop. Doctor Smalley,
+      coming in rather late found them all there, calling Mr. Hendricks &ldquo;Mr.
+      Mayor&rdquo; or &ldquo;Your Honor,&rdquo; reciting election anecdotes, and prophesying the
+      end of the Reds. Only Willy Cameron, sitting on a table near the window,
+      was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hendricks, called upon for a speech, rose with his soda water glass in
+      his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got a toast for you, boys,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You've been talking all
+      evening about my winning this election. Well, I've been elected, but I
+      didn't win it. It was the plain people of this town who elected me, and
+      they did it because my young friend on the table yonder told them to.&rdquo; He
+      raised his glass. &ldquo;Cameron!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron! Cameron!&rdquo; shouted the crowd. &ldquo;Speech! Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Willy shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't any voice left,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and you've heard me say all I know a
+      dozen times. The plain truth is that Mr. Hendricks got the election
+      because he was the best man, and enough people knew it. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. Hendricks the night was one of splendid solemnity. He felt at once
+      very strong and very weak, very proud and very humble. He would do his
+      best, and if honesty meant anything, the people would have it, but he knew
+      that honesty was not enough. The city needed a strong man; he hoped that
+      the Good Man who made cities as He made men, both evil and good, would
+      lend him a hand with things. As prayer in his mind was indissolubly
+      connected with church, he made up his mind to go to church the next Sunday
+      and get matters straightened out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same time another group was meeting at the Benedict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Akers had gone home early. By five o'clock he knew that the chances
+      were against him, but he felt a real lethargy as to the outcome. He had
+      fought, and fought hard, but it was only the surface mind of him that
+      struggled. Only the surface mind of him hated, and had ambitions, dreamed
+      revenge. Underneath that surface mind was a sore that ate like a cancer,
+      and that sore was his desertion by Lily Cardew. For once in his life he
+      suffered, who had always inflicted pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six o'clock Doyle had called him on the telephone and told him that
+      Woslosky was dead, but the death of the Pole had been discounted in
+      advance, and already his place had been filled by a Russian agent, who had
+      taken the first syllable of his name and called himself Ross. Louis Akers
+      heard the news apathetically, and went back to his chair again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By eight o'clock he knew that he had lost the election, but that, too,
+      seemed relatively unimportant. He was not thinking coherently, but certain
+      vague ideas floated through his mind. There was a law of compensation in
+      the universe: it was all rot to believe that one was paid or punished in
+      the hereafter for what one did. Hell was real, but it was on earth and its
+      place was in a man's mind. He couldn't get away from it, because each man
+      carried his own hell around with him. It was all stored up there; nothing
+      he had done was left out, and the more he put into it the more he got out,
+      when the time came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was his time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ross and Doyle, with one or two others, found him there at nine o'clock,
+      an untasted meal on the table, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes on
+      the hearth. In the conference that followed he took but little part. The
+      Russian urged immediate action, and Doyle by a saturnine silence tacitly
+      agreed with him. But Louis only half heard them. His mind was busy with
+      that matter of hell. Only once he looked up. Ross was making use of the
+      phrase: &ldquo;Militant minority.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Militant minority!&rdquo; he said scornfully, &ldquo;you overwork that idea, Ross.
+      What we've got here now is a militant majority, and that's what elected
+      Hendricks. You're licked before you begin. And my advice is, don't begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But they laughed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You act like a whipped dog,&rdquo; Doyle said, &ldquo;crawling under the doorstep for
+      fear somebody else with a strap comes along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're organized against us. We could have put it over six months ago.
+      Not now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you'd better get out,&rdquo; Doyle said, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm thinking of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Doyle had no real fear of him. He was sulky. Well, let him sulk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers relapsed into silence. His interest in the conspiracy had always
+      been purely self-interest; he had never had Woslosky's passion, or Doyle's
+      cold fanaticism. They had carried him off his feet with their promises,
+      but how much were they worth? They had failed to elect him. Every bit of
+      brains, cunning and resource in their organization had been behind him,
+      and they had failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This matter of hell, now? Suppose one put by something on the other
+      account? Suppose one turned square? Wouldn't that earn something? Suppose
+      that one went to the Cardews and put all his cards on the table, asking
+      nothing in return? Suppose one gave up the by-paths of life, and love in a
+      hedgerow, and did the other thing? Wouldn't that earn something?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He roused himself and took a perfunctory part in the conversation, but his
+      mind obstinately returned to itself. He knew every rendezvous of the Red
+      element in the country; he knew where their literature was printed; he
+      knew the storehouses of arms and ammunition, and the plans for carrying on
+      the city government by the strikers after the reign of terrorization which
+      was to subdue the citizens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suppose he turned informer? Could he set a price, and that price Lily? But
+      he discarded that. He was not selling now, he was earning. He would set
+      himself right first, and&mdash;provided the government got the leaders
+      before those leaders got him, as they would surely try to do&mdash;he
+      would have earned something, surely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily had come to him once when he called. She might come again, when he
+      had earned her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doyle sat back in his chair and watched him. He saw that he had gone to
+      pieces under defeat, and men did strange things at those times. With
+      uncanny shrewdness he gauged Akers' reaction; his loss of confidence and,
+      he surmised, his loyalty. He would follow his own interest now, and if he
+      thought that it lay in turning informer, he might try it. But it would
+      take courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the conference broke up Doyle was sure of where his man stood. He was
+      not worried. They did not need Akers any longer. He had been a presentable
+      tool, a lay figure to give the organization front, and they had over-rated
+      him, at that. He had failed them. Doyle, watching him contemptuously,
+      realized in him his own fallacious judgment, and hated Akers for proving
+      him wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the building Doyle drew the Russian aside, and spoke to him. Ross
+      started, then grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're wrong,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He won't try it. But of course he may, and we'll
+      see that he doesn't get away with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time on Louis Akers was under espionage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0046" id="link2HCH0046">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      DOCTOR Smalley was by way of achieving a practice. During his morning and
+      evening office hours he had less and less time to read the papers and the
+      current magazines in his little back office, or to compare the month's
+      earnings, visit by visit, with the same month of the previous year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took to making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather to the
+      outrage of various head nurses, who did not like the staff to come
+      a-visiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every bed
+      corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed and combed and
+      temperatured, and in the exact center of the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Interns were different. They were like husbands. They came and went,
+      seeing things at their worst as well as at their best, but mostly at their
+      worst. Like husbands, too, they developed a sort of philosophy as to the
+      early morning, and would only make occasional remarks, such as:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cyclone struck you this morning, or anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Smalley, being a bachelor, was entirely blind to the early morning
+      deficiencies of his wards. Besides, he was young and had had a cold shower
+      and two eggs and various other things, and he saw the world at eight A.M.
+      as a good place. He would get into his little car, whistling, and driving
+      through the market square he would sometimes stop and buy a bag of apples
+      for the children's ward, or a bunch of fall flowers. Thus armed, it was
+      impossible for the most austere of head nurses to hate him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're not straightened up yet, doctor,&rdquo; they would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks all right to me,&rdquo; he would reply cheerfully, and cast an eager eye
+      over the ward. To him they were all his children, large and small, and if
+      he did not exactly carry healing in his wings, having no wings, he brought
+      them courage and a breath of fresh morning air, slightly tinged with bay
+      rum, and the feeling that this was a new day. A new page, on which to
+      write such wonderful things (in the order book) as: &ldquo;Jennie may get up
+      this afternoon.&rdquo; Or: &ldquo;Lizzie Smith, small piece of beef steak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning after the election Doctor Smalley rose unusually early, and
+      did five minutes of dumb bells, breathing very deep before his window,
+      having started the cold water in the tub first. At the end of that time he
+      padded in his bare feet to the top of the stairs and called in a huge,
+      deep-breathing voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These two cryptic words seeming to be perfectly understood below, followed
+      the sound of a body plunging into water, a prolonged &ldquo;Wow!&rdquo; from the
+      bathroom, and noisy hurried splashing. Dressing was a rapid process, due
+      to a method learned during college days, which consists of wearing as
+      little as possible, and arranging it at night so that two thrusts
+      (trousers and under-drawers), one enveloping gesture (shirt and
+      under-shirt), and a gymnastic effort of standing first on one leg and then
+      on the other (socks and shoes), made a fairly completed toilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While putting on his collar and tie the doctor stood again by the window,
+      and lustily called the garage across the narrow street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jim!&rdquo; he yelled. &ldquo;Annabelle breakfasted yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Annabelle was his shabby little car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Annabelle had breakfasted, on gasoline, oil and water. The doctor finished
+      tying his tie, singing lustily, and went to the door. At the door he
+      stopped singing, put on a carefully professional air, restrained an
+      impulse to slide down the stair-rail, and descended with the dignity of a
+      man with a growing practice and a possible patient in the waiting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half-past seven he was on his way to the hospital. He stopped at the
+      market and bought three dozen oranges out of a ten-dollar bill he had won
+      on the election, and almost bought a live rabbit because it looked so
+      dreary in its slatted box. He restrained himself, because his housekeeper
+      had a weakness for stewed rabbit, and turned into Cardew Way. He passed
+      the Doyle house slowly, inspecting it as he went, because he had a patient
+      there, and because he had felt that there was something mysterious about
+      the household, quite aside from the saturnine Doyle himself. He knew all
+      about Doyle, of course; all, that is, that there was to know, but he was a
+      newcomer to the city, and he did not know that Doyle's wife was a Cardew.
+      Sometimes he had felt that he was under a sort of espionage all the time
+      he was in the house. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it? Because they
+      could not know that he was on the Vigilance Committee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something curious about one of the windows. He slowed Annabelle
+      and gazed at it. That was strange; there was a sort of white rope hanging
+      from Mrs. Doyle's window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped Annabelle and stared. Then he drew up to the curb and got out
+      of the car. He was rather uneasy when he opened the gate and started up
+      the walk, but there was no movement of life in the house. At the foot of
+      the steps he saw something, and almost stopped breathing. Behind a clump
+      of winter-bare shrubbery was what looked like a dark huddle of clothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was incredible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He parted the branches and saw Elinor Doyle lying there, conscious and
+      white with pain. Perhaps never in his life was Doctor Smalley to be so
+      rewarded as with the look in her eyes when she saw him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Mrs. Doyle!&rdquo; was all he could think to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have broken my other leg, doctor,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the rope gave way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come down that rope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried to. I was a prisoner. Don't take me back to the house, doctor.
+      Don't take me back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I'll not take you back,&rdquo; he said, soothingly. &ldquo;I'll carry you
+      out to my car. It may hurt, but try to be quiet. Can you get your arms
+      around my neck?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She managed that, and he raised her slowly, but the pain must have been
+      frightful, for a moment later he felt her arms relax and knew that she had
+      fainted. He got to the car somehow, kicked the oranges into the gutter,
+      and placed her, collapsed, on the seat. It was only then that he dared to
+      look behind him, but the house, like the street, was without signs of
+      life. As he turned the next corner, however, he saw Doyle getting off a
+      streetcar, and probably never before had Annabelle made such speed as she
+      did for the next six blocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hours later Elinor Cardew wakened in a quiet room with gray walls, and
+      with the sickening sweet odor of ether over everything. Instead of Olga a
+      quiet nurse sat by her bed, and standing by a window, in low-voiced
+      conversation, were two men. One she knew, the doctor. The other, a tall
+      young man with a slight limp as he came toward her, she had never seen
+      before. A friendly young man, thin, and grave of voice, who put a hand
+      over hers and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not to worry about anything, Mrs. Doyle. You understand me, don't
+      you? Everything is all right. I am going now to get your people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your own people,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have already telephoned to your brother.
+      And the leg's fixed. Everything's as right as rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor closed her eyes. She felt no pain and no curiosity. Only there was
+      something she had to do, and do quickly. What was it? But she could not
+      remember, because she felt very sleepy and relaxed, and as though
+      everything was indeed as right as rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evening when she looked up again, and the room was dark. The doctor
+      had gone, and the grave young man was still in the room. There was another
+      figure there, tall and straight, and at first she thought it was Jim
+      Doyle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jim!&rdquo; she said. And then: &ldquo;You must go away, Jim. I warn you. I am going
+      to tell all I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the figure turned, and it was Howard Cardew, a tense and strained
+      Howard Cardew, who loomed amazingly tall and angry, but not with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, Nellie dear,&rdquo; he said, bending over her. &ldquo;If we'd only known&mdash;can
+      you talk now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mind was suddenly very clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must. There is very little time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to tell you something first, Nellie. I think we have located the
+      Russian woman, but we haven't got Doyle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard was not very subtle, but Willy Cameron saw her face and understood.
+      It was strange beyond belief, he felt, this loyalty of women to their men,
+      even after love had gone; this feeling that, having once lain in a man's
+      arms, they have taken a vow of protection over that man. It was not so
+      much that they were his as that he was theirs. Jim Doyle had made her a
+      prisoner, had treated her brutally, was a traitor to her and to his
+      country, but&mdash;he had been hers. She was glad that he had got away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0047" id="link2HCH0047">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was dark when Howard Cardew and Willy Cameron left the hospital.
+      Elinor's information had been detailed and exact. Under cover of the
+      general strike the radical element intended to take over the city. On the
+      evening of the first day of the strike, armed groups from the
+      revolutionary party would proceed first to the municipal light plant, and,
+      having driven out any employees who remained at their posts, or such
+      volunteers as had replaced them, would plunge the city into darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor was convinced that following this would come various bomb outrages,
+      perhaps a great number of them, but of this she had no detailed
+      information. What she did know, however, was the dependence that Doyle and
+      the other leaders were placing in the foreign element in the nearby mill
+      towns and from one or two mining districts in the county.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Around the city, in the mill towns, there were more than forty thousand
+      foreign laborers. Subtract from that the loyal aliens, but add a certain
+      percentage of the native-born element, members of seditious societies and
+      followers of the red flag, and the Reds had a potential army of dangerous
+      size.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As an actual fighting force they were much less impressive. Only a small
+      percentage, she knew and told them, were adequately armed. There were a
+      few machine guns, and some long-range rifles, but by far the greater
+      number had only revolvers. The remainder had extemporized weapons, bars of
+      iron, pieces of pipe, farm implements, lances of wood tipped with iron and
+      beaten out on home forges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a rabble, not an army, without organization and with few
+      leaders. Their fighting was certain to be as individualistic as their
+      doctrines. They had two elements in their favor only, numbers and
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To oppose them, if the worst came, there were perhaps five thousand armed
+      men, including the city and county police, the state constabulary, and the
+      citizens who had signed the cards of the Vigilance Committee. The local
+      post of the American Legion stood ready for instant service, and a few
+      national guard troops still remained in the vicinity. &ldquo;What they expect,&rdquo;
+       she said, looking up from her pillows with tragic eyes, &ldquo;is that the
+      police and the troops will join them. You don't think they will, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They reassured her, and after a time she slept again. When she wakened, at
+      midnight, the room was empty save for a nurse reading under a night lamp
+      behind a screen. Elinor was not in pain. She lay there, listening to the
+      night sounds of the hospital, the watchman shuffling along the corridor in
+      slippers, the closing of a window, the wail of a newborn infant far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shuffling of feet in the street below, the sound of many men,
+      not marching but grimly walking, bent on some unknown errand. The nurse
+      opened the window and looked out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's queer!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;About thirty men, and not saying a word. They
+      walk like soldiers, but they're not in uniform.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elinor pondered that, but it was not for some days that she knew that Pink
+      Denslow and a picked number of volunteers from the American Legion had
+      that night, quite silently and unemotionally, broken into the printing
+      office where Doyle and Akers had met Cusick, and had, not so silently but
+      still unemotionally, destroyed the presses and about a ton of inflammatory
+      pamphlets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0048" id="link2HCH0048">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a little city, and few men within it; And there came a great
+      king against it, and besieged it, And built great bulwarks against it; Now
+      there was found in it a Poor Wise Man, And he by his wisdom delivered the
+      city.&mdash;Ecclesiastes IX:14, 15.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general strike occurred two days later, at mid-day. During the
+      interval a joint committee representing the workers, the employers and the
+      public had held a protracted sitting, but without result, and by one
+      o'clock the city was in the throes of a complete tie-up. Laundry and
+      delivery wagons were abandoned where they stood. Some of the street cars
+      had been returned to the barns, but others stood in the street where the
+      crews had deserted them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no disorder, however, and the city took its difficulties with a
+      quiet patience and a certain sense of humor. Bulletins similar to the ones
+      used in Seattle began to appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strikers, the world is the workers' for the taking, and the workers are
+      the vast majority in society. Your interests are paramount to those of a
+      small, useless band of parasites who exploit you to their advantage. You
+      have nothing to lose but your chains and you have a world to gain. The
+      world for the workers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one ray of light in the darkness, however. The municipal
+      employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go dark
+      that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange psychology
+      of the mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and by three o'clock
+      that afternoon the light plant and city water supply had been secured
+      against attack by effectual policing. The power plant for the car lines
+      was likewise protected, and at five o'clock a line of street cars, stalled
+      on Amanda Street, began to show signs of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first car was boarded by a half dozen youngish men, unobtrusively
+      ready for trouble, and headed by a tall youth who limped slightly and wore
+      an extremely anxious expression. He went forward and commenced a series of
+      experiments with levers and brake, in which process incidentally he
+      liberated a quantity of sand onto the rails. A moment later the car
+      lurched forward, and then stopped with a jerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron looked behind him and grinned. The entire guard was piled in
+      an ignoble mass on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By six o'clock volunteer crews were running a number of cars, and had been
+      subjected to nothing worse than abuse. Strikers lined the streets and
+      watched them, but the grim faces of the guards kept them back. They jeered
+      from the curbs, but except for the flinging of an occasional stone they
+      made no inimical move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By eight o'clock it was clear that the tie-up would be only partial.
+      Volunteers from all walks of life were in line at the temporary
+      headquarters of the Vigilance Committee and were being detailed, for
+      police duty, to bring in the trains with the morning milk, to move street
+      cars and trucks. The water plant and the reservoirs were protected. Willy
+      Cameron, abandoning his car after the homeward rush of the evening, found
+      a line before the Committee Building which extended for blocks down the
+      street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Troops had been sent for, but it took time to mobilize and move them. It
+      would be morning before they arrived. And the governor, over the long
+      distance wire to the mayor, was inclined to be querulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll send them, of course,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But if the strikers are keeping
+      quiet&mdash;I don't know what the country's coming to. We're holding a
+      conference here now. There's rioting breaking out all over the state.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      There was a conference held in the Mayor's office that night: Cameron and
+      Cardew and one or two others of the Vigilance Committee, two agents of the
+      government secret service, the captains of the companies of state troops
+      and constabulary, the Chief of Police, the Mayor himself, and some
+      representatives of the conservative element of organized labor. Quiet men,
+      these last, uneasy and anxious, as ignorant as the others of which way the
+      black cat, the symbol of sabotage and destruction, would jump. The
+      majority of their men would stand for order, they declared, but there were
+      some who would go over. They urged, to offset that reflection on their
+      organization that the proletariat of the city might go over, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, by midnight, it seemed as though the situation was solving itself. In
+      the segregated district there had been a small riot, and another along the
+      river front, disturbances quickly ended by the police and the volunteer
+      deputies. The city had not gone dark. The bombs had not exploded. Word
+      came in that by back roads and devious paths the most rabid of the
+      agitators were leaving town. And before two o'clock Howard Cardew and some
+      of the others went home to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At three o'clock the Cardew doorbell rang, and Howard, not asleep, flung
+      on his dressing gown and went out into the hall. Lily was in her doorway,
+      intent and anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't answer it, father,&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;You don't know what it may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard smiled, but went back and got his revolver. The visitor was Willy
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like to waken you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but word has come in of suspicious
+      movements at Baxter and Friendship, and one or two other places. It looks
+      like concerted action of some sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of concerted action?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They still have one card to play. The foreign element outside hasn't been
+      heard from. It looks as though the fellows who left town to-night have
+      been getting busy up the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They wouldn't be such fools as to come to the city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've been made a lot of promises. They may be out of hand, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While Howard was hastily dressing, Willy Cameron waited below. He caught a
+      glimpse of himself in the big mirror and looked away. His face was drawn
+      and haggard, his eyes hollow and his collar a wilted string. He was dusty
+      and shabby, too, and to Lily, coming down the staircase, he looked almost
+      ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lily was in a soft negligee garment, her bare feet thrust into slippers,
+      but she was too anxious to be self-conscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;there is trouble after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the city. Things are not so quiet up the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She placed a hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you and father going up the river?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He explained, after a momentary hesitation. &ldquo;It may crystallize into
+      something, or it may not,&rdquo; he finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think it will, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be nothing more, at the worst, than rioting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you may be hurt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may have one chance to fight for my country,&rdquo; he said, rather grimly.
+      &ldquo;Don't begrudge me that.&rdquo; But he added: &ldquo;I'll not be hurt. The thing will
+      blow up as soon as it starts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't really believe that, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know they'll never get into the city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he moved away she called him back, more breathlessly than ever, and
+      quite white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want you to go without knowing&mdash;Willy, do you remember once
+      that you said you cared for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember.&rdquo; He stared straight ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you&mdash;all over that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know better than that, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I've done so many things,&rdquo; she said, wistfully. &ldquo;You ought to hate
+      me.&rdquo; And when he said nothing, for the simple reason that he could not
+      speak: &ldquo;I've ruined us both, haven't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he caught up her hand and, bending over it, held it to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always,&rdquo; he said, huskily, &ldquo;I love you, Lily. I shall always love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0049" id="link2HCH0049">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Howard went back to the municipal building, driving furiously through the
+      empty streets. The news was ominous. Small bodies of men, avoiding the
+      highways, were focusing at different points in the open country. The state
+      police had been fired at from ambush, and two of them had been killed.
+      They had ridden into and dispersed various gatherings in the darkness, but
+      only to have them re-form in other places. The enemy was still shadowy,
+      elusive; it was apparently saving its ammunition. It did little shooting,
+      but reports of the firing of farmhouses and of buildings in small,
+      unprotected towns began to come in rapidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a short time the messages began to be more significant, indicating that
+      the groups were coalescing and that a revolutionary army, with the city
+      its objective, was coming down the river, evidently making for the bridge
+      at Chester Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've lighted a fire they can't put out,&rdquo; was Howard's comment. His
+      mouth was very dry and his face twitching, for he saw, behind the frail
+      barrier of the Chester Street bridge, the quiet houses of the city, the
+      sleeping children. He saw Grace and Lily, and Elinor. He was among the
+      first to reach the river front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All through the dawn volunteers labored at the bridge head. Members of the
+      Vigilance Committee, policemen and firemen, doctors, lawyers, clerks,
+      shop-keepers, they looted the river wharves with willing, unskillful
+      hands. They turned coal wagons on their sides, carried packing cases and
+      boxes, and, under the direction of men who wore the Legion button, built
+      skillfully and well. Willy Cameron toiled with the others. He lifted and
+      pulled and struggled, and in the midst of his labor he had again that old
+      dream of the city. The city was a vast number of units, and those units
+      were homes. Behind each of those men there was, somewhere, in some quiet
+      neighborhood, a home. It was for their homes they were fighting, for the
+      right of children to play in peaceful streets, for the right to go back at
+      night to the rest they had earned by honest labor, for the right of the
+      hearth, of lamp-light and sunlight, of love, of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in the flare of a gasoline torch, he came face to face with Louis
+      Akers. The two men confronted each other, silently, with hostility.
+      Neither moved aside, but it was Akers who spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always busy, Cameron,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What'd the world do without you,
+      anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you on the wrong side of this barricade?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smart as ever,&rdquo; Akers observed, watching him intently. &ldquo;As it happens,
+      I'm here because I want to be, and because I can't get where I ought to
+      be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a furious moment Willy Cameron thought he was referring to his wife,
+      but there was something strange in Akers' tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could be useful to you fellows,&rdquo; he was saying, &ldquo;but it seems you don't
+      want help. I've been trying to see the Mayor all night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want to see him about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell him that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it's a trick, Akers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Then go to the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away sullenly, leaving Willy Cameron still undecided. It would
+      be like the man as he knew him, this turning informer when he saw the
+      strength of the defense, and Cameron had a flash of intuition, too, that
+      Akers might see, in this new role, some possible chance to win back with
+      Lily Cardew. He saw how the man's cheap soul might dramatize itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Akers!&rdquo; he called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Akers stopped, but he did not turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got a car here. If you mean what you say, and it's straight, I'll
+      take you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's the car?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On their way to it, threading in and out among the toiling crowd, Willy
+      Cameron had a chance to observe the change in the other man, his drooping
+      shoulders and the almost lassitude of his walk. He went ahead, charging
+      the mass and going through it by sheer bulk and weight, his hands in his
+      coat pockets, his soft hat pulled low over his face. Neither of them
+      noticed that one of the former clerks of the Myers Housecleaning Company
+      followed close behind, or that, holding to a tire, he rode on the rear of
+      the Cardew automobile as it made its way into the center of the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the car Akers spoke only once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Howard Cardew?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the Mayor, probably. I left him there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to him that Akers found the answer satisfactory. He sat back in
+      the deep seat, and lighted a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Municipal Building was under guard. Willy Cameron went up the steps
+      and spoke to the sentry there. It was while his back was turned that the
+      sharp crack of a revolver rang out, and he whirled, in time to see Louis
+      Akers fall forward on his face and lie still.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The shadowy groups through the countryside had commenced to coalesce.
+      Groups of twenty became a rabble of five hundred. The five hundred grew,
+      and joined other five hundreds. From Baxter alone over two thousand
+      rioters, mostly foreigners, started out, and by daylight the main body of
+      the enemy reached the outskirts of the city, a long, irregular line of
+      laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly renewed at the rear until the
+      procession covered miles of roadway. They were of all races and all types;
+      individually they were, many of them, like boys playing truant from
+      school, not quite certain of themselves, smiling and yet uneasy, not
+      entirely wicked in intent. But they were shepherded by men with cunning
+      eyes, men who knew well that a mob is greater than the sum of its parts,
+      more wicked than the individuals who compose it, more cruel, more
+      courageous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it marched it laughed. It was like a lion at play, ready to leap at the
+      first scratch that brought blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where the street car line met the Friendship Road the advance was met by
+      the Chief of Police, on horseback and followed by a guard of mounted men,
+      and ordered back. The van hesitated, but it was urged ahead, pushed on by
+      the irresistible force behind it, and it came on no longer singing, but
+      slowly, inevitably, sullenly protesting and muttering. Its good nature was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Chief turned his horse was shot under him. He took another horse
+      from one of his guard, and they retired, moving slowly and with drawn
+      revolvers. There was no further shooting at that time, nothing but the
+      irresistible advance. The police could no more have held the armed rabble
+      than they could have held the invading hordes in Belgium. At the end of
+      the street the Chief stopped and looked back. They had passed over his
+      dead horse as though it were not there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mill district, which they had now reached, they received
+      reenforcements, justifying the judgment of the conference that to have
+      erected their barricades there would have been to expose the city's
+      defenders to attack from the rear. And the mill district suffered
+      comparatively little. It was the business portion of the city toward which
+      they turned their covetous eyes, the great stores, the hotels and
+      restaurants, the homes of the wealthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pleased by the lack of opposition the mob grew more cheerful. The lion
+      played. They pressed forward, wanton and jeering, firing now and then at
+      random, breaking windows as they passed, looting small shops which they
+      stripped like locusts. Their pockets bulging, and the taste of pillage
+      forecasting what was to come, they moved onward more rapidly, shooting at
+      upper windows or into the air, laughing, yelling, cursing, talking. From
+      the barricades, long before the miles-long column came into view, could be
+      heard the ominous far-off muttering of the mob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was when they found the bridge barricaded on the far side, however,
+      that the lion bared its teeth and snarled. Temporarily checked by the play
+      of machine guns which swept the bridge and kept it clear for a time, they
+      commenced wild, wasteful firing, from the bridge-head and from along the
+      Cardew wharves. Their leaders were prepared, and sent snipers into the
+      bridge towers, but the machine guns continued to fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the struggle would be on the bridge Doyle and his Council had
+      anticipated from the reports of the night before. They were prepared to
+      take a heavy loss on the bridges, but they had not prepared for the thing
+      that defeated them; that as the mob is braver than the individual, so also
+      it is more cowardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pushed forward from the rear and unable to retreat through the dense mass
+      behind that was every moment growing denser, a few hundreds found
+      themselves facing the steady machine-gun fire from behind the barricades,
+      and unable either to advance or to retire. Thus trapped, they turned on
+      their own forces behind them, and tried to fight their way to safety, but
+      the inexorable pressure kept on, and the defenders, watching and
+      powerless, saw men fling themselves from the bridges and disappear in the
+      water below, rather than advance into the machine-gun zone. The guns were
+      not firing into the rioters, but before them, to hold them back, and into
+      that leaden stream there were no brave spirits to hurl themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trapped men turned on their own and battled for escape. With the same
+      violence which had been directed toward the city they now fought each
+      other, and the bridge slowly cleared. But the mob did not disperse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It spread out on the bank across, a howling, frustrated, futile mass,
+      disorganized and demoralized, which fired its useless guns across the
+      river, which seethed and tossed and struggled, and spent itself in its own
+      wild fury. And all the time cool-eyed men, on the wharves across, watched
+      and waited for the time to attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're sick at their stomachs now,&rdquo; said an old army sergeant, watching,
+      to Willy Cameron. &ldquo;The dirty devils! They'll be starting their filthy work
+      over there soon, and that's the zero hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron nodded. He had seen one young Russian boy with a child-like
+      face venture forward alone into the fire zone and drop. He still lay
+      there, on the bridge. And all of Willy Cameron was in revolt. What had he
+      been told, that boy, that had made him ready to pour out his young life
+      like wine? There were others like him in that milling multitude on the
+      river bank across, young men who had come to America with a dream in their
+      hearts, and America had done this to them. Or had she? She had taken them
+      in, but they were not her own, and now, since she would not take them,
+      they would take her. Was that it? Was it that America had made them her
+      servants, but not her children? He did not know.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Robbed of the city proper, the mob turned on the mill district it had
+      invaded. Its dream of lust and greed was over, but it could still destroy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a battle charge, as indeed it was, the mounted city and state police
+      crossed the bridge. It was followed by the state troops on foot, by city
+      policemen in orderly files, and then by the armed citizens. The bridge
+      vibrated to the step of marching men, going out to fight for their homes.
+      The real battle was fought there, around the Cardew mills, a battle where
+      the loyalists were greatly outnumbered, and where the rioters fought,
+      according to their teaching, with every trick they could devise. Posted in
+      upper windows they fired down from comparative safety; ambulances crossed
+      and re-crossed the bridges. The streets were filled with rioting men,
+      striking out murderously with bars and spikes. Fires flamed up and burned
+      themselves out. In one place, eight blocks of mill-workers' houses, with
+      their furnishings, went in a quarter of an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron was fighting like a demon. Long ago his reserve of
+      ammunition had given out, and he was fighting with the butt end of his
+      revolver. Around him had rallied some of the men he knew best, Pink and
+      Mr. Hendricks, Doctor Smalley, Dan and Joe Wilkinson, and they stayed
+      together as, street by street, the revolutionists were driven back. There
+      were dead and wounded everywhere, injured men who had crawled into the
+      shelter of doorways and sat or lay there, nursing their wounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, to his amazement, Willy saw old Anthony Cardew. He had somehow
+      achieved an upper window of the mill office building, and he was showing
+      himself fearlessly, a rifle in his hands; in his face was a great anger,
+      but there was more than that. Willy Cameron, thinking it over later,
+      decided that it was perplexity. He could not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He never did understand. For other eyes also had seen old Anthony Cardew.
+      Willy Cameron, breasting the mob and fighting madly toward the door of the
+      building, with Pink behind him, heard a cheer and an angry roar, and,
+      looking up, saw that the old man had disappeared. They found him there
+      later on, the rifle beside him, his small and valiant figure looking, with
+      eyes no longer defiant, toward the Heaven which puts, for its own strange
+      purpose, both evil and good into the same heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By eleven o'clock the revolution was over. Sodden groups of men,
+      thoroughly cowed and frightened, were on their way by back roads to the
+      places they had left a few hours before. They had no longer dreams of
+      empire. Behind them they could see, on the horizon, the city itself, the
+      smoke from its chimneys, the spires of its churches. Both, homes and
+      churches, they had meant to destroy, but behind both there was the
+      indestructible. They had failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned, looked back, and went on.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      On the crest of a hill-top overlooking the city a man was standing,
+      looking down to where the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose
+      above the river mist like fairy towers. Below him lay the city, powerful,
+      significant, important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man saw the city only as a vast crucible, into which he had flung his
+      all, and out of which had come only defeat and failure. But the city was
+      not a crucible. The melting pot of a nation is not a thing of cities, but
+      of the human soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city was not a melting pot. It was a sanctuary. The man stood silent
+      and morose, his chin dropped on his chest, and stared down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beside and somewhat behind him stood a woman, a somber, passionate figure,
+      waiting passively. His eyes traveled from the city to her, and rested on
+      her, contemptuous, thwarted, cynical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fool,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I hate you, and you know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she only smiled faintly. &ldquo;We'd better get away now, Jim,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got into the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0050" id="link2HCH0050">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER L
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Late that afternoon Joe Wilkinson and Dan came slowly up the street,
+      toward the Boyd house. The light of battle was still in Dan's eyes, his
+      clothes were torn and his collar missing, and he walked with the fine
+      swagger of the conqueror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y'ask me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I'll tell the world this thing's done for. It
+      was just as well to let them give it a try, and find out it won't work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe said nothing. He was white and very tired, and a little sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you don't mind I'll go in your place and wash up,&rdquo; he remarked, as
+      they neared the house. &ldquo;I'll scare the kids to death if they see me like
+      this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith was in the parlor. She had sat there almost all day, in an agony of
+      fear. At four o'clock the smallest Wilkinson had hammered at the front
+      door, and on being admitted had made a shameless demand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bed and thugar,&rdquo; she had said, looking up with an ingratiating smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You little beggar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bed and thugar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith had got the bread and sugar, and, having lured the baby into the
+      parlor, had held her while she ate, receiving now and then an exceedingly
+      sticky kiss in payment. After a little the child's head began to droop,
+      and Edith drew the small head down onto her breast. She sat there, rocking
+      gently, while the chair slowly traveled, according to its wont, about the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child brought her comfort. She began to understand those grave rocking
+      figures in the hospital ward, women who sat, with eyes that seemed to look
+      into distant places, with a child's head on their breasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, that was life for a woman. Love was only a part of the scheme
+      of life, a means to an end. And that end was the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time she wished that her child had lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt no bitterness now, and no anger. He was dead. It was hard to
+      think of him as dead, who had been so vitally alive. She was sorry he had
+      had to die, but death was like love and children, it was a part of some
+      general scheme of things. Suppose this had been his child she was holding?
+      Would she so easily have forgiven him? She did not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she thought of Willy Cameron. The bitterness had strangely gone out
+      of that, too. Perhaps, vaguely, she began to realize that only young love
+      gives itself passionately and desperately, when there is no hope of a
+      return, and that the agonies of youth, although terrible enough, pass with
+      youth itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt very old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe found her there, the chair displaying its usual tendency to climb the
+      chimney flue, and stood in the doorway, looking at her with haunted,
+      hungry eyes. There was a sort of despair in Joe those days, and now he was
+      tired and shaken from the battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take her home in a minute,&rdquo; he said, still with the strange eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came into the room, and suddenly he was kneeling beside the chair, his
+      head buried against the baby's warm, round body. His bent shoulders shook,
+      and Edith, still with the maternal impulse strong within her, put her hand
+      on his bowed head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't, Joe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I loved you so, Edith!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you love me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows I do. I can't get over it. I can't. I've tried, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat back on the floor and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;And when I saw you like that just now, with the
+      kid in your arms&mdash;I used to think that maybe you and I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, Joe. No decent man would want me now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still strangely composed, peaceful, almost detached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That!&rdquo; he said, astonished. &ldquo;I don't mean that, Edith. I've had my fight
+      about that, and got it over. That's done with. I mean&mdash;&rdquo; he got up
+      and straightened himself. &ldquo;You don't care about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do care for you. Perhaps not quite the way you care, Joe, but I've
+      been through such a lot. I can't seem to feel anything terribly. I just
+      want peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could give you that,&rdquo; he said eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith smiled. Peace, in that noisy house next door, with children and
+      kittens and puppies everywhere! And yet it would be peace, after all, a
+      peace of the soul, the peace of a good man's love. After a time, too,
+      there might come another peace, the peace of those tired women in the
+      ward, rocking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want me, I'll marry you,&rdquo; she said, very simply. &ldquo;I'll be a good
+      wife, Joe. And I want children. I want the right to have them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He never noticed that the kiss she gave him, over the sleeping baby, was
+      slightly tinged with granulated sugar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0051" id="link2HCH0051">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his great
+      bed. There had been a bad hour; death seems so strangely to erase faults
+      and leave virtues. Something strong and vital had gone from the house, and
+      the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless steps. In Grace's
+      boudoir, Howard was sitting, his arms around his wife, telling her the
+      story of the day. At dawn he had notified her by telephone of Akers'
+      murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell Lily?&rdquo; she had asked, trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to wait until I get back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know how she will take it, Howard. I wish you could be here,
+      anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end it was
+      Willy Cameron who told her. He had brought back all that was mortal of
+      Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession up the stairs,
+      had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping to be useful. Howard
+      found him there, a strange, disheveled figure, bearing the scars of
+      battle, and held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's hard to thank you, Cameron,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you seem to be always about
+      when we need help. And&rdquo;&mdash;he paused&mdash;&ldquo;we seem to have needed it
+      considerably lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron flushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel rather like a meddler, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better go up and wash,&rdquo; Howard said. &ldquo;I'll go up with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened, therefore, that it was in Howard Cardew's opulent
+      dressing-room that Howard first spoke to Willy Cameron of Akers' death,
+      pacing the floor as he did so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't told her, Cameron.&rdquo; He was anxious and puzzled. &ldquo;She'll have to
+      be told soon, of course. I don't know anything about women. I don't know
+      how she'll take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has a great deal of courage. It will be a shock, but not a grief. But
+      I have been thinking&mdash;&rdquo; Willy Cameron hesitated. &ldquo;She must not feel
+      any remorse,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;She must not feel that she contributed to it in
+      any way. If you can make that clear to her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure she did not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't facts that matter now. We can't help those. And no one can tell
+      what actually led to his change of heart. It is what she is to think the
+      rest of her life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would tell her,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm a blundering fool when it comes
+      to her. I suppose I care too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught rather an odd look in Willy Cameron's face at that, and pondered
+      over it later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell her, if you wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Howard drew a deep breath of relief. It was shortly after that he
+      broached another matter, rather diffidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know whether you realize it or not, Cameron,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but this
+      thing to-day might have been a different story if it had not been for you.
+      And&mdash;don't think I'm putting this on a reward basis. It's nothing of
+      the sort&mdash;but I would like to feel that you were working with me. I'd
+      hate like thunder to have you working against me,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am only trained for one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We use chemists in the mills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the discussion ended there. Both men knew that it would be taken up
+      later, at some more opportune time, and in the meantime both had one
+      thought, Lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from Willy
+      Cameron. She stood, straight and erect, and heard him through, watching
+      him with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain of the day.
+      But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one she had known long
+      ago, in some infinitely remote past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; she said, when he finished. &ldquo;I didn't want him to die. You
+      know that, don't you? I never wished him&mdash;Willy, I say I am sorry,
+      but I don't really feel anything. It's dreadful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for the
+      first time in her healthy young life.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She found Willy
+      Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a look of wild
+      despair in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her view-point somewhat
+      since the spring. After all, what mattered was happiness. Wealth and
+      worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end, to
+      the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with the
+      shades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers over everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was but a crisis of
+      the nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure, which
+      issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went up the
+      stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figure lost
+      momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently moved forward on
+      tiptoe. Grayson went into the library and sniffed at the unmistakable odor
+      of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went and stood before a great
+      portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood in the old man's eyes, but
+      there was a faint smile on his lips. He saw the endless procession of
+      life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Then death. Grayson was old,
+      but he had lived to see young love in the Cardew house. Out of love, life.
+      He addressed a little speech to the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever you are, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you needn't worry any more. The line
+      will carry on, sir. The line will carry on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, and
+      gathered Lily close in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0052" id="link2HCH0052">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many changes. It saw, slowly
+      emerging from the chaos of war, new nations, like children, taking their
+      first feeble steps. It saw a socialism which, born at full term might have
+      thrived, prematurely and forcibly delivered, and making a valiant but
+      losing fight for life. It saw that war is never good, but always evil;
+      that war takes everything and gives nothing, save that sometimes a man may
+      lose the whole world and gain his own soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into the vast democracy of
+      heaven, and Louis Akers passed through the Traitors' Gate of eternity to
+      be judged and perhaps reprieved. For a man is many men, good and bad, and
+      the Judge of the Tower of Heaven is a just Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It saw Jim Doyle a fugitive, Woslosky dead, and the Russian, Ross, bland,
+      cunning and eternally plotting, in New England under another name. And Mr.
+      Hendricks ordering a new suit for the day of taking office. And Doctor
+      Smalley tying a bunch of chrysanthemums on Annabelle, against a football
+      game, and taking a pretty nurse to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It saw Ellen roasting a turkey, and a strange young man in the Eagle
+      Pharmacy, a young man who did not smoke a pipe, and allowed no visitors in
+      the back room. And it saw Willy Cameron in the laboratory of the reopened
+      Cardew Mills, dealing in tons instead of grains and drams, and learning to
+      touch any piece of metal in the mill with a moistened fore-finger before
+      he sat down upon it.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      But it saw more than that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the evening of Thanksgiving Day there was an air of repressed
+      excitement about the Cardew house. Mademoiselle, in a new silk dress, ran
+      about the lower floor, followed by an agitated Grayson with a cloth, for
+      Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with trembling hands vases of
+      flowers, and spilling water at each shift. At six o'clock had arrived a
+      large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear and
+      there exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers
+      other excitable and emotional women to peep within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After which he tied it up again and carried it upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At seven o'clock Elinor Cardew, lovely in black satin, was carried down
+      the stairs and placed in a position which commanded both the hall and the
+      drawing-room. For some strange reason it was essential that she should see
+      both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At seven-thirty came in a rush:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (a)&mdash;Mr. Alston Denslow, in evening clothes and gardenia, and feeling
+      in his right waist-coat pocket nervously every few minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (b)&mdash;An excited woman of middle age, in a black silk dress still
+      faintly bearing the creases of five days in a trunk, and accompanied by a
+      mongrel dog, both being taken upstairs by Grayson, Mademoiselle, Pink, and
+      Howard Cardew. (&ldquo;He said Jinx was to come,&rdquo; she explained breathlessly to
+      her bodyguard. &ldquo;I never knew such a boy!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (c)&mdash;Mr. Davis, in a frock coat and white lawn tie, and taken
+      upstairs by Grayson, who mistook him for the bishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (d)&mdash;Aunt Caroline, in her diamond dog collar and purple velvet, and
+      determined to make the best of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (e)&mdash;The real bishop this time, and his assistant, followed by a
+      valet with a suitcase, containing the proper habiliments for a prince of
+      the church while functioning. (A military term, since the Bishop had been
+      in the army.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (f)&mdash;A few unimportant important people, very curious, and the women
+      uncertain about the proper garb for a festive occasion in a house of
+      mourning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (g)&mdash;Set of silver table vases, belated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (h)&mdash;Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks, Mayor and Mayoress-elect. Extremely
+      dignified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (i)&mdash;An overfull taxicab, containing inside it Ellen, Edith, Dan and
+      Joe. The overflow, consisting of a tall young man, displaying repressed
+      excitement and new evening clothes, with gardenia, sat on the seat outside
+      beside the chauffeur and repeated to himself a sort of chant accompanied
+      by furious searchings of his pockets. &ldquo;Money. Checkbook. Tickets. Trunk
+      checks,&rdquo; was the burden of his song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (j)&mdash;Doctor Smalley and Annabelle. He left Annabelle outside.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The city moved on about its business. In thousands of homes the lights
+      shone down on little family groups, infinitely tender little groups. The
+      workers of the city were there, the doors shut, the fires burning. To each
+      man the thing he had earned, not the thing that he took. To all men the
+      right to labor, to love, and to rest. To children, the right to play. To
+      women, the hearth, and the peace of the hearth. To lovers, love, and
+      marriage, and home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city moved on about its business, and its business was homes.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      At the great organ behind the staircase the organist sat. In stiff rows
+      near him were the Cardew servants, marshaled by Grayson and in their best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grayson stood, very rigid, and waited. And as he waited he kept his eyes
+      on the portrait of old Anthony, in the drawing-room beyond. There was a
+      fixed, rapt look in Grayson's eyes, and there was reassurance. It was as
+      though he would say to the portrait: &ldquo;It has all come out very well, you
+      see, sir. It always works out somehow. We worry and fret, we old ones, but
+      the young come along, and somehow or other they manage, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What he actually said was to tell a house maid to stop sniveling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the house was the strange hush of waiting. It had waited before this,
+      for birth and for death, but never before&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bishop was waiting also, and he too had his eyes fixed on old
+      Anthony's portrait, a straight, level-eyed gaze, as of man to man, as of
+      prince of the church to prince of industry. The Bishop's eyes said: &ldquo;All
+      shall be done properly and in order, and as befits the Cardews, Anthony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bishop was as successful in his line as Anthony Cardew had been in
+      his. He cleared his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The organist sat at the great organ behind the staircase, waiting. He was
+      playing very softly, with his eyes turned up. He had played the same music
+      many times before, and always he felt very solemn, as one who makes
+      history. He sighed. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was only an
+      accompaniment to life, to which others sang and prayed, were christened,
+      confirmed and married. But what was the song without the music? He wished
+      the scullery maid would stop crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grayson touched him on the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All ready, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Willy Cameron stood at the foot of the staircase, looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Poor Wise Man
+
+Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+Posting Date: November 3, 2008 [EBook #1970]
+Release Date: November, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR WISE MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+A POOR WISE MAN
+
+By Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened
+walls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over all
+a gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty.
+Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose above the
+river mist like fairy towers suspended between Heaven and earth. And
+again the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold, while the city
+lay buried in its smoke shroud, and white ghosts of river boats moved
+spectrally along.
+
+Sometimes it was ugly, sometimes beautiful, but always the city was
+powerful, significant, important. It was a vast melting pot. Through its
+gates came alike the hopeful and the hopeless, the dreamers and those
+who would destroy those dreams. From all over the world there came men
+who sought a chance to labor. They came in groups, anxious and dumb,
+carrying with them their pathetic bundles, and shepherded by men with
+cunning eyes.
+
+Raw material, for the crucible of the city, as potentially powerful as
+the iron ore which entered the city by the same gate.
+
+The city took them in, gave them sanctuary, and forgot them. But the
+shepherds with the cunning eyes remembered.
+
+Lily Cardew, standing in the train shed one morning early in March,
+watched such a line go by. She watched it with interest. She had
+developed a new interest in people during the year she had been
+away. She had seen, in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of men,
+transformed in a few hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers, beginning
+already to be actuated by the same motive. These aliens, going by, would
+become citizens. Very soon now they would appear on the streets in new
+American clothes of extraordinary cut and color, their hair cut with
+clippers almost to the crown, and surmounted by derby hats always a size
+too small.
+
+Lily smiled, and looked out for her mother. She was suddenly
+unaccountably glad to be back again. She liked the smoke and the noise,
+the movement, the sense of things doing. And the sight of her mother,
+small, faultlessly tailored, wearing a great bunch of violets, and
+incongruous in that work-a-day atmosphere, set her smiling again.
+
+How familiar it all was! And heavens, how young she looked! The
+limousine was at the curb, and a footman as immaculately turned out as
+her mother stood with a folded rug over his arm. On the seat inside lay
+a purple box. Lily had known it would be there. They would be ostensibly
+from her father, because he had not been able to meet her, but she knew
+quite well that Grace Cardew had stopped at the florist's on her way
+downtown and bought them.
+
+A little surge of affection for her mother warmed the girl's eyes. The
+small attentions which in the Cardew household took the place of loving
+demonstrations had always touched her. As a family the Cardews were
+rather loosely knitted together, but there was something very lovable
+about her mother.
+
+Grace Cardew kissed her, and then held her off and looked at her.
+
+"Mercy, Lily!" she said, "you look as old as I do."
+
+"Older, I hope," Lily retorted. "What a marvel you are, Grace dear." Now
+and then she called her mother "Grace." It was by way of being a small
+joke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old Anthony,
+her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a row
+about it.
+
+"I feel horribly old, but I didn't think I looked it."
+
+They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her. "From your
+father, dear. He wanted so to come, but things are dreadful at the mill.
+I suppose you've seen the papers." Lily opened the box, and smiled at
+her mother.
+
+"Yes, I know. But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear?
+Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them? But never mind about
+that; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it. Have you broken
+the news to grandfather that the last of the Cardews is coming home?"
+
+"He sent you all sorts of messages, and he'll see you at dinner."
+
+Lily laughed out at that.
+
+"You darling!" she said. "You know perfectly well that I am nothing in
+grandfather's young life, but the Cardew women all have what he likes
+to call savoir faire. What would they do, father and grandfather, if you
+didn't go through life smoothing things for them?"
+
+Grace looked rather stiffly ahead. This young daughter of hers, with her
+directness and her smiling ignoring of the small subterfuges of life,
+rather frightened her. The terrible honesty of youth! All these years of
+ironing the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the difficulties between
+old Anthony and Howard, and now a third generation to contend with. A
+pitilessly frank and unconsciously cruel generation. She turned and eyed
+Lily uneasily.
+
+"You look tired," she said, "and you need attention. I wish you had let
+me send Castle to you."
+
+But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered her.
+Lovely rather than beautiful, perhaps. Her face was less childish than
+when she had gone away; there was, in certain of her expressions, an
+almost alarming maturity. But perhaps that was fatigue.
+
+"I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I've been
+very happy, really, and very busy."
+
+"You have been very vague lately about your work."
+
+Lily faced her mother squarely.
+
+"I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it would
+drive grandfather crazy."
+
+"I thought you were in a canteen."
+
+"Not lately. I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers to
+camps. Some of them were going to have babies, too. It was rather awful.
+We married quite a lot of them, however."
+
+The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter
+held Grace Cardew dumb. She nodded, but her eyes had slightly hardened.
+So this was what war had done to her. She had had no son, and had
+thanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had hated
+her all her married life for it. But she had given her daughter, her
+clear-eyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs of life.
+
+Her thoughts went back over the years. To Lily as a child, with
+Mademoiselle always at her elbow, and life painted as a thing of beauty.
+Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents. Death was a quiet sleep,
+with heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to age, which had
+wearied and would rest. Then she remembered the day when Elinor Cardew,
+poor unhappy Elinor, had fled back to Anthony's roof to have a baby, and
+after a few rapturous weeks for Lily the baby had died.
+
+"But the baby isn't old," Lily had persisted, standing in front of her
+mother with angry, accusing eyes.
+
+Grace was not an imaginative woman, but she turned it rather neatly, as
+she told Howard later.
+
+"It was such a nice baby," she said, feeling for an idea. "I think
+probably God was lonely without it, and sent an angel for it again."
+
+"But it is still upstairs," Lily had insisted. She had had a curious
+instinct for truth, even then. But there Grace's imagination had failed
+her, and she sent for Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle was a good Catholic,
+and very clear in her own mind, but what she left in Lily's brain was
+a confused conviction that every person was two persons, a body and a
+soul. Death was simply a split-up, then. One part of you, the part that
+bathed every morning and had its toe-nails cut, and went to dancing
+school in a white frock and thin black silk stockings and carriage boots
+over pumps, that part was buried and would only came up again at the
+Resurrection. But the other part was all the time very happy, and mostly
+singing.
+
+Lily did not like to sing.
+
+Then there was the matter of tears. People only cried when they hurt
+themselves. She had been told that again and again when she threatened
+tears over her music lesson. But when Aunt Elinor had gone away she had
+found Mademoiselle, the deadly antagonist of tears, weeping. And here
+again Grace remembered the child's wide, insistent eyes.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"She is sorry for Aunt Elinor."
+
+"Because her baby's gone to God? She ought to be glad, oughtn't she?"
+
+"Not that;" said Grace, and had brought a box of chocolates and given
+her one, although they were not permitted save one after each meal.
+
+Then Lily had gone away to school. How carefully the school had been
+selected! When she came back, however, there had been no more questions,
+and Grace had sighed with relief. That bad time was over, anyhow. But
+Lily was rather difficult those days. She seemed, in some vague
+way, resentful. Her mother found her, now and then, in a frowning,
+half-defiant mood. And once, when Mademoiselle had ventured some jesting
+remark about young Alston Denslow, she was stupefied to see the girl
+march out of the room, her chin high, not to be seen again for hours.
+
+Grace's mind was sub-consciously remembering those things even when she
+spoke.
+
+"I didn't know you were having to learn about that side of life," she
+said, after a brief silence.
+
+"That side of life is life, mother," Lily said gravely. But Grace did
+not reply to that. It was characteristic of her to follow her own line
+of thought.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't tell your grandfather. You know he feels strongly
+about some things. And he hasn't forgiven me yet for letting you go."
+
+Rather diffidently Lily put her hand on her mother's. She gave her rare
+caresses shyly, with averted eyes, and she was always more diffident
+with her mother than with her father. Such spontaneous bursts of
+affection as she sometimes showed had been lavished on Mademoiselle.
+It was Mademoiselle she had hugged rapturously on her small feast days,
+Mademoiselle who never demanded affection, and so received it.
+
+"Poor mother!" she said, "I have made it hard for you, haven't I? Is he
+as bad as ever?"
+
+She had not pinned on the violets, but sat holding them in her hands,
+now and then taking a luxurious sniff. She did not seem to expect
+a reply. Between Grace and herself it was quite understood that old
+Anthony Cardew was always as bad as could be.
+
+"There is some sort of trouble at the mill. Your father is worried."
+
+And this time it was Lily who did not reply. She said,
+inconsequentially:
+
+"We're saved, and it's all over. But sometimes I wonder if we were worth
+saving. It all seems such a mess, doesn't it?" She glanced out.
+They were drawing up before the house, and she looked at her mother
+whimsically.
+
+"The last of the Cardews returning from the wars!" she said. "Only she
+is unfortunately a she, and she hasn't been any nearer the war than the
+State of Ohio."
+
+Her voice was gay enough, but she had a quick vision of the grim
+old house had she been the son they had wanted to carry on the name,
+returning from France.
+
+The Cardews had fighting traditions. They had fought in every war from
+the Revolution on. There had been a Cardew in Mexico in '48, and in that
+upper suite of rooms to which her grandfather had retired in wrath on
+his son's marriage, she remembered her sense of awe as a child on seeing
+on the wall the sword he had worn in the Civil War. He was a small man,
+and the scabbard was badly worn at the end, mute testimony to the long
+forced marches of his youth. Her father had gone to Cuba in '98, and
+had almost died of typhoid fever there, contracted in the marshes of
+Florida.
+
+Yes, they had been a fighting family. And now--
+
+Her mother was determinedly gay. There were flowers in the dark old
+hall, and Grayson, the butler, evidently waiting inside the door,
+greeted her with the familiarity of the old servant who had slipped her
+sweets from the pantry after dinner parties in her little-girl years.
+
+"Welcome home, Miss Lily," he said.
+
+Mademoiselle was lurking on the stairway, in a new lace collar over her
+old black dress. Lily recognized in the collar a great occasion, for
+Mademoiselle was French and thrifty. Suddenly a wave of warmth and
+gladness flooded her. This was home. Dear, familiar home. She had come
+back. She was the only young thing in the house. She would bring them
+gladness and youth. She would try to make them happy. Always before she
+had taken, but now she meant to give.
+
+Not that she formulated such a thought. It was an emotion, rather. She
+ran up the stairs and hugged Mademoiselle wildly.
+
+"You darling old thing!" she cried. She lapsed into French. "I saw the
+collar at once. And think, it is over! It is finished. And all your nice
+French relatives are sitting on the boulevards in the sun, and sipping
+their little glasses of wine, and rising and bowing when a pretty girl
+passes. Is it not so?"
+
+"It is so, God and the saints be praised!" said Mademoiselle, huskily.
+
+Grace Cardew followed them up the staircase. Her French was negligible,
+and she felt again, as in days gone by, shut from the little world of
+two which held her daughter and governess. Old Anthony's doing, that.
+He had never forgiven his son his plebeian marriage, and an early
+conversation returned to her. It was on Lily's first birthday and he had
+made one of his rare visits to the nursery. He had brought with him a
+pearl in a velvet case.
+
+"All our women have their own pearls," he had said. "She will have her
+grandmother's also when she marries. I shall give her one the first
+year, two the second, and so on." He had stood looking down at the child
+critically. "She's a Cardew," he said at last. "Which means that she
+will be obstinate and self-willed." He had paused there, but Grace had
+not refuted the statement. He had grinned. "As you know," he added. "Is
+she talking yet?"
+
+"A word or two," Grace had said, with no more warmth in her tone than
+was in his.
+
+"Very well. Get her a French governess. She ought to speak French before
+she does English. It is one of the accomplishments of a lady. Get a good
+woman, and for heaven's sake arrange to serve her breakfast in her room.
+I don't want to have to be pleasant to any chattering French woman at
+eight in the morning."
+
+"No, you wouldn't," Grace had said.
+
+Anthony had stamped out, but in the hall he smiled grimly. He did not
+like Howard's wife, but she was not afraid of him. He respected her for
+that. He took good care to see that the Frenchwoman was found, and at
+dinner, the only meal he took with the family, he would now and then
+send for the governess and Lily to come in for dessert. That, of
+course, was later on, when the child was nearly ten. Then would follow
+a three-cornered conversation in rapid French, Howard and Anthony and
+Lily, with Mademoiselle joining in timidly, and with Grace, at the side
+of the table, pretending to eat and feeling cut off, in a middle-class
+world of her own, at the side of the table. Anthony Cardew had retained
+the head of his table, and he had never asked her to take his dead
+wife's place.
+
+After a time Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours, the
+fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared to
+see her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made
+desperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was
+atrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh in
+childish, unthinking mirth. She gave it up at last.
+
+She never told Howard about it. He had his own difficulties with his
+father, and she would not add to them. She managed the house, checked
+over the bills and sent them to the office, put up a cheerful and
+courageous front, and after a time sheathed herself in an armor of
+smiling indifference. But she thanked heaven when the time came to
+send Lily away to school. The effort of concealing the armed neutrality
+between Anthony and herself was growing more wearing. The girl was
+observant. And Anthony had been right, she was a Cardew. She would have
+fought her grandfather out on it, defied him, accused him, hated him.
+And Grace wanted peace.
+
+Once again as she followed Lily and Mademoiselle up the stairs she felt
+the barrier of language, and back of it the Cardew pride and traditions
+that somehow cut her off.
+
+But in Lily's rooms she was her sane and cheerful self again. Inside the
+doorway the girl was standing, her eyes traveling over her little domain
+ecstatically.
+
+"How lovely of you not to change a thing, mother!" she said. "I was
+so afraid--I know how you hate my stuff. But I might have known you
+wouldn't. All the time I've been away, sleeping in a dormitory, and
+taking turns at the bath, I have thought of my own little place." She
+wandered around, touching her familiar possessions with caressing hands.
+"I've a good notion," she declared, "to go to bed immediately, just for
+the pleasure of lying in linen sheets again." Suddenly she turned to her
+mother. "I'm afraid you'll find I've made some queer friends, mother."
+
+"What do you mean by 'queer'?"
+
+"People no proper Cardew would care to know." She smiled. "Where's
+Ellen? I want to tell her I met somebody she knows out there, the nicest
+sort of a boy." She went to the doorway and called lustily: "Ellen!
+Ellen!" The rustling of starched skirts answered her from down the
+corridor.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't call, dear." Grace looked anxious. "You know how
+your grandfather--there's a bell for Ellen."
+
+"What we need around here," said Lily, cheerfully, "is a little more
+calling. And if grandfather thinks it is unbefitting the family dignity
+he can put cotton in his ears. Come in, Ellen. Ellen, do you know that I
+met Willy Cameron in the camp?"
+
+"Willy!" squealed Ellen. "You met Willy? Isn't he a fine boy, Miss
+Lily?"
+
+"He's wonderful," said Lily. "I went to the movies with him every
+Friday night." She turned to her mother. "You would like him, mother. He
+couldn't get into the army. He is a little bit lame. And--" she surveyed
+Grace with amused eyes, "you needn't think what you are thinking. He is
+tall and thin and not at all good-looking. Is he, Ellen?"
+
+"He is a very fine young man," Ellen said rather stiffly. "He's very
+highly thought of in the town I come from. His father was a doctor, and
+his buggy used to go around day, and night. When he found they wouldn't
+take him as a soldier he was like to break his heart."
+
+"Lame?" Grace repeated, ignoring Ellen.
+
+"Just a little. You forget all about it when you know him. Don't you,
+Ellen?"
+
+But at Grace's tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and became
+again a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing,
+rubber-heeled, pink-uniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew,
+whose eyebrows were slightly raised.
+
+"Thank you, miss," she said. And went out, leaving Lily rather chilled
+and openly perplexed.
+
+"Well!" she said. Then she glanced at her mother. "I do believe you are
+a little shocked, mother, because Ellen and I have a mutual friend
+in Mr. William Wallace Cameron! Well, if you want the exact truth, he
+hadn't an atom of use for me until he heard about Ellen." She put an arm
+around Grace's shoulders. "Brace up, dear," she said, smilingly. "Don't
+you cry. I'll be a Cardew bye-and-bye."
+
+"Did you really go to the moving pictures with him?" Grace asked, rather
+unhappily. She had never been inside a moving picture theater. To her
+they meant something a step above the corner saloon, and a degree below
+the burlesque houses. They were constituted of bad air and unchaperoned
+young women accompanied by youths who dangled cigarettes from a lower
+lip, all obviously of the lower class, including the cigarette; and of
+other women, sometimes drab, dragged of breast and carrying children
+who should have been in bed hours before; or still others, wandering
+in pairs, young, painted and predatory. She was not imaginative, or she
+could not have lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house. She never saw,
+in the long line waiting outside even the meanest of the little theaters
+that had invaded the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cry
+of every human heart for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance,
+the call of adventure and the open road.
+
+"I can't believe it," she added.
+
+Lily made a little gesture of half-amused despair.
+
+"Dearest," she said, "I did. And I liked it. Mother, things have changed
+a lot in twenty years. Sometimes I think that here, in this house, you
+don't realize that--" she struggled for a phrase--"that things have
+changed," she ended, lamely. "The social order, and that sort of thing.
+You know. Caste." She hesitated. She was young and inarticulate, and
+when she saw Grace's face, somewhat frightened. But she was not old
+Anthony's granddaughter for nothing. "This idea of being a Cardew," she
+went on, "that's ridiculous, you know. I'm only half Cardew, anyhow. The
+rest is you, dear, and it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot."
+
+Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she paused
+now and turned. It was to Grace that she spoke, however.
+
+"They come home like that, all of them," she said. "In France also. But
+in time they see the wisdom of the old order, and return. It is one of
+the fruits of war."
+
+Grace hardly heard her.
+
+"Lily," she asked, "you are not in love with this Cameron person, are
+you?"
+
+But Lily's easy laugh reassured her.
+
+"No, indeed," she said. "I am not. I shall probably marry beneath me,
+as you would call it, but not William Wallace Cameron. For one thing, he
+wouldn't have grandfather in his family."
+
+Some time later Mademoiselle tapped at Grace's door, and entered. Grace
+was reclining on a chaise longue, towels tucked about her neck and over
+her pillows, while Castle, her elderly English maid, was applying ice
+in a soft cloth to her face. Grace sat up. The towel, pinned around her
+hair like a coif, gave a placid, almost nun-like appearance to her still
+lovely face.
+
+"Well?" she demanded. "Go out for a minute, Castle."
+
+Mademoiselle waited until the maid had gone.
+
+"I have spoken to Ellen," she said, her voice cautious. "A young man who
+does not care for women, a clerk in a country pharmacy. What is that,
+Mrs. Cardew?"
+
+"It would be so dreadful, Mademoiselle. Her grandfather--"
+
+"But not handsome," insisted Mademoiselle, "and lame! Also, I know the
+child. She is not in love. When that comes to her we shall know it."
+
+Grace lay back, relieved, but not entirely comforted.
+
+"She is changed, isn't she, Mademoiselle?"
+
+Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"A phase," she said. She had got the word from old Anthony, who regarded
+any mental attitude that did not conform with his own as a condition
+that would pass. "A phase, only. Now that she is back among familiar
+things, she will become again a daughter of the house."
+
+"Then you think this talk about marrying beneath her--"
+
+"She 'as had liberty," said Mademoiselle, who sometimes lost an
+aspirate. "It is like wine to the young. It intoxicates. But it, too,
+passes. In my country--"
+
+But Grace had, for a number of years, heard a great deal of
+Mademoiselle's country. She settled herself on her pillows.
+
+"Call Castle, please," she said. "And--do warn her not to voice those
+ideas of hers to her grandfather. In a country pharmacy, you say?"
+
+"And lame, and not fond of women," corroborated Mademoiselle. "Ca ne
+pourrait pas etre mieux, n'est-ce pas?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Shortly after the Civil War Anthony Cardew had left Pittsburgh and spent
+a year in finding a location for the investment of his small capital.
+That was in the very beginning of the epoch of steel. The iron business
+had already laid the foundations of its future greatness, but steel was
+still in its infancy.
+
+Anthony's father had been an iron-master in a small way, with a monthly
+pay-roll of a few hundred dollars, and an abiding faith in the future of
+iron. But he had never dreamed of steel. But "sixty-five" saw the first
+steel rail rolled in America, and Anthony Cardew began to dream. He
+went to Chicago first, and from there to Michigan, to see the first
+successful Bessemer converter. When he started east again he knew what
+he was to make his life work.
+
+He was very young and his capital was small. But he had an abiding
+faith in the new industry. Not that he dreamed then of floating steel
+battleships. But he did foresee steel in new and various uses. Later on
+he was experimenting with steel cable at the very time Roebling made it
+a commercial possibility, and with it the modern suspension bridge and
+the elevator. He never quite forgave Roebling. That failure of his, the
+difference only of a month or so, was one of the few disappointments
+of his prosperous, self-centered, orderly life. That, and Howard's
+marriage. And, at the height of his prosperity, the realization that
+Howard's middle-class wife would never bear a son.
+
+The city he chose was a small city then, yet it already showed signs of
+approaching greatness. On the east side, across the river, he built his
+first plant, a small one, with the blast heated by passing through cast
+iron pipes, with the furnaceman testing the temperature with strips of
+lead and zinc, and the skip hoist a patient mule.
+
+He had ore within easy hauling distance, and he had fuel, and he had,
+as time went on, a rapidly increasing market. Labor was cheap and
+plentiful, too, and being American-born, was willing and intelligent.
+Perhaps Anthony Cardew's sins of later years were due to a vast
+impatience that the labor of the early seventies was no longer to be
+had.
+
+The Cardew fortune began in the seventies. Up to that time there was
+a struggle, but in the seventies Anthony did two things. He went to
+England to see the furnaces there, and brought home a wife, a timid,
+tall Englishwoman of irreproachable birth, who remained always an alien
+in the crude, busy new city. And he built himself a house, a brick house
+in lower East Avenue, a house rather like his tall, quiet wife, and run
+on English lines. He soon became the leading citizen. He was one of the
+committee to welcome the Prince of Wales to the city, and from the very
+beginning he took his place in the social life.
+
+He found it very raw at times, crude and new. He himself lived with
+dignity and elegant simplicity. He gave now and then lengthy, ponderous
+dinners, making out the lists himself, and handing them over to his
+timid English wife in much the manner in which he gave the wine list and
+the key to the wine cellar to the butler. And, at the head of his
+table, he let other men talk and listened. They talked, those industrial
+pioneers, especially after the women had gone. They saw the city the
+center of great business and great railroads. They talked of its coal,
+its river, and the great oil fields not far away which were then in
+their infancy. All of them dreamed a dream, saw a vision. But not all of
+them lived to see their dream come true.
+
+Old Anthony lived to see it.
+
+In the late eighties, his wife having been by that time decorously
+interred in one of the first great mausoleums west of the mountains,
+Anthony Cardew found himself already wealthy. He owned oil wells and
+coal mines. His mines supplied his coke ovens with coal, and his own
+river boats, as well as railroads in which he was a director, carried
+his steel.
+
+He labored ably and well, and not for wealth alone. He was one of a
+group of big-visioned men who saw that a nation was only as great as its
+industries. It was only in his later years that he loved power for
+the sake of power, and when, having outlived his generation, he had
+developed a rigidity of mind that made him view the forced compromises
+of the new regime as pusillanimous.
+
+He considered his son Howard's quiet strength weakness. "You have no
+stamina," he would say. "You have no moral fiber. For God's sake, make a
+stand, you fellows, and stick to it."
+
+He had not mellowed with age. He viewed with endless bitterness the
+passing of his own day and generation, and the rise to power of younger
+men; with their "shilly-shallying," he would say. He was an aristocrat,
+an autocrat, and a survival. He tied Howard's hands in the management of
+the now vast mills, and then blamed him for the results.
+
+But he had been a great man.
+
+He had had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl had been the tragedy
+of his middle years, and Howard had been his hope.
+
+On the heights outside the city and overlooking the river he owned a
+farm, and now and then, on Sunday afternoons in the eighties, he drove
+out there, with Howard sitting beside him, a rangy boy in his teens,
+in the victoria which Anthony considered the proper vehicle for
+Sunday afternoons. The farmhouse was in a hollow, but always on those
+excursions Anthony, fastidiously dressed, picking his way half-irritably
+through briars and cornfields, would go to the edge of the cliffs and
+stand there, looking down. Below was the muddy river, sluggish always,
+but a thing of terror in spring freshets. And across was the east side,
+already a sordid place, its steel mills belching black smoke that killed
+the green of the hillsides, its furnaces dwarfed by distance and height,
+its rows of unpainted wooden structures which housed the mill laborers.
+
+Howard would go with him, but Howard dreamed no dreams. He was a sturdy,
+dependable, unimaginative boy, watching the squirrels or flinging stones
+over the palisades. Life for Howard was already a thing determined. He
+would go to college, and then he would come back and go into the mill
+offices. In time, he would take his father's place. He meant to do it
+well and honestly. He had but to follow. Anthony had broken the trail,
+only by that time it was no longer a trail, but a broad and easy way.
+
+Only once or twice did Anthony Cardew give voice to his dreams. Once he
+said: "I'll build a house out here some of these days. Good location.
+Growth of the city is bound to be in this direction."
+
+What he did not say was that to be there, on that hill, overlooking his
+activities, his very own, the things he had builded with such labor,
+gave him a sense of power. "This below," he felt, with more of pride
+than arrogance, "this is mine. I have done it. I, Anthony Cardew."
+
+He felt, looking down, the pride of an artist in his picture, of a
+sculptor who, secure from curious eyes, draws the sheet from the still
+moist clay of his modeling, and now from this angle, now from that,
+studies, criticizes, and exults.
+
+But Anthony Cardew never built his house on the cliff. Time was to come
+when great houses stood there, like vast forts, overlooking, almost
+menacing, the valley beneath. For, until the nineties, although the city
+distended in all directions, huge, ugly, powerful, infinitely rich, and
+while in the direction of Anthony's farm the growth was real and rapid,
+it was the plain people who lined its rapidly extending avenues with
+their two-story brick houses; little homes of infinite tenderness
+and quiet, along tree-lined streets, where the children played on the
+cobble-stones, and at night the horse cars, and later the cable system,
+brought home tired clerks and storekeepers to small havens, already
+growing dingy from the smoke of the distant mills.
+
+Anthony Cardew did not like the plain people. Yet in the end, it was the
+plain people, those who neither labored with their hands nor lived
+by the labor of others--it was the plain people who vanquished him.
+Vanquished him and tried to protect him. But could not. A smallish man,
+hard and wiry, he neither saved himself nor saved others. He had one
+fetish, power. And one pride, his line. The Cardews were iron masters.
+Howard would be an iron master, and Howard's son.
+
+But Howard never had a son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+All through her teens Lily had wondered about the mystery concerning her
+Aunt Elinor. There was an oil portrait of her in the library, and one of
+the first things she had been taught was not to speak of it.
+
+Now and then, at intervals of years, Aunt Elinor came back. Her mother
+and father would look worried, and Aunt Elinor herself would stay in her
+rooms, and seldom appeared at meals. Never at dinner. As a child Lily
+used to think she had two Aunt Elinors, one the young girl in the gilt
+frame, and the other the quiet, soft-voiced person who slipped around
+the upper corridors like a ghost.
+
+But she was not to speak of either of them to her grandfather.
+
+Lily was not born in the house on lower East Avenue.
+
+In the late eighties Anthony built himself a home, not on the farm, but
+in a new residence portion of the city. The old common, grazing ground
+of family cows, dump and general eye-sore, had become a park by that
+time, still only a potentially beautiful thing, with the trees that were
+to be its later glory only thin young shoots, and on the streets that
+faced it the wealthy of the city built their homes, brick houses of
+square solidity, flush with brick pavements, which were carefully
+reddened on Saturday mornings. Beyond the pavements were cobble-stoned
+streets. Anthony Cardew was the first man in the city to have a
+rubber-tired carriage. The story of Anthony Cardew's new home is the
+story of Elinor's tragedy. Nor did it stop there. It carried on to the
+third generation, to Lily Cardew, and in the end it involved the city
+itself. Because of the ruin of one small home all homes were threatened.
+One small house, and one undying hatred.
+
+Yet the matter was small in itself. An Irishman named Doyle owned the
+site Anthony coveted. After years of struggle his small grocery had
+begun to put him on his feet, and now the new development of the
+neighborhood added to his prosperity. He was a dried-up, sentimental
+little man, with two loves, his wife's memory and his wife's garden,
+which he still tended religiously between customers; and one ambition,
+his son. With the change from common to park, and the improvement in the
+neighborhood, he began to flourish, and he, too, like Anthony, dreamed
+a dream. He would make his son a gentleman, and he would get a shop
+assistant and a horse and wagon. Poverty was still his lot, but there
+were good times coming. He saved carefully, and sent Jim Doyle away to
+college.
+
+He would not sell to Anthony. When he said he could not sell his wife's
+garden, Anthony's agents reported him either mad or deeply scheming.
+They kept after him, offering much more than the land was worth. Doyle
+began by being pugnacious, but in the end he took to brooding.
+
+"He'll get me yet," he would mutter, standing among the white phlox of
+his little back garden. "He'll get me. He never quits."
+
+Anthony Cardew waited a year. Then he had the frame building condemned
+as unsafe, and Doyle gave in. Anthony built his house. He put a brick
+stable where the garden had been, and the night watchman for the
+property complained that a little man, with wild eyes, often spent half
+the night standing across the street, quite still, staring over. If
+Anthony gave Doyle a thought, it was that progress and growth had their
+inevitable victims. But on the first night of Anthony's occupancy of his
+new house Doyle shot himself beside the stable, where a few stalks of
+white phlox had survived the building operations.
+
+It never reached the newspapers, nor did a stable-boy's story of hearing
+the dying man curse Anthony and all his works. But nevertheless the
+story of the Doyle curse on Anthony Cardew spread. Anthony heard it, and
+forgot it. But two days later he was dragged from his carriage by young
+Jim Doyle, returned for the older Doyle's funeral, and beaten insensible
+with the stick of his own carriage whip.
+
+Young Doyle did not run away. He stood by, a defiant figure full of
+hatred, watching Anthony on the cobbles, as though he wanted to see him
+revive and suffer.
+
+"I didn't do it to revenge my father," he said at the trial. "He was
+nothing to me--I did it to show old Cardew that he couldn't get away
+with it. I'd do it again, too."
+
+Any sentiment in his favor died at that, and he was given five years
+in the penitentiary. He was a demoralizing influence there, already a
+socialist with anarchical tendencies, and with the gift of influencing
+men. A fluent, sneering youth, who lashed the guards to fury with his
+unctuous, diabolical tongue.
+
+The penitentiary had not been moved then. It stood in the park, a grim
+gray thing of stone. Elinor Cardew, a lonely girl always, used to stand
+in a window of the new house and watch the walls. Inside there were men
+who were shut away from all that greenery around them. Men who could
+look up at the sky, or down at the ground, but never out and across, as
+she could.
+
+She was always hoping some of them would get away. She hated the
+sentries, rifle on shoulder, who walked their monotonous beats, back and
+forward, along the top of the wall.
+
+Anthony's house was square and substantial, with high ceilings. It was
+paneled with walnut and furnished in walnut, in those days. Its tables
+and bureaus were of walnut, with cold white marble tops. And in the
+parlor was a square walnut piano, which Elinor hated because she had
+to sit there three hours each day, slipping on the top of the
+horsehair-covered stool, to practice. In cold weather her German
+governess sat in the frigid room, with a shawl and mittens, waiting
+until the onyx clock on the mantel-piece showed that the three hours
+were over.
+
+Elinor had never heard the story of old Michael Doyle, or of his son
+Jim. But one night--she was seventeen then, and Jim Doyle had served
+three years of his sentence--sitting at dinner with her father, she
+said:
+
+"Some convicts escaped from the penitentiary today, father."
+
+"Don't believe it," said Anthony Cardew. "Nothing about it in the
+newspapers."
+
+"Fraulein saw the hole."
+
+Elinor had had an Alsatian governess. That was one reason why Elinor's
+niece had a French one.
+
+"Hole? What do you mean by hole?"
+
+Elinor shrank back a little. She had not minded dining with her father
+when Howard was at home, but Howard was at college. Howard had a way
+of good-naturedly ignoring his father's asperities, but Elinor was a
+suppressed, shy little thing, romantic, aloof, and filled with undesired
+affections. "She said a hole," she affirmed, diffidently. "She says they
+dug a tunnel and got out. Last night."
+
+"Very probably," said Anthony Cardew. And he repeated, thoughtfully,
+"Very probably."
+
+He did not hear Elinor when she quietly pushed back her chair and said
+"good-night." He was sitting at the table, tapping on the cloth with
+finger-tips that were slightly cold. That evening Anthony Cardew had
+a visit from the police, and considerable fiery talk took place in his
+library. As a result there was a shake-up in city politics, and a change
+in the penitentiary management, for Anthony Cardew had a heavy hand
+and a bitter memory. And a little cloud on his horizon grew and finally
+settled down over his life, turning it gray. Jim Doyle was among those
+who had escaped. For three months Anthony was followed wherever he went
+by detectives, and his house was watched at night. But he was a brave
+man, and the espionage grew hateful. Besides, each day added to his
+sense of security. There came a time when he impatiently dismissed the
+police, and took up life again as before.
+
+Then one day he received a note, in a plain white envelope. It said:
+"There are worse things than death." And it was signed: "J. Doyle."
+
+Doyle was not recaptured. Anthony had iron gratings put on the lower
+windows of his house after that, and he hired a special watchman. But
+nothing happened, and at last he began to forget. He was building the
+new furnaces up the river by that time. The era of structural steel for
+tall buildings was beginning, and he bought the rights of a process for
+making cement out of his furnace slag. He was achieving great wealth,
+although he did not change his scale of living.
+
+Now and then Fraulein braved the terrors of the library, small
+neatly-written lists in her hands. Miss Elinor needed this or that. He
+would check up the lists, sign his name to them, and Elinor and Fraulein
+would have a shopping excursion. He never gave Elinor money.
+
+On one of the lists one day he found the word, added in Elinor's hand:
+"Horse."
+
+"Horse?" he said, scowling up at Fraulein. "There are six horses in the
+stable now."
+
+"Miss Elinor thought--a riding horse--"
+
+"Nonsense!" Then he thought a moment. There came back to him a picture
+of those English gentlewomen from among whom he had selected his wife,
+quiet-voiced, hard-riding, high-colored girls, who could hunt all day
+and dance all night. Elinor was a pale little thing. Besides, every
+gentlewoman should ride.
+
+"She can't ride around here."
+
+"Miss Elinor thought--there are bridle paths near the riding academy."
+
+It was odd, but at that moment Anthony Cardew had an odd sort of vision.
+He saw the little grocer lying stark and huddled among the phlox by the
+stable, and the group of men that stooped over him.
+
+"I'll think about it," was his answer.
+
+But within a few days Elinor was the owner of a quiet mare, stabled at
+the academy, and was riding each day in the tan bark ring between its
+white-washed fences, while a mechanical piano gave an air of festivity
+to what was otherwise rather a solemn business.
+
+Within a week of that time the riding academy had a new instructor, a
+tall, thin young man, looking older than he was, with heavy dark hair
+and a manner of repressed insolence. A man, the grooms said among
+themselves, of furious temper and cold eyes.
+
+And in less than four months Elinor Cardew ran away from home and was
+married to Jim Doyle. Anthony received two letters from a distant city,
+a long, ecstatic but terrified one from his daughter, and one line on
+a slip of paper from her husband. The one line read: "I always pay my
+debts."
+
+Anthony made a new will, leaving Howard everything, and had Elinor's
+rooms closed. Fraulein went away, weeping bitterly, and time went on.
+Now and then Anthony heard indirectly from Doyle. He taught in a boys'
+school for a time, and was dismissed for his radical views. He did
+brilliant editorial work on a Chicago newspaper, but now and then he
+intruded his slant-eyed personal views, and in the end he lost his
+position. Then he joined the Socialist party, and was making speeches
+containing radical statements that made the police of various cities
+watchful. But he managed to keep within the letter of the law.
+
+Howard Cardew married when Elinor had been gone less than a year.
+Married the daughter of a small hotel-keeper in his college town, a
+pretty, soft-voiced girl, intelligent and gentle, and because Howard was
+all old Anthony had left, he took her into his home. But for many years
+he did not forgive her. He had one hope, that she would give Howard a
+son to carry on the line. Perhaps the happiest months of Grace Cardew's
+married life were those before Lily was born, when her delicate health
+was safeguarded in every way by her grim father-in-law. But Grace bore
+a girl child, and very nearly died in the bearing. Anthony Cardew would
+never have a grandson.
+
+He was deeply resentful. The proud fabric of his own weaving would
+descend in the fullness of time to a woman. And Howard himself--old
+Anthony was pitilessly hard in his judgments--Howard was not a strong
+man. A good man. A good son, better than he deserved. But amiable,
+kindly, without force.
+
+Once the cloud had lifted, and only once. Elinor had come home to have a
+child. She came at night, a shabby, worn young woman, with great eyes in
+a chalk-white face, and Grayson had not recognized her at first. He
+got her some port from the dining-room before he let her go into the
+library, and stood outside the door, his usually impassive face working,
+during the interview which followed. Probably that was Grayson's big
+hour, for if Anthony turned her out he intended to go in himself, and
+fight for the woman he had petted as a child.
+
+But Anthony had not turned her out. He took one comprehensive glance at
+her thin face and distorted figure. Then he said:
+
+"So this is the way you come back."
+
+"He drove me out," she said dully. "He sent me here. He knew I had no
+place else to go. He knew you wouldn't want me. It's revenge, I suppose.
+I'm so tired, father."
+
+Yes, it was revenge, surely. To send back to him this soiled and broken
+woman, bearing the mark he had put upon her--that was deviltry, thought
+out and shrewdly executed. During the next hour Anthony Cardew suffered,
+and made Elinor suffer, too. But at the end of that time he found
+himself confronting a curious situation. Elinor, ashamed, humbled, was
+not contrite. It began to dawn on Anthony that Jim Doyle's revenge was
+not finished. For--Elinor loved the man.
+
+She both hated him and loved him. And that leering Irish devil knew it.
+
+He sent for Grace, finally, and Elinor was established in the house.
+Grace and little Lily's governess had themselves bathed her and put
+her to bed, and Mademoiselle had smuggled out of the house the garments
+Elinor had worn into it. Grace had gone in the motor--one of the first
+in the city--and had sent back all sorts of lovely garments for Elinor
+to wear, and quantities of fine materials to be made into tiny garments.
+Grace was a practical woman, and she disliked the brooding look in
+Elinor's eyes.
+
+"Do you know," she said to Howard that night, "I believe she is quite
+mad about him still."
+
+"He ought to be drawn and quartered," said Howard, savagely.
+
+Anthony Cardew gave Elinor sanctuary, but he refused to see her again.
+Except once.
+
+"Then, if it is a boy, you want me to leave him with you?" she asked,
+bending over her sewing.
+
+"Leave him with me! Do you mean that you intend to go back to that
+blackguard?"
+
+"He is my husband. He isn't always cruel."
+
+"Good God!" shouted Anthony. "How did I ever happen to have such a
+craven creature for a daughter?"
+
+"Anyhow," said Elinor, "it will be his child, father."
+
+"When he turned you out, like any drab of the streets!" bellowed old
+Anthony. "He never cared for you. He married you to revenge himself on
+me. He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child,
+and break its spirit and ruin its body, for the same reason. The man's a
+maniac."
+
+But again, as on the night she came, he found himself helpless against
+Elinor's quiet impassivity. He knew that, let Jim Doyle so much as raise
+a beckoning finger, and she would go to him. He did not realize that
+Elinor had inherited from her quiet mother the dog-like quality of
+love in spite of cruelty. To Howard he stormed. He considered Elinor's
+infatuation indecent. She was not a Cardew. The Cardew women had some
+pride. And Howard, his handsome figure draped negligently against the
+library mantel, would puzzle over it, too.
+
+"I'm blessed if I understand it," he would say.
+
+Elinor's child had been a boy, and old Anthony found some balm in
+Gilead. Jim Doyle had not raised a finger to beckon, and if he knew of
+his son, he made no sign. Anthony still ignored Elinor, but he saw in
+her child the third generation of Cardews. Lily he had never counted. He
+took steps to give the child the Cardew name, and the fact was announced
+in the newspapers. Then one day Elinor went out, and did not come back.
+It was something Anthony Cardew had not counted on, that a woman could
+love a man more than her child.
+
+"I simply had to do it, father," she wrote. "You won't understand, of
+course. I love him, father. Terribly. And he loves me in his way, even
+when he is unfaithful to me. I know he has been that. Perhaps if you had
+wanted me at home it would have been different. But it kills me to leave
+the baby. The only reason I can bring myself to do it is that, the way
+things are, I cannot give him the things he ought to have. And Jim does
+not seem to want him. He has never seen him, for one thing. Besides--I
+am being honest--I don't think the atmosphere of the way we live would
+be good for a boy."
+
+There was a letter to Grace, too, a wild hysterical document, filled
+with instructions for the baby's care. A wet nurse, for one thing. Grace
+read it with tears in her eyes, but Anthony saw in it only the ravings
+of a weak and unbalanced woman.
+
+He never forgave Elinor, and once more the little grocer's curse
+thwarted his ambitions. For, deprived of its mother's milk, the baby
+died. Old Anthony sometimes wondered if that, too, had been calculated,
+a part of the Doyle revenge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+While Grace rested that afternoon of Lily's return, Lily ranged over
+the house. In twenty odd years the neighborhood had changed, and only
+a handful of the old families remained. Many of the other large houses
+were prostituted to base uses. Dingy curtains hung at their windows,
+dingy because of the smoke from the great furnaces and railroads. The
+old Osgood residence, nearby, had been turned into apartments, with
+bottles of milk and paper bags on its fire-escapes, and a pharmacy on
+the street floor. The Methodist Church, following its congregation to
+the vicinity of old Anthony's farm, which was now cut up into city lots,
+had abandoned the building, and it had become a garage. The penitentiary
+had been moved outside the city limits, and near its old site was a
+small cement-lined lake, the cheerful rendezvous in summer of bathing
+children and thirsty dogs.
+
+Lily was idle, for the first time in months. She wandered about, even
+penetrating to those upper rooms sacred to her grandfather, to which he
+had retired on Howard's marriage. How strangely commonplace they were
+now, in the full light of day, and yet, when he was in them, the doors
+closed and only Burton, his valet, in attendance, how mysterious they
+became!
+
+Increasingly, in later years, Lily had felt and resented the domination
+of the old man. She resented her father's acquiescence in that
+domination, her mother's good-humored tolerance of it. She herself had
+accepted it, although unwillingly, but she knew, rather vaguely, that
+the Lily Cardew who had gone away to the camp and the Lily Cardew who
+stood that day before her grandfather's throne-like chair under its
+lamp, were two entirely different people.
+
+She was uneasy rather than defiant. She meant to keep the peace. She
+had been brought up to the theory that no price was too great to pay for
+peace. But she wondered, as she stood there, if that were entirely true.
+She remembered something Willy Cameron had said about that very thing.
+
+"What's wrong with your grandfather," he had said, truculently, and
+waving his pipe, "is that everybody gets down and lets him walk on them.
+If everybody lets a man use them as doormats, you can't blame him for
+wiping his feet on them. Tell him that sometime, and see what happens."
+
+"Tell him yourself!" said Lily.
+
+He had smiled cheerfully. He had an engaging sort of smile.
+
+"Maybe I will," he said. "I am a rising young man, and my voice may some
+day be heard in the land. Sometimes I feel the elements of greatness in
+me, sweet child. You haven't happened to notice it yourself, have you?"
+
+He had gazed at her with solemn anxiety through the smoke of his pipe,
+and had grinned when she remained silent.
+
+Lily drew a long breath. All that delightful fooling was over; the hard
+work was over. The nights were gone when they would wander like children
+across the parade grounds, or past the bayonet school, with its rows of
+tripods upholding imitation enemies made of sacks stuffed with hay, and
+showing signs of mortal injury with their greasy entrails protruding.
+Gone, too, were the hours when Willy sank into the lowest abyss of
+depression over his failure to be a fighting man.
+
+"But you are doing your best for your country," she would say.
+
+"I'm not fighting for it, or getting smashed up for it. I don't want
+to be a hero, but I'd like to have had one good bang at them before I
+quit."
+
+Once she had found him in the hut, with his head on a table. He said he
+had a toothache.
+
+Well, that was all over. She was back in her grandfather's house, and--
+
+"He'll get me too, probably," she reflected, as she went down the
+stairs, "just as he's got all the others."
+
+Mademoiselle was in Lily's small sitting room, while Castle was
+unpacking under her supervision. The sight of her uniforms made Lily
+suddenly restless.
+
+"How you could wear these things!" cried Mademoiselle. "You, who have
+always dressed like a princess!"
+
+"I liked them," said Lily, briefly. "Mademoiselle, what am I going to do
+with myself, now?"
+
+"Do?" Mademoiselle smiled. "Play, as you deserve, Cherie. Dance, and
+meet nice young men. You are to make your debut this fall. Then a very
+charming young man, and marriage."
+
+"Oh!" said Lily, rather blankly. "I've got to come out, have I? I'd
+forgotten people did such things. Please run along and do something
+else, Castle. I'll unpack."
+
+"That is very bad for discipline," Mademoiselle objected when the
+maid had gone. "And it is not necessary for Mr. Anthony Cardew's
+granddaughter."
+
+"It's awfully necessary for her," Lily observed, cheerfully. "I've been
+buttoning my own shoes for some time, and I haven't developed a spinal
+curvature yet." She kissed Mademoiselle's perplexed face lightly. "Don't
+get to worrying about me," she added. "I'll shake down in time, and be
+just as useless as ever. But I wish you'd lend me your sewing basket."
+
+"Why?" asked Mademoiselle, suspiciously.
+
+"Because I am possessed with a mad desire to sew on some buttons."
+
+A little later Lily looked up from her rather awkward but industrious
+labors with a needle, and fixed her keen young eyes on Mademoiselle.
+
+"Is there any news about Aunt Elinor?" she asked.
+
+"She is with him," said Mademoiselle, shortly. "They are here now, in
+the city. How he dared to come back!"
+
+"Does mother see her?"
+
+"No. Certainly not."
+
+"Why 'certainly' not? He is Aunt Elinor's husband. She isn't doing
+anything wicked."
+
+"A woman who would leave a home like this," said Mademoiselle, "and a
+distinguished family. Position. Wealth. For a brute who beats her. And
+desert her child also!"
+
+"Does he really beat her? I don't quite believe that, Mademoiselle."
+
+"It is not a subject for a young girl."
+
+"Because really," Lily went on, "there is something awfully big about a
+woman who will stick to one man like that. I am quite sure I would bite
+a man who struck me, but--suppose I loved him terribly--" her voice
+trailed off. "You see, dear, I have seen a lot of brutality lately. An
+army camp isn't a Sunday school picnic. And I like strong men, even if
+they are brutal sometimes."
+
+Mademoiselle carefully cut a thread.
+
+"This--you were speaking to Ellen of a young man. Is he a--what you term
+brutal?"
+
+Suddenly Lily laughed.
+
+"You poor dear!" she said. "And mother, too, of course! You're afraid
+I'm in love with Willy Cameron. Don't you know that if I were, I'd
+probably never even mention his name?"
+
+"But is he brutal?" persisted Mademoiselle.
+
+"I'll tell you about him. He is a thin, blond young man, tall and a bit
+lame. He has curly hair, and he puts pomade on it to take the curl out.
+He is frightfully sensitive about not getting in the army, and he is
+perfectly sweet and kind, and as brutal as a June breeze. You'd better
+tell mother. And you can tell her he isn't in love with me, or I with
+him. You see, I represent what he would call the monied aristocracy of
+America, and he has the most fearful ideas about us."
+
+"An anarchist, then?" asked. Mademoiselle, extremely comforted.
+
+"Not at all. He says he belongs to the plain people. The people in
+between. He is rather oratorical about them. He calls them the backbone
+of the country."
+
+Mademoiselle relaxed. She had been too long in old Anthony's house
+to consider very seriously the plain people. Her world, like Anthony
+Cardew's, consisted of the financial aristocracy, which invested money
+in industries and drew out rich returns, while providing employment for
+the many; and of the employees of the magnates, who had recently shown
+strong tendencies toward upsetting the peace of the land, and had given
+old Anthony one or two attacks of irritability when it was better to go
+up a rear staircase if he were coming down the main one.
+
+"Wait a moment," said Lily, suddenly. "I have a picture of him
+somewhere."
+
+She disappeared, and Mademoiselle heard her rummaging through the
+drawers of her dressing table. She came back with a small photograph in
+her hand.
+
+It showed a young man, in a large apron over a Red Cross uniform,
+bending over a low field range with a long-handled fork in his hand.
+
+"Frying doughnuts," Lily explained. "I was in this hut at first, and I
+mixed them and cut them, and he fried them. We made thousands of them.
+We used to talk about opening a shop somewhere, Cardew and Cameron. He
+said my name would be fine for business. He'd fry them in the window,
+and I'd sell them. And a coffee machine--coffee and doughnuts, you
+know."
+
+"Not--seriously?"
+
+At the expression on Mademoiselle's face Lily laughed joyously.
+
+"Why not?" she demanded. "And you could be the cashier, like the ones in
+France, and sit behind a high desk and count money all day. I'd rather
+do that than come out," she added.
+
+"You are going to be a good girl, Lily, aren't you?"
+
+"If that means letting grandfather use me for a doormat, I don't know."
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"He's old, and I intend to be careful. But he doesn't own me, body and
+soul. And it may be hard to make him understand that."
+
+Many times in the next few months Mademoiselle was to remember that
+conversation, and turn it over in her shrewd, troubled mind. Was there
+anything she could have done, outside of warning old Anthony himself?
+Suppose she had gone to Mr. Howard Cardew?
+
+"And how," said Mademoiselle, trying to smile, "do you propose to assert
+this new independence of spirit?"
+
+"I am going to see Aunt Elinor," observed Lily. "There, that's eleven
+buttons on, and I feel I've earned my dinner. And I'm going to ask Willy
+Cameron to come here to see me. To dinner. And as he is sure not to have
+any evening clothes, for one night in their lives the Cardew men are
+going to dine in mufti. Which is military, you dear old thing, for
+the everyday clothing that the plain people eat in, without apparent
+suffering!"
+
+Mademoiselle got up. She felt that Grace should be warned at once. And
+there was a look in Lily's face when she mentioned this Cameron creature
+that made Mademoiselle nervous.
+
+"I thought he lived in the country."
+
+"Then prepare yourself for a blow," said Lily Cardew, cheerfully. "He
+is here in the city, earning twenty-five dollars a week in the Eagle
+Pharmacy, and serving the plain people perfectly preposterous patent
+potions--which is his own alliteration, and pretty good, I say."
+
+Mademoiselle went out into the hall. Over the house, always silent,
+there had come a death-like hush. In the lower hall the footman was
+hanging up his master's hat and overcoat. Anthony Cardew had come home
+for dinner.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily's return, took a walk.
+From his boarding house near the Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew residence
+was a half-hour's walk. There were a number of things he had meant to do
+that evening, with a view to improving his mind, but instead he took a
+walk. He had made up a schedule for those evenings when he was off
+duty, thinking it out very carefully on the train to the city. And the
+schedule ran something like this:
+
+Monday: 8-11. Read History. Wednesday: 8-11. Read Politics and
+Economics. Friday: 8-9:30. Travel. 9:30-11. French. Sunday: Hear various
+prominent divines.
+
+He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because travel was with
+him an indulgence rather than a study. The longest journey he had ever
+taken in his life was to Washington. That was early in the war, when
+it did not seem possible that his country would not use him, a boy who
+could tramp incredible miles in spite of his lameness and who could
+shoot a frightened rabbit at almost any distance, by allowing for a
+slight deflection to the right in the barrel of his old rifle.
+
+But they had refused him.
+
+"They won't use me, mother," he had said when he got home, home being
+a small neat house on a tidy street of a little country town. "I tried
+every branch, but the only training I've had--well, some smart kid said
+they weren't planning to serve soda water to the army. They didn't want
+cripples, you see."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't, Willy."
+
+He had been frightfully sorry then and had comforted her at some length,
+but the fact remained.
+
+"And you the very best they've ever had for mixing prescriptions!" she
+had said at last. "And a graduate in chemistry!"
+
+"Well," he said, "that's that, and we won't worry about it. There's more
+than one way of killing a cat."
+
+"What do you mean, Willy? More than one way?"
+
+There was no light of prophecy in William Wallace Cameron's gray eyes,
+however, when he replied: "More than one way of serving my country.
+Don't you worry. I'll find something."
+
+So he had, and he had come out of his Red Cross work in the camp with
+one or two things in his heart that had not been there before. One was
+a knowledge of men. He could not have put into words what he felt about
+men. It was something about the fundamental simplicity of them, for one
+thing. You got pretty close to them at night sometimes, especially when
+the homesick ones had gone to bed, and the phonograph was playing in a
+corner of the long, dim room. There were some shame-faced tears hidden
+under army blankets those nights, and Willy Cameron did some blinking on
+his own account.
+
+Then, under all the blasphemy, the talk about women, the surface
+sordidness of their daily lives and thoughts, there was one instinct
+common to all, one love, one hidden purity. And the keyword to those
+depths was "home."
+
+"Home," he said one day to Lily Cardew. "Mostly it's the home they've
+left, and maybe they didn't think so much of it then. But they do now.
+And if it isn't that, it's the home they want to have some day." He
+looked at Lily. Sometimes she smiled at things he said, and if she had
+not been grave he would not have gone on. "You know," he continued,
+"there's mostly a girl some place. All this talk about the nation,
+now--" He settled himself on the edge of the pine table where old
+Anthony Cardew's granddaughter had been figuring up her week's accounts,
+and lighted his pipe, "the nation's too big for us to understand. But
+what is the nation, but a bunch of homes?"
+
+"Willy dear," said Lily Cardew, "did you take any money out of the cigar
+box for anything this week?"
+
+"Dollar sixty-five for lard," replied Willy dear. "As I was saying,
+we've got to think of this country in terms of homes. Not palaces like
+yours--"
+
+"Good gracious!" said Lily, "I don't live in a palace. Get my
+pocket-book, will you? I'm out three dollars somehow, and I'd rather
+make it up myself than add these figures over again. Go on and talk,
+Willy. I love hearing you."
+
+"Not palaces like yours," repeated Mr. Cameron, "and not hovels. But
+mostly self-respecting houses, the homes of the plain people. The middle
+class, Miss Cardew. My class. The people who never say anything, but
+are squeezed between capital, represented by your grandfather, with its
+parasites, represented by you, and--"
+
+"You represent the people who never say anything," observed the slightly
+flushed parasite of capital, "about as adequately as I represent the
+idle rich."
+
+Yet not even old Anthony could have resented the actual relationship
+between them. Lily Cardew, working alone in her hut among hundreds of
+men, was as without sex consciousness as a child. Even then her flaming
+interest was in the private soldiers. The officers were able to amuse
+themselves; they had money and opportunity. It was the doughboys she
+loved and mothered. For them she organized her little entertainments.
+For them she played and sang in the evenings, when the field range in
+the kitchen was cold, and her blistered fingers stumbled sometimes over
+the keys of the jingling camp piano.
+
+Gradually, out of the chaos of her early impressions, she began to
+divide the men in the army into three parts. There were the American
+born; they took the war and their part in it as a job to be done, with
+as few words as possible. And there were the foreigners to whom America
+was a religion, a dream come true, whose flaming love for their new
+mother inspired them to stuttering eloquence and awkward gestures. And
+then there was a third division, small and mostly foreign born, but
+with a certain percentage of native malcontents, who hated the war and
+sneered among themselves at the other dupes who believed that it was a
+war for freedom. It was a capitalists' war. They considered the state as
+an instrument of oppression, as a bungling interference with liberty
+and labor; they felt that wealth inevitably brought depravity. They
+committed both open and overt acts against discipline, and found in
+their arrest and imprisonment renewed grievances, additional oppression,
+tyranny. And one day a handful of them, having learned Lily's identity,
+came into her hut and attempted to bait her.
+
+"Gentlemen," said one of them, "we have here an example of one of the
+idle rich, sacrificing herself to make us happy. Now, boys, be happy.
+Are we all happy?" He surveyed the group. "Here, you," he addressed a
+sullen-eyed squat Hungarian. "Smile when I tell you. You're a slave in
+one of old Cardew's mills, aren't you? Well, aren't you grateful to him?
+Here he goes and sends his granddaughter--"
+
+Willy Cameron had entered the room with a platter of doughnuts in his
+hand, and stood watching, his face going pale. Quite suddenly there
+was a crash, and the gang leader went down in a welter of porcelain and
+fried pastry. Willy Cameron was badly beaten up, in the end, and the
+beaters were court-martialed. But something of Lily's fine faith in
+humanity was gone.
+
+"But," she said to him, visiting him one day in the base hospital, where
+he was still an aching, mass of bruises, "there must be something behind
+it. They didn't hate me. They only hated my--well, my family."
+
+"My dear child," said Willy Cameron, feeling very old and experienced,
+and, it must be confessed, extremely happy, "of course there's something
+behind it. But the most that's behind it is a lot of fellows who want
+without working what the other fellow's worked to get."
+
+It was about that time that Lily was exchanged into the town near the
+camp, and Willy Cameron suddenly found life a stale thing, and ashes in
+the mouth. He finally decided that he had not been such a hopeless fool
+as to fall in love with her, but that it would be as well not to see her
+too much.
+
+"The thing to do," he reasoned to himself, "is, first of all, not to
+see her. Or only on Friday nights, because she likes the movies, and it
+would look queer to stop." Thus Willy Cameron speciously to himself, and
+deliberately ignoring the fact that some twenty-odd officers stood ready
+to seize those Friday nights. "And then to work hard, so I'll sleep
+better, and not lie awake making a fool of myself. And when I get a bit
+of idiocy in the daytime, I'd better just walk it off. Because I've got
+to live with myself a long time, probably, and I'm no love-sick Romeo."
+
+Which excellent practical advice had cost him considerable shoe-leather
+at first. In a month or two, however, he considered himself quite cured,
+and pretended to himself that he was surprised to find it Friday again.
+But when, after retreat, the band marched back again to its quarters
+playing, for instance, "There's a Long, Long Trail," there was something
+inside him that insisted on seeing the years ahead as a long, long
+trail, and that the trail did not lead to the lands of his dreams.
+
+He got to know that very well indeed during the winter that followed the
+armistice. Because there was work to do he stayed and finished up, as
+did Lily Cardew. But the hut was closed and she was working in the town,
+and although they kept up their Friday evenings, the old intimacy was
+gone. And one night she said:
+
+"Isn't it amazing, when you are busy, how soon Friday night comes
+along?"
+
+And on each day of the preceding week he had wakened and said to
+himself: "This is Monday--"--or whatever it might be--"and in four more
+days it will be Friday."
+
+In February he was sent home. Lily stayed on until the end of March. He
+went back to his little village of plain people, and took up life again
+as best he could. But sometimes it seemed to him that from behind every
+fire-lit window in the evenings--he was still wearing out shoe-leather,
+particularly at nights--somebody with a mandolin was wailing about the
+long, long trail.
+
+His mother watched him anxiously. He was thinner than ever, and oddly
+older, and there was a hollow look about his eyes that hurt her.
+
+"Why don't you bring home a bottle of tonic from the store, Willy," she
+said, one evening when he had been feverishly running through the city
+newspaper. He put the paper aside hastily.
+
+"Tonic!" he said. "Why, I'm all right, mother. Anyhow, I wouldn't take
+any of that stuff." He caught her eye and looked away. "It takes a
+little time to get settled again, that's all, mother."
+
+"The Young People's Society is having an entertainment at the church
+to-night, Willy."
+
+"Well, maybe I'll go," he agreed to her unspoken suggestion. "If you
+insist on making me a society man--"
+
+But some time later he came downstairs with a book.
+
+"Thought I'd rather read," he explained. "Got a book here on the history
+of steel. Talk about romances! Let me read some of it to you. You sit
+there and close your eyes and just listen to this: 'The first Cardew
+furnace was built in 1868. At that time--'"
+
+Some time later he glanced up. His mother was quietly sleeping, her
+hands folded in her lap. He closed the book and sat there, fighting
+again his patient battle with himself. The book on his knee seemed to
+symbolize the gulf between Lily Cardew and himself. But the real gulf,
+the unbridgeable chasm, between Lily and himself, was neither social nor
+financial.
+
+"As if that counted, in America," he reflected scornfully.
+
+No. It was not that. The war had temporarily broken down the old social
+barriers. Some of them would never be erected again, although it was the
+tendency of civilization for men to divide themselves, rather than to
+be divided, into the high, the middle and the low. But in his generation
+young Cameron knew that there would be no uncrossable bridge between old
+Anthony's granddaughter and himself, were it not for one thing.
+
+She did not love him. It hurt his pride to realize that she had never
+thought of him in any terms but that of a pleasant comradeship. Hardly
+even as a man. Men fought, in war time. They did not fry doughnuts and
+write letters home for the illiterate. Any one of those boys in the
+ranks was a better man than he was. All this talk about a man's soul
+being greater than his body, that was rot. A man was as good as the
+weakest part of him, and no more.
+
+His sensitive face in the lamplight was etched with lines of tragedy.
+He put the book on the table, and suddenly flinging his arms across it,
+dropped his head on them. The slight movement wakened his mother.
+
+"Why, Willy!" she said.
+
+After a moment he looked up. "I was almost asleep," he explained, more
+to protect her than himself. "I--I wish that fool Nelson kid would break
+his mandolin--or his neck," he said irritably. He kissed her and went
+upstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive,
+occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the long, long trail.
+
+There was the blood of Covenanters in Willy Cameron's mother, a high
+courage of sacrifice, and an exceedingly shrewd brain. She lay awake
+that night, carefully planning, and when everything was arranged in
+orderly fashion in her mind, she lighted her lamp and carried it to the
+door of Willy's room. He lay diagonally across his golden-oak bed, for
+he was very long, and sleep had rubbed away the tragic lines about his
+mouth. She closed his door and went back to her bed.
+
+"I've seen too much of it," she reflected, without bitterness. She
+stared around the room. "Too much of it," she repeated. And crawled
+heavily back into bed, a determined little figure, rather chilled.
+
+The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with her
+brother in California.
+
+"I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu," she explained, "and
+James has been wanting me this long time. I don't want to leave you,
+that's all, Willy. If you were in the city it would be different."
+
+He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth. He no
+more suspected her of design than of crime.
+
+"Of course you are going," he said, heartily. "It's the very thing. But
+I like the way you desert your little son!"
+
+"I've been thinking about that, too," she said, pouring his coffee.
+"I--if you were in the city, now, there would always be something to
+do."
+
+He shot her a suspicious glance, but her face was without evidence of
+guile.
+
+"What would I do in the city?"
+
+"They use chemists in the mills, don't they?"
+
+"A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job," he scoffed. "No city for
+me, mother."
+
+But she knew. She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous pause
+of the bird whose cage door is suddenly opened. He would go.
+
+"I'd think about it, anyhow, Willy."
+
+But for a long time after he had gone she sat quietly rocking in her
+rocking chair in the bay window of the sitting room. It was a familiar
+attitude of hers, homely, middle-class, and in a way symbolic. Had old
+Anthony Cardew ever visualized so imaginative a thing as a Nemesis,
+he would probably have summoned a vision of a huddled figure in his
+stable-yard, dying, and cursing him as he died. Had Jim Doyle, cunningly
+plotting the overthrow of law and order, been able in his arrogance
+to conceive of such a thing, it might have been Anthony Cardew he
+saw. Neither of them, for a moment, dreamed of it as an elderly Scotch
+Covenanter, a plain little womanly figure, rocking in a cane-seated
+rocking chair, and making the great sacrifice of her life.
+
+All of which simply explains how, on a March Wednesday evening of the
+great year of peace after much tribulation, Mr. William Wallace Cameron,
+now a clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy, after an hour of Politics, and no
+Economics at all, happened to be taking a walk toward the Cardew
+house. Such pilgrimages has love taken for many years, small uncertain
+ramblings where the fancy leads the feet and far outstrips them, and
+where heart-hunger hides under various flimsy pretexts; a fine night, a
+paper to be bought, a dog to be exercised.
+
+Not that Willy Cameron made any excuses to himself. He had a sort of
+idea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would through
+her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself
+with a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he
+addressed it now and then.
+
+"Even a cat can look at a king," he said once. And again, following some
+vague train of thought, on a crowded street: "The People's voice is
+a queer thing. 'It is, and it is not, the voice of God.' The people's
+voice, old man. Only the ones that count haven't got a voice."
+
+There were, he felt, two Lily Cardews. One lived in an army camp,
+and wore plain clothes, and got a bath by means of calculation and
+persistency, and went to the movies on Friday nights, and was quite
+apt to eat peanuts at those times, carefully putting the shells in her
+pocket.
+
+And another one lived inside this great pile of brick,--he was standing
+across from it, by the park railing, by that time--where motor cars drew
+up, and a footman with an umbrella against a light rain ushered to their
+limousines draped women and men in evening clothes, their strong blacks
+and whites revealed in the light of the street door. And this Lily
+Cardew lived in state, bowed to by flunkeys in livery, dressed and
+undressed--his Scotch sense of decorum resented this--by serving women.
+This Lily Cardew would wear frivolous ball-gowns, such things as he saw
+in the shop windows, considered money only as a thing of exchange, and
+had traveled all over Europe a number of times.
+
+He took his station against the park railings and reflected that it was
+a good thing he had come, after all. Because it was the first Lily whom
+he loved, and she was gone, with the camp and the rest, including war.
+What had he in common with those lighted windows, with their heavy laces
+and draperies?
+
+"Nothing at all, old man," he said cheerfully to the dog, "nothing at
+all."
+
+But although the ache was gone when he turned homeward, the dog still at
+his heels, he felt strangely lonely without it. He considered that very
+definitely he had put love out of his life. Hereafter he would travel
+the trail alone. Or accompanied only by History, Politics, Economics,
+and various divines on Sunday evenings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"Well, grandfather," said Lily Cardew, "the last of the Cardews is home
+from the wars."
+
+"So I presume," observed old Anthony. "Owing, however, to your mother's
+determination to shroud this room in impenetrable gloom, I can only
+presume. I cannot see you."
+
+His tone was less unpleasant than his words, however. He was in one of
+the rare moods of what passed with him for geniality. For one thing, he
+had won at the club that afternoon, where every day from four to six he
+played bridge with his own little group, reactionaries like himself,
+men who viewed the difficulties of the younger employers of labor with
+amused contempt. For another, he and Howard had had a difference of
+opinion, and he had, for a wonder, made Howard angry.
+
+"Well, Lily," he inquired, "how does it seem to be at home?"
+
+Lily eyed him almost warily. He was sometimes most dangerous in these
+moods.
+
+"I'm not sure, grandfather."
+
+"Not sure about what?"
+
+"Well, I am glad to see everybody, of course. But what am I to do with
+myself?"
+
+"Tut." He had an air of benignantly forgiving her. "You'll find plenty.
+What did you do before you went away?"
+
+"That was different, grandfather."
+
+"I'm blessed," said old Anthony, truculently, "if I understand what
+has come over this country, anyhow. What is different? We've had a war.
+We've had other wars, and we didn't think it necessary to change the
+Constitution after them. But everything that was right before this
+war is wrong after it. Lot of young idiots coming back and refusing to
+settle down. Set of young Bolshevists!"
+
+He had always managed to arouse a controversial spirit in the girl.
+
+"Maybe, if it isn't right now, it wasn't right before." Having said it,
+Lily immediately believed it. She felt suddenly fired with an intense
+dislike of anything that her grandfather advocated.
+
+"Meaning what?" He fixed her with cold but attentive eyes.
+
+"Oh--conditions," she said vaguely. She was not at all sure what she
+meant. And old Anthony realized it, and gave a sardonic chuckle.
+
+"I advise you to get a few arguments from your father, Lily. He is full
+of them. If he had his way I'd have a board of my workmen running my
+mills, while I played golf in Florida."
+
+Dinner was a relatively pleasant meal. In her gradual rehabilitation
+of the house Grace had finally succeeded in doing over the dining room.
+Over the old walnut paneling she had hung loose folds of faded blue
+Italian velvet, with old silver candle sconces at irregular intervals
+along the walls. The great table and high-backed chairs were likewise
+Italian, and the old-fashioned white marble fireplace had been given an
+over-mantel, also white, enclosing an old tapestry. For warmth of color
+there were always flowers, and that night there were red roses.
+
+Lily liked the luxury of it. She liked the immaculate dinner dress of
+the two men; she liked her mother's beautiful neck and arms; she liked
+the quiet service once more; she even liked herself, moderately, in a
+light frock and slippers. But she watched it all with a new interest and
+a certain detachment. She felt strange and aloof, not entirely one of
+them. She felt very keenly that no one of them was vitally interested
+in this wonder-year of hers. They asked her perfunctory questions, but
+Grace's watchful eyes were on the service, Anthony was engrossed with
+his food, and her father--
+
+Her father was changed. He looked older and care-worn. For the first
+time she began to wonder about her father. What was he, really, under
+that calm, fastidiously dressed, handsome exterior? Did he mind the
+little man with the sardonic smile and the swift unpleasant humor, whose
+glance reduced the men who served into terrified menials? Her big,
+blond father, with his rather slow speech, his honest eyes, his slight
+hesitation before he grasped some of the finer nuances of his father's
+wit. No, he was not brilliant, but he was real, real and kindly. Perhaps
+he was strong, too. He looked strong.
+
+With the same pitiless judgment she watched her mother. Either Grace
+was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's tongue.
+Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly.
+Like Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had
+loved her child. Quite calmly Lily decided that, as between her husband
+and herself, her mother loved her husband. Perhaps that was as it should
+be, but it added to her sense of aloofness. And she wondered, too, about
+these great loves that seemed to feed on sacrifice.
+
+Anthony, who had a most unpleasant faculty of remembering things,
+suddenly bent forward and observed to her, across the table:
+
+"I should be interested to know, since you regard present conditions as
+wrong, and, I inferred, wrong because of my mishandling of them, just
+what you would propose to do to right them."
+
+"But I didn't say they were wrong, did I?"
+
+"Don't answer a question with a question. It's a feminine form of
+evasion, because you have no answer and no remedy. Yet, heaven save the
+country, women are going to vote!" He pushed his plate away and glanced
+at Grace. "Is that the new chef's work?"
+
+"Yes. Isn't it right?"
+
+"Right? The food is impossible."
+
+"He came from the club."
+
+"Send him back," ordered Anthony. And when Grace observed that it was
+difficult to get servants, he broke into a cold fury. What had come over
+the world, anyhow? Time was when a gentleman's servants stayed with
+the family until they became pensioners, and their children took their
+places. Now--!
+
+Grace said nothing. Her eyes sought Howard's, and seemed to find some
+comfort there. And Lily, sorry for her mother, said the first thing that
+came into her head.
+
+"The old days of caste are gone, grandfather. And service, in your sense
+of the word, went with them."
+
+"Really?" he eyed her. "Who said that? Because I daresay it is not
+original."
+
+"A man I knew at camp."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"His name was Willy Cameron."
+
+"Willy Cameron! Was this--er--person qualified to speak? Does he know
+anything about what he chooses to call caste?"
+
+"He thinks a lot about things."
+
+"A little less thinking and more working wouldn't hurt the country any,"
+observed old Anthony. He bent forward. "As my granddaughter, and the
+last of the Cardews," he said, "I have a certain interest in the sources
+of your political opinions. They will probably, like your father's,
+differ from mine. You may not know that your father has not only
+opinions, but ambitions." She saw Grace stiffen, and Howard's warning
+glance at her. But she saw, too, the look in her mother's eyes,
+infinitely loving and compassionate. "Dear little mother," she thought,
+"he is her baby, really. Not I."
+
+She felt a vague stirring of what married love at its best must be for a
+woman, its strange complex of passion and maternity. She wondered if
+it would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also
+conscious of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's
+tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared shoulders, and across
+from her her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass and
+faintly smiling.
+
+"It's time somebody went into city politics for some purpose other than
+graft," said Howard. "I am going to run for mayor, Lily. I probably
+won't get it."
+
+"You can see," said old Anthony, "why I am interested in your views, or
+perhaps I should say, in Willy Cameron's. Does your father's passion for
+uplift, for instance, extend to you?"
+
+"Why won't you be elected, father?"
+
+"Partly because my name is Cardew."
+
+Old Anthony chuckled.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, "after the bath-house and gymnasium you have built
+at the mill? And the laundries for the women--which I believe they
+do not use. Surely, Howard, you would not accuse the dear people of
+ingratitude?"
+
+"They are beginning to use them, sir." Howard, in his forties, still
+addressed his father as "Sir!"
+
+"Then you admit your defeat beforehand."
+
+"You are rather a formidable antagonist."
+
+"Antagonist!" Anthony repeated in mock protest. "I am a quiet onlooker
+at the game. I am amused, naturally. You must understand," he said
+to Lily, "that this is a matter of a principle with your father. He
+believes that he should serve. My whole contention is that the people
+don't want to be served. They want to be bossed. They like it; it's all
+they know. And they're suspicious of a man who puts his hand into his
+own pocket instead of into theirs."
+
+He smiled and sipped his wine.
+
+"Good wine, this," he observed. "I'm buying all I can lay my hands on,
+against the approaching drought."
+
+Lily's old distrust of her grandfather revived. Why did people sharpen
+like that with age? Age should be mellow, like old wine. And--what was
+she going to do with herself? Already the atmosphere of the house began
+to depress and worry her; she felt a new, almost violent impatience with
+it. It was so unnecessary.
+
+She went to the pipe organ which filled the space behind the staircase,
+and played a little, but she had never been very proficient, and her
+own awkwardness annoyed her. In the dining room she could hear the men
+talking, Howard quietly, his father in short staccato barks. She left
+the organ and wandered into her mother's morning room, behind the
+drawing room, where Grace sat with the coffee tray before her.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm going to be terribly on your hands, mother," she said,
+"I don't know what to do with myself, so how can you know what to do
+with me?"
+
+"It is going to be rather stupid for you at first, of course," Grace
+said. "Lent, and then so many of the men are not at home. Would you like
+to go South?"
+
+"Why, I've just come home!"
+
+"We can have some luncheons, of course. Just informal ones. And there
+will be small dinners. You'll have to get some clothes. I saw Suzette
+yesterday. She has some adorable things."
+
+"I'd love them. Mother, why doesn't he want father to go into politics?"
+
+Grace hesitated.
+
+"He doesn't like change, for one thing. But I don't know anything about
+politics. Suzette says--"
+
+"Will he try to keep him from being elected?"
+
+"He won't support him. Of course I hardly think he would oppose him. I
+really don't understand about those things."
+
+"You mean you don't understand him. Well, I do, mother. He has run
+everything, including father, for so long--"
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"I must, mother. Why, out at the camp--" She checked herself. "All the
+papers say the city is badly governed, and that he is responsible. And
+now he is going to fight his own son! The more I think about it, the
+more I understand about Aunt Elinor. Mother, where do they live?"
+
+Grace looked apprehensively toward the door. "You are not allowed to
+visit her."
+
+"You do."
+
+"That's different. And I only go once or twice a year."
+
+"Just because she married a poor man, a man whose father--"
+
+"Not at all. That is all dead and buried. He is a very dangerous man. He
+is running a Socialist newspaper, and now he is inciting the mill men
+to strike. He is preaching terrible things. I haven't been there for
+months."
+
+"What do you mean by terrible things, mother?"
+
+"Your father says it amounts to a revolution. I believe he calls it a
+general strike. I don't really know much about it."
+
+Lily pondered that.
+
+"Socialism isn't revolution, mother, is it? But even then--is all this
+because grandfather drove his father to--"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't, Lily. Of course it is not that. I daresay he
+believes what he preaches. He ought to be put into jail. Why the country
+lets such men go around, preaching sedition, I don't understand."
+
+Lily remembered something else Willy Cameron had said, and promptly
+repeated it.
+
+"We had a muzzled press during the war," she said, "and now we've got
+free speech. And one's as bad as the other. She must love him terribly,
+mother," she added.
+
+But Grace harked back to Suzette, and the last of the Cardews harked
+with her. Later on people dropped in, and Lily made a real attempt to
+get back into her old groove, but that night, when she went upstairs
+to her bedroom, with its bright fire, its bed neatly turned down, her
+dressing gown and slippers laid out, the shaded lamps shining on the
+gold and ivory of her dressing table, she was conscious of a sudden
+homesickness. Homesickness for her bare little room in the camp
+barracks, for other young lives, noisy, chattering, often rather silly,
+occasionally unpleasant, but young. Radiantly, vitally young. The great
+house, with its stillness and decorum, oppressed her. There was no youth
+in it, save hers.
+
+She went to her window and looked out. Years ago, like Elinor, she had
+watched the penitentiary walls from that window, with their endlessly
+pacing sentries, and had grieved for those men who might look up at the
+sky, or down at the earth, but never out and across, to see the
+spring trees, for instance, or the children playing on the grass.
+She remembered the story about Jim Doyle's escape, too. He had dug
+a perilous way to freedom. Vaguely she wondered if he were not again
+digging a perilous way to freedom.
+
+Men seemed always to be wanting freedom, only they had so many different
+ideas of what freedom was. At the camp it had meant breaking bounds,
+balking the Military Police, doing forbidden things generally. Was that,
+after all, what freedom meant, to do the forbidden thing? Those people
+in Russia, for instance, who stole and burned and appropriated women,
+in the name of freedom. Were law and order, then, irreconcilable with
+freedom?
+
+After she had undressed she rang her bell, and Castle answered it.
+
+"Please find out if Ellen has gone to bed," she said. "If she has not, I
+would like to talk to her."
+
+The maid looked slightly surprised.
+
+"If it's your hair, Miss Lily, Mrs. Cardew has asked me to look after
+you until she has engaged a maid for you."
+
+"Not my hair," said Lily, cheerfully. "I rather like doing it myself. I
+just want to talk to Ellen."
+
+It was a bewildered and rather scandalized Castle who conveyed the
+message to Ellen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"I wish you'd stop whistling that thing," said Miss Boyd, irritably. "It
+makes me low in my mind."
+
+"Sorry," said Willy Cameron. "I do it because I'm low in my mind."
+
+"What are you low about?" Miss Boyd had turned toward the rear of the
+counter, where a mirror was pasted to a card above a box of chewing gum,
+and was carefully adjusting her hair net. "Lady friend turned you down?"
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at her.
+
+"I'm low because I haven't got a lady friend, Miss Boyd." He held up
+a sheet of prescription paper and squinted at it. "Also because
+the medical profession writes with its feet, apparently. I've done
+everything to this but dip it in acid. I've had it pinned to the wall,
+and tried glancing at it as I went past. Sometimes you can surprise them
+that way. But it does no good. I'm going to take it home and dream on
+it, like bride's cake."
+
+"They're awful, aren't they?"
+
+"When I get into the Legislature," said Willy Cameron, "I'm going to
+have a bill passed compelling doctors to use typewriters. Take this now.
+Read upside down, its horse liniment. Read right side up, it's poison.
+And it's for internal use."
+
+"What d'you mean you haven't got a lady friend?"
+
+"The exact and cruel truth." He smiled at her, and had Miss Boyd been
+more discerning she might have seen that the smile was slightly forced.
+Also that his eyes were somewhat sunken in his head. Which might, of
+course, have been due to too much political economy and history, and
+the eminent divines on Sunday evenings. Miss Boyd, however, was not
+discerning, and moreover, she was summoning her courage to a certain
+point.
+
+"Why don't you ask me to go to the movies some night?" she said. "I like
+the movies, and I get sick of going alone."
+
+"My dear child," observed Willy Cameron, "if that young man in the sack
+suit who comes in to see you every day were three inches shorter and
+twenty pounds lighter, I'd ask you this minute."
+
+"Oh, him!" said Miss Boyd, with a self-conscious smile. "I'm through
+with him. He's a Bolshevik!"
+
+"He has the Bolshevist possessive eye," agreed Willy Cameron, readily.
+"Does he know you are through with him? Because that's important, too.
+You may know it, and I may know it, but if he doesn't know it--"
+
+"Why don't you say right out you don't want to take me?" Willy Cameron's
+chivalrous soul was suddenly shocked. To his horror he saw tears in Miss
+Boyd's eyes.
+
+"I'm just a plain idiot, Miss Edith," he said. "I was only fooling. It
+will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the movies, or
+anywhere else. We'll make it to-night, if that suits you, and I'll take
+a look through the neighborhood at noon and see what's worth while."
+
+The Eagle Pharmacy was a small one in a quiet neighborhood. During the
+entire day, and for three evenings a week, Mr. William Wallace Cameron
+ran it almost single-handed, having only the preoccupied assistance of
+Miss Boyd in the candy and fancy goods. At the noon and dinner hours,
+and four evenings a week, he was relieved by the owner, Mr. Davis, a
+tired little man with large projecting ears and worried, child-like
+eyes, who was nursing an invalid wife at home. A pathetic little man,
+carrying home with unbounded faith day after day bottles of liquid foods
+and beef capsules, and making wistful comments on them when he returned.
+
+"She couldn't seem to keep that last stuff down, Mr. Cameron," he would
+say. "I'll try something else."
+
+And he would stand before his shelves, eyes upturned, searching,
+eliminating, choosing.
+
+Miss Boyd attended to the general merchandise, sold stationery and
+perfumes, candy and fancy soaps, and in the intervals surveyed the world
+that lay beyond the plate glass windows with shrewd, sophisticated young
+eyes.
+
+"That new doctor across the street is getting busier," she would say.
+Or, "The people in 42 have got a Ford. They haven't got room for a
+garage, either. Probably have to leave it out at nights."
+
+Her sophistication was kindly in the main. She combined it with an easy
+tolerance of weakness, and an invincible and cheery romanticism, as
+Willy Cameron discovered the night they first went to a moving picture
+theater together. She frankly wept and joyously laughed, and now and
+then, delighted at catching some film subtlety and fearful that he would
+miss it, she would nudge him with her elbow.
+
+"What d'you think of that?" she would say. "D'you get it? He thinks he's
+getting her--Alice Joyce, you know--on the telephone, and it's a private
+wire to the gang." She was rather quiet after that particular speech.
+Then she added: "I know a place that's got a secret telephone." But he
+was absorbed in the picture, and made no comment on that. She seemed
+rather relieved.
+
+Once or twice she placed an excited hand on his knee. He was very
+uncomfortable until she removed it, because he had a helpless sort of
+impression that she was not quite so unconscious of it as she appeared.
+Time had been, and not so long ago, when he might have reciprocated her
+little advance in the spirit in which it was offered, might have taken
+the hand and held it, out of the sheer joy of youth and proximity. But
+there was nothing of the philanderer in the Willy Cameron who sat beside
+Edith Boyd that night in body, while in spirit he was in another state,
+walking with his slight limp over crisp snow and sodden mud, but through
+magic lands, to the little moving picture theater at the camp.
+
+Would he ever see her again? Ever again? And if he did, what good would
+it be? He roused himself when they started toward her home. The girl was
+chattering happily. She adored Douglas Fairbanks. She knew a girl who
+had written for his picture but who didn't get one. She wouldn't do
+a thing like that. "Did they really say things when they moved their
+lips?"
+
+"I think they do," said Willy Cameron. "When that chap was talking over
+the telephone I could tell what he was saying by--Look here, what did
+you mean when you said you knew of a place that has a secret telephone?"
+
+"I was only talking."
+
+"No house has any business with a secret telephone," he said virtuously.
+
+"Oh, forget it. I say a lot of things I don't mean." He was a little
+puzzled and rather curious, but not at all disturbed.
+
+"Well, how did you get to know about it?"
+
+"I tell you I was only talking."
+
+He let it drop at that. The street crowds held and interested him. He
+liked to speculate about them; what life meant to them, in work and love
+and play; to what they were going on such hurrying feet. A country boy,
+the haste of the city impressed him.
+
+"Why do they hurry so?" he demanded, almost irritably.
+
+"Hurrying home, most of them, because they've got to get up in the
+morning and go to work."
+
+"Do you ever wonder about the homes they are hurrying to?"
+
+"Me? I don't wonder. I know. Most of them have to move fast to keep up
+with the rent."
+
+"I don't mean houses," he explained, patiently. "I mean--A house isn't a
+home."
+
+"You bet it isn't."
+
+"It's the families I'm talking about. In a small town you know all about
+people, who they live with, and all that." He was laboriously talking
+down to her. "But here--"
+
+He saw that she was not interested. Something he had said started an
+unpleasant train of thought in her mind. She was walking faster, and
+frowning slightly. To cheer her he said:
+
+"I am keeping an eye out for the large young man in the sack suit, you
+know. If he jumps me, just yell for the police, will you? Because I'll
+probably not be able to."
+
+"I wish you'd let me forget him."
+
+"I will. The question is, will he?" But he saw that the subject was
+unpleasant.
+
+"We'll have to do this again. It's been mighty nice of you to come."
+
+"You'll have to ask me, the next time."
+
+"I certainly will. But I think I'd better let your family look me over
+first, just so they'll know that I don't customarily steal the silver
+spoons when I'm asked out to dinner. Or anything like that."
+
+"We're just--folks."
+
+"So am I, awfully--folks! And pretty lonely folks at that. Something
+like that pup that has adopted me, only worse. He's got me, but I
+haven't anybody."
+
+"You'll not be lonely long." She glanced up at him.
+
+"That's cheering. Why?"
+
+"Well, you are the sort that makes friends," she said, rather
+vaguely. "That crowd that drops into the shop on the evenings you're
+there--they're crazy about you. They like to hear you talk."
+
+"Great Scott! I suppose I've been orating all over the place!"
+
+"No, but you've got ideas. You give them something to think about when
+they go home. I wish I had a mind like yours."
+
+He was so astonished that he stopped dead on the pavement. "My Scottish
+blood," he said despondently. "A Scot is always a reformer and a
+preacher, in his heart. I used to orate to my mother, but she liked
+it. She is a Scot, too. Besides, it put her to sleep. But I thought I'd
+outgrown it."
+
+"You don't make speeches. I didn't mean that."
+
+But he was very crestfallen during the remainder of the way, and rather
+silent. He wondered, that night before he went to bed, if he had been
+didactic to Lily Cardew. He had aired his opinions to her at length, he
+knew. He groaned as he took off his coat in his cold little room at the
+boarding house which lodged and fed him, both indifferently, for the sum
+of twelve dollars per week.
+
+Jinx, the little hybrid dog, occupied the seat of his one comfortable
+chair. He eyed the animal somberly.
+
+"Hereafter, old man," he said, "when I feel a spell of oratory coming
+on, you will have to be the audience." He took his dressing gown from
+a nail behind the door, and commenced to put it on. Then he took it off
+again and wrapped the dog in it.
+
+"I can read in bed, which you can't," he observed. "Only, I can't help
+thinking, with all this town to pick from, you might have chosen a
+fellow with two dressing gowns and two chairs."
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+He was extremely quiet all the next day. Miss Boyd could hear him,
+behind the partition with its "Please Keep Out" sign, fussing with
+bottles and occasionally whistling to himself. Once it was the "Long,
+Long Trail," and a moment later he appeared in his doorway, grinning.
+
+"Sorry," he said. "I've got in the habit of thinking to the fool thing.
+Won't do it again."
+
+"You must be thinking hard."
+
+"I am," he replied, grimly, and disappeared. She could hear the slight
+unevenness of his steps as he moved about, but there was no more
+whistling. Edith Boyd leaned both elbows on the top of a showcase and
+fell into a profound and troubled thought. Mostly her thoughts were of
+Willy Cameron, but some of them were for herself. Up dreary and sordid
+by-paths her mind wandered; she was facing ugly facts for the first
+time, and a little shudder of disgust shook her. He wanted to meet her
+family. He was a gentleman and he wanted to meet her family. Well, he
+could meet them all right, and maybe he would understand then that she
+had never had a chance. In all her young life no man had ever proposed
+letting her family look him over. Hardly ever had they visited her at
+home, and when they did they seemed always glad to get away. She had met
+them on street corners, and slipped back alone, fearful of every creak
+of the old staircase, and her mother's querulous voice calling to her:
+
+"Edie, where've you been all this time?" And she had lied. How she had
+lied!
+
+"I'm through with all that," she resolved. "It wasn't any fun anyhow.
+I'm sick of hating myself."
+
+
+Some time later Willy Cameron heard the telephone ring, and taking
+pad and pencil started forward. But Miss Boyd was at the telephone,
+conducting a personal conversation.
+
+"No.... No, I think not.... Look here, Lou, I've said no twice."
+
+There was a rather lengthy silence while she listened. Then: "You might
+as well have it straight, Lou. I'm through.... No, I'm not sick. I'm
+just through.... I wouldn't.... What's the use?"
+
+Willy Cameron, retreating into his lair, was unhappily conscious that
+the girl was on the verge of tears. He puzzled over the situation for
+some time. His immediate instinct was to help any troubled creature,
+and it had dawned on him that this composed young lady who manicured her
+nails out of a pasteboard box during the slack portion of every day was
+troubled. In his abstraction he commenced again his melancholy refrain,
+and a moment later she appeared in the doorway:
+
+"Oh, for mercy's sake, stop," she said. She was very pale.
+
+"Look here, Miss Edith, you come in here and tell me what's wrong.
+Here's a chair. Now sit down and talk it out. It helps a lot to get
+things off your chest."
+
+"There's nothing the matter with me. And if the boss comes in here and
+finds me--"
+
+Quite suddenly she put her head down on the back of the chair and began
+to cry. He was frightfully distressed. He poured some aromatic ammonia
+into a medicine glass and picking up her limp hand, closed her fingers
+around it.
+
+"Drink that," he ordered.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I'm not sick," she said. "I'm only a fool."
+
+"If that fellow said anything over the telephone--!"
+
+She looked up drearily.
+
+"It wasn't him. He doesn't matter. It's just--I got to hating myself."
+She stood up and carefully dabbed her eyes. "Heavens, I must be a sight.
+Now don't you get to thinking things, Mr. Cameron. Girls can't go out
+and fight off a temper, or get full and sleep it off. So they cry."
+
+Some time later he glanced out at her. She was standing before the
+little mirror above the chewing gum, carefully rubbing her cheeks with a
+small red pad. After that she reached into the show case, got out a lip
+pencil and touched her lips.
+
+"You're pretty enough without all that, Miss Edith."
+
+"You mind your own business," she retorted acidly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life. The children of that
+group of families which formed the monied aristocracy of the city
+knew only their own small circle. They met at dancing classes, where
+governesses and occasionally mothers sat around the walls, while the
+little girls, in handmade white frocks of exquisite simplicity, their
+shining hair drawn back and held by ribbon bows, made their prim little
+dip at the door before entering, and the boys, in white Eton collars and
+gleaming pumps, bowed from the waist and then dived for the masculine
+corner of the long room.
+
+No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although now and then a
+brave spirit among the boys would wander, with assumed unconsciousness
+but ears rather pink, to the opposite corner where the little girls were
+grouped like white butterflies milling in the sun.
+
+The pianist struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on one
+side, the boys on the other, a long line, with Mrs. Van Buren in the
+center. Another chord, rather a long one. Mrs. Van Buren curtsied to
+the girls. The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself. Mrs. Van Buren
+turned. Another chord. The boys bent, rather too much, from the waist,
+while Mrs. Van Buren swept another deep curtsey. The music now, very
+definite as to time. Glide and short step to the right. Glide and short
+step to the left. Dancing school had commenced. Outside were long lines
+of motors waiting. The governesses chatted, and sometimes embroidered.
+Mademoiselle tatted.
+
+Alton Denslow was generally known as Pink, but the origin of the name
+was shrouded in mystery. As "Pink" he had learned to waltz at the
+dancing class, at a time when he was more attentive to the step than to
+the music that accompanied it. As Pink Denslow he had played on a scrub
+team at Harvard, and got two broken ribs for his trouble, and as Pink
+he now paid intermittent visits to the Denslow Bank, between the hunting
+season in October and polo at eastern fields and in California. At
+twenty-three he was still the boy of the dancing class, very careful at
+parties to ask his hostess to dance, and not noticeably upset when she
+did, having arranged to be cut in on at the end of the second round.
+
+Pink could not remember when he had not been in love with Lily Cardew.
+There had been other girls, of course, times when Lily seemed far away
+from Cambridge, and some other fair charmer was near. But he had always
+known there was only Lily. Once or twice he would have become
+engaged, had it not been for that. He was a blond boy, squarely built,
+good-looking without being handsome, and on rainy Sundays when there
+was no golf he went quite cheerfully to St. Peter's with his mother, and
+watched a pretty girl in the choir.
+
+He wished at those times that he could sing.
+
+A pleasant cumberer of the earth, he had wrapped his talents in a napkin
+and buried them by the wayside, and promptly forgotten where they were.
+He was to find them later on, however, not particularly rusty, and he
+increased them rather considerably before he got through.
+
+It was this pleasant cumberer of the earth, then, who on the morning
+after Lily's return, stopped his car before the Cardew house and got
+out. Immediately following his descent he turned, took a square white
+box from the car, ascended the steps, settled his neck in his collar and
+his tie around it, and rang the bell.
+
+The second man, hastily buttoned into his coat and with a faint odor
+of silver polish about him, opened the door. Pink gave him his hat, but
+retained the box firmly.
+
+"Mrs. Cardew and Miss Cardew at home?" he asked. "Yes? Then you might
+tell Grayson I'm here to luncheon--unless the family is lunching out."
+
+"Yes, sir," said the footman. "No, sir, they are lunching at home."
+
+Pink sauntered into the library. He was not so easy as his manner
+indicated. One never knew about Lily. Sometimes she was in a mood when
+she seemed to think a man funny, and not to be taken seriously. And
+when she was serious, which was the way he liked her--he rather lacked
+humor--she was never serious about him or herself. It had been religion
+once, he remembered. She had wanted to know if he believed in the
+thirty-nine articles, and because he had seen them in the back of
+the prayer-book, where they certainly would not be if there was not
+authority for them, he had said he did.
+
+"Well, I don't," said Lily. And there had been rather a bad half-hour,
+because he had felt that he had to stick to his thirty-nine guns,
+whatever they were. He had finished on a rather desperate note of
+appeal.
+
+"See here, Lily," he had said. "Why do you bother your head about such
+things, anyhow?"
+
+"Because I've got a head, and I want to use it."
+
+"Life's too short."
+
+"Eternity's pretty long. Do you believe in eternity?" And there they
+were, off again, and of course old Anthony had come in after that, and
+had wanted to know about his Aunt Marcia, and otherwise had shown every
+indication of taking root on the hearth rug.
+
+Pink was afraid of Anthony. He felt like a stammering fool when Anthony
+was around. That was why he had invited himself to luncheon. Old Anthony
+lunched at his club.
+
+When he heard Lily coming down the stairs, Pink's honest heart beat
+somewhat faster. A good many times in France, but particularly on the
+ship coming back, he had thought about this meeting. In France a fellow
+had a lot of distractions, and Lily had seemed as dear as ever, but
+extremely remote. But once turned toward home, and she had filled
+the entire western horizon. The other men had seen sunsets there, and
+sometimes a ship, or a school of porpoises. But Pink had seen only Lily.
+
+She came in. The dear old girl! The beautiful, wonderful, dear old girl!
+The--
+
+"Pink!"
+
+"H--hello, Lily."
+
+"Why, Pink--you're a man!"
+
+"What'd you think I'd be? A girl?"
+
+"You've grown."
+
+"Oh, now see here, Lily. I quit growing years ago."
+
+"And to think you are back all right. I was so worried, Pink."
+
+He flushed at that.
+
+"Needn't have worried," he said, rather thickly. "Didn't get to the
+front until just before the end. My show was made a labor division in
+the south of France. If you laugh, I'll take my flowers and go home."
+
+"Why, Pink dear, I wouldn't laugh for anything. And it was the man
+behind the lines who--"
+
+"Won the war," he finished for her, rather grimly. "All right, Lily.
+We've heard it before. Anyhow, it's all done and over, and--I brought
+gardenias and violets. You used to like 'em."
+
+"It was dear of you to remember."
+
+"Couldn't help remembering. No credit to me. I--you were always in my
+mind."
+
+She was busily unwrapping the box.
+
+"Always," he repeated, unsteadily.
+
+"What gorgeous things!" she buried her face in them.
+
+"Did you hear what I said, Lily?"
+
+"Yes, and it's sweet of you. Now sit down and tell me about things. I've
+got a lot to tell you, too."
+
+He had a sort of quiet obstinacy, however, and he did not sit down. When
+she had done so he stood in front of her, looking down at her.
+
+"You've been in a camp. I know that. I heard it over there. Anne
+Devereaux wrote me. It worried me because--we had girls in the camps
+over there, and every one of them had a string of suitors a mile long."
+
+"Well, I didn't," said Lily, spiritedly. Then she laughed. He had been
+afraid she would laugh. "Oh, Pink, how dear and funny and masculine you
+are! I have a perfectly uncontrollable desire to kiss you."
+
+Which she did, to his amazement and consternation. Nothing she could
+have done would more effectually have shown him the hopelessness of his
+situation than that sisterly impulse.
+
+"Good Lord," he gasped, "Grayson's in the hall."
+
+"If he comes in I shall probably do it again. Pink, you darling child,
+you are still the little boy at Mrs. Van Buren's and if you would only
+purse your lips and count one--two--three--Are you staying to luncheon?"
+
+He was suffering terribly. Also he felt strangely empty inside, because
+something that he had carried around with him for a long time seemed to
+have suddenly moved out and left a vacancy.
+
+"Thanks. I think not, Lily; I've got a lot to do to-day."
+
+She sat very still. She had had to do it, had had to show him, somehow,
+that she loved him without loving him as he wanted her to. She had acted
+on impulse, on an impulse born of intention, but she had hurt him. It
+was in every line of his rigid body and set face.
+
+"You're not angry, Pink dear?"
+
+"There's nothing to be angry about," he said, stolidly. "Things have
+been going on, with me, and staying where they've always been, with
+you. That's all. I'm not very keen, you know, and I used to think--Your
+people like me. I mean, they wouldn't--"
+
+"Everybody likes you, Pink."
+
+"Well, I'll trot along." He moved a step, hesitated. "Is there anybody
+else, Lily?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"You won't mind if I hang around a bit, then? You can always send me off
+when you are sick of me. Which you couldn't if you were fool enough to
+marry me."
+
+"Whoever does marry you, dear, will be a lucky woman."
+
+In the end he stayed to luncheon, and managed to eat a very fair one.
+But he had little lapses into silence, and Grace Cardew drew her own
+shrewd conclusions.
+
+"He's such a nice boy, Lily," she said, after he had gone. "And your
+grandfather would like it. In a way I think he expects it."
+
+"I'm not going to marry to please him, mother."
+
+"But you are fond of Alston."
+
+"I want to marry a man, mother. Pink is a boy. He will always be a boy.
+He doesn't think; he just feels. He is fine and loyal and honest, but I
+would loathe him in a month."
+
+"I wish," said Grace Cardew unhappily, "I wish you had never gone to
+that camp."
+
+All afternoon Lily and Grace shopped. Lily was fitted into shining
+evening gowns, into bright little afternoon frocks, into Paris wraps.
+The Cardew name was whispered through the shops, and great piles of
+exotic things were brought in for Grace's critical eye. Lily's own
+attitude was joyously carefree. Long lines of models walked by, draped
+in furs, in satins and velvet and chiffon, tall girls, most of them,
+with hair carefully dressed, faces delicately tinted and that curious
+forward thrust at the waist and slight advancement of one shoulder that
+gave them an air of languorous indifference.
+
+"The only way I could get that twist," Lily confided to her mother,
+"would be to stand that way and be done up in plaster of paris. It is
+the most abandoned thing I ever saw."
+
+Grace was shocked, and said so.
+
+Sometimes, during the few hours since her arrival, Lily had wondered if
+her year's experiences had coarsened her. There were so many times when
+her mother raised her eyebrows. She knew that she had changed, that the
+granddaughter of old Anthony Cardew who had come back from the war was
+not the girl who had gone away. She had gone away amazingly ignorant;
+what little she had known of life she had learned away at school. But
+even there she had not realized the possibility of wickedness and vice
+in the world. One of the girls had run away with a music master who
+was married, and her name was forbidden to be mentioned. That was
+wickedness, like blasphemy, and a crime against the Holy Ghost.
+
+She had never heard of prostitution. Near the camp there was a district
+with a bad name, and the girls of her organization were forbidden to so
+much as walk in that direction. It took her a long time to understand,
+and she suffered horribly when she did. There were depths of wickedness,
+then, and of abasement like that in the world. It was a bad world, a
+cruel, sordid world. She did not want to live in it.
+
+She had had to reorganize all her ideas of life after that. At first she
+was flamingly indignant. God had made His world clean and beautiful, and
+covered it with flowers and trees that grew, cleanly begotten, from the
+earth. Why had He not stopped there? Why had He soiled it with passion
+and lust?
+
+It was a little Red Cross nurse who helped her, finally.
+
+"Very well," she said. "I see what you mean. But trees and flowers are
+not God's most beautiful gift to the world."
+
+"I think they are."
+
+"No. It is love."
+
+"I am not talking about love," said Lily, flushing.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are. You have never loved, have you? You are talking of
+one of the many things that go to make up love, and out of that one
+phase of love comes the most wonderful thing in the world. He gives us
+the child."
+
+And again:
+
+"All bodies are not whole, and not all souls. It is wrong to judge life
+by its exceptions, or love by its perversions, Lily."
+
+It had been the little nurse finally who cured her, for she secured
+Lily's removal to that shady house on a by-street, where the tragedies
+of unwise love and youth sought sanctuary. There were prayers there,
+morning and evening. They knelt, those girls, in front of their little
+wooden chairs, and by far the great majority of them quite simply laid
+their burdens before God, and with an equal simplicity, felt that He
+would help them out.
+
+"We have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have
+followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have
+offended against Thy holy laws.... Restore Thou those who are penitent,
+according to Thy promises.... And grant, Oh most merciful Father, that
+we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life."
+
+After a time Lily learned something that helped her. The soul was
+greater and stronger than the body and than the mind. The body failed.
+It sinned, but that did not touch the unassailable purity and simplicity
+of the soul. The soul, which lived on, was always clean. For that reason
+there was no hell.
+
+Lily rose and buttoned her coat. Grace was fastening her sables, and
+making a delayed decision in satins.
+
+"Mother, I've been thinking it over. I am going to see Aunt Elinor."
+
+Grace waited until the saleswoman had moved away.
+
+"I don't like it, Lily."
+
+"I was thinking, while we were ordering all that stuff. She is a Cardew,
+mother. She ought to be having that sort of thing. And just because
+grandfather hates her husband, she hasn't anything."
+
+"That is rather silly, dear. They are not in want. I believe he is quite
+flourishing."
+
+"She is father's sister. And she is a good woman. We treat her like a
+leper."
+
+Grace was weakening. "If you take the car, your grandfather may hear of
+it."
+
+"I'll take a taxi."
+
+Grace followed her with uneasy eyes. For years she paid a price for
+peace, and not a small price. She had placed her pride on the domestic
+altar, and had counted it a worthy sacrifice for Howard's sake. And she
+had succeeded. She knew Anthony Cardew had never forgiven her and would
+never like her, but he gave her, now and then, the tribute of a grudging
+admiration.
+
+And now Lily had come home, a new and different Lily, with her father's
+lovableness and his father's obstinacy. Already Grace saw in the girl
+the beginning of a passionate protest against things as they were.
+Perhaps, had Grace given to Lily the great love of her life, instead of
+to Howard, she might have understood her less clearly. As it was, she
+shivered slightly as she got into the limousine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Lily Cardew inspected curiously the east side neighborhood through which
+the taxi was passing. She knew vaguely that she was in the vicinity of
+one of the Cardew mills, but she had never visited any of the Cardew
+plants. She had never been permitted to do so. Perhaps the neighborhood
+would have impressed her more had she not seen, in the camp, that life
+can be stripped sometimes to its essentials, and still have lost very
+little. But the dinginess depressed her. Smoke was in the atmosphere,
+like a heavy fog. Soot lay on the window-sills, and mingled with street
+dust to form little black whirlpools in the wind. Even the white river
+steamers, guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were
+gray with soft coal smoke. The foam of the river falling in broken
+cataracts from their stern wheels was oddly white in contrast.
+
+Everywhere she began to see her own name. "Cardew" was on the ore hopper
+cars that were moving slowly along a railroad spur. One of the steamers
+bore "Anthony Cardew" in tall black letters on its side. There was a
+narrow street called "Cardew Way."
+
+Aunt Elinor lived on Cardew Way. She wondered if Aunt Elinor found that
+curious, as she did. Did she resent these ever-present reminders of her
+lost family? Did she have any bitterness because the very grayness of
+her skies was making her hard old father richer and more powerful?
+
+Yet there was comfort, stability and a certain dignity about Aunt
+Elinor's house when she reached it. It stood in the district, but not
+of it, withdrawn from the street in a small open space which gave
+indication of being a flower garden in summer. There were two large
+gaunt trees on either side of a brick walk, and that walk had been swept
+to the last degree of neatness. The steps were freshly scoured, and a
+small brass door-plate, like a doctor's sign, was as bright as rubbing
+could make it. "James Doyle," she read.
+
+Suddenly she was glad she had come. The little brick house looked
+anything but tragic, with its shining windows, its white curtains
+and its evenly drawn shades. Through the windows on the right came a
+flickering light, warm and rosy. There must be a coal fire there. She
+loved a coal fire.
+
+She had braced herself to meet Aunt Elinor at the door, but an elderly
+woman opened it.
+
+"Mrs. Doyle is in," she said; "just step inside."
+
+She did not ask Lily's name, but left her in the dark little hall and
+creaked up the stairs. Lily hesitated. Then, feeling that Aunt Elinor
+might not like to find her so unceremoniously received, she pushed open
+a door which was only partly closed, and made a step into the room. Only
+then did she see that it was occupied. A man sat by the fire, reading.
+He was holding his book low, to get the light from the fire, and he
+turned slowly to glance at Lily. He had clearly expected some one else.
+Elinor, probably.
+
+"I beg your pardon," Lily said. "I am calling on Mrs. Doyle, and when I
+saw the firelight--"
+
+He stood up then, a tall, thin man, with close-cropped gray mustache and
+heavy gray hair above a high, bulging forehead. She had never seen Jim
+Doyle, but Mademoiselle had once said that he had pointed ears, like a
+satyr. She had immediately recanted, on finding Lily searching in a book
+for a picture of a satyr. This man had ears pointed at the top. Lily was
+too startled then to analyze his face, but later on she was to know
+well the high, intellectual forehead, the keen sunken eyes, the full
+but firmly held mouth and pointed, satyr-like ears of that brilliant
+Irishman, cynic and arch scoundrel, Jim Doyle.
+
+He was inspecting her intently.
+
+"Please come in," he said. "Did the maid take your name?"
+
+"No. I am Lily Cardew."
+
+"I see." He stood quite still, eyeing her. "You are Anthony's
+granddaughter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Just a moment." He went out, closing the door behind him, and she
+heard him going quickly up the stairs. A door closed above, and a weight
+settled down on the girl's heart. He was not going to let her see Aunt
+Elinor. She was frightened, but she was angry, too. She would not run
+away. She would wait until he came down, and if he was insolent, well,
+she could be haughty. She moved to the fire and stood there, slightly
+flushed, but very straight.
+
+She heard him coming down again almost immediately. He was outside the
+door. But he did not come in at once. She had a sudden impression that
+he was standing there, his hand on the knob, outlining what he meant
+to say to her when he showed the door to a hated Cardew. Afterwards she
+came to know how right that impression was. He was never spontaneous. He
+was a man who debated everything, calculated everything beforehand.
+
+When he came in it was slowly, and with his head bent, as though he
+still debated within himself. Then:
+
+"I think I have a right to ask what Anthony Cardew's granddaughter is
+doing in my house."
+
+"Your wife's niece has come to call on her, Mr. Doyle."
+
+"Are you quite sure that is all?"
+
+"I assure you that is all," Lily said haughtily. "It had not occurred to
+me that you would be here."
+
+"I dare say. Still, strangely enough, I do spend a certain amount of
+time in my home."
+
+Lily picked up her muff.
+
+"If you have forbidden her to come down, I shall go."
+
+"Wait," he said slowly. "I haven't forbidden her to see you. I asked her
+to wait. I wanted a few moments. You see, it is not often that I have a
+Cardew in my house, and I am a selfish man."
+
+She hated him. She loathed his cold eyes, his long, slim white hands.
+She hated him until he fascinated her.
+
+"Sit down, and I will call Mrs. Doyle."
+
+He went out again, but this time it was the elderly maid who went up the
+stairs. Doyle himself came back, and stood before her on the hearth rug.
+He was slightly smiling, and the look of uncertainty was gone.
+
+"Now that you've seen me, I'm not absolutely poisonous, am I, Miss Lily?
+You don't mind my calling you that, do you? You are my niece. You have
+been taught to hate me, of course."
+
+"Yes," said Lily, coldly.
+
+"By Jove, the truth from a Cardew!" Then: "That's an old habit of mine,
+damning the Cardews. I'll have to try to get over it, if they are going
+to reestablish family relations." He was laughing at her, Lily knew, and
+she flushed somewhat.
+
+"I wouldn't make too great an effort, then," she said.
+
+He smiled again, this time not unpleasantly, and suddenly he threw into
+his rich Irish voice an unexpected softness. No one knew better than Jim
+Doyle the uses of the human voice.
+
+"You mustn't mind me, Miss Lily. I have no reason to love your family,
+but I am very happy that you came here to-day. My wife has missed her
+people. If you'll run in like this now and then it will do her worlds of
+good. And if my being here is going to keep you away I can clear out."
+
+She rather liked him for that speech. He was totally unlike what she had
+been led to expect, and she felt a sort of resentment toward her family
+for misleading her. He was a gentleman, on the surface at least. He
+had not been over-cordial at first, but then who could have expected
+cordiality under the circumstances? In Lily's defense it should be said
+that the vicissitudes of Elinor's life with Doyle had been kept from her
+always. She had but two facts to go on: he had beaten her grandfather as
+a young man, for a cause, and he held views as to labor which conflicted
+with those of her family.
+
+Months later, when she learned all the truth, it was too late.
+
+"Of course you're being here won't keep me away, if you care to have me
+come."
+
+He was all dignity and charm then. They needed youth in that quiet
+place. They ought all to be able to forget the past, which was done
+with, anyhow. He showed the first genuine interest she had found in her
+work at the camp, and before his unexpected geniality the girl opened
+like a flower.
+
+And all the time he was watching her with calculating eyes. He was a
+gambler with life, and he rather suspected that he had just drawn a
+valuable card.
+
+"Thank you," he said gravely, when she had finished. "You have done a
+lot to bridge the gulf that lies--I am sure you have noticed it--between
+the people who saw service in this war and those who stayed at home."
+
+Suddenly Lily saw that the gulf between her family and herself was just
+that, which was what he had intended.
+
+When Elinor came in they were absorbed in conversation, Lily flushed and
+eager, and her husband smiling, urbane, and genial.
+
+To Lily, Elinor Doyle had been for years a figure of mystery. She had
+not seen her for many years, and she had, remembered a thin, girlish
+figure, tragic-eyed, which eternally stood by a window in her room,
+looking out. But here was a matronly woman, her face framed with soft,
+dark hair, with eyes like her father's, with Howard Cardew's ease of
+manner, too, but with a strange passivity, either of repression or of
+fires early burned out and never renewed.
+
+Lily was vaguely disappointed. Aunt Elinor, in soft gray silk, matronly,
+assured, unenthusiastically pleased to see her; Doyle himself, cheerful
+and suave; the neat servant; the fire lit, comfortable room,--there was
+no drama in all that, no hint of mystery or tragedy. All the hatred at
+home for an impulsive assault of years ago, and--this!
+
+"Lily, dear!" Elinor said, and kissed her. "Why, Lily, you are a woman!"
+
+"I am twenty, Aunt Elinor."
+
+"Yes, of course. I keep forgetting. I live so quietly here that the days
+go by faster than I know." She put Lily back in her chair, and glanced
+at her husband.
+
+"Is Louis coming to dinner, Jim?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I suppose you cannot stay, Lily?"
+
+"I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor. Only mother knows that I am here."
+
+Aunt Elinor smiled her quiet smile.
+
+"I understand, dear. How are they all?"
+
+"Grandfather is very well. Father looks tired. There is some trouble at
+the mill, I think."
+
+Elinor glanced at Doyle, but he said nothing.
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+"She is well."
+
+Lily was commencing to have an odd conviction, which was that her Aunt
+Elinor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle. He seemed
+inclined to make up for Elinor's lack of enthusiasm by his own. He built
+up a larger fire, and moved her chair near it.
+
+"Weather's raw," he said. "Sure you are comfortable now? And why not
+have dinner here? We have an interesting man coming, and we don't often
+have the chance to offer our guests a charming young lady."
+
+"Lily only came home yesterday, Jim," Elinor observed. "Her own people
+will want to see something of her. Besides, they do no know she is
+here."
+
+Lily felt slightly chilled. For years she had espoused her Aunt
+Elinor's cause; in the early days she had painfully hemstitched a small
+handkerchief each fall and had sent it, with much secrecy, to Aunt
+Elinor's varying addresses at Christmas. She had felt a childish
+resentment of Elinor Doyle's martyrdom. And now--
+
+"Her father and grandfather are dining out to-night." Had Lily looked up
+she would have seen Doyle's eyes fixed on his wife, ugly and menacing.
+
+"Dining out?" Lily glanced at him in surprise.
+
+"There is a dinner to-night, for the--" He checked himself "The steel
+manufacturers are having a meeting," he finished. "I believe to discuss
+me, among other things. Amazing the amount of discussion my simple
+opinions bring about."
+
+Elinor Doyle, unseen, made a little gesture of despair and surrender.
+
+"I hope you will stay, Lily," she said. "You can telephone, if you like.
+I don't see you often, and there is so much I want to ask you."
+
+In the end Lily agreed. She would find out from Grayson if the men were
+really dining out, and if they were Grayson would notify her mother that
+she was staying. She did not quite know herself why she had accepted,
+unless it was because she was bored and restless at home. Perhaps, too,
+the lure of doing a forbidden thing influenced her sub-consciously, the
+thought that her grandfather would detest it. She had not forgiven him
+for the night before.
+
+Jim Doyle left her in the back hall at the telephone, and returned
+to the sitting room, dosing the door behind him. His face was set and
+angry.
+
+"I thought I told you to be pleasant."
+
+"I tried, Jim. You must remember I hardly know her." She got up and
+placed her hand on his arm, but he shook it off. "I don't understand,
+Jim, and I wish you wouldn't. What good is it?"
+
+"I've told you what I want. I want that girl to come here, and to like
+coming here. That's plain, isn't it? But if you're going to sit with a
+frozen face--She'll be useful. Useful as hell to a preacher."
+
+"I can't use my family that way."
+
+"You and your family! Now listen, Elinor. This isn't a matter o the
+Cardews and me. It may be nothing, but it may be a big thing. I hardly
+know yet--" His voice trailed off; he stood with his head bent, lost in
+those eternal calculations with which Elinor Doyle was so familiar.
+
+The doorbell rang, and was immediately followed by the opening and
+closing of the front door.
+
+From her station at the telephone Lily Cardew saw a man come in, little
+more than a huge black shadow, which placed a hat on the stand and then,
+striking a match, lighted the gas overhead. In the illumination he stood
+before the mirror, smoothing back his shining black hair. Then he saw
+her, stared and retreated into the sitting room.
+
+"Got company, I see."
+
+"My niece, Lily Cardew," said Doyle, dryly.
+
+The gentleman seemed highly amused. Evidently he considered Lily's
+presence in the house in the nature of a huge joke. He was conveying
+this by pantomime, in deference to the open door, when Doyle nodded
+toward Elinor.
+
+"It's customary to greet your hostess, Louis."
+
+"Easiest thing I do," boasted the new arrival cheerily. "'Lo, Mrs.
+Doyle. Is our niece going to dine with us?"
+
+"I don't know yet, Mr. Akers," she said, without warmth. Louis Akers
+knew quite well that Elinor did not like him, and the thought amused
+him, the more so since as a rule women liked him rather too well. Deep
+in his heart he respected Jim Doyle's wife, and sometimes feared her. He
+respected her because she had behind her traditions of birth and wealth,
+things he professed to despise but secretly envied. He feared her
+because he trusted no woman, and she knew too much.
+
+She loved Jim Doyle, but he had watched her, and he knew that sometimes
+she hated Doyle also. He knew that could be, because there had been
+women he had both loved and hated himself.
+
+Elinor had gone out, and Akers sat down.
+
+"Well," he said, in a lowered tone. "I've written it."
+
+Doyle closed the door, and stood again with his head lowered,
+considering.
+
+"You'd better look over it," continued Lou. "I don't want to be jailed.
+You're better at skating over thin ice than I am. And I've been thinking
+over the Prohibition matter, Jim. In a sense you're right. It will make
+them sullen and angry. But they won't go the limit without booze. I'd
+advise cache-ing a lot of it somewhere, to be administered when needed."
+
+Doyle returned to his old place on the hearth-rug, still thoughtful. He
+had paid no attention to Aker's views on Prohibition, nor to the paper
+laid upon the desk in the center of the room.
+
+"Do you know that that girl in the hall will be worth forty million
+dollars some day?"
+
+"Some money," said Akers, calmly. "Which reminds me, Jim, that I've got
+to have a raise. And pretty soon."
+
+"You get plenty, if you'd leave women alone."
+
+"Tell them to leave me alone, then," said Akers, stretching out his long
+legs. "All right. We'll talk about that, after dinner. What about this
+forty millions?"
+
+Doyle looked at him quickly. Akers' speech about women had crystallized
+the vague plans which Lily's arrival had suddenly given rise to. He gave
+the young man a careful scrutiny, from his handsome head to his feet,
+and smiled. It had occurred to him that the Cardew family would loathe a
+man of Louis Akers' type with an entire and whole-hearted loathing.
+
+"You might try to make her have a pleasant evening," he suggested dryly.
+"And, to do that, it might be as well to remember a number of things,
+one of which is that she is accustomed to the society of gentlemen."
+
+"All right, old dear," said Akers, without resentment.
+
+"She hates her grandfather like poison," Doyle went on. "She doesn't
+know it, but she does. A little education, and it is just possible--"
+
+"Get Olga. I'm no kindergarten teacher."
+
+"You haven't seen her in the light yet."
+
+Louis Akers smiled and carefully settled his tie.
+
+Like Doyle, Akers loved the game of life, and he liked playing for high
+stakes. He had joined forces with Doyle because the game was dangerous
+and exciting, rather than because of any real conviction. Doyle had
+a fanatic faith, with all his calculation, but Louis Akers had
+only calculation and ambition. A practicing attorney in the city, a
+specialist in union law openly, a Red in secret, he played his triple
+game shrewdly and with zest.
+
+Doyle turned to go, then stopped and came back. "I was forgetting
+something," he said, slowly. "What possessed you to take that Boyd girl
+to the Searing Building the other night?"
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Woslosky saw you coming out."
+
+"I had left something there," Akers said sullenly. "That's the truth,
+whether you believe it or not. I wasn't there two minutes."
+
+"You're a fool, Louis," Doyle said coldly. "You'll play that game once
+too often. What happens to you is your own concern, but what may happen
+to me is mine. And I'll take mighty good care it doesn't happen."
+
+Doyle was all unction and hospitality when he met Lily in the hall. At
+dinner he was brilliant, witty, the gracious host. Akers played up to
+him. At the foot of the table Elinor sat, outwardly passive, inwardly
+puzzled, and watched Lily. She knew the contrast the girl must be
+drawing, between the bright little meal, with its simple service and
+clever talk, and those dreary formal dinners at home when old Anthony
+sometimes never spoke at all, or again used his caustic tongue like a
+scourge. Elinor did not hate her father; he was simply no longer her
+father. As for Howard, she had had a childish affection for him, but he
+had gone away early to school, and she hardly knew him. But she did
+not want his child here, drinking in as she was, without clearly
+understanding what they meant, Doyle's theories of unrest and
+revolution.
+
+"You will find that I am an idealist, in a way," he was saying. "That
+is, if you come often. I hope you will, by the way. I am perpetually
+dissatisfied with things as they are, and wanting them changed. With
+the single exception of my wife"--he bowed to Elinor, "and this little
+party, which is delightful."
+
+"Are you a Socialist?" Lily demanded, in her direct way.
+
+"Well, you might call it that. I go a bit further."
+
+"Don't talk politics, Jim," Elinor hastily interposed. He caught her eye
+and grinned.
+
+"I'm not talking politics, my dear." He turned to Lily, smiling.
+
+"For one thing, I don't believe that any one should have a lot of
+money, so that a taxicab could remain ticking away fabulous sums while a
+charming young lady dines at her leisure." He smiled again.
+
+"Will it be a lot?" Lily asked. "I thought I'd better keep him,
+because--" She hesitated.
+
+"Because this neighborhood is unlikely to have a cab stand? You
+were entirely right. But I can see that you won't like my idealistic
+community. You see, in it everybody will have enough, and nobody will
+have too much."
+
+"Don't take him too seriously, Miss Cardew," said Akers, bending
+forward. "You and I know that there isn't such a thing as too much."
+
+Elinor changed the subject; as a girl she had drawn rather well, and she
+had retained her interest in that form of art. There was an exhibition
+in town of colored drawings. Lily should see them. But Jim Doyle
+countered her move.
+
+"I forgot to mention," he said, "that in this ideal world we were
+discussing the arts will flourish. Not at once, of course, because the
+artists will be fighting--"
+
+"Fighting?"
+
+"Per aspera ad astra," put in Louis Akers. "You cannot change a world in
+a day, without revolution--"
+
+"But you don't believe that revolution is ever worth while, do you?"
+
+"If it would drive starvation and wretchedness from the world, yes."
+
+Lily found Louis Akers interesting. Certainly he was very handsome. And
+after all, why should there be misery and hunger in the world? There
+must be enough for all. It was hardly fair, for instance, that she
+should have so much, and others scarcely anything. Only it was like
+thinking about religion; you didn't get anywhere with it. You wanted to
+be good, and tried to be. And you wanted to love God, only He seemed so
+far away, mostly. And even that was confusing, because you prayed to God
+to be forgiven for wickedness, but it was to His Son our Lord one went
+for help in trouble.
+
+One could be sorry for the poor, and even give away all one had, but
+that would only help a few. It would have to be that every one who had
+too much would give up all but what he needed.
+
+Lily tried to put that into words.
+
+"Exactly," said Jim Doyle. "Only in my new world we realize that there
+would be a few craven spirits who might not willingly give up what they
+have. In that case it would be taken from them."
+
+"And that is what you call revolution?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"But that's not revolution. It is a sort of justice, isn't it?"
+
+"You think very straight, young lady," said Jim Doyle.
+
+He had a fascinating theory of individualism, too; no man should impose
+his will and no community its laws, on the individual. Laws were for
+slaves. Ethics were better than laws, to control.
+
+"Although," he added, urbanely, "I daresay it might be difficult to
+convert Mr. Anthony Cardew to such a belief."
+
+While Louis Akers saw Lily to her taxicab that night Doyle stood in the
+hall, waiting. He was very content with his evening's work.
+
+"Well?" he said, when Akers returned.
+
+"Merry as a marriage bell. I'm to show her the Brunelleschi drawings
+to-morrow."
+
+Slightly flushed, he smoothed his hair in front of the mirror over the
+stand.
+
+"She's a nice child," he said. In his eyes was the look of the hunting
+animal that scents food.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Lily did not sleep very well that night. She was repentant, for one
+thing, for her mother's evening alone, and for the anxiety in her face
+when she arrived.
+
+"I've been so worried," she said, "I was afraid your grandfather would
+get back before you did."
+
+"I'm sorry, mother dear. I know it was selfish. But I've had a wonderful
+evening."
+
+"Wonderful?"
+
+"All sorts of talk," Lily said, and hesitated. After all, her mother
+would not understand, and it would only make her uneasy. "I suppose it
+is rank hearsay to say it, but I like Mr. Doyle."
+
+"I detest him."
+
+"But you don't know him, do you?"
+
+"I know he is stirring up all sorts of trouble for us. Lily, I want you
+to promise not to go back there."
+
+There was a little silence. A small feeling of rebellion was rising in
+the girl's heart.
+
+"I don't see why. She is my own aunt."
+
+"Will you promise?"
+
+"Please don't ask me, mother. I--oh, don't you understand? It is
+interesting there, that's all. It isn't wrong to go. And the moment you
+forbid it you make me want to go back."
+
+"Were there any other people there to dinner?" Grace asked, with sudden
+suspicion.
+
+"Only one man. A lawyer named Akers."
+
+The name meant nothing to Grace Cardew.
+
+"A young man?"
+
+"Not very young. In his thirties, I should think," Lily hesitated again.
+She had meant to tell her mother of the engagement for the next day, but
+Grace's attitude made it difficult. To be absolutely forbidden to meet
+Louis Akers at the gallery, and to be able to give no reason beyond the
+fact that she had met him at the Doyle house, seemed absurd.
+
+"A gentleman?"
+
+"I hardly know," Lily said frankly. "In your sense of the word, perhaps
+not, mother. But he is very clever."
+
+Grace Cardew sighed and picked up her book. She never retired until
+Howard came in. And Lily went upstairs, uneasy and a little defiant.
+She must live her own life, somehow; have her own friends; think her own
+thoughts. The quiet tyranny of the family was again closing down on
+her. It would squeeze her dry, in the end, as it had her mother and Aunt
+Elinor.
+
+She stood for a time by her window, looking out at the city. Behind her
+was her warm, luxurious room, her deep, soft bed. Yet all through
+the city there were those who did not sleep warm and soft. Close by,
+perhaps, in that deteriorated neighborhood, there were children that
+very night going to bed hungry.
+
+Because things had always been like that, should they always be so?
+Wasn't Mr. Doyle right, after all? Only he went very far. You couldn't,
+for instance, take from a man the thing he had earned. What about the
+people who did not try to earn?
+
+She rather thought she would be clearer about it if she talked to Willy
+Cameron.
+
+She went to bed at last, a troubled young thing in a soft white
+night-gown, passionately in revolt against the injustice which gave to
+her so much and to others so little. And against that quiet domestic
+tyranny which was forcing her to her first deceit.
+
+Yet the visit to the gallery was innocuous enough. Louis Akers met her
+there, and carefully made the rounds with her. Then he suggested tea,
+and chose a quiet tea-room, and a corner.
+
+"I'll tell you something, now it's over," he said, his bold eyes fixed
+on hers. "I loathe galleries and pictures. I wanted to see you again.
+That's all. You see, I am starting in by being honest with you."
+
+She was rather uncomfortable.
+
+"Why don't you like pictures?"
+
+"Because they are only imitations of life. I like life." He pushed
+his teacup away. "I don't want tea either. Tea was an excuse, too." He
+smiled at her. "Perhaps you don't like honesty," he said. "If you don't
+you won't care for me."
+
+She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness and
+effrontery, but he made her vaguely uneasy. He knew so many things, and
+yet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her family's sense of
+the word. He had a curious effect on her, too, one that she resented. He
+made her insistently conscious of her sex.
+
+And of his. His very deference had something of restraint about it. She
+thought, trying to drink her tea quietly, that he might be very terrible
+if he loved any one. There was a sort of repressed fierceness behind his
+suavity.
+
+But he interested her, and he was undeniably handsome, not in her
+father's way but with high-colored, almost dramatic good looks. There
+could be no doubt, too, that he was interested in her. He rarely took
+his eyes off hers. Afterwards she was to know well that bold possessive
+look of his.
+
+It was just before they left that he said:
+
+"I am going to see you again, you know. May I come in some afternoon?"
+
+Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments, and she raised frank
+eyes to his.
+
+"I am afraid not," she said. "You see, you are a friend of Mr. Doyle's,
+and you must know that my people and Aunt Elinor's husband are on bad
+terms."
+
+"What has that got to do with you and me?" Then he laughed. "Might be
+unpleasant, I suppose. But you go to the Doyles'."
+
+She was very earnest.
+
+"My mother knows, but my grandfather wouldn't permit it if he knew."
+
+"And you put up with that sort of thing?" He leaned closer to her. "You
+are not a baby, you know. But I will say you are a good sport to do it,
+anyhow."
+
+"I'm not very comfortable about it."
+
+"Bosh," he said, abruptly. "You go there as often as you can. Elinor
+Doyle's a lonely woman, and Jim is all right. You pick your own friends,
+my child, and live your own life. Every human being has that right."
+
+He helped her into a taxi at the door of the tea shop, giving her rather
+more assistance than she required, and then standing bare-headed in
+the March wind until the car had moved away. Lily, sitting back in her
+corner, was both repelled and thrilled. He was totally unlike the men
+she knew, those carefully repressed, conventional clean-cut boys, like
+Pink Denslow. He was raw, vigorous and possibly brutal. She did not
+quite like him, but she found herself thinking about him a great deal.
+
+The old life was reaching out its friendly, idle hands toward her. The
+next day Grace gave a luncheon for her at the house, a gay little affair
+of color, chatter and movement. But Lily found herself with little
+to say. Her year away had separated her from the small community of
+interest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to
+them in her sitting room later, what they would all talk about when they
+had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It
+would all be said so soon. And what then?
+
+Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small circle,
+carefully guarded. They belonged together, they and the men who
+likewise belonged. Now and then there would be changes. A new man, of
+irreproachable family connections would come to live in the city, and
+cause a small flurry. Then in time he would be appropriated. Or a girl
+would come to visit, and by the same system of appropriation would come
+back later, permanently. Always the same faces, the same small talk.
+Orchids or violets at luncheons, white or rose or blue or yellow frocks
+at dinners and dances. Golf at the country club. Travel, in the Cardew
+private car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting.
+Winter at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at seeing moving picture
+stars and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand. One never had a
+chance to meet them.
+
+And, in quiet intervals, this still house, and grandfather shut away
+in his upstairs room, but holding the threads of all their lives as a
+spider clutches the diverging filaments of its web.
+
+"Get in on this, Lily," said a clear young voice. "We're talking about
+the most interesting men we met in our war work. You ought to have known
+a lot of them."
+
+"I knew a lot of men. They were not so very interesting. There was a
+little nurse--"
+
+"Men, Lily dear."
+
+"There was one awfully nice boy. He wasn't a soldier, but he was very
+kind to the men. They adored him."
+
+"Did he fall in love with your?"
+
+"Not a particle."
+
+"Why wasn't he a soldier?"
+
+"He is a little bit lame. But he is awfully nice."
+
+"But what is extraordinary about him, then?"
+
+"Not a thing, except his niceness."
+
+But they were surfeited with nice young men. They wanted something
+dramatic, and Willy Cameron was essentially undramatic. Besides, it was
+quite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical handicap made
+him unacceptable to them.
+
+"Don't be ridiculous, Lily. You're hiding some one behind this kind
+person. You must have met somebody worth while."
+
+"Not in the camp. I know a perfectly nice Socialist, but he was not in
+the army. Not a Socialist, really. Much worse. He believes in having a
+revolution."
+
+That stirred them somewhat. She saw their interested faces turned toward
+her.
+
+"With a bomb under his coat, of course, Lily."
+
+"He didn't bulge."
+
+"Good-looking?"
+
+"Well, rather."
+
+"How old is he, Lily?" one of them asked, suspiciously.
+
+"Almost fifty, I should say."
+
+"Good heavens!"
+
+Their interest died. She could have revived it, she knew, if she
+mentioned Louis Akers; he would have answered to their prime requisite
+in an interesting man. He was both handsome and young. But she felt
+curiously disinclined to mention him.
+
+The party broke up. By ones and twos luxuriously dressed little figures
+went down the great staircase, where Grayson stood in the hall and the
+footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle,
+watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense of
+comfort and well-being after they had all gone. This was as it should
+be. Lily would take up life again where she had left it off, and all
+would be well.
+
+It was now the sixth day, and she had not yet carried out that absurd
+idea of asking Ellen's friend to dinner.
+
+Lily was, however, at that exact moment in process of carrying it out.
+
+"Telephone for you, Mr. Cameron."
+
+"Thanks. Coming," sang out Willy Cameron.
+
+Edith Boyd sauntered toward his doorway.
+
+"It's a lady."
+
+"Woman," corrected Willy Cameron. "The word 'lady' is now obsolete,
+since your sex has entered the economic world." He put on his coat.
+
+"I said 'lady' and that's what I mean," said Edith. "'May I speak to Mr.
+Cameron?'" she mimicked. "Regular Newport accent."
+
+Suddenly Willy Cameron went rather pale. If it should be Lily
+Cardew--but then of course it wouldn't be. She had been home for six
+days, and if she had meant to call--
+
+"Hello," he said.
+
+It was Lily. Something that had been like a band around his heart
+suddenly loosened, to fasten about his throat. His voice sounded
+strangled and strange.
+
+"Why, yes," he said, in the unfamiliar voice. "I'd like to come, of
+course."
+
+Edith Boyd watched and listened, with a slightly strained look in her
+eyes.
+
+"To dinner? But--I don't think I'd better come to dinner."
+
+"Why not, Willy?"
+
+Mr. William Wallace Cameron glanced around. There was no one about save
+Miss Boyd, who was polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of the
+other.
+
+"May I come in a business suit?"
+
+"Why, of course. Why not?"
+
+"I didn't know," said Willy Cameron. "I didn't know what your people
+would think. That's all. To-morrow at eight, then. Thanks."
+
+He hung up the receiver and walked to the door, where he stood looking
+out and seeing nothing. She had not forgotten. He was going to see her.
+Instead of standing across the street by the park fence, waiting for
+a glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the room with her.
+There would be--eight from eleven was three--three hours of her.
+
+What a wonderful day it was! Spring was surely near. He would like to be
+able to go and pick up Jinx, and then take a long walk through the park.
+He needed movement. He needed to walk off his excitement or he felt that
+he might burst with it.
+
+"Eight o'clock!" said Edith. "I wish you joy, waiting until eight for
+supper."
+
+He had to come back a long, long way to her.
+
+"'May I come in a business suit?'" she mimicked him. "My evening clothes
+have not arrived yet. My valet's bringing them up to town to-morrow."
+
+Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist, he
+caught the bitterness under her raillery. It puzzled him.
+
+"It's a young lady I knew at camp. I was in an army camp, you know."
+
+"Is her name a secret?"
+
+"Why, no. It is Cardew. Miss Lily Cardew."
+
+"I believe you--not."
+
+"But it is," he said, genuinely concerned. "Why in the world should I
+give you a wrong name?"
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his face.
+
+"No. You wouldn't. But it makes me laugh, because--well, it was crazy,
+anyhow."
+
+"What was crazy?"
+
+"Something I had in my mind. Just forget it. I'll tell you what will
+happen, Mr. Cameron. You'll stay here about six weeks. Then you'll get a
+job at the Cardew Mills. They use chemists there, and you will be--"
+
+She lifted her finger-tips and blew along them delicately.
+
+"Gone--like that," she finished.
+
+Sometimes Willy Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd. The large young man,
+for instance, whose name he had learned was Louis Akers, did not
+come any more. Not since that telephone conversation. But he had been
+distinctly a grade above that competent young person, Edith Boyd, if
+there were such grades these days; fluent and prosperous-looking, and
+probably able to offer a girl a good home. But she had thrown him over.
+He had heard her doing it, and when he had once ventured to ask her
+about Akers she had cut him off curtly.
+
+"I was sick to death of him. That's all," she had said.
+
+But on the night of Lily's invitation he was to hear more of Louis
+Akers.
+
+It was his evening in the shop. One day he came on at seven-thirty in
+the morning and was off at six, and the next he came at ten and stayed
+until eleven at night. The evening business was oddly increasing. Men
+wandered in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a tooth-brush, and sat
+or stood around for an hour or so; clerks whose families had gone to the
+movies, bachelors who found their lodging houses dreary, a young doctor
+or two, coming in after evening office hours to leave a prescription,
+and remaining to talk and listen. Thus they satisfied their gregarious
+instinct while within easy call of home.
+
+The wealthy had their clubs. The workmen of the city had their balls and
+sometimes their saloons. But in between was that vast, unorganized male
+element which was neither, and had neither. To them the neighborhood
+pharmacy, open in the evening, warm and bright, gave them a rendezvous.
+They gathered there in thousands, the country over. During the war they
+fought their daily battles there, with newspaper maps. After the war the
+League of Nations, local politics, a bit of neighborhood scandal, washed
+down with soft drinks from the soda fountain, furnished the evening's
+entertainment.
+
+The Eagle Pharmacy had always been the neighborhood club, but with the
+advent of Willy Cameron it was attaining a new popularity. The roundsman
+on the beat dropped in, the political boss of the ward, named Hendricks,
+Doctor Smalley, the young physician who lived across the street, and
+others. Back of the store proper was a room, with the prescription desk
+at one side and reserve stock on shelves around the other three. Here
+were a table and a half dozen old chairs, a war map, still showing with
+colored pins the last positions before the great allied advance, and an
+ancient hat-rack, which had held from time immemorial an umbrella with
+three broken ribs and a pair of arctics of unknown ownership.
+
+"Going to watch this boy," Hendricks confided to Doctor Smalley a night
+or two after Lily's return, meeting him outside. "He sure can talk."
+
+Doctor Smalley grinned.
+
+"He can read my writing, too, which is more than I can do myself. What
+do you mean, watch him?"
+
+But whatever his purposes Mr. Hendricks kept them to himself. A big,
+burly man, with a fund of practical good sense a keen knowledge of
+men, he had gained a small but loyal following. He was a retired master
+plumber, with a small income from careful investments, and he had a
+curious, almost fanatic love for the city.
+
+"I was born here," he would say, boastfully. "And I've seen it grow from
+fifty thousand to what it's got now. Some folks say it's dirty, but it's
+home to me, all right."
+
+But on the evening of Lily's invitation the drug store forum found Willy
+Cameron extremely silent. He had been going over his weaknesses, for the
+thought of Lily always made him humble, and one of them was that he got
+carried away by things and talked too much. He did not intend to do that
+the next night, at the Cardew's.
+
+"Something's scared him off," said Mr. Hendricks to Doctor Smalley,
+after a half hour of almost taciturnity, while Willy Cameron smoked his
+pipe and listened. "Watch him rise to this, though." And aloud:
+
+"Why don't you fellows drop the League of Nations, which none of you
+knows a damn about anyhow, and get to the thing that's coming in this
+country?"
+
+"I'll bite," said Mr. Clarey, who sold life insurance in the daytime and
+sometimes utilized his evenings in a similar manner. "What's coming to
+this country?"
+
+"Revolution."
+
+The crowd laughed.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Hendricks. "Laugh while you can. I saw the Chief
+of Police to-day, and he's got a line of conversation that makes a man
+feel like taking his savings out of the bank and burying them in the
+back yard."
+
+Willy Cameron took his pipe out of his mouth, but remained dumb.
+
+Mr. Hendricks nudged Doctor Smalley, who rose manfully to the occasion.
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Says the Russians have got a lot of paid agents here. Not all Russians
+either. Some of our Americans are in it. It's to begin with a general
+strike."
+
+"In this town?"
+
+"All over the country. But this is a good field for them. The crust's
+pretty thin here, and where that's the case there is likely to be
+earthquakes and eruptions. The Chief says they're bringing in a bunch of
+gunmen, wobblies and Bolshevists from every industrial town on the map.
+Did you get that, Cameron? Gunmen!"
+
+"Any of you men here dissatisfied with this form of government?"
+inquired Willy, rather truculently.
+
+"Not so you could notice it," said Mr. Clarey. "And once the Republican
+party gets in--"
+
+"Then there will never be a revolution."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's why," said Willy Cameron. "Of course you are worthless now. You
+aren't organized. You don't know how many you are or how strong you
+are. You can't talk. You sit back and listen until you believe that this
+country is only capital and labor. You get squeezed in between them. You
+see labor getting more money than you, and howling for still more. You
+see both capital and labor raising prices until you can't live on what
+you get. There are a hundred times as many of you as represent capital
+and labor combined, and all you do is loaf here and growl about things
+being wrong. Why don't you do something? You ought to be running this
+country, but you aren't. You're lazy. You don't even vote. You leave
+running the country to men like Mr. Hendricks here."
+
+Mr. Hendricks was cheerfully unirritated.
+
+"All right, son," he said, "I do my bit and like it. Go on. Don't stop
+to insult me. You can do that any time."
+
+"I've been buying a seditious weekly since I came," said Willy Cameron.
+"It's preaching a revolution, all right. I'd like to see its foreign
+language copies. They'll never overthrow the government, but they may
+try. Why don't you fellows combine to fight them? Why don't you learn
+how strong you are? Nine-tenths of the country, and milling like sheep
+with a wolf around!"
+
+Mr. Hendricks winked at the doctor.
+
+"What'd I tell you?" whispered Hendricks. "Got them, hasn't he? If
+he'd suggest arming them with pop bottles and attacking that gang of
+anarchists at the cobbler's down the street, they'd do it this minute."
+
+"All right, son," he offered. "We'll combine. Anything you say goes.
+And we'll get the Jim Doyle-Woslosky-Louis Akers outfit first. I know a
+first-class brick wall--"
+
+"Akers?" said Willy Cameron. "Do you know him?"
+
+"I do," said Hendricks. "But that needn't prejudice you against me any.
+He's a bad actor, and as smooth as butter. D'you know what their plan
+is? They expect to take the city. This city! The--" Mr. Hendrick's voice
+was lost in fury.
+
+"Talk!" said the roundsman. "Where'd the police be, I'm asking?"
+
+"The police," said Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, "are as filled with
+sedition as a whale with corset bones. Also the army. Also the state
+constabulary."
+
+"The hell they are," said the roundsman aggressively. But Willy Cameron
+was staring through the smoke from his pipe at the crowd.
+
+"They might do it, for a while," he said thoughtfully. "There's a
+tremendous foreign population in the mill towns around, isn't there?
+Does anybody in the crowd own a revolver? Or know how to use it if he
+has one."
+
+"I've got one," said the insurance agent. "Don't know how it would work.
+Found my wife nailing oilcloth with it the other day."
+
+"Very well. If we're a representative group, they wouldn't need a
+battery of eight-inch guns, would they?"
+
+A little silence fell on the group. Around them the city went about its
+business; the roar of the day had softened to muffled night sounds, as
+though one said: "The city sleeps. Be still." The red glare of the mills
+was the fire on the hearth. The hills were its four protecting walls.
+And the night mist covered it like a blanket.
+
+"Here's one representative of the plain people," said Mr. Hendricks,
+"who is going home to get some sleep. And tomorrow I'll buy me a gun,
+and if I can keep the children out of the yard I'll learn to use it."
+
+For a long time after he went home that night Willy Cameron paced the
+floor of his upper room, paced it until an irate boarder below hammered
+on his chandelier. Jinx followed him, moving sedately back and forth,
+now and then glancing up with idolatrous eyes. Willy Cameron's mind was
+active and not particularly coordinate. The Cardews and Lily; Edith Boyd
+and Louis Akers; the plain people; an army marching to the city to loot
+and burn and rape, and another army meeting it, saying: "You shall not
+pass"; Abraham Lincoln, Russia, Lily.
+
+His last thought, of course, was of Lily Cardew. He had neglected to
+cover Jinx, and at last the dog leaped on the bed and snuggled close to
+him. He threw an end of the blanket over him and lay there, staring into
+the darkness. He was frightfully lonely. At last he fell asleep, and
+the March wind, coming in through the open window, overturned a paper
+leaning against his collar box, on which he had carefully written:
+
+                     Have suit pressed.
+                     Buy new tie.
+                     Shirts from laundry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Going home that night Mr. Hendricks met Edith Boyd, and accompanied her
+for a block or two. At his corner he stopped.
+
+"How's your mother, Edith?"
+
+It was Mr. Hendricks' business to know his ward thoroughly.
+
+"About the same. She isn't really sick, Mr. Hendricks. She's just low
+spirited, but that's enough. I hate to go home."
+
+Hendricks hesitated.
+
+"Still, home's a pretty good place," he said. "Especially for a pretty
+girl." There was unmistakable meaning in his tone, and she threw up her
+head.
+
+"I've got to get some pleasure out of life, Mr. Hendricks."
+
+"Sure you have," he agreed affably. "But playing around with Louis Akers
+is like playing with a hand-grenade, Edith." She said nothing. "I'd cut
+him out, little girl. He's poor stuff. Mind, I'm not saying he's a fool,
+but he's a bad actor. Now if I was a pretty girl, and there was a nice
+fellow around like this Cameron, I'd be likely to think he was all
+right. He's got brains." Mr. Hendricks had a great admiration for
+brains.
+
+"I'm sick of men."
+
+He turned at her tone and eyed her sharply.
+
+"Well, don't judge them all by Akers. This is my corner. Good-night. Not
+afraid to go on by yourself, are you?"
+
+"If I ever was I've had a good many chances to get over it."
+
+He turned the corner, but stopped and called after her.
+
+"Tell Dan I'll be in to see him soon, Edith. Haven't seen him since he
+came back from France."
+
+"All right."
+
+She went on, her steps lagging. She hated going home. When she reached
+the little house she did not go in at once. The March night was not
+cold, and she sat the step, hoping to see her mother's light go out in
+the second-story front windows. But it continued to burn steadily, and
+at last, with a gesture of despair, she rose and unlocked the door.
+
+Almost at once she heard footsteps above, and a peevish voice.
+
+"That you, Edie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"D'you mind bringing up the chloroform liniment and rubbing my back?"
+
+"I'll bring it, mother."
+
+She found it on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen. She could hear
+the faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor,
+and then silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her,
+and something crunched under her foot. She felt like screaming. That new
+clerk at the store was always talking about homes. What did he know
+of squalid city houses, with their insects and rats, their damp, moldy
+cellars, their hateful plumbing? A thought struck her. She lighted the
+gas and stared around. It was as she had expected. The dishes had not
+been washed. They were piled in the sink, and a soiled dish-towel had
+been thrown over them.
+
+She lowered the gas and went upstairs. The hardness had, somehow, gone
+out of her when she thought of Willy Cameron.
+
+"Back bad again, is it?" she asked.
+
+"It's always bad. But I've got a pain in my left shoulder and down my
+arm that's driving me crazy. I couldn't wash the dishes."
+
+"Never mind the dishes. I'm not tired. Now crawl into bed and let me rub
+you."
+
+Mrs. Boyd complied. She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties,
+who had set out to conquer life and had been conquered by it. The
+hopeless drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by the
+incident of her widowhood, and stretched ahead hopelessly. She had
+accepted Dan's going to France resignedly, with neither protest nor
+undue anxiety. She had never been very close to Dan, although she
+loved him more than she did Edith. She was the sort of woman who has
+no fundamental knowledge of men. They had to be fed and mended for, and
+they had strange physical wants that made a great deal of trouble in the
+world. But mostly they ate and slept and went to work in the morning,
+and came home at night smelling of sweat and beer.
+
+There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life,
+however. And through it she had seen Edith well married, with perhaps
+a girl to do the house work, and a room where Edith's mother could fold
+her hands and sit in the long silences without thought that were her
+sanctuary against life.
+
+"Is that the place, mother?"
+
+"Yes." Edith's unwonted solicitude gave her courage.
+
+"Edie, I want to ask you something."
+
+"Well?" But the girl stiffened.
+
+"Lou hasn't been round, lately."
+
+"That's all over, mother."
+
+"You mean you've quarreled? Oh, Edie, and me planning you'd have a nice
+home and everything."
+
+"He never meant to marry me, if that's what you mean."
+
+Mrs. Boyd turned on her back impatiently.
+
+"You could have had him. He was crazy about you. Trouble is with you,
+you think you've got a fellow hard and fast, and you begin acting up.
+Then, first thing you know--"
+
+Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl. "Listen,
+mother," she said. "I give you my word, Lou'd run a mile if he thought
+any girl wanted to marry him. I know him better than you do. If any one
+ever does rope him in, he'll stick about three months, and then beat
+it."
+
+"I don't know why we have to have men, anyhow. Put out the gas, Edie.
+No, don't open the window. The night air makes me cough."
+
+Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen. Something
+would have to be done about the house. Dan was taking to staying out
+at nights, because the untidy rooms repelled him. And there was the
+question of food. Her mother had never learned to cook, and recently
+more and more of the food had been something warmed out of a tin. If
+only they could keep a girl, one who would scrub and wash dishes. There
+was a room on the third floor, an attic, full now of her mother's untidy
+harborings of years, that might be used for a servant. Or she could move
+up there, and they could get a roomer. The rent would pay a woman to
+come in now and then to clean up.
+
+She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had in
+mind was Willy Cameron. But the knowledge that he knew the Cardews
+had somehow changed all that. She couldn't picture him going from this
+sordid house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still, returning to it
+afterwards. She saw him there, at the Cardews, surrounded by bowing
+flunkies--a picture of wealth gained from the movies--and by women
+who moved indolently, trailing through long vistas of ball room and
+conservatory in low gowns without sleeves, and draped with ropes of
+pearls. Women who smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge for
+money.
+
+She hated the Cardews.
+
+On her way to her room she paused at her mother's door.
+
+"Asleep yet, mother?"
+
+"No. Feel like I'm not going to sleep at all."
+
+"Mother," she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, "we've got to
+change things around here. It isn't fair to Dan, for one thing. We've
+got to get a girl to do the work. And to do that we'll have to rent a
+room."
+
+She heard the thin figure twist impatiently.
+
+"I've never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I'm not going to let
+the neighbors begin looking down on me now."
+
+"Now, listen, mother--"
+
+"Go on away, Edie."
+
+"But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out all
+but three evenings a week. I don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the store
+isn't satisfied where he is. He's got a dog, and they haven't any yard.
+We've got a yard."
+
+"I won't be bothered with any dog," said the querulous voice, from the
+darkness.
+
+With a gesture of despair the girl turned away. What was the use,
+anyhow? Let them go on, then, her mother and Dan. Only let them let her
+go on, too. She had tried her best to change herself, the house, the
+whole rotten mess. But they wouldn't let her.
+
+Her mood of disgust continued the next morning. When, at eleven o'clock,
+Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at him
+somberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did it
+matter? So long as something took her for a little while away from
+the sordidness of home, its stale odors, its untidiness, its querulous
+inmates.
+
+"What's got into you lately, Edith?" he inquired, lowering his voice.
+"You used to be the best little pal ever. Now the other day, when I
+called up--"
+
+"Had the headache," she said laconically. "Well?"
+
+"Want to play around this evening?"
+
+She hesitated. Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be that
+night, and her face hardened. Had any one told Edith that she was
+beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, with
+his exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and his
+sentimental whistling, she would have laughed. But he gave her something
+that the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of self-respect. It
+was perhaps not so much that she cared for him, as that he enabled her
+to care more for herself.
+
+But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew.
+
+"I might, depending on what you've got to offer."
+
+"I've got a car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outside
+work, and the organization came over. I've been after it for six months.
+We can have a ride, and supper somewhere. How's the young man with the
+wooden leg?"
+
+"If you want to know I'll call him out and let him tell you."
+
+"Quick, aren't you?" He smiled down at where she stood, firmly
+entrenched behind a show case. "Well, don't fall in love with him.
+That's all. I'm a bad man when I'm jealous."
+
+He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him. He did
+not know, nor would have cared had he known, that her acceptance of his
+invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, and
+of the fact that Willy Cameron was dining at the Cardews that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Howard Cardew was in his dressing room, sitting before the fire. His
+man had put out his dinner clothes and retired, and Howard was sifting
+before the fire rather listlessly.
+
+In Grace's room, adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices.
+Before Lily's return, now and then when he was tired Grace and he had
+dined by the fire in her boudoir. It had been very restful. He was still
+in love with his wife, although, as in most marriages, there was one who
+gave more than the other. In this case it was Grace who gave, and Howard
+who received. But he loved her. He never thought of other women. Only
+his father had never let him forget her weaknesses.
+
+Sometimes he was afraid that he was looking at Grace with his father's
+eyes, rather than his own.
+
+He had put up a hard fight with his father. Not about Grace. That was
+over and done with, although it had been bad while it lasted. But his
+real struggle had been to preserve himself, to keep his faiths and his
+ideals, and even his personality. In the inessentials he had yielded
+easily, and so bought peace. Or perhaps a truce, of a sort. But for the
+essentials he was standing with a sort of dogged conviction that if he
+lowered his flag it would precipitate a crisis. He was not brilliant,
+but he was intelligent, progressive and kindly. He knew that his father
+considered him both stupid and obstinate.
+
+There was going to be a strike. The quarrel now was between Anthony's
+curt "Let them strike," and his own conviction that a strike at this
+time might lead to even worse things. The men's demands were exorbitant.
+No business, no matter how big, could concede them and live. But Howard
+was debating another phase of the situation.
+
+Not all the mills would go down. A careful canvass of some of the other
+independent concerns had shown the men eighty, ninety, even one hundred
+per cent, loyal. Those were the smaller plants, where there had always
+been a reciprocal good feeling between the owners and the men; there the
+men knew the owners, and the owners knew the men, who had been with them
+for years.
+
+But the Cardew Mills would go down. There had been no liaison between
+the Cardews and the workmen. The very magnitude of the business forbade
+that. And for many years, too, the Cardews had shown a gross callousness
+to the welfare of the laborers. Long ago he had urged on his father the
+progressive attitude of other steel men, but Anthony had jeered, and
+when Howard had forced the issue and gained concessions, it was too
+late. The old grievances remained in too many minds. To hate the Cardews
+bad become a habit. Their past sins would damn them now. The strike was
+wrong, a wicked thing. It was without reason and without aim. The men
+were knocking a hole in the boat that floated them. But--
+
+There was a tap at his door, and he called "Come in." From her babyhood
+Lily had had her own peculiar method of signaling that she stood
+without, a delicate rapid tattoo of finger nails on the panel. He
+watched smilingly for her entrance.
+
+"Well!" she said. "Thank goodness you haven't started to dress. I tried
+to get here earlier, but my hair wouldn't go up, I want to make a good
+impression to-night."
+
+"Is there a dinner on? I didn't know it."
+
+"Not a dinner. A young man. I came to see what you are going to wear."
+
+"Really! Well, I haven't a great variety. The ordinary dinner dress of a
+gentleman doesn't lend itself to any extraordinary ornamentation. If
+you like, I'll pin on that medal from the Iron and Steel--Who's coming,
+Lily?"
+
+"Grayson says grandfather's dining out."
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"What a piece of luck! I mean--you know what he'd say if I asked him not
+to dress for dinner."
+
+"Am I to gather that you are asking me?"
+
+"You wouldn't mind, would you? He hasn't any evening clothes."
+
+"Look here, Lily," said her father, sitting upright. "Who is coming here
+to-night? And why should he upset the habits of the entire family?"
+
+"Willy Cameron. You know, father. And he has the queerest ideas about
+us. Honestly. And I want him to like us, and it's such a good chance,
+with grandfather out."
+
+He ignored that.
+
+"How about our liking him?"
+
+"Oh, you'll like him. Everybody does. You will try to make a good
+impression, won't you, father?"
+
+He got up, and resting his hands on her shoulders, smiled down into her
+upturned face. "I will," he said. "But I think I should tell you that
+your anxiety arouses deep and black suspicions in my mind. Am I to
+understand that you have fixed your young affections on this Willy
+Cameron, and that you want your family to help you in your dark
+designs?"
+
+Lily laughed.
+
+"I love him," she said. "I really do. I could listen to him for hours.
+But people don't want to marry Willy Cameron. They just love him."
+
+There was born in Howard's mind a vision of a nice pink and white young
+man, quite sexless, whom people loved but did not dream of marrying.
+
+"I see," he said slowly. "Like a puppy."
+
+"Not at all like a puppy."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not subtle, my dear. Well, ring for Adams, and--you
+think he wouldn't care for the medal?"
+
+"I think he'd love it. He'd probably think some king gave it to you. I'm
+sure he believes that you and grandfather habitually hobnob with kings."
+She turned to go out. "He doesn't approve of kings."
+
+"You are making me extremely uneasy," was her father's shot. "I only
+hope I acquit myself well."
+
+"Hurry, then. He is sure to be exactly on the hour." Howard was still
+smiling slightly to himself when, a half-hour later, he descended
+the staircase. But he had some difficulty first in reconciling his
+preconceived idea of Willy with the tall young man, with the faint
+unevenness of step, who responded to his greeting so calmly and so
+easily. "We are always glad to see any of Lily's friends."
+
+"It is very good of you to let me come, sir."
+
+Why, the girl was blind. This was a man, a fine, up-standing fellow,
+with a clean-cut, sensitive face, and honest, almost beautiful eyes. How
+did women judge men, anyhow?
+
+And, try as he would, Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willy
+Cameron that night. He tried him out on a number of things. In religion,
+for instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the church had not
+come up fully during the war.
+
+"Religion isn't a matter only of churches any more," said Mr. Cameron.
+"It has to go out into the streets, I think, sir. It's a-well, Christ
+left the tabernacle, you remember."
+
+That was all right. Howard felt that himself sometimes. He was a
+vestryman at Saint Peter's, and although he felt very devout during the
+service, especially during the offertory, when the music filled the fine
+old building, he was often conscious that he shed his spirituality at
+the door, when he glanced at the sky to see what were the prospects for
+an afternoon's golf.
+
+In politics Willy Cameron was less satisfactory.
+
+"I haven't decided, yet," he said. "I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916, but
+although I suppose parties are necessary, I don't like to feel that I am
+party-bound. Anyhow, the old party lines are gone. I rather look--"
+
+He stopped. That terrible speech of Edith Boyd's still rankled.
+
+"Go on, Willy," said Lily. "I told them they'd love to you talk."
+
+"That's really all, sir," said Willy Cameron, unhappily. "I am a Scot,
+and to start a Scot on reform is fatal."
+
+"Ah, you believe in reform?"
+
+"We are not doing very well as we are, sir."
+
+"I should like extremely to know how you feel about things," said
+Howard, gravely.
+
+"Only this: So long as one party is, or is considered, the
+representative of capital, the vested interests, and the other of labor,
+the great mass of the people who are neither the one nor the other
+cannot be adequately represented."
+
+"And the solution?"
+
+"Perhaps a new party. Or better still, a liberalizing of the
+Republican."
+
+"Before long," said Lily suddenly, "there will be no state. There will
+be enough for everybody, and nobody will have too much."
+
+Howard smiled at her indulgently.
+
+"How do you expect to accomplish this ideal condition?"
+
+"That's the difficulty about it," said Lily, thoughtfully. "It means a
+revolution. It would be peaceful, though. The thing to do is to convince
+people that it is simple justice, and then they will divide what they
+have."
+
+"Why, Lily!" Grace's voice was anxious. "That's Socialism."
+
+But Howard only smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject. Every
+one had these attacks of idealism in youth. They were the exaggerated
+altruism of adolescence; a part of its dreams and aspirations. He
+changed the subject.
+
+"I like the boy," he said to Grace, later, over the cribbage board in
+the morning room. "He has character, and a queer sort of magnetism. It
+mightn't be a bad thing--"
+
+Grace was counting.
+
+"I forgot to tell you; I think she refused Pink Denslow the other day."
+
+"I rather gathered, from the way she spoke of young Cameron, that she
+isn't interested there either."
+
+"Not a bit," said Grace, complacently. "You needn't worry about him."
+
+Howard smiled. He was often conscious that after all the years of their
+common life, his wife's mind and his traveled along parallel lines that
+never met.
+
+Willy Cameron was extremely happy. He had brought his pipe along,
+although without much hope, but the moment they were settled by the
+library fire Lily had suggested it.
+
+"You know you can't talk unless you have it in your hand to wave
+around," she said. "And I want to know such a lot of things. Where you
+live, and all that."
+
+"I live in a boarding house. More house than board, really. And the
+work's all right. I'm going to study metallurgy some day. There are
+night courses at the college, only I haven't many nights."
+
+He had lighted his pipe, and kept his eyes on it mostly, or on the fire.
+He was afraid to look at Lily, because there was something he could not
+keep out of his eyes, but must keep from her. It had been both better
+and worse than he had anticipated, seeing her in her home. Lily herself
+had not changed. She was her wonderful self, in spite of her frock and
+her surroundings. But the house, her people, with their ease of wealth
+and position, Grace's slight condescension, the elaborate simplicity of
+dining, the matter-of-course-ness of the service. It was not that Lily
+was above him. That was ridiculous. But she was far removed from him.
+
+"There is something wrong with you, Willy," she said unexpectedly. "You
+are not happy, or you are not well. Which is it? You are awfully thin,
+for one thing."
+
+"I'm all right," he said, evading her eyes.
+
+"Are you lonely? I don't mean now, of course."
+
+"Well, I've got a dog. That helps. He's a helpless sort of mutt. I carry
+his meat home from the shop in my pocket, and I feel like a butcher's
+wagon, sometimes. But he's taken a queer sort of liking to me, and he is
+something to talk to."
+
+"Why didn't you bring him along?"
+
+Dogs were forbidden in the Cardew house, by old Anthony's order, as were
+pipes, especially old and beloved ones, but Lily was entirely reckless.
+
+"He did follow me. He's probably sitting on the doorstep now. I tried to
+send him back, but he's an obstinate little beast."
+
+Lily got up.
+
+"I am going to bring him in," she said. "And if you'll ring that bell
+we'll get him some dinner."
+
+"I'll get him, while you ring."
+
+Half an hour later Anthony Cardew entered his house. He had spent a
+miserable evening. Some young whipper snapper who employed a handful of
+men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew, was a clog in
+the wheel of progress. Not in so many words, but he had said: "Tempora
+mutantur, Mr. Cardew. And the wise employer meets those changes
+half-way."
+
+"You young fools want to go all the way."
+
+"Not at all. We'll meet them half-way, and stop."
+
+"Bah!" said Anthony Cardew, and had left the club in a temper. The club
+was going to the dogs, along with the rest of the world. There was only
+a handful of straight-thinking men like himself left in it. Lot of young
+cravens, letting their men dominate them and intimidate them.
+
+So he slammed into his house, threw off his coat and hat, and--sniffed.
+A pungent, acrid odor was floating through a partly closed door. Anthony
+Cardew flung open the door and entered.
+
+Before the fire, on a deep velvet couch, sat his granddaughter. Beside
+her was a thin young man in a gray suit, and the thin young man was
+waving an old pipe about, and saying:
+
+"Tempora mutantur, Lily. The wise employer--"
+
+"I am afraid, sir," said Anthony, in a terrible voice, "that you are
+not acquainted with the rules of my house. I object to pipes. There are
+cigars in the humidor behind you."
+
+"Very sorry, Mr. Cardew," Willy Cameron explained. "I didn't know. I'll
+put it away, sir."
+
+But Anthony was not listening. His eyes had traveled from an empty
+platter on the hearth-rug to a deep chair where Jinx, both warm and
+fed at the same time, and extremely distended with meat, lay sleeping.
+Anthony put out a hand and pressed the bell beside him.
+
+"I want you to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather." Lily was rather pale, but
+she had the Cardew poise. "He was in the camp when I was."
+
+Grayson entered on that, however, and Anthony pointed to Jinx.
+
+"Put that dog out," he said, and left the room, his figure rigid and
+uncompromising.
+
+"Grayson," Lily said, white to the lips, "that dog is to remain here.
+He's perfectly quiet. And, will you find Ellen and ask her to come
+here?"
+
+"Haven't I made enough trouble?" asked Willy Cameron, unhappily. "I can
+see her again, you know."
+
+"She's crazy to see you, Willy. And besides--"
+
+Grayson had gone, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"Don't you see?" she said. "The others have always submitted. I did,
+too. But I can't keep it up, Willy. I can't live here and let him treat
+me like that. Or my friends. I know what will happen. I'll run away,
+like Aunt Elinor."
+
+"You must not do that, Lily." He was very grave.
+
+"Why not? They think she is unhappy. She isn't. She ran away and married
+a man she cared about. I may call you up some day and ask you to marry
+me!" she added, less tensely. "You would be an awfully good husband, you
+know."
+
+She looked up at him, still angry, but rather amused with this new
+conceit.
+
+"Don't!"
+
+She was startled by the look on his face.
+
+"You see," he said painfully, "what only amuses you in that idea
+is--well, it doesn't amuse me, Lily."
+
+"I only meant--" she was very uncomfortable. "You are so real and
+dependable and kind, and I--"
+
+"I know what you mean. Like Jinx, there. I'm sorry! I didn't mean that.
+But you must not talk about marrying me unless you mean it. You see, I
+happen to care."
+
+"Willy!"
+
+"It won't hurt you to know, although I hadn't meant to tell you. And of
+course, you know, I am not asking you to marry me. Only I'd like you to
+feel that you can count on me, always. The one person a woman can count
+on is the man who loves her."
+
+And after a little silence:
+
+"You see, I know you are not in love with me. I cared from the
+beginning, but I always knew that."
+
+"I wish I did." She was rather close to tears. She had not felt at
+all like that with Pink. But, although she knew he was suffering, his
+quietness deceived her. She had the theory of youth about love, that it
+was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love
+demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and then asks. She could
+not know how he felt about his love for her, that it lay in a sort of
+cathedral shrine in his heart. There were holy days when saints left
+their niches and were shown in city streets, but until that holy day
+came they remained in the church.
+
+"You will remember that, won't you?"
+
+"I'll remember, Willy."
+
+"I won't be a nuisance, you know. I've never had any hope, so I won't
+make you unhappy. And don't be unhappy about me, Lily. I would rather
+love you, even knowing I can't have you, than be loved by anybody else."
+
+Perhaps, had he shown more hurt, he would have made it seem more real to
+her. But he was frightfully anxious not to cause her pain.
+
+"I'm really very happy, loving you," he added, and smiled down at her
+reassuringly. But he had for all that a wild primitive impulse which
+almost overcame him for a moment, to pick her up in his arms and carry
+her out the door and away with him. Somewhere, anywhere. Away from that
+grim old house, and that despotic little man, to liberty and happiness
+and--William Wallace Cameron.
+
+Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired
+painstakingly about his mother, and his uncle in California, and the
+Presbyterian minister. But she was uncomfortable and uneasy and refused
+to sit down, and Willy watched her furtively slipping out again with a
+slight frown. It was not right, somehow, this dividing of the world into
+classes, those who served and those who were served. But he had an idea
+that it was those below who made the distinction, nowadays. It was the
+masses who insisted on isolating the classes. They made kings, perhaps
+that they might some day reach up and pull them off their thrones. At
+the top of the stairs Ellen found Mademoiselle, who fixed her with cold
+eyes.
+
+"What were you doing down there," she demanded.
+
+"Miss Lily sent for me, to see that young man I told you about."
+
+"How dare you go down? And into the library?"
+
+"I've just told you," said Ellen, her face setting. "She sent for me."
+
+"Why didn't you say you were in bed?"
+
+"I'm no liar, Mademoiselle. Besides, I guess it's no crime to see a boy
+I've known all his life, and his mother and me like sisters."
+
+"You are a fool," said Mademoiselle, and turning clumped back in her
+bedroom slippers to her room.
+
+Ellen went up to her room. Heretofore she had given her allegiance to
+Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew, and in a more remote fashion, to Howard.
+But Ellen, crying angry tears in her small white bed that night, sensed
+a new division in the family, with Mademoiselle and Anthony and Howard
+and Grace on one side, and Lily standing alone, fighting valiantly for
+the right to live her own life, to receive her own friends, and the
+friends of her friends, even though one of these latter might be a
+servant in her own house.
+
+Yet Ellen, with the true snobbishness of the servants' hall, disapproved
+of Lily's course while she admired it.
+
+"But they're all against her," Ellen reflected. "The poor thing! And
+just because of Willy Cameron. Well, I'll stand by her, if they throw me
+out for it."
+
+In her romantic head there formed strange, delightful visions. Lily
+eloping with Willy Cameron, assisted by herself. Lily in the little
+Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her
+charm, and being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village, and
+the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first call, and were
+cards necessary?
+
+Into Ellen's not very hard-working but monotonous life had comes its
+first dream of romance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+For three weeks Lily did not see Louis Akers, nor did she go back to the
+house on Cardew Way. She hated doing clandestine or forbidden things,
+and she was, too, determined to add nothing to the tenseness she began
+to realize existed at home. She went through her days, struggling to fit
+herself again into the old environment, reading to her mother,
+lending herself with assumed enthusiasm to such small gayeties as Lent
+permitted, and doing penance in a dozen ways for that stolen afternoon
+with Louis Akers.
+
+She had been forbidden to see him again. It had come about by Grace's
+confession to Howard as to Lily's visit to the Doyles. He had not
+objected to that.
+
+"Unless Doyle talks his rubbish to her," he said. "She said something
+the other night that didn't sound like her. Was any one else there?"
+
+"An attorney named Akers," she said.
+
+And at that Howard had scowled.
+
+"She'd better keep away altogether," he observed, curtly. "She oughtn't
+to meet men like that."
+
+"Shall I tell her?"
+
+"I'll tell her," he said. And tell her he did, not too tactfully, and
+man-like shielding her by not telling her his reasons.
+
+"He's not the sort of man I want you to know," he finished. "That ought
+to be sufficient. Have you seen him since?"
+
+Lily flushed, but she did not like to lie.
+
+"I had tea with him one afternoon. I often have tea with men, father.
+You know that."
+
+"You knew I wouldn't approve, or you would have mentioned it."
+
+Because he felt that he had been rather ruthless with her, he stopped
+in at the jeweler's the next morning and sent her a tiny jeweled watch.
+Lily was touched and repentant. She made up her mind not to see Louis
+Akers again, and found a certain relief in the decision. She was
+conscious that he had a peculiar attraction for her, a purely emotional
+appeal. He made her feel alive. Even when she disapproved of him, she
+was conscious of him. She put him resolutely out of her mind, to have
+him reappear in her dreams, not as a lover, but as some one dominant and
+insistent, commanding her to do absurd, inconsequential things.
+
+Now and then she saw Willy Cameron, and they had gone back, apparently,
+to the old friendly relationship. They walked together, and once they
+went to the moving pictures, to Grace's horror. But there were no
+peanuts to eat, and instead of the jingling camp piano there was an
+orchestra, and it was all strangely different. Even Willy Cameron was
+different. He was very silent, and on the way home he did not once speak
+of the plain people.
+
+Louis Akers had both written and telephoned her, but she made excuses,
+and did not see him, and the last time he had hung up the receiver
+abruptly. She felt an odd mixture of relief and regret.
+
+Then, about the middle of April, she saw him again.
+
+Spring was well on by that time. Before the Doyle house on Cardew Way
+the two horse-chestnuts were showing great red-brown buds, ready to fall
+into leaf with the first warm day, and Elinor, assisted by Jennie,
+the elderly maid, was finishing her spring house-cleaning. The Cardew
+mansion showed window-boxes at each window, filled by the florist with
+spring flowers, to be replaced later by summer ones. A potted primrose
+sat behind the plate glass of the Eagle Pharmacy, among packets of
+flower seeds and spring tonics, its leaves occasionally nibbled by
+the pharmacy cat, out of some atavistic craving survived through long
+generations of city streets.
+
+The children's playground near the Lily furnace was ready; Howard Cardew
+himself had overseen the locations of the swings and chute-the-chutes.
+And at Friendship an army of workers was sprinkling and tamping the turf
+of the polo field. After two years of war, there was to be polo again
+that spring and early summer. The Cherry Hill Hunt team was still
+intact, although some of the visiting outfits had been badly shot to
+pieces by the war. But the war was over. It lay behind, a nightmare to
+be forgotten as soon as possible. It had left its train of misery and
+debt, but--spring had come.
+
+On a pleasant Monday, Lily motored out to the field with Pink Denslow.
+It had touched her that he still wanted her, and it had offered an
+escape from her own worries. She was fighting a sense of failure that
+day. It seemed impossible to reconcile the warring elements at home.
+Old Anthony and his son were quarreling over the strike, and Anthony was
+jibing constantly at Howard over the playground. It was not so much her
+grandfather's irritability that depressed her as his tyranny over the
+household, and his attitude toward her mother roused her to bitter
+resentment.
+
+The night before she had left the table after one of his scourging
+speeches, only to have what amounted to a scene with her mother
+afterward.
+
+"But I cannot sit by while he insults you, mother."
+
+"It is just his way. I don't mind, really. Oh, Lily, don't destroy what
+I have built up so carefully. It hurts your father so."
+
+"Sometimes," Lily said slowly, "he makes me think Aunt Elinor's husband
+was right. He believes a lot of things--"
+
+"What things?" Grace had asked, suspiciously.
+
+Lily hesitated.
+
+"Well, a sort of Socialism, for one thing, only it isn't exactly that.
+It's individualism, really, or I think so; the sort of thing that this
+house stifles." Grace was too horrified for speech. "I don't want to
+hurt you, mother, but don't you see? He tyrannizes over all of us, and
+it's bad for our souls. Why should he bellow at the servants? Or talk to
+you the way he did to-night?" She smiled faintly. "We're all drowning,
+and I want to swim, that's all. Mr. Doyle--"
+
+"You are talking nonsense," said Grace sharply. "You have got a lot of
+ideas from that wretched house, and now you think they are your own.
+Lily, I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles I shall take
+you abroad."
+
+Lily turned and walked out of the room, and there was something
+suggestive of old Anthony in the pitch of her shoulders. Her anger did
+not last long, but her uneasiness persisted. Already she knew that she
+was older in many ways than Grace; she had matured in the past year more
+than her mother in twenty, and she felt rather like a woman obeying the
+mandates of a child.
+
+But on that pleasant Monday she was determined to be happy.
+
+"Old world begins to look pretty, doesn't it?" said Pink, breaking in on
+her thoughts.
+
+"Lovely."
+
+"It's not a bad place to live in, after all," said Pink, trying to cheer
+his own rather unhappy humor. "There is always spring to expect, when we
+get low in winter. And there are horses and dogs, and--and blossoms on
+the trees, and all that." What he meant was, "If there isn't love."
+
+"You are perfectly satisfied with things just as they are, aren't you?"
+Lily asked, half enviously.
+
+"Well, I'd change some things." He stopped. He wasn't going to go round
+sighing like a furnace. "But it's a pretty good sort of place. I'm for
+it."
+
+"Have you sent your ponies out?"
+
+"Only two. I want to show you one I bought from the Government almost
+for nothing. Remount man piped me off. Light in flesh, rather, but fast.
+Handy, light mouth--all he needs is a bit of training."
+
+They had been in the open country for some time, but now they were
+approaching the Cardew's Friendship plant. The furnaces had covered the
+fields with a thin deposit of reddish ore dust. Such blighted grass
+as grew had already lost its fresh green, and the trees showed stunted
+blossoms. The one oasis of freshness was the polo field itself,
+carefully irrigated by underground pipes. The field, with its stables
+and grandstand, had been the gift of Anthony Cardew, thereby promoting
+much discussion with his son. For Howard had wanted the land for certain
+purposes of his own, to build a clubhouse for the men at the plant, with
+a baseball field. Finding his father obdurate in that, he had urged that
+the field be thrown open to the men and their families, save immediately
+preceding and during the polo season. But he had failed there, too.
+Anthony Cardew had insisted, and with some reason, that to use
+the grounds for band concerts and baseball games, for picnics and
+playgrounds, would ruin the turf for its legitimate purpose.
+
+Howard had subsequently found other land, and out of his own private
+means had carried out his plans, but the location was less desirable.
+And he knew what his father refused to believe, that the polo ground,
+taking up space badly needed for other purposes, was a continual
+grievance.
+
+Suddenly Pink stared ahead.
+
+"I say," he said, "have they changed the rule about that sort of thing?"
+
+He pointed to the field. A diamond had been roughly outlined on it with
+bags of sand, and a ball-game was in progress, boys playing, but a long
+line of men watching from the side lines.
+
+"I don't know, but it doesn't hurt anything."
+
+"Ruins the turf, that's all." He stopped the car and got out. "Look at
+this sign. It says 'ball-playing or any trespassing forbidden on these
+grounds.' I'll clear them off."
+
+"I wouldn't, Pink. They may be ugly."
+
+But he only smiled at her reassuringly, and went off. She watched him
+go with many misgivings, his sturdy young figure, his careful dress, his
+air of the young aristocrat, easy, domineering, unconsciously insolent.
+They would resent him, she knew, those men and boys. And after all, why
+should they not use the field? There was injustice in that sign.
+
+Yet her liking and real sympathy were with Pink.
+
+"Pink!" she called, "Come back here. Let them alone."
+
+He turned toward her a face slightly flushed with indignation and set
+with purpose.
+
+"Sorry. Can't do it, Lily. This sort of thing's got to be stopped."
+
+She felt, rather hopelessly, that he was wrong, but that he was right,
+too. The grounds were private property. She sat back and watched.
+
+Pink was angry. She could hear his voice, see his gestures. He was
+shooing them off like a lot of chickens, and they were laughing. The
+game had stopped, and the side lines were pressing forward. There was a
+moment's debate, with raised voices, a sullen muttering from the crowd,
+and the line closing into a circle. The last thing she saw before it
+closed was a man lunging at Pink, and his counter-feint. Then some one
+was down. If it was Pink he was not out, for there was fighting still
+going on. The laborers working on the grounds were running.
+
+Lily stood up in the car, pale and sickened. She was only vaguely
+conscious of a car that suddenly left the road, and dashed recklessly
+across the priceless turf, but she did see, and recognize, Louis Akers
+as he leaped from it and flinging men this way and that disappeared into
+the storm center. She could hear his voice, too, loud and angry, and see
+the quick dispersal of the crowd. Some of the men, foreigners, passed
+quite near to her, and eyed her either sullenly or with mocking smiles.
+She was quite oblivious of them. She got out and ran with shaking knees
+across to where Pink lay on the grass, his profile white and sharply
+chiseled, with two or three men bending over him.
+
+Pink was dead. Those brutes had killed him. Pink.
+
+He was not dead. He was moving his arms.
+
+Louis Akers straightened when he saw her and took off his hat.
+
+"Nothing to worry about, Miss Cardew," he said. "But what sort of
+idiocy--! Hello, old man, all right now?"
+
+Pink sat up, then rose stiffly and awkwardly. He had a cut over one eye,
+and he felt for his handkerchief.
+
+"Fouled me," he said. "Filthy lot, anyhow. Wonder they didn't walk on me
+when I was down." He turned to the grounds-keeper, who had come up. "You
+ought to know better than to let those fellows cut up this turf," he
+said angrily. "What're you here for anyhow?"
+
+But he was suddenly very sick. He looked at Lily, his face drawn and
+blanched.
+
+"Got me right," he muttered. "I--"
+
+"Get into my car," said Akers, not too amiably. "I'll drive you to the
+stables. I'll be back, Miss Cardew."
+
+Lily went back to the car and sat down. She was shocked and startled,
+but she was strangely excited. The crowd had beaten Pink, but it had
+obeyed Louis Akers like a master. He was a man. He was a strong man. He
+must be built of iron. Mentally she saw him again, driving recklessly
+over the turf, throwing the men to right and left, hoarse with anger,
+tall, dominant, powerful.
+
+It was more important that a man be a man than that he be a gentleman.
+
+After a little he drove back across the field, sending the car forward
+again at reckless speed. Some vision of her grandfather, watching the
+machine careening over the still soft and spongy turf and leaving deep
+tracks behind it, made her smile. Akers leaped out.
+
+"No need to worry about our young friend," he said cheerfully. "He is
+alternately being very sick at his stomach and cursing the poor working
+man. But I think I'd better drive you back. He'll be poor company, I'll
+say that."
+
+He looked at her, his bold eyes challenging, belying the amiable
+gentleness of his smile.
+
+"I'd better let him know."
+
+"I told him. He isn't strong for me. Always hate the fellow who saves
+you, you know. But he didn't object."
+
+Lily moved into his car obediently. She felt a strange inclination to do
+what this man wanted. Rather, it was an inability to oppose him. He went
+on, big, strong, and imperious. And he carried one along. It was easy
+and queer. But she did, unconsciously, what she had never done with Pink
+or any other man; she sat as far away from him on the wide seat as she
+could.
+
+He noticed that, and smiled ahead, over the wheel. He had been
+infuriated over her avoidance of him, but if she was afraid of him--
+
+"Bully engine in this car. Never have to change a gear."
+
+"You certainly made a road through the field."
+
+"They'll fix that, all right. Are you warm enough?"
+
+"Yes, thank you."
+
+"You have been treating me very badly, you know, Miss Cardew."
+
+"I have been frightfully busy."
+
+"That's not true, and you know it. You've been forbidden to see me,
+haven't you?"
+
+"I have been forbidden to go back to Cardew Way."
+
+"They don't know about me, then?"
+
+"There isn't very much to know, is there?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't fence with me," he said impatiently. "I told you
+once I was frank. I want you to answer one question. If this thing
+rested with you, would you see me again?"
+
+"I think I would, Mr. Akers," she said honestly.
+
+Had she ever known a man like the one beside her, she would not have
+given him that opportunity. He glanced sharply around, and then suddenly
+stopped the car and turned toward her.
+
+"I'm crazy about you, and you know it," he said. And roughly, violently,
+he caught her to him and kissed her again and again. Her arms were
+pinned to her sides, and she was helpless. After a brief struggle to
+free herself she merely shut her eyes and waited for him to stop.
+
+"I'm mad about you," he whispered.
+
+Then he freed her. Lily wanted to feel angry, but she felt only
+humiliated and rather soiled. There were men like that, then, men who
+gave way to violent impulses, who lost control of themselves and had to
+apologize afterwards. She hated him, but she was sorry for him, too. He
+would have to be so humble. She was staring ahead, white and waiting for
+his explanation, when he released the brake and started the car forward
+slowly.
+
+"Well?" he said, with a faint smile.
+
+"You will have to apologize for that, Mr. Akers."
+
+"I'm damned if I will. That man back there, Denslow--he's the sort who
+would kiss a girl and then crawl about it afterwards. I won't. I'm not
+sorry. A strong man can digest his own sins. I kissed you because I
+wanted to. It wasn't an impulse. I meant to when we started. And you're
+only doing the conventional thing and pretending to be angry. You're not
+angry. Good God, girl, be yourself once in a while."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand you." Her voice was haughty. "And I must
+ask you to stop the car and let me get out."
+
+"I'll do nothing of the sort, of course. Now get this straight, Miss
+Cardew. I haven't done you any harm. I may have a brutal way of showing
+that I'm crazy about you, but it's my way. I'm a man, and I'm no hand
+kisser."
+
+And when she said nothing:
+
+"You think I'm unrestrained, and I am, in a way. But if I did what I
+really want to do, I'd not take you home at all. I'd steal you. You've
+done something to me, God knows what."
+
+"Then I can only say I'm sorry," Lily said slowly.
+
+She felt strangely helpless and rather maternal. With all his strength
+this sort of man needed to be protected from himself. She felt no
+answering thrill whatever to his passion, but as though, having told her
+he loved her, he had placed a considerable responsibility in her hands.
+
+"I'll be good now," he said. "Mind, I'm not sorry. But I don't want to
+worry you."
+
+He made no further overtures to her during the ride, but he was neither
+sulky nor sheepish. He feigned an anxiety as to the threatened strike,
+and related at great length and with extreme cleverness of invention his
+own efforts to prevent it.
+
+"I've a good bit of influence with the A.F.L.," he said. "Doyle's in bad
+with them, but I'm still solid. But it's coming, sure as shooting. And
+they'll win, too."
+
+He knew women well, and he saw that she was forgiving him. But she would
+not forget. He had a cynical doctrine, to the effect that a woman's
+first kiss of passion left an ineradicable mark on her, and he was quite
+certain that Lily had never been so kissed before.
+
+Driving through the park he turned to her:
+
+"Please forgive me," he said, his mellow voice contrite and
+supplicating. "You've been so fine about it that you make me ashamed."
+
+"I would like to feel that it wouldn't happen again: That's all."
+
+"That means you intend to see me again. But never is a long word. I'm
+afraid to promise. You go to my head, Lily Cardew." They were halted
+by the traffic, and it gave him a chance to say something he had been
+ingeniously formulating in his mind. "I've known lots of girls. I'm no
+saint. But you are different. You're a good woman. You could do anything
+you wanted with me, if you cared to."
+
+And because she was young and lovely, and because he was always the
+slave of youth and beauty, he meant what he said. It was a lie, but he
+was lying to himself also, and his voice held unmistakable sincerity.
+But even then he was watching her, weighing the effect of his words on
+her. He saw that she was touched.
+
+He was very well pleased with himself on his way home. He left the
+car at the public garage, and walked, whistling blithely, to his small
+bachelor apartment. He was a self-indulgent man, and his rooms were
+comfortable to the point of luxury. In the sitting room was a desk, as
+clean and orderly as Doyle's was untidy. Having put on his dressing gown
+he went to it, and with a sheet of paper before him sat for some time
+thinking.
+
+He found his work irksome at times. True, it had its interest. He was
+the liaison between organized labor, which was conservative in the main,
+and the radical element, both in and out of the organization. He played
+a double game, and his work was always the same, to fan the discontent
+latently smoldering in every man's soul into a flame. And to do this he
+had not Doyle's fanaticism. Personally, Louis Akers found the world a
+pretty good place. He hated the rich because they had more than he had,
+but he scorned the poor because they had less. And he liked the feeling
+of power he had when, on the platform, men swayed to his words like
+wheat to a wind.
+
+Personal ambition was his fetish, as power was Anthony Cardew's.
+Sometimes he walked past the exclusive city clubs, and he dreamed of a
+time when he, too, would have the entree to them. But time was passing.
+He was thirty-three years old when Jim Doyle crossed his path, and the
+clubs were as far away as ever. It was Doyle who found the weak place
+in his armor, and who taught him that when one could not rise it was
+possible to pull others down.
+
+But it was Woslosky, the Americanized Pole; who had put the thing in a
+more appealing form.
+
+"Our friend Doyle to the contrary," he said cynically, "we cannot hope
+to contend against the inevitable. The few will always govern the many,
+in the end. It will be the old cycle, autocracy, anarchy, and then
+democracy; but out of this last comes always the one man who crowns
+himself or is crowned. One of the people. You, or myself, it may be."
+
+The Pole had smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Akers did not go to work immediately. He sat for some time, a cigarette
+in his hand, his eyes slightly narrowed. He believed that he could marry
+Lily Cardew. It would take time and all his skill, but he believed he
+could do it. His mind wandered to Lily herself, her youth and charm, her
+soft red mouth, the feel of her warm young body in his arms. He brought
+himself up sharply. Where would such a marriage take him?
+
+He pondered the question pro and con. On the one hand the Cardews, on
+the other, Doyle and a revolutionary movement. A revolution would be
+interesting and exciting, and there was strong in him the desire to pull
+down. But revolution was troublesome. It was violent and bloody. Even if
+it succeeded it would be years before the country would be stabilized.
+This other, now--
+
+He sat low in his chair, his long legs stretched out in his favorite
+position, and dreamed. He would not play the fool like Doyle. He would
+conciliate the family. In the end he would be put up at the clubs; he
+might even play polo. His thoughts wandered to Pink Denslow at the polo
+grounds, and he grinned.
+
+"Young fool!" he reflected. "If I can't beat his time--" He ordered
+dinner to be sent up, and mixed himself a cocktail, using the utmost
+care in its preparation. Drinking it, he eyed himself complacently in
+the small mirror over the mantel. Yes, life was not bad. It was damned
+interesting. It was a game. No, it was a race where a man could so hedge
+his bets that he stood to gain, whoever won.
+
+When there was a knock at the door he did not turn. "Come in," he said.
+
+But it was not the waiter. It was Edith Boyd. He saw her through the
+mirror, and so addressed her.
+
+"Hello, sweetie," he said. Then he turned. "You oughtn't to come here,
+Edith. I've told you about that."
+
+"I had to see you, Lou."
+
+"Well, take a good look, then," he said. Her coming fitted in well with
+the complacence of his mood. Yes, life was good, so long as it held
+power, and drink, and women.
+
+He stooped to kiss her, but although she accepted the caress, she did
+not return it.
+
+"Not mad at me, Miss Boyd, are you?"
+
+"No. Lou, I'm frightened!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+On clear Sundays Anthony Cardew played golf all day. He kept his
+religious observances for bad weather, but at such times as he attended
+service he did it with the decorum and dignity of a Cardew, who bowed to
+his God but to nothing else. He made the responses properly and with a
+certain unction, and sat during the sermon with a vigilant eye on the
+choir boys, who wriggled. Now and then, however, the eye wandered to
+the great stained glass window which was a memorial to his wife. It said
+beneath: "In memoriam, Lilian Lethbridge Cardew."
+
+He thought there was too much yellow in John the Baptist. On the Sunday
+afternoon following her ride into the city with Louis Akers, Lily found
+herself alone. Anthony was golfing and Grace and Howard had motored out
+of town for luncheon. In a small office near the rear of the hall the
+second man dozed, waiting for the doorbell. There would be people in
+for tea later, as always on Sunday afternoons; girls and men, walking
+through the park or motoring up in smart cars, the men a trifle bored
+because they were not golfing or riding, the girls chattering about the
+small inessentials which somehow they made so important.
+
+Lily was wretchedly unhappy. For one thing, she had begun to feel that
+Mademoiselle was exercising over her a sort of gentle espionage, and she
+thought her grandfather was behind it. Out of sheer rebellion she had
+gone again to the house on Cardew Way, to find Elinor out and Jim Doyle
+writing at his desk. He had received her cordially, and had talked to
+her as an equal. His deferential attitude had soothed her wounded pride,
+and she had told him something--very little--of the situation at home.
+
+"Then you are still forbidden to come here?"
+
+"Yes. As if what happened years ago matters now, Mr. Doyle."
+
+He eyed her.
+
+"Don't let them break your spirit, Lily," he had said. "Success can
+make people very hard. I don't know myself what success would do to
+me. Plenty, probably." He smiled. "It isn't the past your people won't
+forgive me, Lily. It's my failure to succeed in what they call success."
+
+"It isn't that," she had said hastily. "It is--they say you are
+inflammatory. Of course they don't understand. I have tried to tell
+them, but--"
+
+"There are fires that purify," he had said, smilingly.
+
+She had gone home, discontented with her family's lack of vision, and
+with herself.
+
+She was in a curious frame of mind. The thought of Louis Akers repelled
+her, but she thought of him constantly. She analyzed him clearly enough;
+he was not fine and not sensitive. He was not even kind. Indeed, she
+felt that he could be both cruel and ruthless. And if she was the first
+good woman he had ever known, then he must have had a hateful past.
+
+The thought that he had kissed her turned her hot with anger and shame
+at such times, but the thought recurred.
+
+Had she had occupation perhaps she might have been saved, but she had
+nothing to do. The house went on with its disciplined service; Lent had
+made its small demands as to church services, and was over. The weather
+was bad, and the golf links still soggy with the spring rains. Her
+wardrobe was long ago replenished, and that small interest gone.
+
+And somehow there had opened a breach between herself and the little
+intimate group that had been hers before the war. She wondered sometimes
+what they would think of Louis Akers. They would admire him, at first,
+for his opulent good looks, but very soon they would recognize what she
+knew so well--the gulf between him and the men of their own world, so
+hard a distinction to divine, yet so real for all that. They would know
+instinctively that under his veneer of good manners was something coarse
+and crude, as she did, and they would politely snub him. She had no name
+and no knowledge for the urge in the man that she vaguely recognized and
+resented. But she had a full knowledge of the obsession he was becoming
+in her mind.
+
+"If I could see him here," she reflected, more than once, "I'd get over
+thinking about him. It's because they forbid me to see him. It's sheer
+contrariness."
+
+But it was not, and she knew it. She had never heard of his theory about
+the mark on a woman.
+
+She was hating herself very vigorously on that Sunday afternoon.
+Mademoiselle and she had lunched alone in Lily's sitting-room, and
+Mademoiselle had dozed off in her chair afterwards, a novel on her knee.
+Lily was wandering about downstairs when the telephone rang, and she had
+a quick conviction that it was Louis Akers. It was only Willy Cameron,
+however, asking her if she cared to go for a walk.
+
+"I've promised Jinx one all day," he explained, "and we might as well
+combine, if you are not busy."
+
+She smiled at that.
+
+"I'd love it," she said. "In the park?"
+
+"Wait a moment." Then: "Yes, Jinx says the park is right."
+
+His wholesome nonsense was good for her. She drew a long breath.
+
+"You are precisely the person I need to-day," she said. "And come soon,
+because I shall have to be back at five."
+
+When he came he was very neat indeed, and most scrupulous as to his
+heels being polished. He was also slightly breathless.
+
+"Had to sew a button on my coat," he explained. "Then I found I'd sewed
+in one of my fingers and had to start all over again."
+
+Lily was conscious of a change in him. He looked older, she thought, and
+thinner. His smile, when it came, was as boyish as ever, but he did
+not smile so much, and seen in full daylight he was shabby. He seemed
+totally unconscious of his clothes, however.
+
+"What do you do with yourself, Willy?" she asked. "I mean when you are
+free?"
+
+"Read and study. I want to take up metallurgy pretty soon. There's a
+night course at the college."
+
+"We use metallurgists in the mill. When you are ready I know father
+would be glad to have you."
+
+He flushed at that.
+
+"Thanks," he said. "I'd rather get in, wherever I go, by what I know,
+and not who I know."
+
+She felt considerably snubbed, but she knew his curious pride. After a
+time, while he threw a stick into the park lake and Jinx retrieved it,
+he said:
+
+"What do you do with yourself these days, Lily?"
+
+"Nothing. I've forgotten how to work, I'm afraid. And I'm not very
+happy, Willy. I ought to be, but I'm just--not."
+
+"You've learned what it is to be useful," he observed gravely, "and now
+it hardly seems worth while just to live, and nothing else. Is that it?"
+
+"I suppose."
+
+"Isn't there anything you can do?"
+
+"They won't let me work, and I hate to study."
+
+There was a silence. Willy Cameron sat on the bench, bent and staring
+ahead. Jinx brought the stick, and, receiving no attention, insinuated a
+dripping body between his knees. He patted the dog's head absently.
+
+"I have been thinking about the night I went to dinner at your house,"
+he said at last. "I had no business to say what I said then. I've got
+a miserable habit of saying just what comes into my mind, and I've been
+afraid, ever since, that it would end in your not wanting to see me
+again. Just try to forget it happened, won't you?"
+
+"I knew it was an impulse, but it made me very proud, Willy."
+
+"All right," he said quietly. "And that's that. Now about your
+grandfather. I've had him on my mind, too. He is an old man, and
+sometimes they are peculiar. I am only sorry I upset him. And you are to
+forget that, too."
+
+In spite of herself she laughed, rather helplessly.
+
+"Is there anything I am to remember?"
+
+He smiled too, and straightened himself, like a man who has got
+something off his chest.
+
+"Certainly there is, Miss Cardew. Me. Myself. I want you to know that
+I'm around, ready to fetch and carry like Jinx here, and about as
+necessary, I suppose. We are a good bit alike, Jinx and I. We're
+satisfied with a bone, and we give a lot of affection. You won't mind a
+bone now and then?"
+
+His cheerful tone reassured the girl. There was no real hurt, then.
+
+"That's nice of you, you know."
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "you know there are men who prefer a dream to
+reality. Perhaps I'm like that. Anyhow, that's enough about me. Do you
+know that there is a strike coming?"
+
+"Yes. I ought to tell you, Willy. I think the men are right."
+
+He stared at her incredulously.
+
+"Right?" he said. "Why, my dear child, most of them want to strike about
+as much as I want delirium tremens. I've talked to them, and I know."
+
+"A slave may be satisfied if he has never known freedom."
+
+"Oh, fudge," said Willy Cameron, rudely. "Where do you get all that?
+You're quoting; aren't you? The strike, any strike, is an acknowledgment
+of weakness. It is a resort to the physical because the collective
+mentality of labor isn't as strong as the other side. Or labor thinks it
+isn't, which amounts to the same thing. And there is a fine line between
+the fellow who fights for a principle and the one who knocks people down
+to show how strong he is."
+
+"This is a fight for a principle, Willy."
+
+"Fine little Cardew you are!" he scoffed. "Don't make any mistake. There
+have been fights by labor for a principle, and the principle won, as
+good always wins over evil. But this is different. It's a direct play
+by men who don't realize what they are doing, into the hands of a lot
+of--well, we'll call them anarchists. It's Germany's way of winning the
+war. By indirection."
+
+"If by anarchists you mean men like my uncle--"
+
+"I do," he said grimly. "That's a family accident and you can't help it.
+But I do mean Doyle. Doyle and a Pole named Woslosky, and a scoundrel of
+an attorney here in town, named Akers, among others."
+
+"Mr. Akers is a friend of mine, Willy."
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"If they have been teaching you their dirty doctrines, Lily," he said
+at last, "I can only tell you this. They can disguise it in all the fine
+terms they want. It is treason, and they are traitors. I know. I've had
+a talk with the Chief of Police."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"How well do you know Louis Akers?"
+
+"Not very well." But there were spots of vivid color flaming in her
+cheeks. He drew a long breath.
+
+"I can't retract it," he said. "I didn't know, of course. Shall we start
+back?"
+
+They were very silent as they walked. Willy Cameron was pained and
+anxious. He knew Akers' type rather than the man himself, but he knew
+the type well. Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal who
+attracted girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made passionate,
+pagan love promiscuously, and put the responsibility for the misery they
+caused on the Creator because He had made them as they were.
+
+He was agonized by another train of thought. For him Lily had always
+been something fine, beautiful, infinitely remote. There were other
+girls, girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less,
+with the soil of life. Even when they kept clean they saw it all
+about them, and looked on it with shrewd, sophisticated eyes. But Lily
+was--Lily. The very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as he had seen
+him look at Edith Boyd made him cold with rage.
+
+"Do you mind if I say something?"
+
+"That sounds disagreeable. Is it?"
+
+"Maybe, but I'm going to anyhow, Lily. I don't like to think of you
+seeing Akers. I don't know anything against him, and I suppose if I did
+I wouldn't tell you. But he is not your sort."
+
+An impulse of honesty prevailed with her.
+
+"I know that as well as you do. I know him better than you do. But, he
+stands for something, at least," she added rather hotly. "None of the
+other men I know stand for anything very much. Even you, Willy."
+
+"I stand for the preservation of my country," he said gravely. "I mean,
+I represent a lot of people who--well, who don't believe that change
+always means progress, and who do intend that the changes Doyle and
+Akers and that lot want they won't get. I don't believe--if you say you
+want what they want--that you know what you are talking about."
+
+"Perhaps I am more intelligent than you think I am."
+
+He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of
+arguing with her.
+
+"Do your people know that you are seeing Louis Akers!"
+
+"You are being rather solicitous, aren't you?"
+
+"I am being rather anxious. I wouldn't dare, of course, if we hadn't
+been such friends. But Akers is wrong, wrong every way, and I have to
+tell you that, even if it means that you will never see me again. He
+takes a credulous girl--"
+
+"Thank you!"
+
+"And talks bunk to her and possibly makes love to her--"
+
+"Haven't we had enough of Mr. Akers?" Lily asked coldly. "If you cannot
+speak of anything else, please don't talk."
+
+The result of which was a frozen silence until they reached the house.
+
+"Good-by," she said primly. "It was very nice of you to call me up.
+Good-by, Jinx." She went up the steps, leaving him bare-headed and
+rather haggard, looking after her.
+
+He took the dog and went out into the country on foot, tramping through
+the mud without noticing it, and now and then making little despairing
+gestures. He was helpless. He had cut himself off from her like a fool.
+Akers. Akers and Edith Boyd. Other women. Akers and other women. And now
+Lily. Good God, Lily!
+
+Jinx was tired. He begged to be carried, planting two muddy feet on his
+master's shabby trouser leg, and pleading with low whines. Willy Cameron
+stooped and, gathering up the little animal, tucked him under his arm.
+When it commenced to rain he put him under his coat and plunged his head
+through the mud and wet toward home.
+
+Lily had entered the house in a white fury, but a moment later she was
+remorseful. For one thing, her own anger bewildered her. After all, he
+had meant well, and it was like him to be honest, even if it cost him
+something he valued.
+
+She ran to the door and looked around for him, but he had disappeared.
+She went in again, remorseful and unhappy. What had come over her to
+treat him like that? He had looked almost stricken.
+
+"Mr. Akers is calling, Miss Cardew," said the footman. "He is in the
+drawing-room."
+
+Lily went in slowly.
+
+Louis Akers had been waiting for some time. He had lounged into the
+drawing-room, with an ease assumed for the servant's benefit, and had
+immediately lighted a cigarette. That done, and the servant departed, he
+had carefully appraised his surroundings. He liked the stiff formality
+of the room. He liked the servant in his dark maroon livery. He
+liked the silence and decorum. Most of all, he liked himself in these
+surroundings. He wandered around, touching a bowl here, a vase there,
+eyeing carefully the ancient altar cloth that lay on a table, the old
+needle-work tapestry on the chairs.
+
+He saw himself fitted into this environment, a part of it; coming
+down the staircase, followed by his wife, and getting into his waiting
+limousine; sitting at the head of his table, while the important men of
+the city listened to what he had to say. It would come, as sure as God
+made little fishes. And Doyle was a fool. He, Louis Akers, would marry
+Lily Cardew and block that other game. But he would let the Cardews
+know who it was who had blocked it and saved their skins. They'd have to
+receive him after that; they would cringe to him.
+
+Then, unexpectedly, he had one of the shocks of his life. He had gone
+to the window and through it he saw Lily and Willy Cameron outside. He
+clutched at the curtain and cursed under his breath, apprehensively.
+But Willy Cameron did not come in; Akers watched him up the street with
+calculating, slightly narrowed eyes. The fact that Lily Cardew knew the
+clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an unexpected complication. His surprise
+was lost in anxiety. But Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather
+pale and unsmiling, found him facing the door, his manner easy, his head
+well up, and drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height. She found
+her poise entirely gone, and it was he who spoke first.
+
+"I know," he said. "You didn't ask me, but I came anyhow."
+
+She held out her hand rather primly.
+
+"It is very good of you to come."
+
+"Good! I couldn't stay away."
+
+He took her outstretched hand, smiling down at her, and suddenly made an
+attempt to draw her to him.
+
+"You know that, don't you?"
+
+"Please!"
+
+He let her go at once. He had not played his little game so long without
+learning its fine points. There were times to woo a woman with a strong
+arm, and there were other times that required other methods.
+
+"Right-o," he said, "I'm sorry. I've been thinking about you so much
+that I daresay I have got farther in our friendship than I should. Do
+you know that you haven't been out of my mind since that ride we had
+together?"
+
+"Really? Would you like some tea?"
+
+"Thanks, yes. Do you dislike my telling you that?"
+
+She rang the bell, and then stood Lacing him.
+
+"I don't mind, no. But I am trying very hard to forget that ride, and I
+don't want to talk about it."
+
+"When a beautiful thing comes into a man's life he likes to remember
+it."
+
+"How can you call it beautiful?"
+
+"Isn't it rather fine when two people, a man and a woman, suddenly find
+a tremendous attraction that draws them together, in spite of the fact
+that everything else is conspiring to keep them apart?"
+
+"I don't know," she said uncertainly. "It just seemed all wrong,
+somehow."
+
+"An honest impulse is never wrong."
+
+"I don't want to discuss it, Mr. Akers. It is over."
+
+While he was away from her, her attraction for him loomed less than the
+things she promised, of power and gratified ambition. But he found her,
+with her gentle aloofness, exceedingly appealing, and with the tact of
+the man who understands women he adapted himself to her humor.
+
+"You are making me very unhappy; Miss Lily," he said. "If you'll only
+promise to let me see you now and then, I'll promise to be as mild as
+dish-water. Will you promise?"
+
+She was still struggling, still remembering Willy Cameron, still trying
+to remember all the things that Louis Akers was not.
+
+"I think I ought not to see you at all."
+
+"Then," he said slowly, "you are going to cut me off from the one decent
+influence in my life."
+
+She was still revolving that in her mind when tea came. Akers, having
+shot his bolt, watched with interest the preparation for the little
+ceremony, the old Georgian teaspoons, the Crown Derby cups, the
+bell-shaped Queen Anne teapot, beautifully chased, the old pierced sugar
+basin. Almost his gaze was proprietary. And he watched Lily, her casual
+handling of those priceless treasures, her taking for granted of service
+and beauty, her acceptance of quality because she had never known
+anything else, watched her with possessive eyes.
+
+When the servant had gone, he said:
+
+"You are being very nice to me, in view of the fact that you did not
+ask me to come. And also remembering that your family does not happen to
+care about me."
+
+"They are not at home."
+
+"I knew that, or I should not have come. I don't want to make trouble
+for you, child." His voice was infinitely caressing. "As it happens, I
+know your grandfather's Sunday habits, and I met your father and mother
+on the road going out of town at noon. I knew they had not come back."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+He smiled down at her. "I have ways of knowing quite a lot of things.
+Especially when they are as vital to me as this few minutes alone with
+you."
+
+He bent toward her, as he sat behind the tea table.
+
+"You know how vital this is to me, don't you?" he said. "You're not
+going to cut me off, are you?"
+
+He stood over her, big, compelling, dominant, and put his hand under her
+chin.
+
+"I am insane about you," he whispered, and waited.
+
+Slowly, irresistibly, she lifted her face to his kiss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+On the first day of May, William Wallace Cameron moved his trunk, the
+framed photograph of his mother, eleven books, an alarm clock and Jinx
+to the Boyd house. He went for two reasons. First, after his initial
+call at the dreary little house, he began to realize that something had
+to be done in the Boyd family. The second reason was his dog.
+
+He began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family as
+soon as he had met Mrs. Boyd.
+
+"I don't know what's come over the children," Mrs. Boyd said, fretfully.
+She sat rocking persistently in the dreary little parlor. Her chair
+inched steadily along the dull carpet, and once or twice she brought up
+just as she was about to make a gradual exit from the room. "They act so
+queer lately."
+
+She hitched the chair into place again. Edith had gone out. It was her
+idea of an evening call to serve cakes and coffee, and a strong and
+acrid odor was seeping through the doorway. "There's Dan come home from
+the war, and when he gets back from the mill he just sits and stares
+ahead of him. He won't even talk about the war, although he's got a lot
+to tell."
+
+"It takes some time for the men who were over to get settled down again,
+you know."
+
+"Well, there's Edith," continued the querulous voice. "You'd think the
+cat had got her tongue, too. I tell you, Mr. Cameron, there are meals
+here when if I didn't talk there wouldn't be a word spoken."
+
+Mr. Cameron looked up. It had occurred to him lately, not precisely that
+a cat had got away with Edith's tongue, but that something undeniably
+had got away with her cheerfulness. There were entire days in the store
+when she neglected to manicure her nails, and stood looking out past the
+fading primrose in the window to the street. But there were no longer
+any shrewd comments on the passers-by.
+
+"Of course, the house isn't very cheerful," sighed Mrs. Boyd. "I'm a
+sick woman, Mr. Cameron. My back hurts most of the time. It just aches
+and aches."
+
+"I know," said Mr. Cameron. "My mother has that, sometimes. If you like
+I'll mix you up some liniment, and Miss Edith can bring it to you."
+
+"Thanks. I've tried most everything. Edith wants to rent a room, so we
+can keep a hired girl, but it's hard to get a girl. They want all the
+money on earth, and they eat something awful. That's a nice friendly dog
+of yours, Mr. Cameron."
+
+It was perhaps Jinx who decided Willy Cameron. Jinx was at that moment
+occupying the only upholstered chair, but he had developed a strong
+liking for the frail little lady with the querulous voice and the shabby
+black dress. He had, indeed, insisted shortly after his entrance
+on leaping into her lap, and had thus sat for some time, completely
+eclipsing his hostess.
+
+"Just let him sit," Mrs. Boyd said placidly. "I like a dog. And he can't
+hurt this skirt I've got on. It's on its last legs."
+
+With which bit of unconscious humor Willy Cameron had sat down.
+Something warm and kindly glowed in his heart. He felt that dogs have a
+curious instinct for knowing what lies concealed in the human heart, and
+that Jinx had discovered something worth while in Edith's mother.
+
+It was later in the evening, however, that he said, over Edith's bakery
+cakes and her atrocious coffee:
+
+"If you really mean that about a roomer, I know of one." He glanced at
+Edith. "Very neat. Careful with matches. Hard to get up in the morning,
+but interesting, highly intelligent, and a clever talker. That's his one
+fault. When he is interested in a thing he spouts all over the place."
+
+"Really?" said Mrs. Boyd. "Well, talk would be a change here. He sounds
+kind of pleasant. Who is he?"
+
+"This paragon of beauty and intellect sits before you," said Willy
+Cameron.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me. I didn't recognize you by the description,"
+said Mrs. Boyd, unconsciously. "Well, I don't know. I'd like to have
+this dog around."
+
+Even Edith laughed at that. She had been very silent all evening,
+sitting most of the time with her hands in her lap, and her eyes on
+Willy Cameron. Rather like Jinx's eyes they were, steady, unblinking,
+loyal, and with something else in common with Jinx which Willy Cameron
+never suspected.
+
+"I wouldn't come, if I were you," she said, unexpectedly.
+
+"Why, Edie, you've been thinking of asking him right along."
+
+"We don't know how to keep a house," she persisted, to him. "We can't
+even cook--you know that's rotten coffee. I'll show you the room, if you
+like, but I won't feel hurt if you don't take it, I'll be worried if you
+do."
+
+Mrs. Boyd watched them perplexedly as they went out, the tall young man
+with his uneven step, and Edith, who had changed so greatly in the last
+few weeks, and blew hot one minute and cold the next. Now that she had
+seen Willy Cameron, Mrs. Boyd wanted him to come. He would bring new
+life into the little house. He was cheerful. He was not glum like Dan or
+discontented like Edie. And the dog--She got up slowly and walked over
+to the chair where Jinx sat, eyes watchfully on the door.
+
+"Nice Jinx," she said, and stroked his head with a thin and stringy
+hand. "Nice doggie."
+
+She took a cake from the plate and fed it to him, bit by bit. She felt
+happier than she had for a long time, since her children were babies and
+needed her.
+
+"I meant it," said Edith, on the stairs. "You stay away. We're a poor
+lot, and we're unlucky, too. Don't get mixed up with us."
+
+"Maybe I'm going to bring you luck."
+
+"The best luck for me would be to fall down these stairs and break my
+neck."
+
+He looked at her anxiously, and any doubts he might have had, born of
+the dreariness, the odors of stale food and of the musty cellar below,
+of the shabby room she proceeded to show him, died in an impulse to
+somehow, some way, lift this small group of people out of the slough of
+despondency which seemed to be engulfing them all.
+
+"Why, what's the matter with the room?" he said. "Just wait until I've
+got busy in it! I'm a paper hanger and a painter, and--"
+
+"You're a dear, too," said Edith.
+
+So on the first of May he moved in, and for some evenings Political
+Economy and History and Travel and the rest gave way to anxious cuttings
+and fittings of wall paper, and a pungent odor of paint. The old house
+took on new life and activity, the latter sometimes pernicious, as when
+Willy Cameron fell down the cellar stairs with a pail of paint in his
+hand, or Dan, digging up some bricks in the back yard for a border the
+seeds of which were already sprouting in a flat box in the kitchen, ran
+a pickaxe into his foot.
+
+Some changes were immediate, such as the white-washing of the cellar and
+the unpainted fence in the yard, where Willy Cameron visualized, later
+on, great draperies of morning glories. He papered the parlor, and
+coaxed Mrs. Boyd to wash the curtains, although she protested that, with
+the mill smoke, it was useless labor.
+
+But there were some changes that he knew only time would effect.
+Sometimes he went to his bed worn out both physically and spiritually,
+as though the burden of lifting three life-sodden souls was too much.
+Not that he thought of that, however. What he did know was that the food
+was poor. No servant had been found, and years of lack of system had
+left Mrs. Boyd's mind confused and erratic. She would spend hours
+concocting expensive desserts, while the vegetables boiled dry and
+scorched and meat turned to leather, only to bring pridefully to the
+table some flavorless mixture garnished according to a picture in the
+cook book, and totally unedible.
+
+She would have ambitious cleaning days, too, starting late and leaving
+off with beds unmade to prepare the evening meal. Dan, home from the
+mill and newly adopting Willy Cameron's system of cleaning up for
+supper, would turn sullen then, and leave the moment the meal was over.
+
+"Hell of a way to live," he said once. "I'd get married, but how can a
+fellow know whether a girl will make a home for him or give him this?
+And then there would be babies, too."
+
+The relations between Dan and Edith were not particularly cordial. Willy
+Cameron found their bickering understandable enough, but he was puzzled,
+sometimes, to find that Dan was surreptitiously watching his sister.
+Edith was conscious of it, too, and one evening she broke into irritated
+speech.
+
+"I wish you'd quit staring at me, Dan Boyd."
+
+"I was wondering what has come over you," said Dan, ungraciously. "You
+used to be a nice kid. Now you're an angel one minute and a devil the
+next."
+
+Willy spoke to him that night when they were setting out rows of
+seedlings, under the supervision of Jinx.
+
+"I wouldn't worry her, Dan," he said; "it is the spring, probably. It
+gets into people, you know. I'm that way myself. I'd give a lot to be in
+the country just now."
+
+Dan glanced at him quickly, but whatever he may have had in his mind, he
+said nothing just then. However, later on he volunteered:
+
+"She's got something on her mind. I know her. But I won't have her
+talking back to mother."
+
+A week or so after Willy Cameron had moved, Mr. Hendricks rang the bell
+of the Boyd house, and then, after his amiable custom, walked in.
+
+"Oh, Cameron!" he bawled.
+
+"Upstairs," came Willy Cameron's voice, somewhat thickened with carpet
+tacks. So Mr. Hendricks climbed part of the way, when he found his head
+on a level with that of the young gentleman he sought, who was nailing a
+rent in the carpet.
+
+"Don't stop," said Mr. Hendricks. "Merely friendly call. And for
+heaven's sake don't swallow a tack, son. I'm going to need you."
+
+"Whaffor?" inquired Willy Cameron, through his nose.
+
+"Don't know yet. Make speeches, probably. If Howard Cardew, or any
+Cardew, thinks he's going to be mayor of this town, he's got to think
+again."
+
+"I don't give a tinker's dam who's mayor of this town, so long as he
+gives it honest government."
+
+"That's right," said Mr. Hendricks approvingly. "Old Cardew's been
+running it for years, and you could put all the honest government he's
+given us in a hollow tooth. If you'll stop that hammering, I'd like to
+make a proposition to you."
+
+Willy Cameron took an admiring squint at his handiwork.
+
+"Sorry to refuse you, Mr. Hendricks, but I don't want to be mayor."
+
+Mr. Hendricks chuckled, as Willy Cameron led the way to his room. He
+wandered around the room while Cameron opened a window and slid the dog
+off his second chair.
+
+"Great snakes!" he said. "Spargo's Bolshevism! Political Economy,
+History of--. What are you planning to be? President?"
+
+"I haven't decided yet. It's a hard job, and mighty thankless. But I
+won't be your mayor, even for you."
+
+Mr. Hendricks sat down.
+
+"All right," he said. "Of course if you'd wanted it!" He took two large
+cigars from the row in his breast pocket and held one out, but Willy
+Cameron refused it and got his pipe.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+Mr. Hendrick's face became serious and very thoughtful. "I don't know
+that I have ever made it clear to you, Cameron," he said, "but I've got
+a peculiar feeling for this city. I like it, the way some people like
+their families. It's--well, it's home to me, for one thing. I like to
+go out in the evenings and walk around, and I say to myself: 'This is my
+town.' And we, it and me, are sending stuff all over the world. I like
+to think that somewhere, maybe in China, they are riding on our rails
+and fighting with guns made from our steel. Maybe you don't understand
+that."
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Well, that's the way I feel about it, anyhow. And this Bolshevist stuff
+gets under my skin. I've got a home and a family here. I started in to
+work when I was thirteen, and all I've got I've made and saved right
+here. It isn't much, but it's mine."
+
+Willy Cameron was lighting his pipe. He nodded. Mr. Hendricks bent
+forward and pointed a finger at him.
+
+"And to govern this city, who do you think the labor element is going
+to put up and probably elect? We're an industrial city, son, with a
+big labor vote, and if it stands together--they're being swindled into
+putting up as an honest candidate one of the dirtiest radicals in the
+country. That man Akers."
+
+He got up and closed the door.
+
+"I don't want Edith to hear me," he said. "He's a friend of hers. But
+he's a bad actor, son. He's wrong with women, for one thing, and when I
+think that all he's got to oppose him is Howard Cardew--" Mr. Hendricks
+got up, and took a nervous turn about the room.
+
+"Maybe you know that Cardew has a daughter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I hear a good many things, one way and another, and my wife likes
+a bit of gossip. She knows them both by sight, and she ran into them one
+day in the tea room of the Saint Elmo, sitting in a corner, and the girl
+had her back to the room. I don't like the look of that, Cameron."
+
+Willy Cameron got up and closed the window. He stood there, with his
+back to the light, for a full minute. Then:
+
+"I think there must be some mistake about that, Mr. Hendricks. I have
+met her. She isn't the sort of girl who would do clandestine things."
+
+Mr. Hendricks looked up quickly. He had made it his business to study
+men, and there was something in Willy Cameron's voice that caught his
+attention, and turned his shrewd mind to speculation.
+
+"Maybe," he conceded. "Of course, anything a Cardew does is likely to
+be magnified in this town. If she's as keen as the men in her family,
+she'll get wise to him pretty soon." Willy Cameron came back then, but
+Mr. Hendricks kept his eyes on the tip of his cigar.
+
+"We've got to lick Cardew," he said, "but I'm cursed if I want to do it
+with Akers."
+
+When there was no comment, he looked up. Yes, the boy had had a blow.
+Mr. Hendricks was sorry. If that was the way the wind blew it was
+hopeless. It was more than that; it was tragic.
+
+"Sorry I said anything, Cameron. Didn't know you knew her."
+
+"That's all right. Of course I don't like to think she is being talked
+about."
+
+"The Cardews are always being talked about. You couldn't drop her a
+hint, I suppose?"
+
+"She knows what I think about Louis Akers."
+
+He made a violent effort and pulled himself together. "So it is Akers
+and Howard Cardew, and one's a knave and one's a poor bet."
+
+"Right," said Mr. Hendricks. "And one's Bolshevist, if I know anything,
+and the other is capital, and has about as much chance as a rich man to
+get through the eye of a needle."
+
+Which was slightly mixed, owing to a repressed excitement now making
+itself evident in Mr. Hendricks's voice.
+
+"Why not run an independent candidate?" Willy Cameron asked quietly.
+"I've been shouting about the plain people. Why shouldn't they elect a
+mayor? There is a lot of them."
+
+"That's the talk," said Mr. Hendricks, letting his excitement have full
+sway. "They could. They could run this town and run it right, if they'd
+take the trouble. Now look here, son, I don't usually talk about myself,
+but--I'm honest. I don't say I wouldn't get off a street-car without
+paying my fare if the conductor didn't lift it! But I'm honest. I don't
+lie. I keep my word. And I live clean--which you can't say for Lou
+Akers. Why shouldn't I run on an independent ticket? I mightn't be
+elected, but I'd make a damned good try."
+
+He stood up, and Willy Cameron rose also and held out his hand.
+
+"I don't know that my opinion is of any value, Mr. Hendricks. But I hope
+you get it, and I think you have a good chance. If I can do anything--"
+
+"Do anything! What do you suppose I came here for? You're going to elect
+me. You're going to make speeches and kiss babies, and tell the ordinary
+folks they're worth something after all. You got me started on this
+thing, and now you've got to help me out."
+
+The future maker of mayors here stepped back in his amazement, and Jinx
+emitted a piercing howl. When peace was restored the F.M. of M. had got
+his breath, and he said:
+
+"I couldn't remember my own name before an audience, Mr. Hendricks."
+
+"You're fluent enough in that back room of yours."
+
+"That's different."
+
+"The people we're going after don't want oratory. They want good,
+straight talk, and a fellow behind it who doesn't believe the country's
+headed straight for perdition. We've had enough calamity bowlers. You've
+got the way out. The plain people. The hope of the nation. And, by God,
+you love your country, and not for what you can get out of it. That's a
+thing a fellow's got to have inside him. He can't pretend it and get it
+over."
+
+In the end the F.M. of M. capitulated.
+
+It was late when Mr. Hendricks left. He went away with all the old
+envelopes in his pockets covered with memoranda.
+
+"Just wait a minute, son," he would say. "I've got to make some speeches
+myself. Repeat that, now. 'Sins of omission are as great, even greater
+than sins of commission. The lethargic citizen throws open the gates to
+revolution.' How do you spell 'lethargic'?"
+
+But it was not Hendricks and his campaign that kept the F.M. of M. awake
+until dawn. He sat in front of his soft coal fire, and when it died
+to gray-white ash he still sat there, unconscious of the chill of the
+spring night. Mostly he thought of Lily, and of Louis Akers, big and
+handsome, of his insolent eyes and his self-indulgent mouth. Into that
+curious whirlpool that is the mind came now and then other visions: His
+mother asleep in her chair; the men in the War Department who had
+turned him down; a girl at home who had loved him, and made him feel
+desperately unhappy because he could not love her in return. Was love
+always like that? If it was what He intended, why was it so often
+without reciprocation?
+
+He took to walking about the room, according to his old habit, and
+obediently Jinx followed him.
+
+It was four by his alarm clock when Edith knocked at his door. She was
+in a wrapper flung over her nightgown, and with her hair flying loose
+she looked childish and very small.
+
+"I wish you would go to bed," she said, rather petulantly. "Are you
+sick, or anything?"
+
+"I was thinking, Edith. I'm sorry. I'll go at once. Why aren't you
+asleep?"
+
+"I don't sleep much lately." Their voices were cautious. "I never go to
+sleep until you're settled down, anyhow."
+
+"Why not? Am I noisy?"
+
+"It's not that."
+
+She went away, a drooping, listless figure that climbed the stairs
+slowly and left him in the doorway, puzzled and uncomfortable.
+
+At six that morning Dan, tip-toeing downstairs to warm his left-over
+coffee and get his own breakfast, heard a voice from Willy Cameron's
+room, and opened the door. Willy Cameron was sitting up in bed with
+his eyes closed and his arms extended, and was concluding a speech to a
+dream audience in deep and oratorical tones.
+
+"By God, it is time the plain people know their power."
+
+Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather primitive, he edged
+his way into the room and filled the orator's sponge with icy water from
+the pitcher.
+
+"All right, old top," he said, "but it is also time the plain people got
+up."
+
+Then he flung the sponge and departed with extreme expedition.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers' visit to the house
+that Lily's family learned of it.
+
+Lily's state of mind during that week had been an unhappy one. She
+magnified the incident until her nerves were on edge, and Grace, finding
+her alternating between almost demonstrative affection and strange
+aloofness, was bewildered and hurt. Mademoiselle watched her secretly,
+shook her head, and set herself to work to find out what was wrong. It
+was, in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated the crisis.
+
+Lily had not intended to make a secret of the visit, but as time went
+on she found it increasingly difficult to tell about it. She should, she
+knew, have spoken at once, and it would be hard to explain why she had
+delayed.
+
+She meant to go to her father with it. It was he who had forbidden her
+to see Akers, for one thing. And she felt nearer to her father than
+to her mother, always. Since her return she had developed an almost
+passionate admiration for Howard, founded perhaps on her grandfather's
+attitude toward him. She was strongly partizan, and she watched her
+father, day after day, fighting his eternal battles with Anthony,
+sometimes winning, often losing, but standing for a principle like
+a rock while the seas of old Anthony's wrath washed over and often
+engulfed him.
+
+She was rather wistful those days, struggling with her own perplexities,
+and blindly reaching out for a hand to help her. But she could not bring
+herself to confession. She would wander into her father's dressing-room
+before she went to bed, and, sitting on the arm of his deep chair, would
+try indirectly to get him to solve the problems that were troubling
+her. But he was inarticulate and rather shy with her. He had difficulty,
+sometimes, after her long absence at school and camp, in realizing her
+as the little girl who had once begged for his neckties to make into
+doll frocks.
+
+Once she said:
+
+"Could you love a person you didn't entirely respect, father?"
+
+"Love is founded on respect, Lily."
+
+She pondered that. She felt that he was wrong.
+
+"But it does happen, doesn't it?" she had persisted.
+
+He had been accustomed to her searchings for interesting abstractions
+for years. She used to talk about religion in the same way. So he smiled
+and said:
+
+"There is a sort of infatuation that is based on something quite
+different."
+
+"On what?"
+
+But he had rather floundered there. He could not discuss physical
+attraction with her.
+
+"We're getting rather deep for eleven o'clock at night, aren't we?"
+
+After a short silence:
+
+"Do you mind speaking about Aunt Elinor, father?"
+
+"No, dear. Although it is rather a painful subject."
+
+"But if she is happy, why is it painful?"
+
+"Well, because Doyle is the sort of man he is."
+
+"You mean--because he is unfaithful to her? Or was?"
+
+He was very uncomfortable.
+
+"That is one reason for it, of course. There are others."
+
+"But if he is faithful to her now, father? Don't you think, whatever a
+man has been, if he really cares for a woman it makes him over?"
+
+"Sometimes, not always." The subject was painful to him. He did not want
+his daughter to know the sordid things of life. But he added, gallantly:
+"Of course a good woman can do almost anything she wants with a man, if
+he cares for her."
+
+She lay awake almost all night, thinking that over.
+
+On the Sunday following Louis Akers' call Mademoiselle learned of it, by
+the devious route of the servants' hall, and she went to Lily at once,
+yearning and anxious, and in her best lace collar. She needed courage,
+and to be dressed in her best gave her moral strength.
+
+"It is not," she said, "that they wish to curtail your liberty, Lily.
+But to have that man come here, when he knows he is not wanted, to force
+himself on you--"
+
+"I need not have seen him. I wanted to see him."
+
+Mademoiselle waved her hands despairingly.
+
+"If they find it out!" she wailed.
+
+"They will. I intend to tell them."
+
+But Mademoiselle made her error there. She was fearful of Grace's
+attitude unless she forewarned her, and Grace, frightened, immediately
+made it a matter of a family conclave. She had not intended to include
+Anthony, but he came in on an excited speech from Howard, and heard it
+all.
+
+The result was that instead of Lily going to them with her confession,
+she was summoned, to find her family a unit for once and combined
+against her. She was not to see Louis Akers again, or the Doyles.
+
+They demanded a promise, but she refused. Yet even then, standing before
+them, forced to a defiance she did not feel, she was puzzled as well
+as angry. They were wrong, and yet in some strange way they were right,
+too. She was Cardew enough to get their point of view. But she was
+Cardew enough, too, to defy them.
+
+She did it rather gently.
+
+"You must understand," she said, her hands folded in front of her, "that
+it is not so much that I care to see the people you are talking about.
+It is that I feel I have the right to choose my own friends."
+
+"Friends!" sneered old Anthony. "A third-rate lawyer, a--"
+
+"That is not the point, grandfather. I went away to school when I was a
+little girl. I have been away for five years. You cannot seem to realize
+that I am a woman now, not a child. You bring me in here like a bad
+child."
+
+In the end old Anthony had slammed out of the room. There were arguments
+after that, tears on Grace's part, persuasion on Howard's; but Lily had
+frozen against what she considered their tyranny, and Howard found in
+her a sort of passive resistance, that drove him frantic.
+
+"Very well," he said finally. "You have the arrogance of youth, and its
+cruelty, Lily. And you are making us all suffer without reason."
+
+"Don't you think I might say that too, father?"
+
+"Are you in love with this man?"
+
+"I have only seen him four times. If you would give me some reasons for
+all this fuss--"
+
+"There are things I cannot explain to you. You wouldn't understand."
+
+"About his moral character?"
+
+Howard was rather shocked. He hesitated:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you tell me what they are?"
+
+"Good heavens, no!" he exploded. "The man's a radical, too. That in
+itself ought to be enough."
+
+"You can't condemn a man for his political opinions."
+
+"Political opinions!"
+
+"Besides," she said, looking at him with her direct gaze, "isn't there
+some reason in what the radicals believe, father? Maybe it is a dream
+that can't come true, but it is rather a fine dream, isn't it?"
+
+It was then that Howard followed his father's example, and flung out of
+the room.
+
+After that Lily went, very deliberately and without secrecy, to the
+house on Cardew Way. She found a welcome there, not so marked on her
+Aunt Elinor's part as on Doyle's, but a welcome. She found approval,
+too, where at home she had only suspicion and a solicitude based
+on anxiety. She found a clever little circle there, and sometimes a
+cultured one; underpaid, disgruntled, but brilliant professors from
+the college, a journalist or two, a city councilman, even prosperous
+merchants, and now and then strange bearded foreigners who were passing
+through the city and who talked brilliantly of the vision of Lenine and
+the future of Russia.
+
+She learned that the true League of Nations was not a political
+alliance, but a union of all the leveled peoples of the world. She had
+no curiosity as to how this leveling was to be brought about. All
+she knew was that these brilliant dreamers made her welcome, and that
+instead of the dinner chat at home, small personalities, old Anthony's
+comments on his food, her father's heavy silence, here was world talk,
+vast in its scope, idealistic, intoxicating.
+
+Almost always Louis Akers was there; it pleased her to see how the other
+men listened to him, deferred to his views, laughed at his wit. She did
+not know the care exercised in selecting the groups she was to meet, the
+restraints imposed on them. And she could not know that from her visits
+the Doyle establishment was gaining a prestige totally new to it, an
+almost respectability.
+
+Because of those small open forums, sometimes noted in the papers, those
+innocuous gatherings, it was possible to hold in that very room other
+meetings, not open and not innocuous, where practical plans took the
+place of discontented yearnings, and where the talk was more often of
+fighting than of brotherhood.
+
+She was, by the first of May, frankly infatuated with Louis Akers, yet
+with a curious knowledge that what she felt was infatuation only. She
+would lie wide-eyed at night and rehearse painfully the weaknesses she
+saw so clearly in him. But the next time she saw him she would yield to
+his arms, passively but without protest. She did not like his caresses,
+but the memory of them thrilled her.
+
+She was following the first uncurbed impulse of her life. Guarded and
+more or less isolated from other youth, she had always lived a strong
+inner life, purely mental, largely interrogative. She had had strong
+childish impulses, sometimes of pure affection, occasionally of sheer
+contrariness, but always her impulses had been curbed.
+
+"Do be a little lady," Mademoiselle would say.
+
+She had got, somehow, to feel that impulse was wrong. It ranked with
+disobedience. It partook of the nature of sin. People who did wicked
+things did them on impulse, and were sorry ever after; but then it was
+too late.
+
+As she grew older, she added something to that. Impulses of the mind led
+to impulses of the body, and impulse was wrong. Passion was an impulse
+of the body. Therefore it was sin. It was the one sin one could not talk
+about, so one was never quite clear about it. However, one thing seemed
+beyond dispute; it was predominatingly a masculine wickedness. Good
+women were beyond and above it, its victims sometimes, like those girls
+at the camp, or its toys, like the sodden creatures in the segregated
+district who hung, smiling their tragic smiles, around their doorways in
+the late afternoons.
+
+But good women were not like that. If they were, then they were not
+good. They did not lie awake remembering the savage clasp of a man's
+arms, knowing all the time that this was not love, but something quite
+different. Or if it was love, that it was painful and certainly not
+beautiful.
+
+Sometimes she thought about Willy Cameron. He had had very exalted ideas
+about love. He used to be rather oratorical about it.
+
+"It's the fundamental principle of the universe," he would say, waving
+his pipe wildly. "But it means suffering, dear child. It feeds on
+martyrdom and fattens on sacrifice. And as the h.c. of l. doesn't affect
+either commodity, it lives forever."
+
+"What does it do, Willy, if it hasn't any martyrdom and sacrifice to
+feed on? Do you mean to say that when it is returned and everybody is
+happy, it dies?"
+
+"Practically," he had said. "It then becomes domestic contentment, and
+expresses itself in the shape of butcher's bills and roast chicken on
+Sundays."
+
+But that had been in the old care-free days, before Willy had thought he
+loved her, and before she had met Louis.
+
+She made a desperate effort one day to talk to her mother. She wanted,
+somehow, to be set right in her own eyes. But Grace could not meet her
+even half way; she did not know anything about different sorts of love,
+but she did know that love was beautiful, if you met the right man and
+married him. But it had to be some one who was your sort, because in the
+end marriage was only a sort of glorified companionship.
+
+The moral in that, so obviously pointed at Louis Akers, invalidated the
+rest of it for Lily.
+
+She was in a state of constant emotional excitement by that time, and it
+was only a night or two after that she quarreled with her grandfather.
+There had been a dinner party, a heavy, pompous affair, largely
+attended, for although spring was well advanced, the usual May hegira to
+the country or the coast had not yet commenced. Industrial conditions
+in and around the city were too disturbed for the large employers to
+get away, and following Lent there had been a sort of sporadic gayety,
+covering a vast uneasiness. There was to be no polo after all.
+
+Lily, doing her best to make the dinner a success, found herself
+contrasting it with the gatherings at the Doyle house, and found it very
+dull. These men, with their rigidity of mind, invited because they held
+her grandfather's opinions, or because they kept their own convictions
+to themselves, seemed to her of a bygone time. She did not see in them a
+safe counterpoise to a people which in its reaction from the old order,
+was ready to swing to anything that was new. She saw only a dozen or
+so elderly gentlemen, immaculate and prosperous, peering through their
+glasses after a world which had passed them by.
+
+They were very grave that night. The situation was serious. The talk
+turned inevitably to the approaching strike, and from that to a possible
+attempt on the part of the radical element toward violence. The older
+men pooh-poohed that, but the younger ones were uncertain. Isolated
+riotings, yes. But a coordinated attempt against the city, no. Labour
+was greedy, but it was law-abiding. Ah, but it was being fired by
+incendiary literature. Then what were the police doing? They were
+doing everything. They were doing nothing. The governor was secretly a
+radical. Nonsense. The governor was saying little, but was waiting and
+watching. A general strike was only another word for revolution. No. It
+would be attempted, perhaps, but only to demonstrate the solidarity of
+labor.
+
+After a time Lily made a discovery. She found that even into that
+carefully selected gathering had crept a surprising spirit, based on the
+necessity for concession; a few men who shared her father's convictions,
+and went even further. One or two, even, who, cautiously for fear of old
+Anthony's ears, voiced a belief that before long invested money would
+be given a fixed return, all surplus profits to be divided among the
+workers, the owners and the government.
+
+"What about the lean years?" some one asked.
+
+The government's share of all business was to form a contingent fund for
+such emergencies, it seemed.
+
+Lily listened attentively. Was it because they feared that if they did
+not voluntarily divide their profits they would be taken from them?
+Enough for all, and to none too much. Was that what they feared? Or was
+it a sense of justice, belated but real?
+
+She remembered something Jim Doyle had said:
+
+"Labor has learned its weakness alone, its strength united. But capital
+has not learned that lesson. It will not take a loss for a principle.
+It will not unite. It is suspicious and jealous, so it fights its
+individual battles alone, and loses in the end."
+
+But then to offset that there was something Willy Cameron had said one
+day, frying doughnuts for her with one hand, and waving the fork about
+with the other.
+
+"Don't forget this, oh representative of the plutocracy," he had said.
+"Capital has its side, and a darned good one, too. It's got a sense of
+responsibility to the country, which labor may have individually but
+hasn't got collectively."
+
+These men at the table were grave, burdened with responsibility. Her
+father. Even her grandfather. It was no longer a question of profit. It
+was a question of keeping the country going. They were like men forced
+to travel, and breasting a strong head wind. There were some there who
+would turn, in time, and travel with the gale. But there were others
+like her grandfather, obstinate and secretly frightened, who would
+refuse. Who would, to change the figure, sit like misers over their
+treasure, an eye on the window of life for thieves.
+
+She went upstairs, perplexed and thoughtful. Some time later she heard
+the family ascending, the click of her mother's high heels on the
+polished wood of the staircase, her father's sturdy tread, and a moment
+or two later her grandfather's slow, rather weary step. Suddenly she
+felt sorry for him, for his age, for his false gods of power and
+pride, for the disappointment she was to him. She flung open her door
+impulsively and confronted him.
+
+"I just wanted to say good-night, grandfather," she said breathlessly.
+"And that I am sorry."
+
+"Sorry for what?"
+
+"Sorry--" she hesitated. "Because we see things so differently."
+
+Lily was almost certain that she caught a flash of tenderness in his
+eyes, and certainly his voice had softened.
+
+"You looked very pretty to-night," he said. But he passed on, and she
+had again the sense of rebuff with which he met all her small overtures
+at that time. However, he turned at the foot of the upper flight.
+
+"I would like to talk to you, Lily. Will you come upstairs?"
+
+She had been summoned before to those mysterious upper rooms of his,
+where entrance was always by request, and generally such requests
+presaged trouble. But she followed him light-heartedly enough then. His
+rare compliment had pleased and touched her.
+
+The lamp beside his high-backed, almost throne-like chair was lighted,
+and in the dressing-room beyond his valet was moving about, preparing
+for the night. Anthony dismissed the man, and sat down under the lamp.
+
+"You heard the discussion downstairs, to-night, Lily. Personally I
+anticipate no trouble, but if there is any it may be directed at this
+house." He smiled grimly. "I cannot rely on my personal popularity
+to protect me, I fear. Your mother obstinately refuses to leave your
+father, but I have decided to send you to your grand-aunt Caroline."
+
+"Aunt Caroline! She doesn't care for me, grandfather. She never has."
+
+"That is hardly pertinent, is it? The situation is this: She intends to
+open the Newport house early in June, and at my request she will bring
+you out there. Next fall we will do something here; I haven't decided
+just what."
+
+There was a sudden wild surge of revolt in Lily. She hated Newport.
+Grand-aunt Caroline was a terrible person. She was like Anthony,
+domineering and cruel, and with even less control over her tongue.
+
+"I need not point out the advantages of the plan," said Anthony suavely.
+"There may be trouble here, although I doubt it. But in any event you
+will have to come out, and this seems an excellent way."
+
+"Is it a good thing to spend a lot of money now, grandfather, when there
+is so much discontent?"
+
+Old Anthony had a small jagged vein down the center of his forehead, and
+in anger or his rare excitements it stood out like a scar. Lily saw it
+now, but his voice was quiet enough.
+
+"I consider it vitally important to the country to continue its social
+life as before the war."
+
+"You mean, to show we are not frightened?"
+
+"Frightened! Good God, nobody's frightened. It will take more than a
+handful of demagogues to upset this government. Which brings me to
+a subject you insist on reopening, by your conduct. I have reason to
+believe that you are still going to that man's house."
+
+He never called Doyle by name if he could avoid it.
+
+"I have been there several times."
+
+"After you were forbidden?"
+
+His tone roused every particle of antagonism in her. She flushed.
+
+"Perhaps because I was forbidden," she said, slowly. "Hasn't it occurred
+to you that I may consider your attitude very unjust?"
+
+If she looked for an outburst from him it did not come. He stood for a
+moment, deep in thought.
+
+"You understand that this Doyle once tried to assassinate me?"
+
+"I know that he tried to beat you, grandfather. I am sorry, but that was
+long ago. And there was a reason for it, wasn't there?"
+
+"I see," he said, slowly. "What you are conveying to me, not too
+delicately, is that you have definitely allied yourself with my enemies.
+That, here in my own house, you intend to defy me. That, regardless of
+my wishes or commands, while eating my food, you purpose to traffic with
+a man who has sworn to get me, sooner or later. Am I correct?"
+
+"I have only said that I see no reason why I should not visit Aunt
+Elinor."
+
+"And that you intend to. Do I understand also that you refuse to go to
+Newport?"
+
+"I daresay I shall have to go, if you send me. I don't want to go."
+
+"Very well. I am glad we have had this little talk. It makes my own
+course quite plain. Good-night."
+
+He opened the door for her and she went out and down the stairs. She
+felt very calm, and as though something irrevocable had happened. With
+her anger at her grandfather there was mixed a sort of pity for him,
+because she knew that nothing he could do would change the fundamental
+situation. Even if he locked her up, and that was possible, he
+would know that he had not really changed things, or her. She felt
+surprisingly strong. All these years that she had feared him, and yet
+when it came to a direct issue, he was helpless! What had he but his
+wicked tongue, and what did that matter to deaf ears?
+
+She found her maid gone, and Mademoiselle waiting to help her undress.
+Mademoiselle often did that. It made her feel still essential in Lily's
+life.
+
+"A long seance!" she said. "Your mother told me to-night. It is
+Newport?"
+
+"He wants me to go. Unhook me, Mademoiselle, and then run off and go to
+bed. You ought not to wait up like this."
+
+"Newport!" said Mademoiselle, deftly slipping off the white and silver
+that was Lily's gown. "It will be wonderful, dear. And you will be a
+great success. You are very beautiful."
+
+"I am not going to Newport, Mademoiselle."
+
+Mademoiselle broke into rapid expostulation, in French. Every girl
+wanted to make her debut at Newport. Here it was all industry, money,
+dirt. Men who slaved in offices daily. At Newport was gathered the real
+leisure class of America, those who knew how to play, who lived. But
+Lily, taking off her birthday pearls before the mirror of her dressing
+table, only shook her head.
+
+"I'm not going," she said. "I might as well tell you, for you'll hear
+about it later. I have quarreled with him, very badly. I think he
+intends to lock me up."
+
+"C'est impossible!" cried Mademoiselle.
+
+But a glance at Lily's set face in the mirror told her it was true.
+
+She went away very soon, sadly troubled. There were bad times coming.
+The old peaceful quiet days were gone, for age and obstinacy had met
+youth and the arrogance of youth, and it was to be battle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+But there was a truce for a time. Lily came and went without
+interference, and without comment. Nothing more was said about Newport.
+She motored on bright days to the country club, lunched and played golf
+or tennis, rode along the country lanes with Pink Denslow, accepted such
+invitations as came her way cheerfully enough but without enthusiasm,
+and was very gentle to her mother. But Mademoiselle found her tense and
+restless, as though she were waiting.
+
+And there were times when she disappeared for an hour or two in the
+afternoons, proffering no excuses, and came back flushed, and perhaps a
+little frightened. On the evenings that followed those small excursions
+she was particularly gentle to her mother. Mademoiselle watched and
+waited for the blow she feared was about to fall. She felt sure that the
+girl was seeing Louis Akers, and that she would ultimately marry him. In
+her despair she fell back on Willy Cameron and persuaded Grace to invite
+him to dinner. It was meant to be a surprise for Lily, but she had
+telephoned at seven o'clock that she was dining at the Doyles'.
+
+It was that evening that Willy Cameron learned that Mr. Hendricks had
+been right about Lily. He and Grace dined alone, for Howard was away at
+a political conference, and Anthony had dined at his club. And in the
+morning room after dinner Grace found herself giving him her confidence.
+
+"I have no right to burden you with our troubles, Mr. Cameron," Grace
+said, "but she is so fond of you, and she has great respect for your
+judgment. If you could only talk to her about the anxiety she is
+causing. These Doyles, or rather Mr. Doyle--the wife is Mr. Cardew's
+sister--are putting all sorts of ideas into her head. And she has met a
+man there, a Mr. Akers, and--I'm afraid she thinks she is in love with
+him, Mr. Cameron."
+
+He met her eyes gravely.
+
+"Have you tried not forbidding her to go to the Doyles?"
+
+"I have forbidden her nothing. It is her grandfather."
+
+"Then it seems to be Mr. Cardew who needs to be talked to, doesn't it?"
+he said. "I wouldn't worry too much, Mrs. Cardew. And don't hold too
+tight a rein."
+
+He was very down-hearted when he left. Grace's last words placed a heavy
+burden on him.
+
+"I simply feel," she said, "that you can do more with her than we can,
+and that if something isn't done she will ruin her life. She is too fine
+and wonderful to have her do that."
+
+To picture Lily as willfully going her own gait at that period would be
+most unfair. She was suffering cruelly; the impulse that led her to meet
+Louis Akers against her family's wishes was irresistible, but there was
+a new angle to her visits to the Doyle house. She was going there now,
+not so much because she wished to go, as because she began to feel that
+her Aunt Elinor needed her.
+
+There was something mysterious about her Aunt Elinor, mysterious and
+very sad. Even her smile had pathos in it, and she was smiling less
+and less. She sat in those bright little gatherings, in them but not of
+them, unbrilliant and very quiet. Sometimes she gave Lily the sense that
+like Lily herself she was waiting. Waiting for what?
+
+Lily had a queer feeling too, once or twice, that Elinor was afraid. But
+again, afraid of what? Sometimes she wondered if Elinor Doyle was afraid
+of her husband; certainly there were times, when they were alone, when
+he dropped his unctuous mask and held Elinor up to smiling contempt.
+
+"You can see what a clever wife I have," he said once. "Sometimes I
+wonder, Elinor, how you have lived with me so long and absorbed so
+little of what really counts."
+
+"Perhaps the difficulty," Elinor had said quietly, "is because we differ
+as to what really counts."
+
+Lily brought Elinor something she needed, of youth and irresponsible
+chatter, and in the end the girl found the older woman depending on her.
+To cut her off from that small solace was unthinkable. And then too she
+formed Elinor's sole link with her former world, a world of dinners and
+receptions, of clothes and horses and men who habitually dressed for
+dinner, of the wealth and panoply of life. A world in which her interest
+strangely persisted.
+
+"What did you wear at the country club dance last night?" she would ask.
+
+"A rose-colored chiffon over yellow. It gives the oddest effect, like an
+Ophelia rose."
+
+Or:
+
+"At the Mainwarings? George or Albert?"
+
+"The Alberts."
+
+"Did they ever have any children?"
+
+One day she told her about not going to Newport, and was surprised to
+see Elinor troubled.
+
+"Why won't you go? It is a wonderful house."
+
+"I don't care to go away, Aunt Nellie." She called her that sometimes.
+
+Elinor had knitted silently for a little. Then:
+
+"Do you mind if I say something to you?"
+
+"Say anything you like, of course."
+
+"I just--Lily, don't see too much of Louis Akers. Don't let him carry
+you off your feet. He is good-looking, but if you marry him, you will be
+terribly unhappy."
+
+"That isn't enough to say, Aunt Nellie," she said gravely. "You must
+have a reason."
+
+Elinor hesitated.
+
+"I don't like him. He is a man of very impure life."
+
+"That's because he has never known any good women." Lily rose valiantly
+to his defense, but the words hurt her. "Suppose a good woman came into
+his life? Couldn't she change him?"
+
+
+"I don't know," Elinor said helplessly. "But there is something else. It
+will cut you off from your family."
+
+"You did that. You couldn't stand it, either. You know what it's like."
+
+
+
+"There must be some other way. That is no reason for marriage."
+
+"But--suppose I care for him?" Lily said, shyly.
+
+"You wouldn't live with him a year. There are different ways of caring,
+Lily. There is such a thing as being carried away by a man's violent
+devotion, but it isn't the violent love that lasts."
+
+Lily considered that carefully, and she felt that there was some truth
+in it. When Louis Akers came to take her home that night he found her
+unresponsive and thoughtful.
+
+"Mrs. Doyle's been talking to you," he said at last. "She hates me, you
+know."
+
+"Why should she hate you?"
+
+"Because, with all her vicissitudes, she's still a snob," he said
+roughly. "My family was nothing, so I'm nothing."
+
+"She wants me to be happy, Louis."
+
+"And she thinks you won't be with me."
+
+"I am not at all sure that I would be." She made an effort then to throw
+off the strange bond that held her to him. "I should like to have three
+months, Louis, to get a--well, a sort of perspective. I can't think
+clearly when you're around, and--"
+
+"And I'm always around? Thanks." But she had alarmed him. "You're
+hurting me awfully, little girl," he said, in a different tone. "I can't
+live without seeing you, and you know it. You're all I have in life.
+You have everything, wealth, friends, position. You could play for three
+months and never miss me. But you are all I have."
+
+In the end she capitulated
+
+Jim Doyle was very content those days. There had been a time when Jim
+Doyle was the honest advocate of labor, a flaming partizan of those who
+worked with their hands. But he had traveled a long road since then,
+from dreamer to conspirator. Once he had planned to build up; now he
+plotted to tear down.
+
+His weekly paper had enormous power. To the workers he had begun to
+preach class consciousness, and the doctrine of being true to their
+class. From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.
+Ostensibly he stood for a vast equality, world wide and beneficent;
+actually he preached an inflammable doctrine of an earth where the
+last shall be first. He advocated the overthrow of all centralized
+government, and considered the wages system robbery. Under it workers
+were slaves, and employers of workers slave-masters. It was with
+such phrases that he had for months been consistently inflaming the
+inflammable foreign element in and around the city, and not the foreign
+element only. A certain percentage of American-born workmen fell before
+the hammer-like blows of his words, repeated and driven home each week.
+
+He had no scruples, and preached none. He preached only revolt, and in
+that revolt defiance of all existing laws. He had no religion; Christ
+to him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same system that
+still crucified those who fought the established order. In his new world
+there would be no churches and no laws. He advocated bloodshed, arson,
+sabotage of all sorts, as a means to an end.
+
+Fanatic he was, but practical fanatic, and the more dangerous for that.
+He had viewed the failure of the plan to capture a city in the northwest
+in February with irritation, but without discouragement. They had acted
+prematurely there and without sufficient secrecy. That was all. The
+plan in itself was right. And he had watched the scant reports of the
+uprising in the newspapers with amusement and scorn. The very steps
+taken to suppress the facts showed the uneasiness of the authorities and
+left the nation with a feeling of false security.
+
+The people were always like that. Twice in a hundred years France had
+experienced the commune. Each time she had been warned, and each time
+she had waited too long. Ever so often in the life of every nation came
+these periodic outbursts of discontent, economic in their origin, and
+ran their course like diseases, contagious, violent and deadly.
+
+The commune always followed long and costly wars. The people would
+dance, but they revolted at paying the piper.
+
+The plan in Seattle had been well enough conceived; the city light plant
+was to have been taken over during the early evening of February 6, and
+at ten o'clock that night the city was to have gone dark. But the reign
+of terrorization that was to follow had revolted Jim Osborne, one
+of their leaders, and from his hotel bedroom he had notified the
+authorities. Word had gone out to "get" Osborne.
+
+If it had not been for Osborne, and the conservative element behind him,
+a flame would have been kindled at Seattle that would have burnt across
+the nation.
+
+Doyle watched Gompers cynically.. He considered his advocacy of
+patriotic cooperation between labor and the Government during the war
+the skillful attitude of an opportunist. Gompers could do better with
+public opinion behind him than without it. He was an opportunist, riding
+the wave which would carry him farthest. Playing both ends against the
+middle, and the middle, himself. He saw Gompers, watching the release
+of tension that followed the armistice and seeing the great child he
+had fathered, grown now and conscious of its power,--watching it, fully
+aware that it had become stronger than he.
+
+Gompers, according to Doyle, had ceased to be a leader and become a
+follower, into strange and difficult paths.
+
+The war had made labor's day. No public move was made without consulting
+organized labor, and a certain element in it had grown drunk with power.
+To this element Doyle appealed. It was Doyle who wrote the carefully
+prepared incendiary speeches, which were learned verbatim by his
+agents for delivery. For Doyle knew one thing, and knew it well. Labor,
+thinking along new lines, must think along the same lines. Be taught the
+same doctrines. Be pushed in one direction.
+
+There were, then, two Doyles, one the poseur, flaunting his outrageous
+doctrines with a sardonic grin, gathering about him a small circle of
+the intelligentsia, and too openly heterodox to be dangerous. And the
+other, secretly plotting against the city, wary, cautious, practical and
+deadly, waiting to overthrow the established order and substitute for it
+chaos. It was only incidental to him that old Anthony should go with the
+rest.
+
+But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis. He
+meant to be that. He steadily widened the breach between Lily and her
+family, and he watched the progress of her affair with Louis Akers with
+relish. He had not sought this particular form of revenge, but Fate had
+thrust it into his hands, and he meant to be worthy of the opportunity.
+
+He was in no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather liked
+sitting back and watching the slow development of his plans. It was like
+chess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then sat
+back waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell,
+with slow agonizing, into the trap.
+
+A few days after Lily had had her talk with Elinor, Doyle found a way to
+widen the gulf between Lily and her grandfather. Elinor seldom left the
+house, and Lily had done some shopping for her. The two women were in
+Elinor's bedroom, opening small parcels, when he knocked and came in.
+
+"I don't like to disturb the serenity of this happy family group," he
+said, "but I am inclined to think that a certain gentleman, standing not
+far from a certain young lady's taxicab, belongs to a certain department
+of our great city government. And from his unflattering lack of interest
+in me, that he--"
+
+Elinor half rose, terrified.
+
+"Not the police, Jim?"
+
+"Sit down," he said, in a tone Lily had never heard him use before. And
+to Lily, more gently: "I am not altogether surprised. As a matter of
+fact, I have known it for some time. Your esteemed grandfather seems to
+take a deep interest in your movements these days."
+
+"Do you mean that I am being followed?"
+
+"I'm afraid so. You see, you are a very important person, and if you
+will venture in the slums which surround the Cardew Mills, you should be
+protected. At any time, for instance, Aunt Elinor and I may despoil you
+of those pearls you wear so casually, and--"
+
+"Don't talk like that, Jim," Elinor protested. She was very pale. "Are
+you sure he is watching Lily?"
+
+He gave her an ugly look.
+
+"Who else?" he inquired suavely.
+
+Lily sat still, frozen with anger. So this was her grandfather's method
+of dealing with her. He could not lock her up, but he would know, day
+by day, and hour by hour, what she was doing. She could see him reading
+carefully his wicked little notes on her day. Perhaps he was watching
+her mail, too. Then when he had secured a hateful total he would go to
+her father, and together they would send her away somewhere. Away from
+Louis Akers. If he was watching her mail too he would know that Louis
+was in love with her. They would rake up all the things that belonged
+in the past he was done with, and recite them to her. As though they
+mattered now!
+
+She went to the window and looked out. Yes, she had seen the
+detective before. He must have been hanging around for days, his face
+unconsciously impressing itself upon her. When she turned:
+
+"Louis is coming to dinner, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If you don't mind, Aunt Nellie, I think I'll dine out with him
+somewhere. I want to talk to him alone."
+
+"But the detective--"
+
+"If my grandfather uses low and detestable means to spy on me, Aunt
+Nellie, he deserves what he gets, doesn't he?"
+
+When Louis Akers came at half-past six, he found that she had been
+crying, but she greeted him calmly enough, with her head held high.
+Elinor, watching her, thought she was very like old Anthony himself just
+then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Willy Cameron came home from a night class in metallurgy the evening
+after the day Lily had made her declaration of independence, and let
+himself in with his night key. There was a light in the little parlor,
+and Mrs. Boyd's fragile silhouette against the window shade.
+
+He was not surprised at that. She had developed a maternal affection for
+him stronger than any she showed for either Edith or Dan. She revealed
+it in rather touching ways, too, keeping accounts when he accused her of
+gross extravagance, for she spent Dan's swollen wages wastefully; making
+him coffee late at night, and forcing him to drink it, although it kept
+him awake for hours; and never going to bed until he was safely closeted
+in his room at the top of the stairs.
+
+He came in as early as possible, therefore, for he had had Doctor
+Smalley in to see her, and the result had been unsatisfactory.
+
+"Heart's bad," said the doctor, when they had retired to Willy's room.
+"Leaks like a sieve. And there may be an aneurism. Looks like it,
+anyhow."
+
+"What is there to do?" Willy asked, feeling helpless and extremely
+shocked. "We might send her somewhere."
+
+"Nothing to do. Don't send her away; she'd die of loneliness. Keep her
+quiet and keep her happy. Don't let her worry. She only has a short
+time, I should say, and you can't lengthen it. It could be shortened, of
+course, if she had a shock, or anything like that."
+
+"Shall I tell the family?"
+
+"What's the use?" asked Doctor Smalley, philosophically. "If they fuss
+over her she'll suspect something."
+
+As he went down the stairs he looked about him. The hall was fresh with
+new paper and white paint, and in the yard at the rear, visible through
+an open door, the border of annuals was putting out its first blossoms.
+
+"Nice little place you've got here," he observed. "I think I see the
+fine hand of Miss Edith, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Willy Cameron, gravely.
+
+He had made renewed efforts to get a servant after that, but the invalid
+herself balked him. When he found an applicant Mrs. Boyd would sit, very
+much the grande dame, and question her, although she always ended by
+sending her away.
+
+"She looked like the sort that would be running out at nights," she
+would say. Or: "She wouldn't take telling, and I know the way you like
+your things, Willy. I could see by looking at her that she couldn't cook
+at all."
+
+She cherished the delusion that he was improving and gaining flesh under
+her ministrations, and there was a sort of jealousy in her care for him.
+She wanted to yield to no one the right to sit proudly behind one of her
+heavy, tasteless pies, and say:
+
+"Now I made this for you, Willy, because I know country boys like pies.
+Just see if that crust isn't nice."
+
+"You don't mean to say you made it!"
+
+"I certainly did." And to please her he would clear his plate. He rather
+ran to digestive tablets those days, and Edith, surprising him with one
+at the kitchen sink one evening, accused him roundly of hypocrisy.
+
+"I don't know why you stay anyhow," she said, staring into the yard
+where Jinx was burying a bone in the heliotrope bed. "The food's awful.
+I'm used to it, but you're not."
+
+"You don't eat anything, Edith."
+
+"I'm not hungry. Willy, I wish you'd go away. What right we got to tie
+you up with us, anyhow? We're a poor lot. You're not comfortable and you
+know it. D'you know where she is now?"
+
+"She" in the vernacular of the house, was always Mrs. Boyd.
+
+"She forgot to make your bed, and she's doing it now."
+
+He ran up the stairs, and forcibly putting Mrs. Boyd in a chair, made up
+his own bed, awkwardly and with an eye on her chest, which rose and fell
+alarmingly. It was after that that he warned Edith.
+
+"She's not strong," he said. "She needs care and--well, to be happy.
+That's up to the three of us. For one thing, she must not have a shock.
+I'm going to warn Dan against exploding paper bags; she goes white every
+time."
+
+Dan was at a meeting, and Willy dried the supper dishes for Edith. She
+was silent and morose. Finally she said:
+
+"She's not very strong for me, Willy. You needn't look so shocked. She
+loves Dan and you, but not me. I don't mind, you know. She doesn't know
+it, but I do."
+
+"She is very proud of you."
+
+"That's different. You're right, though. Pride's her middle name. It
+nearly killed her at first to take a roomer, because she is always
+thinking of what the neighbors will say. That's why she hates me
+sometimes."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk that way."
+
+"But it's true. That fool Hodge woman at the corner came here one day
+last winter and filled her up with a lot of talk about me, and she's
+been queer to me ever since."
+
+"You are a very good daughter."
+
+She eyed him furtively. If only he wouldn't always believe in her! It
+was almost worse than to have him know the truth. But he went along
+with his head in the clouds; all women were good and all men meant well.
+Sometimes it worked out; Dan, for instance. Dan was trying to live up to
+him. But it was too late for her. Forever too late.
+
+It was Willy Cameron's night off, and they went, the three of them,
+to the movies that evening. To Mrs. Boyd the movies was the acme of
+dissipation. She would, if warned in advance, spend the entire day with
+her hair in curlers, and once there she feasted her starved romantic
+soul to repletion. But that night the building was stifling, and without
+any warning Edith suddenly got up and walked toward the door. There was
+something odd about her walk and Willy followed her, but she turned on
+him almost fiercely outside.
+
+"I wish you'd let me alone," she said, and then swayed a little. But she
+did not faint.
+
+"I'm going home," she said. "You stay with her. And for heaven's sake
+don't stare at me like that. I'm all right."
+
+Nevertheless he had taken her home, Edith obstinately silent and sullen,
+and Willy anxious and perplexed. At the door she said:
+
+"Now go back to her, and tell her I just got sick of the picture. It was
+the smells in that rotten place. They'd turn a pig's stomach."
+
+"I wish you'd see a doctor."
+
+She looked at him with suspicious eyes. "If you run Smalley in on me
+I'll leave home."
+
+"Will you go to bed?"
+
+"I'll go to bed, all right."
+
+He had found things rather more difficult after that. Two women, both
+ill and refusing to acknowledge it, and the prospect of Dan's being
+called out by the union. Try as he would, he could not introduce any
+habit of thrift into the family. Dan's money came and went, and on
+Saturday nights there was not only nothing left, but often a deficit.
+Dan, skillfully worked upon outside, began to develop a grievance, also,
+and on his rare evenings at home or at the table he would voice his
+wrongs.
+
+"It's just hand to mouth all the time," he would grumble. "A fellow
+working for the Cardews never gets ahead. What chance has he got,
+anyhow? It takes all he can get to live."
+
+Willy Cameron began to see that the trouble was not with Dan, but with
+his women folks. And Dan was one of thousands. His wages went for food,
+too much food, food spoiled in cooking. There were men, with able women
+behind them, making less than Dan and saving money.
+
+"Keep some of it out and bank it," he suggested, but Dan sneered.
+
+"And have a store bill a mile long! You know mother as well as I do. She
+means well, but she's a fool with money."
+
+He counted his hours from the time he entered the mill until he left it,
+but he revealed once that there were long idle periods when the heating
+was going on, when he and the other men of the furnace crew sat and
+waited, doing nothing.
+
+"But I'm there, all right," he said. "I'm not playing golf or riding in
+my automobile. I'm on the job."
+
+"Well," said Willy Cameron, "I'm on the job about eleven hours a day,
+and I wear out more shoe leather than trouser seats at that. But it
+doesn't seem to hurt me."
+
+"It's a question of principle," said Dan doggedly. "I've got no personal
+kick, y'understand. Only I'm not getting anywhere, and something's got
+to be done about it."
+
+So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration of
+independence, Willy Cameron made his way rather heavily toward the Boyd
+house. He was very tired. He had made one or two speeches for Hendricks
+already, before local ward organizations, and he was working hard at his
+night class in metallurgy. He had had a letter from his mother, too,
+and he thought he read homesickness between the lines. He was not at all
+sure where his duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the
+Boyds flat, seemed impossible.
+
+He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over
+the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice,
+he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had
+pleaded a week of engagements.
+
+"I'm sorry," she had said. "I'll call you up next week some time I have
+a lot of things I want to talk over with you."
+
+But he knew she was avoiding him.
+
+And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had
+learned something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not the
+poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the accusations
+against him. Lily mixed up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white
+flame of patriotism, was unthinkable. She must not go to the house on
+Cardew Way. A man's loyalty was like a woman's virtue; it could not be
+questionable. There was no middle ground.
+
+He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found
+Ellen in the parlor. She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her
+chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suit-case and brown paper bundle
+at her feet.
+
+Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.
+
+"I make it a point to hold my head high," she was saying. "I guess there
+was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but--Is that you, Willy?"
+
+"Why, Miss Ellen!" he said. "And looking as though headed for a
+journey!"
+
+Ellen's face did not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour,
+letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking
+meanwhile her own bitter thoughts.
+
+"I am, Willy. Only I didn't wait for my money and the bank's closed, and
+I came to borrow ten dollars, if you have it."
+
+That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable and
+reveling in a fresh audience, showed no sign of departing.
+
+"She says she's been living at the Cardews," she put in, rocking
+valiantly. "I guess most any place would seem tame after that. I do
+hear, Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes once and
+then gives them away."
+
+She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every
+indication of going up the chimney.
+
+"I call that downright wasteful," she offered.
+
+Willy glanced at his watch, which had been his father's, and bore the
+inscription: "James Duncan Cameron, 1876" inside the case.
+
+"Eleven o'clock," he said sternly. "And me promising the doctor I'd have
+you in bed at ten sharp every night! Now off with you."
+
+"But, Willy--"
+
+"--or I shall have to carry you," he threatened. It was an old joke
+between them, and she rose, smiling, her thin face illuminated with the
+sense of being looked after.
+
+"He's that domineering," she said to Ellen, "that I can't call my soul
+my own."
+
+"Good-night," Ellen said briefly.
+
+Willy stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up. He knew
+she liked him to do that, that she would expect to find him there when
+she reached the top and looked down, panting slightly.
+
+"Good-night," he called. "Both windows open. I shall go outside to see."
+
+Then he went back to Ellen, still standing primly over her Lares and
+Penates.
+
+"Now tell me about it," he said.
+
+"I've left them. There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily left
+to-night, I did too."
+
+"She left her home?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It's awful, Willy. I don't know all of it, but they've been having her
+followed, or her grandfather did. I think there's a man in it. Followed!
+And her a good girl! Her grandfather's been treating her like a dog for
+weeks. We all noticed it. And to-night there was a quarrel, with all of
+them at her like a pack of dogs, and her governess crying in the hall. I
+just went up and packed my things."
+
+"Where did she go?"
+
+"I don't know. I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag. I went
+right off to the housekeeper and told her I wouldn't stay, and they
+could send my money after me."
+
+"Did you notice the number of the taxicab?"
+
+"I never thought of it."
+
+He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of course.
+Then, if she had left her home rather than give him up, she was really
+in love with him. He had too much common sense to believe for a moment
+that she had fled to Louis Akers' protection, however. That was the
+last thing she would do. She would have gone to a hotel, or to the Doyle
+house.
+
+"She shouldn't have left home, Ellen."
+
+"They drove her out, I tell you," Ellen cried, irritably. "At least
+that's what it amounted to. There are things no high-minded girl will
+stand. Can you lend me some money, Willy?"
+
+He felt in his pocket, producing a handful of loose money.
+
+"Of course you can have all I've got," he said. "But you must not go
+to-night, Miss Ellen. It's too late. I'll give you my room and go in
+with Dan Boyd."
+
+And he prevailed over her protests, in the end. It was not until he saw
+her settled there, hiding her sense of strangeness under an impassive
+mask, that he went downstairs again and took his hat from its hook.
+
+Lily must go back home, he knew. It was unthinkable that she should
+break with her family, and go to the Doyles. He had too little
+self-consciousness to question the propriety of his own interference,
+too much love for her to care whether she resented that interference.
+And he was filled with a vast anger at Jim Doyle. He saw in all this,
+somehow, Doyle's work; how it would play into Doyle's plans to have
+Anthony Cardew's granddaughter a member of his household. He would take
+her away from there if he had to carry her.
+
+He was a long time in getting to the mill district, and a longer time
+still in finding Cardew Way. At an all-night pharmacy he learned
+which was the house, and his determined movements took on a sort of
+uncertainty. It was very late. Ellen had waited for him for some time.
+If Lily were in that sinister darkened house across the street, the
+family had probably retired. And for the first time, too, he began to
+doubt if Doyle would let him see her. Lily herself might even refuse to
+see him.
+
+Nevertheless, the urgency to get her away from there, if she were there,
+prevailed at last, and a strip of light in an upper window, as from an
+imperfectly fitting blind, assured him that some one was still awake in
+the house.
+
+He went across the street and opening the gate, strode up the walk.
+Almost immediately he was confronted by the figure of a man who had been
+concealed by the trunk of one of the trees. He lounged forward, huge,
+menacing, yet not entirely hostile.
+
+"Who is it?" demanded the figure blocking his way.
+
+"I want to see Mr. Doyle."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"I'll tell him that," said Willy Cameron.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"That's my business, too," said Mr. Cameron, with disarming
+pleasantness.
+
+"Damn private about your business, aren't you?" jeered the sentry, still
+in cautious tones. "Well, you can write it down on a piece of paper and
+mail it to him. He's busy now."
+
+"All I want to do," persisted Mr. William Wallace Cameron, growing
+slightly giddy with repressed fury, "is to ring that doorbell and ask
+him a question. I'm going to do it, too."
+
+There was rather an interesting moment then, because the figure lunged
+at Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron, stooping low and swiftly, as well as to
+one side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting Scot, which means
+a cool-eyed madman, got in one or two rather neat effects with his
+fists. The first took the shadow just below his breast-bone, and the
+left caught him at that angle of the jaw where a small cause sometimes
+produces a large effect. The figure sat down on the brick walk and
+grunted, and Mr. Cameron, judging that he had about ten seconds' leeway,
+felt in the dazed person's right hand pocket for the revolver he knew
+would be there, and secured it. The sitting figure made puffing, feeble
+attempts to prevent him, but there was no real struggle.
+
+Mr. Cameron himself was feeling extremely triumphant and as strong as a
+lion. He was rather sorry no one had seen the affair, but that of course
+was sub-conscious. And he was more cheerful than he had been for some
+days. He had been up against so many purely intangible obstacles lately
+that it was a relief to find one he could use his fists on.
+
+"Now I'll have a few words with you, my desperate friend," he said.
+"I've got your gun, and I am hell with a revolver, because I've never
+fired one, and there's a sort of homicidal beginner's luck about the
+thing. If you move or speak, I'll shoot it into you first and when it's
+empty I'll choke it down your throat and strangle you to death."
+
+After which ferocious speech he strolled up the path, revolver in hand,
+and rang the doorbell. He put the weapon in his pocket then, but he
+kept his hand upon it. He had read somewhere that a revolver was quite
+useable from a pocket. There was no immediate answer to the bell, and he
+turned and surveyed the man under the tree, faintly distinguishable in
+the blackness. It had occurred to him that the number of guns a man may
+carry is only limited to his pockets, which are about fifteen.
+
+There were heavy, deliberate footsteps inside, and the door was flung
+open. No glare of light followed it, however. There was a man there,
+alarmingly tall, who seemed to stare at him, and then beyond him into
+the yard.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Are you Mr. Doyle?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"My name is Cameron, Mr. Doyle. I have had a small difference with your
+watch-dog, but he finally let me by."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand. I have no dog."
+
+"The sentry you keep posted, then." Mr. Cameron disliked fencing.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Doyle, urbanely. "You have happened on one of my good
+friends, I see. I have many enemies, Mr. Cameron--was that the name? And
+my friends sometimes like to keep an eye on me. It is rather touching."
+
+He was smiling, Mr. Cameron knew, and his anger rose afresh.
+
+"Very touching," said Mr. Cameron, "but if he bothers me going out
+you may be short one friend. Mr. Doyle, Miss Lily Cardew left her home
+to-night. I want to know if she is here."
+
+"Are you sent by her family?"
+
+"I have asked you if she is here."
+
+Jim Doyle apparently deliberated.
+
+"My niece is here, although just why you should interest yourself--"
+
+"May I see her?"
+
+"I regret to say she has retired."
+
+"I think she would see me."
+
+A door opened into the hall, throwing a shaft of light on the wall
+across and letting out the sounds of voices.
+
+"Shut that door," said Doyle, wheeling sharply. It was closed at once.
+"Now," he said, turning to his visitor, "I'll tell you this. My niece
+is here." He emphasized the "my." "She has come to me for refuge, and
+I intend to give it to her. You won't see her to-night, and if you come
+from her people you can tell them she came here of her own free will,
+and that if she stays it will be because she wants to. Joe!" he called
+into the darkness.
+
+"Yes," came a sullen voice, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"Show this gentleman out."
+
+All at once Willy Cameron was staring at a closed door, on the inner
+side of which a bolt was being slipped. He felt absurd and futile, and
+not at all like a lion. With the revolver in his hand, he went down the
+steps.
+
+"Don't bother about the gate, Joe," he said. "I like to open my own
+gates. And--don't try any tricks, Joe. Get back to your kennel."
+
+Fearful mutterings followed that, but the shadow retired, and he made
+an undisturbed exit to the street. Once on the street-car, the entire
+episode became unreal and theatrical, with only the drag of Joe's
+revolver in his coat pocket to prove its reality.
+
+It was after midnight when, shoes in hand, he crept up the stairs to
+Dan's room, and careful not to disturb him, slipped into his side of the
+double bed. He did not sleep at all. He lay there, facing the fact that
+Lily had delivered herself voluntarily into the hands of the enemy of
+her house, and not only of her house, an enemy of the country. That
+conference that night was a sinister one. Brought to book about it,
+Doyle might claim it as a labor meeting. Organizers planning a strike
+might--did indeed--hold secret conferences, but they did not post armed
+guards. They opened business offices, and brought in the press men, and
+shouted their grievances for the world to hear.
+
+This was different. This was anarchy. And in every city it was going
+on, this rallying of the malcontents, the idlers, the envious and
+the dangerous, to the red flag. Organized labor gathered together
+the workmen, but men like Doyle were organizing the riff-raff of
+the country. They secured a small percentage of idealists and
+pseudo-intellectuals, and taught them a so-called internationalism
+which under the name of brotherhood was nothing but a raid on private
+property, a scheme of pillage and arson. They allied with themselves
+imported laborers from Europe, men with everything to gain and nothing
+to lose, and by magnifying real grievances and inflaming them with
+imaginary ones, were building out of this material the rank and file of
+an anarchist army.
+
+And against it, what?
+
+On toward morning he remembered something, and sat bolt upright in bed.
+Edith had once said something about knowing of a secret telephone. She
+had known Louis Akers very well. He might have told her what she knew,
+or have shown her, in some braggart moment. A certain type of man was
+unable to keep a secret from a woman. But that would imply--For the
+first time he wondered what Edith's relations with Louis Akers might
+have been.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the even tenor of her
+days there, the feeling she had of sanctuary did not offset Lily's clear
+knowledge that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing. Even her
+grandfather, whose anger had driven her away, she remembered now as a
+feeble old man, fighting his losing battle in a changing world, and yet
+with a sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors to the end.
+
+She had determined, that first night in Elinor's immaculate guest room,
+to go back the next day. They had been right at home, by all the tenets
+to which they adhered so religiously. She had broken the unwritten law
+not to break bread with an enemy of her house. She had done what they
+had expressly forbidden, done it over and over.
+
+"On top of all this," old Anthony had said, after reading the tale of
+her delinquencies from some notes in his hand, "you dined last night
+openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a man openly
+my enemy, and openly of impure life."
+
+"I do not believe he is your enemy."
+
+"He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened to
+kill me."
+
+"Oh, Lily, Lily!" said her mother.
+
+But it was to her father, standing grave and still, that Lily replied.
+
+"I don't believe that, father. He is not a murderer. If you would let
+him come here--"
+
+"Never in this house," said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in his
+hand. "He will come here over my dead body."
+
+"You have no right to condemn a man unheard."
+
+"Unheard! I tell you I know all about him. The man is an anarchist, a
+rake, a--dog."
+
+"Just a moment, father," Howard had put in, quietly. "Lily, do you care
+for this man? I mean by that, do you want to marry him?"
+
+"He has asked me. I have not given him any answer yet. I don't want to
+marry a man my family will not receive. It wouldn't be fair to him."
+
+Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and led him to a
+bitterness of language that turned Lily cold and obstinate. She heard
+him through, with her father vainly trying to break in and save the
+situation; then she said, coldly:
+
+"I am sorry you feel that way about it," and turned and left the room.
+
+She had made no plan, of course. She hated doing theatrical things. But
+shut in her bedroom with the doors locked, Anthony's furious words came
+back, his threats, his bitter sneers. She felt strangely alone, too.
+In all the great house she had no one to support her. Mademoiselle,
+her father and mother, even the servants, were tacitly aligned with the
+opposition. Except Ellen. She had felt lately that Ellen, in her humble
+way, had espoused her cause.
+
+She had sent for Ellen.
+
+In spite of the warmth of her greeting, Lily had felt a reserve in Aunt
+Elinor's welcome. It was as though she was determinedly making the best
+of a bad situation.
+
+"I had to do it, Aunt Elinor," she said, when they had gone upstairs.
+There was a labor conference, Doyle had explained, being held below.
+
+"I know," said Elinor. "I understand. I'll pin back the curtains so you
+can open your windows. The night air is so smoky here."
+
+"I am afraid mother will grieve terribly."
+
+"I think she will," said Elinor, with her quiet gravity. "You are all
+she has."
+
+"She has father. She cares more for him than for anything in the world."
+
+"Would you like some ice-water, dear?"
+
+Some time later Lily roused from the light sleep of emotional
+exhaustion. She had thought she heard Willy Cameron's voice. But that
+was absurd, of course, and she lay back to toss uneasily for hours.
+Out of all her thinking there emerged at last her real self, so long
+overlaid with her infatuation. She would go home again, and make what
+amends she could. They were wrong about Louis Akers, but they were
+right, too.
+
+Lying there, as the dawn slowly turned her windows to gray, she saw him
+with a new clarity. She had a swift vision of what life with him would
+mean. Intervals of passionate loving, of boyish dependence on her, and
+then--a new face. Never again was she to see him with such clearness.
+He was incapable of loyalty to a woman, even though he loved her. He
+was born to be a wanderer in love, an experimenter in passion. She even
+recognized in him an incurable sensuous curiosity about women, that
+would be quite remote from his love for her. He would see nothing wrong
+in his infidelities, so long as she did not know and did not suffer. And
+he would come back to her from them, watchful for suspicion, relieved
+when he did not find it, and bringing her small gifts which would be
+actually burnt offerings to his own soul.
+
+She made up her mind to give him up. She would go home in the morning,
+make her peace with them all, and never see Louis Akers again.
+
+She slept after that, and at ten o'clock Elinor wakened her with the
+word that her father was downstairs. Elinor was very pale. It had been
+a shock to her to see her brother in her home after all the years, and a
+still greater one when he had put his arm around her and kissed her.
+
+"I am so sorry, Howard," she had said. The sight of him had set her lips
+trembling. He patted her shoulder.
+
+"Poor Elinor," he said. "Poor old girl! We're a queer lot, aren't we?"
+
+"All but you."
+
+"An obstinate, do-and-be-damned lot," he said slowly. "I'd like to see
+my little girl, Nellie. We can't have another break in the family."
+
+He held Lily in much the same way when she came down, an arm around her,
+his big shoulders thrown back as though he would guard her against the
+world. But he was very uneasy and depressed, at that. He had come on a
+difficult errand, and because he had no finesse he blundered badly.
+It was some time before she gathered the full meaning of what he was
+saying.
+
+"Aunt Cornelia's!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Or, if you and your mother want to go to Europe," he put in hastily,
+seeing her puzzled face, "I think I can arrange about passports."
+
+"Does that mean he won't have me back, father?"
+
+"Lily, dear," he said, hoarse with anxiety, "we simply have to remember
+that he is a very old man, and that his mind is not elastic. He is
+feeling very bitter now, but he will get over it."
+
+"And I am to travel around waiting to be forgiven! I was ready to go
+back, but--he won't have me. Is that it?"
+
+"Only just for the present." He threw out his hands. "I have tried
+everything. I suppose, in a way, I could insist, make a point of it,
+but there are other things to be considered. His age, for one thing,
+and then--the strike. If he takes an arbitrary stand against me, no
+concession, no argument with the men, it makes it very difficult, in
+many ways."
+
+"I see. It is wicked that any one man should have such power. The city,
+the mills, his family--it's wicked." But she was conscious of no deep
+anger against Anthony now. She merely saw that between them, they, she
+and her grandfather, had dug a gulf that could not be passed. And
+in Howard's efforts she saw the temporizing that her impatient youth
+resented.
+
+"I am afraid it is a final break, father," she said. "And if he shuts
+me out I must live my own life. But I am not going to run away to Aunt
+Cornelia or Europe. I shall stay here."
+
+He had to be content with that. After all, his own sister--but he wished
+it were not Jim Doyle's house. Not that he regarded Lily's shift toward
+what he termed Bolshevism very seriously; all youth had a slant toward
+socialism, and outgrew it. But he went away sorely troubled, after a few
+words with Elinor Doyle alone.
+
+"You don't look unhappy, Nellie."
+
+"Things have been much better the last few years."
+
+"Is he kind to you?"
+
+"Not always, Howard. He doesn't drink now, so that is over. And I think
+there are no other women. But when things go wrong I suffer, of course."
+She stared past him toward the open window.
+
+"Why don't you leave him?"
+
+"I couldn't go home, Howard. You know what it would be. Worse than
+Lily. And I'm too old to start out by myself. My habits are formed, and
+besides, I--" She checked herself.
+
+"I could take a house somewhere for both of you, Lily and yourself," he
+said eagerly; "that would be a wonderful way out for everybody."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We'll manage all right," she said. "I'll make Lily comfortable and as
+happy as I can."
+
+He felt that he had to make his own case clear, or he might have
+noticed with what care she was choosing her words. His father's age, his
+unconscious dependence on Grace, his certainty to retire soon from the
+arbitrary stand he had taken. Elinor hardly heard him. Months
+afterwards he was to remember the distant look in her eyes, a sort of
+half-frightened determination, but he was self-engrossed just then.
+
+"I can't persuade you?" he finished.
+
+"No. But it is good of you to think of it."
+
+"You know what the actual trouble was last night? It was not her coming
+here."
+
+"I know, Howard."
+
+"Don't let her marry him, Nellie! Better than any one, you ought to know
+what that would mean."
+
+"I knew too, Howard, but I did it."
+
+In the end he went away not greatly comforted, to fight his own battles,
+to meet committees from the union, and having met them, to find
+himself facing the fact that, driven by some strange urge he could
+not understand, the leaders wished a strike. There were times when he
+wondered what would happen if he should suddenly yield every point, make
+every concession. They would only make further demands, he felt. They
+seemed determined to put him out of business. If only he could have
+dealt with the men directly, instead of with their paid representatives,
+he felt that he would get somewhere. But always, interposed between
+himself and his workmen, was this barrier of their own erecting.
+
+It was like representative government. It did not always represent.
+It, too, was founded on representation in good faith; but there was not
+always good faith. The union system was wrong. It was like politics. The
+few handled the many. The union, with its all-powerful leaders, was only
+another form of autocracy. It was Prussian. Yet the ideal behind the
+union was sound enough.
+
+He had no quarrel with the union. He puzzled it out, traveling
+unaccustomed mental paths. The country was founded on liberty. All men
+were created free and equal. Free, yes, but equal? Was not equality a
+long way ahead along a thorny road? Men were not equal in the effort
+they made, nor did equal efforts bring equal result. If there was class
+antagonism behind all this unrest, would there not always be those who
+rose by dint of ceaseless effort? Equality of opportunity, yes. Equality
+of effort and result, no.
+
+To destroy the chance of gain was to put a premium on inertia; to kill
+ambition; to reduce the high without raising the low.
+
+At noon on the same day Willy Cameron went back to the house on Cardew
+Way, to find Lily composed and resigned, instead of the militant figure
+he had expected. He asked her to go home, and she told him then that she
+had no longer a home to go to.
+
+"I meant to go, Willy," she finished. "I meant to go this morning. But
+you see how things are."
+
+He had stood for a long time, looking at nothing very hard. "I see," he
+said finally. "Of course your grandfather will be sorry in a day or two,
+but he may not swallow his pride very soon."
+
+That rather hurt her.
+
+"What about my pride?" she asked.
+
+"You can afford to be magnanimous with all your life before you." Then
+he faced her. "Besides, Lily, you're wrong. Dead wrong. You've hurt
+three people, and all you've got out of it has been your own way."
+
+"There is such a thing as liberty."
+
+"I don't know about that. And a good many crimes have been committed in
+its name." Even in his unhappiness he was controversial. "We are never
+really free, so long as we love people, and they love us. Well--" He
+picked up his old felt hat and absently turned down the brim; it was
+raining. "I'll have to get back. I've overstayed my lunch hour as it
+is."
+
+"You haven't had any luncheon?"
+
+"I wasn't hungry," he had said, and had gone away, his coat collar
+turned up against the shower. Lily had had a presentiment that he was
+taking himself out of her life, that he had given her up as a bad job.
+She felt depressed and lonely, and not quite so sure of herself as
+she had been; rather, although she did not put it that way, as though
+something fine had passed her way, like Pippa singing, and had then gone
+on.
+
+She settled down as well as she could to her new life, making no plans,
+however, and always with the stricken feeling that she had gained her
+own point at the cost of much suffering. She telephoned to her mother
+daily, broken little conversations with long pauses while Grace steadied
+her voice. Once her mother hung up the receiver hastily, and Lily
+guessed that her grandfather had come in. She felt very bitter toward
+him.
+
+But she found the small oneage interesting, in a quiet way; to make
+her own bed and mend her stockings--Grace had sent her a trunkful of
+clothing; and on the elderly maid's afternoon out, to help Elinor with
+the supper. She seldom went out, but Louis Akers came daily, and on the
+sixth day of her stay she promised to marry him.
+
+She had not meant to do it, but it was difficult to refuse him. She had
+let him think she would do it ultimately, for one thing. And, however
+clearly she might analyze him in his absences, his strange attraction
+reasserted itself when he was near. But her acceptance of him was almost
+stoical.
+
+"But not soon, Louis," she said, holding him off. "And--I ought to tell
+you--I don't think we will be happy together."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because--" she found it hard to put into words--"because love with you
+is a sort of selfish thing, I think."
+
+"I'll lie down now and let you tramp on me," he said exultantly, and
+held out his arms. But even as she moved toward him she voiced her inner
+perplexity.
+
+"I never seem to be able to see myself married to you."
+
+"Then the sooner the better, so you can."
+
+"You won't like being married, you know."
+
+"That's all you know about it, Lily. I'm mad about you. I'm mad for
+you."
+
+There was a new air of maturity about Lily those days, and sometimes
+a sort of aloofness that both maddened him and increased his desire to
+possess her. She went into his arms, but when he held her closest she
+sometimes seemed farthest away.
+
+"I want you now."
+
+"I want to be engaged a long time, Louis. We have so much to learn about
+each other."
+
+He thought that rather childish. But whatever had been his motive in the
+beginning, he was desperately in love with her by that time, and because
+of that he frightened her sometimes. He was less sure of himself, too,
+even after she had accepted him, and to prove his continued dominance
+over her he would bully her.
+
+"Come here," he would say, from the hearth rug, or by the window.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Come here."
+
+Sometimes she went, to be smothered in his hot embrace; sometimes she
+did not.
+
+But her infatuation persisted, although there were times when his
+inordinate vitality and his caresses gave her a sense of physical
+weariness, times when sheer contact revolted her. He seemed always to
+want to touch her. Fastidiously reared, taught a sort of aloofness from
+childhood, Lily found herself wondering if all men in love were like
+that, always having to be held off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Ellen was staying at the Boyd house. She went downstairs the morning
+after her arrival, and found the bread--bakery bread--toasted and
+growing cold on the table, while a slice of ham, ready to be cooked, was
+not yet on the fire, and Mrs. Boyd had run out to buy some milk.
+
+Dan had already gone, and his half-empty cup of black coffee was on the
+kitchen table. Ellen sniffed it and raised her eyebrows.
+
+She rolled up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in the
+frying pan, with much the same grimness with which she had sat the night
+before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue. If this was the way they
+looked after Willy Cameron, no wonder he was thin and pale. She threw
+out the coffee, which she suspected had been made by the time-saving
+method of pouring water on last night's grounds, and made a fresh pot of
+it. After that she inspected the tea towels, and getting a tin dishpan,
+set them to boil in it on the top of the range.
+
+"Enough to give him typhoid," she reflected.
+
+Ellen disapproved of her surroundings; she disapproved of any woman who
+did not boil her tea towels. And when Edith came down carefully dressed
+and undeniably rouged she formed a disapproving opinion of that young
+lady, which was that she was trying to land Willy Cameron, and that he
+would be better dead than landed.
+
+She met Edith's stare of surprise with one of thinly veiled hostility.
+
+"Hello!" said Edith. "When did you blow in, and where from?"
+
+"I came to see Mr. Cameron last night, and he made me stay."
+
+"A friend of Willy's! Well, I guess you needn't pay for your breakfast
+by cooking it. Mother's probably run out for something--she never has
+anything in the house--and is talking somewhere. I'll take that fork."
+
+But Ellen proceeded to turn the ham.
+
+"I'll do it," she said. "You might spoil your hands."
+
+But Edith showed no offense.
+
+"All right," she acceded indifferently. "If you're going to eat it you'd
+better cook it. We're rotten housekeepers here."
+
+"I should think, if you're going to keep boarders, somebody would learn
+to cook. Mr. Cameron's mother is the best housekeeper in town, and he
+was raised on good food and plenty of it."
+
+Her tone was truculent. Ellen's world, the world of short hours and
+easy service, of the decorum of the Cardew servants' hall, of luxury
+and dignity and good pay, had suddenly gone to pieces about her. She
+was feeling very bitter, especially toward a certain chauffeur who had
+prophesied the end of all service. He had made the statement that
+before long all people would be equal. There would be no above and
+below-stairs, no servants' hall.
+
+"They'll drive their own cars, then, damn them," he had said once, "if
+they can get any to drive. And answer their own bells, if they've got
+any to ring. And get up and cook their own breakfasts."
+
+"Which you won't have any to cook," Grayson had said irritably, from
+the head of the long table. "Just a word, my man. That sort of talk is
+forbidden here. One word more and I go to Mr. Cardew."
+
+The chauffeur had not sulked, however. "All right, Mr. Grayson," he said
+affably. "But I can go on thinking, I daresay. And some of these days
+you'll be wishing you'd climbed on the band wagon before it's too late."
+
+Ellen, turning the ham carefully, was conscious that her revolt had been
+only partially on Lily's account. It was not so much Lily's plight
+as the abuse of power, although she did not put it that way, that had
+driven her out. Ellen then had carried out her own small revolution, and
+where had it put her? She had lost a good home, and what could she do?
+All she knew was service.
+
+Edith poured herself a cup of coffee, and taking a piece of toast from
+the oven, stood nibbling it. The crumbs fell on the not over-clean
+floor.
+
+"Why don't you go into the dining-room to eat?" Ellen demanded.
+
+"Got out of the wrong side of the bed, didn't you?" Edith asked.
+"Willy's bed, I suppose. I'm not hungry, and I always eat breakfast like
+this. I wish he would hurry. We'll be late."
+
+Ellen stared. It was her first knowledge that this girl, this painted
+hussy, worked in Willy's pharmacy, and her suspicions increased. She
+had a quick vision, as she had once had of Lily, of Edith in the Cameron
+house; Edith reading or embroidering on the front porch while Willy's
+mother slaved for her; Edith on the same porch in the evening, with all
+the boys in town around her. She knew the type, the sort that set an
+entire village by the ears and in the end left home and husband and ran
+away with a traveling salesman.
+
+Ellen had already got Willy married and divorced when Mrs. Boyd came in.
+She carried the milk pail, but her lips were blue and she sat down in a
+chair and held her hand to her heart.
+
+"I'm that short of breath!" she gasped. "I declare I could hardly get
+back."
+
+"I'll give you some coffee, right off."
+
+When Willy Cameron had finished his breakfast she followed him into the
+parlor. His pallor was not lost on her, or his sunken eyes. He looked
+badly fed, shabby, and harassed, and he bore the marks of his sleepless
+night on his face. "Are you going to stay here?" she demanded.
+
+"Why, yes, Miss Ellen."
+
+"Your mother would break her heart if she knew the way you're living."
+
+"I'm very comfortable. We've tried to get a ser--" He changed color
+at that. In the simple life of the village at home a woman whose only
+training was the town standard of good housekeeping might go into
+service in the city and not lose caste. But she was never thought of as
+a servant. "--help," he substituted. "But we can't get any one, and Mrs.
+Boyd is delicate. It is heart trouble."
+
+"Does that girl work where you do?"
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"Is she engaged to you? She calls you Willy." He smiled into her eyes.
+
+"Not a bit of it, or thinking of it."
+
+"How do you know what she's thinking? It's all over her. It's Willy this
+and Willy that--and men are such fools."
+
+There flashed into his mind certain things that he had tried to forget;
+Edith at his doorway, with that odd look in her eyes; Edith never going
+to sleep until he had gone to bed; and recently, certain things she had
+said, that he had passed over lightly and somewhat uncomfortably.
+
+"That's ridiculous, Miss Ellen. But even if it were true, which it
+isn't, don't you think it would be rather nice of her?" He smiled.
+
+"I do not. I heard you going out last night, Willy. Did you find her?"
+
+"She is at the Doyles'. I didn't see her."
+
+"That'll finish it," Ellen prophesied, somberly. She glanced around the
+parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard, at the
+unwound clock on the mantel shelf.
+
+"If you're going to stay here I will," she announced abruptly. "I owe
+that much to your mother. I've got some money. I'll take what they'd
+pay some foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another family." Then,
+seeing hesitation in his eyes: "That woman's sick, and you've got to be
+looked after. I could do all the work, if that--if the girl would help
+in the evenings."
+
+He demurred at first. She would find it hard. They had no luxuries, and
+she was accustomed to luxury. There was no room for her. But in the
+end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to find Edith
+offering to share her upper bedroom.
+
+"It's a hole," she said, "cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer.
+But there's room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone."
+
+"I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith," he said for perhaps the
+twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, "and you would
+take my room."
+
+"No chance," she said cheerfully. "Mother would raise the devil if you
+tried it." She glanced at Ellen's face. "If that word shocks you, you're
+due for a few shocks, you know."
+
+"The way you talk is your business, not mine," said Ellen austerely.
+
+When they finally departed on a half-run Ellen was established as
+a fixture in the Boyd house, and was already piling all the cooking
+utensils into a wash boiler and with grim efficiency was searching for
+lye with which to clean them.
+
+Two weeks later, the end of June, the strike occurred. It was not,
+in spite of predictions, a general walk-out. Some of the mills,
+particularly the smaller plants, did not go down at all, and with
+reduced forces kept on, but the chain of Cardew Mills was closed. There
+was occasional rioting by the foreign element in outlying districts, but
+the state constabulary handled it easily.
+
+Dan was out of work, and the loss of his pay was a serious matter in
+the little house. He had managed to lay by a hundred dollars, and Willy
+Cameron had banked it for him, but there was a real problem to be
+faced. On the night of the day the Cardew Mills went down Willy called a
+meeting of the household after supper, around the dining room table. He
+had been in to see Mr. Hendricks, who had been laid up with bronchitis,
+and Mr. Hendricks had predicted a long strike.
+
+"The irresistible force and the immovable body, son," he said. "They'll
+stay set this time. And unless I miss my guess that is playing Doyle's
+hand for him, all right. His chance will come when the men have used up
+their savings and are growing bitter. Every strike plays into the hands
+of the enemy, son, and they know it. The moment production ceases prices
+go up, and soon all the money in the world won't pay them wages enough
+to live on."
+
+He had a store of homely common sense, and a gift of putting things into
+few words. Willy Cameron, going back to the little house that evening,
+remembered the last thing he had said.
+
+"The only way to solve this problem of living," he said, "is to see how
+much we can work, and not how little. Germany's working ten hours a day,
+and producing. We're talking about six, and loafing and fighting while
+we talk."
+
+So Willy went home and called his meeting, and knowing Mrs. Boyd's
+regard for figures, set down and added or subtracted, he placed a pad
+and pencil on the table before him. It was an odd group: Dan sullen,
+resenting the strike and the causes that had led to it; Ellen, austere
+and competent; Mrs. Boyd with a lace fichu pinned around her neck,
+now that she had achieved the dignity of hired help, and Edith. Edith
+silent, morose and fixing now and then rather haggard eyes on Willy
+Cameron's unruly hair. She seldom met his eyes.
+
+"First of all," said Willy, "we'll take our weekly assets. Of course
+Dan will get something temporarily, but we'll leave that out for the
+present."
+
+The weekly assets turned out to be his salary and Edith's.
+
+"Why, Willy," said Mrs. Boyd, "you can't turn all your money over to
+us."
+
+"You are all the family I have just now. Why not? Anyhow, I'll have
+to keep out lunch money and carfare, and so will Edith. Now as to
+expenses."
+
+Ellen had made a great reduction in expenses, but food was high. And
+there was gas and coal, and Dan's small insurance, and the rent. There
+was absolutely no margin, and a sort of silence fell.
+
+"What about your tuition at night school?" Edith asked suddenly.
+
+"Spring term ended this week."
+
+"But you said there was a summer one."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you about that," Willy said, feeling for words. "I'm
+going to be busy helping Mr. Hendricks in his campaign. Then next
+fall--well, I'll either go back or Hendricks will make me chief of
+police, or something." He smiled around the table. "I ought to get some
+sort of graft out of it."
+
+"Mother!" Edith protested. "He mustn't sacrifice himself for us. What
+are we to him anyhow? A lot of stones hung around his neck. That's all."
+
+It was after Willy had declared that this was his home now, and he had
+a right to help keep it going, and after Ellen had observed that she had
+some money laid by and would not take any wages during the strike, that
+the meeting threatened to become emotional. Mrs. Boyd shed a few tears,
+and as she never by any chance carried a handkerchief, let them flow
+over her fichu. And Dan shook Willy's hand and Ellen's, and said that
+if he'd had his way he'd be working, and not sitting round like a stiff
+letting other people work for him. But Edith got up and went out into
+the little back garden, and did not come back until the meeting was both
+actually and morally broken up. When she heard Dan go out, and Ellen
+and Mrs. Boyd go upstairs, chatting in a new amiability brought about by
+trouble and sacrifice, she put on her hat and left the house.
+
+Ellen, rousing on her cot in Edith's upper room, heard her come in some
+time later, and undress and get into bed. Her old suspicion of the girl
+revived, and she sat upright.
+
+"Where I come from girls don't stay out alone until all hours," she
+said.
+
+"Oh, let me alone."
+
+Ellen fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed that Mrs. Boyd had taken
+sick and was moaning. The moaning was terrible; it filled the little
+house. Ellen wakened suddenly. It was not moaning; it was strange, heavy
+breathing, strangling; and it came from Edith's bed.
+
+"Are you sick?" she called, and getting up, her knees hardly holding
+her, she lighted the gas at its unshaded bracket on the wall and ran to
+the other bed.
+
+Edith was lying there, her mouth open, her lips bleached and twisted.
+Her stertorous breathing filled the room, and over all was the odor of
+carbolic acid.
+
+"Edith, for God's sake!"
+
+The girl was only partially conscious. Ellen ran down the stairs and
+into Willy's room.
+
+"Get up," she cried, shaking him. "That girl's killed herself."
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"No, Edith. Carbolic acid."
+
+Even then he remembered her mother.
+
+"Don't let her hear anything, It will kill her," he said, and ran up the
+stairs. Almost immediately he was down again, searching for alcohol;
+he found a small quantity and poured that down the swollen throat. He
+roused Dan then, and sent him running madly for Doctor Smalley, with
+a warning to bring him past Mrs. Boyd's door quietly, and to bring an
+intubation set with him in case her throat should close. Then, on one of
+his innumerable journeys up and down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Boyd
+herself, in her nightgown, and terrified.
+
+"What's the matter, Willy?" she asked. "Is it a fire?"
+
+"Edith is sick. I don't want you to go up. It may be contagious. It's
+her throat."
+
+And from that Mrs. Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairs in her
+nightgown, a shaken helpless figure, asking countless questions of those
+that hurried past. But they reassured her, and after a time she went
+downstairs and made a pot of coffee. Ensconced with it in the lower
+hall, and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid them with it as they hurried
+up and down.
+
+Upstairs the battle went on. There were times when the paralyzed muscles
+almost stopped lifting the chest walls, when each breath was a new
+miracle. Her throat was closing fast, too, and at eight o'clock came a
+brisk young surgeon, and with Willy Cameron's assistance, an operation
+was performed. After that, and for days, Edith breathed through a tube
+in her neck.
+
+The fiction of diphtheria was kept up, and Mrs. Boyd, having a childlike
+faith in medical men, betrayed no anxiety after the first hour or two.
+She saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going down through the house while
+she herself was kept out of that upper room where Edith lay, conscious
+now but sullen, disfigured, silent. She was happy, too, to have her
+old domain hers again, while Ellen nursed; to make again her flavorless
+desserts, her mounds of rubberlike gelatine, her pies. She brewed broths
+daily, and when Edith could swallow she sent up the results of hours of
+cooking which Ellen cooled, skimmed the crust of grease from the top,
+and heated again over the gas flame.
+
+She never guessed the conspiracy against her.
+
+Between Ellen and Edith there was no real liking. Ellen did her duty,
+and more; got up at night; was gentle with rather heavy hands; bathed
+the girl and brushed and braided her long hair. But there were hours
+during that simulated quarantine when a brooding silence held in the
+sick-room, and when Ellen, turning suddenly, would find Edith's eyes on
+her, full of angry distrust. At those times Ellen was glad that Edith
+could not speak.
+
+For at the end of a few days Ellen knew, and Edith knew she knew.
+
+Edith could not speak. She wrote her wants with a stub of pencil, or
+made signs. One day she motioned toward a mirror and Ellen took it to
+her.
+
+"You needn't be frightened," she said. "When those scabs come off the
+doctor says you'll hardly be marked at all."
+
+But Edith only glanced at herself, and threw the mirror aside.
+
+Another time she wrote: "Willy?"
+
+"He's all right. They've got a girl at the store to take your place, but
+I guess you can go back if you want to." Then, seeing the hunger in the
+girl's eyes: "He's out a good bit these nights. He's making speeches for
+that Mr. Hendricks. As if he could be elected against Mr. Cardew!"
+
+The confinement told on Ellen. She would sit for hours, wondering what
+had become of Lily. Had she gone back home? Was she seeing that other
+man? Perhaps her valiant loyalty to Lily faded somewhat during those
+days, because she began to guess Willy Cameron's secret. If a girl had
+no eyes in her head, and couldn't see that Willy Cameron was the finest
+gentleman who ever stepped in shoe leather, that girl had something
+wrong about her.
+
+Then, sometimes, she wondered how Edith's condition was going to be kept
+from her mother. She had measured Mrs. Boyd's pride by that time, her
+almost terrible respectability. She rather hoped that the sick woman
+would die some night, easily and painlessly in her sleep, because death
+was easier than some things. She liked Mrs. Boyd; she felt a slightly
+contemptuous but real affection for her.
+
+Then one night Edith heard Willy's voice below, and indicated that she
+wanted to see him. He came in, stooping under the sheet which Mrs. Boyd
+had heard belonged in the doorway of diphtheria, and stood looking down
+at her. His heart ached. He sat down on the bed beside her and stroked
+her hand.
+
+"Poor little girl," he said. "We've got to make things very happy for
+her, to make up for all this!"
+
+But Edith freed her hand, and reaching out for paper and pencil stub,
+wrote something and gave it to Ellen.
+
+Ellen read it.
+
+"Tell him."
+
+"I don't want to, Edith. You wait and do it yourself."
+
+But Edith made an insistent gesture, and Ellen, flushed and wretched,
+had to tell. He made no sign, but sat stroking Edith's hand, only he
+stared rather fixedly at the wall, conscious that the girl's eyes were
+watching him for a single gesture of surprise or anger. He felt no
+anger, only a great perplexity and sadness, an older-brother grief.
+
+"I'm sorry, little sister," he said, and did the kindest thing he could
+think of, bent over and kissed her on the forehead. "Of course I know
+how you feel, but it is a big thing to bear a child, isn't it? It is the
+only miracle we have these days."
+
+"A child with no father," said Ellen, stonily.
+
+"Even then," he persisted, "it's a big thing. We would have this one
+come under happier circumstances if we could, but we will welcome and
+take care of it, anyhow. A child's a child, and mighty valuable. And,"
+he added--"I appreciate your wanting me to know, Edith."
+
+He stayed a little while after that, but he read aloud, choosing a
+humorous story and laughing very hard at all the proper places. In the
+end he brought a faint smile to Edith's blistered lips, and a small lift
+to the cloud that hung over her now, day and night.
+
+He made a speech that night, and into it he put all of his aching,
+anxious soul; Edith and Dan and Lily were behind it. Akers and Doyle.
+It was at a meeting in the hall over the city market, and the audience a
+new men's non-partisan association.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, "I am asked what it is that we want, we men who
+are standing behind Hendricks as an independent candidate." He was
+supposed to bring Mr. Hendricks' name in as often as possible. "I answer
+that we want honest government, law and order, an end to this conviction
+that the country is owned by the unions and the capitalists, a fair deal
+for the plain people, which is you and I, my friends. But I answer still
+further, we want one thing more, a greater thing, and that thing we
+shall have. All through this great country to-night are groups of men
+hoping and planning for an incredible thing. They are not great in
+numbers; they are, however, organized, competent, intelligent and
+deadly. They plow the land with discord to sow the seeds of sedition.
+And the thing they want is civil war.
+
+"And against them, what? The people like you and me; the men with homes
+they love; the men with little businesses they have fought and labored
+to secure; the clerks; the preachers; the doctors, the honest laborers,
+the God-fearing rich. I tell you, we are the people, and it is time we
+knew our power.
+
+"And this is the thing we want, we the people; the greater thing, the
+thing we shall have; that this government, this country which we love,
+which has three times been saved at such cost of blood, shall survive."
+
+It was after that speech that he met Pink Denslow for the first time.
+A square, solidly built young man edged his way through the crowd, and
+shook hands with him.
+
+"Name's Denslow," said Pink. "Liked what you said. Have you time to run
+over to my club with me and have a high-ball and a talk?"
+
+"I've got all the rest of the night."
+
+"Right-o!" said Pink, who had brought back a phrase or two from the
+British.
+
+It was not until they were in the car that Pink said:
+
+"I think you're a friend of Miss Cardew's, aren't you?"
+
+"I know Miss Cardew," said Willy Cameron, guardedly. And they were both
+rather silent for a time.
+
+That night proved to be a significant one for them both, as it
+happened. They struck up a curious sort of friendship, based on a humble
+admiration on Pink's part, and with Willy Cameron on sheer hunger for
+the society of his kind. He had been suffering a real mental starvation.
+He had been constantly giving out and getting nothing in return.
+
+Pink developed a habit of dropping into the pharmacy when he happened
+to be nearby. He was rather wistfully envious of that year in the camp,
+when Lily Cardew and Cameron had been together, and at first it was
+the bond of Lily that sent him to the shop. In the beginning the shop
+irritated him, because it seemed an incongruous background for the fiery
+young orator. But later on he joined the small open forum in the back
+room, and perhaps for the first time in his idle years he began to
+think. He had made the sacrifice of his luxurious young life to go to
+war, had slept in mud and risked his body and been hungry and cold and
+often frightfully homesick. And now it appeared that a lot of madmen
+were going to try to undo all that he had helped to do. He was surprised
+and highly indignant. Even a handful of agitators, it seemed, could do
+incredible harm.
+
+One night he and Willy Cameron slipped into a meeting of a Russian
+Society, wearing old clothes, which with Willy was not difficult,
+and shuffling up dirty stairs without molestation. They came away
+thoughtful.
+
+"Looks like it's more than talk," Pink said, after a time.
+
+"They're not dangerous," Willy Cameron said. "That's talk. But it shows
+a state of mind. The real incendiaries don't show their hand like that."
+
+"You think it's real, then?"
+
+"Some boils don't come to a head. But most do."
+
+It was after a mob of foreigners had tried to capture the town of
+Donesson, near Pittsburgh, and had been turned back by a hastily armed
+body of its citizens, doctors, lawyers and shop-keepers, that a nebulous
+plan began to form in Willy Cameron's active mind.
+
+If one could unite the plain people politically, or against a foreign
+war, why could they not be united against an enemy at home? The South
+had had a similar problem, and the result was the Ku Klux Klan.
+
+The Chief of Police was convinced that a plan was being formulated to
+repeat the Seattle experiment against the city. The Mayor was dubious.
+He was not a strong man; he had a conviction that because a thing never
+had happened it never could happen.
+
+"The mob has done it before," urged the Chief of Police one day. "They
+took Paris, and it was damned disagreeable."
+
+The Mayor was a trifle weak in history.
+
+"Maybe they did," he agreed. "But this is different. This is America."
+
+He was rather uneasy after that. It had occurred to him that the Chief
+might have referred to Paris, Illinois.
+
+Now and then Pink coaxed Willy Cameron to his club, and for those rare
+occasions he provided always a little group of men like themselves,
+young, eager, loyal, and struggling with the new problems of the day. In
+this environment Willy Cameron received as well as gave.
+
+Most of the men had been in the army, and he found in them an eager
+anxiety to face the coming situation and combat it. In the end the
+nucleus of the new Vigilance Committee was formed there.
+
+Not immediately. The idea was of slow growth even with its originator,
+and it only reached the point of speech when Mr. Hendricks stopped in
+one day at the pharmacy and brought a bundle which he slapped down on
+the prescription desk.
+
+"Read that dynamite," he said, his face flushed and lowering. "A man I
+know got it translated for me. Read it and then tell me whether I'm an
+alarmist and a plain fool, or if it means trouble around here."
+
+There was no question in Willy Cameron's mind as to which it meant.
+
+Louis Akers had by that time announced his candidacy for Mayor, and
+organized labor was behind him to an alarming extent. When Willy
+Cameron went with Pink to the club that afternoon, he found Akers under
+discussion, and he heard some facts about that gentleman's private life
+which left him silent and morose. Pink knew nothing of Lily's friendship
+with Akers. Indeed, Pink did not know that Lily was in the city, and
+Willy Cameron had not undeceived him. It had pleased Anthony Cardew to
+announce in the press that Lily was making a round of visits, and the
+secret was not his to divulge. But the question which was always in his
+mind rose again. What did she see in the man? How could she have thrown
+away her home and her family for a fellow who was so obviously what Pink
+would have called "a wrong one"?
+
+He roused, however, at a question.
+
+"He may," he said; "with three candidates we're splitting the vote three
+ways, and it's hard to predict. Mr. Cardew can't be elected, but he
+weakens Hendricks. One thing's sure. Where's my pipe?" Silence while Mr.
+Cameron searched for his pipe, and took his own time to divulge the
+sure thing. "If Hendricks is elected he'll clear out the entire bunch of
+anarchists. The present man's afraid. But if Akers can hypnotize labor
+into voting for him, and he gets it, it will be up to the city to
+protect itself, for he won't. He'll let them hold their infamous
+meetings and spread their damnable doctrine, and--you know what they've
+tried to do in other places." He explained what he had in mind then,
+finding them expectant and eager. There ought to be some sort of
+citizen organization, to supplement the state and city forces. Nothing
+spectacular; indeed, the least said about it the better. He harked back
+then to his idea of the plain people, with homes to protect.
+
+"That needn't keep you fellows out," he said, with his whimsical smile.
+"But the rank and file will have to constitute the big end. We don't
+want a lot of busybodies, pussy-footing around with guns and looking for
+trouble. We had enough of that during the war. We would want some men
+who would answer a riot call if they were needed. That's all."
+
+He had some of the translations Hendricks had brought him in his pocket,
+and they circulated around the group.
+
+"Do you think they mean to attack the city?"
+
+"That looks like it, doesn't it? And they are getting that sort of stuff
+all the time. There are a hundred thousand of them in this end of the
+state."
+
+"Would you make it a secret organization?"
+
+"Yes. I like doing things in the open myself, but you've got to fight a
+rat in his hole, if he won't come out."
+
+"Would you hold office?" Pink asked.
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+"I'm a good bit like the boy who dug post holes in the daytime and took
+in washing at night to support the family. But I'll work, if that's what
+you mean."
+
+"We'd better have a constitution and all that, don't you think?" Pink
+asked. "We can draw up a tentative one, and then fix it up at the first
+meeting. This is going to be a big thing. It'll go like a fire."
+
+But Willy Cameron overruled that.
+
+"We don't need that sort of stuff," he said, "and if we begin that we
+might as well put it in the newspapers. We want men who can keep their
+mouths shut, and who will sign some sort of a card agreeing to stand
+by the government and to preserve law and order. Then an office and a
+filing case, and their addresses, so we can get at them in a hurry if we
+need them. Get me a piece of paper, somebody."
+
+Then and there, in twenty words, Willy Cameron wrote the now historic
+oath of the new Vigilance Committee, on the back of an old envelope. It
+was a promise, an agreement rather than an oath. There was a little
+hush as the paper passed from hand to hand. Not a man there but felt a
+certain solemnity in the occasion. To preserve the Union and the flag,
+to fight all sedition, to love their country and support it; the very
+simplicity of the words was impressive. And the mere putting of it into
+visible form crystallized their hitherto vague anxieties, pointed to a
+real enemy and a real danger. Yet, as Willy Cameron pointed out, they
+might never be needed.
+
+"Our job," he said, "is only as a last resort. Only for real trouble.
+Until the state troops can get here, for instance, and if the
+constabulary is greatly outnumbered. It's their work up to a certain
+point. We'll fight if they need us. That's all."
+
+It was very surprising to him to find the enterprise financed
+immediately. Pink offered an office in the bank building. Some one
+agreed to pay a clerk who should belong to the committee. It was
+practical, businesslike, and--done. And, although he had protested, he
+found himself made the head of the organization.
+
+"--without title and without pay," he stipulated. "If you wish a title
+on me, I'll resign."
+
+He went home that night very exalted and very humble.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+For a time Lily remained hidden in the house on Cardew Way, walking
+out after nightfall with Louis occasionally, but shrinkingly keeping to
+quiet back streets. She had a horror of meeting some one she knew,
+of explanations and of gossip. But after a time the desire to see her
+mother became overwhelming. She took to making little flying visits
+home at an hour when her grandfather was certain to be away, going in a
+taxicab, and reaching the house somewhat breathless and excited. She was
+driven by an impulse toward the old familiar things; she was homesick
+for them all, for her mother, for Mademoiselle, for her own rooms, for
+her little toilet table, for her bed and her reading lamp. For the old
+house itself.
+
+She was still an alien where she was. Elinor Doyle was a perpetual
+enigma to her; now and then she thought she had penetrated behind the
+gentle mask that was Elinor's face, only to find beyond it something
+inscrutable. There was a dead line in Elinor's life across which Lily
+never stepped. Whatever Elinor's battles were, she fought them alone,
+and Lily had begun to realize that there were battles.
+
+The atmosphere of the little house had changed. Sometimes, after she
+had gone to bed, she heard Doyle's voice from the room across the hall,
+raised angrily. He was nervous and impatient; at times he dropped the
+unctuousness of his manner toward her, and she found herself looking
+into a pair of cold blue eyes which terrified her.
+
+The brilliant little dinners had entirely ceased, with her coming. A
+sort of early summer lethargy had apparently settled on the house.
+Doyle wrote for hours, shut in the room with the desk; the group of
+intellectuals, as he had dubbed them, had dispersed on summer vacations.
+But she discovered that there were other conferences being held in the
+house, generally late at night.
+
+She learned to know the nights when those meetings were to occur. On
+those evenings Elinor always made an early move toward bed, and Lily
+would repair to her hot low-ceiled room, to sit in the darkness by the
+window and think long, painful thoughts.
+
+That was how she learned of the conferences. She had no curiosity about
+them at first. They had something to do with the strike, she considered,
+and with that her interest died. Strikes were a symptom, and ultimately,
+through great thinkers like Mr. Doyle, they would discover the cure for
+the disease that caused them. She was quite content to wait for that
+time.
+
+Then, one night, she went downstairs for a glass of ice water, and found
+the lower floor dark, and subdued voices coming from the study. The
+kitchen door was standing open, and she closed and locked it, placing
+the key, as was Elinor's custom, in a table drawer. The door was partly
+glass, and Elinor had a fear of the glass being broken and thus the key
+turned in the lock by some intruder.
+
+On toward morning there came a violent hammering at her bedroom door,
+and Doyle's voice outside, a savage voice that she scarcely recognized.
+When she had thrown on her dressing gown and opened the door he had
+instantly caught her by the shoulder, and she bore the imprints of his
+fingers for days.
+
+"Did you lock the kitchen door?" he demanded, his tones thick with fury.
+
+"Yes. Why not?" She tried to shake off his hand, but failed.
+
+"None of your business why not," he said, and gave her an angry shake.
+"Hereafter, when you find that door open, you leave it that way. That's
+all."
+
+"Take your hands off me!" She was rather like her grandfather at that
+moment, and his lost caution came back. He freed her at once and laughed
+a little.
+
+"Sorry!" he said. "I get a bit emphatic at times. But there are times
+when a locked door becomes a mighty serious matter."
+
+The next day he removed the key from the door, and substituted a bolt.
+Elinor made no protest.
+
+Another night Elinor was taken ill, and Lilly had been forced to knock
+at the study door and call Doyle. She had an instant's impression of the
+room crowded with strange figures. The heavy odors of sweating bodies,
+of tobacco, and of stale beer came through the half-open door and
+revolted her. And Doyle had refused to go upstairs.
+
+She began to feel that she could not remain there very long. The
+atmosphere was variable. It was either cynical or sinister, and she
+hated them both. She had a curious feeling, too, that Doyle both wanted
+her there and did not want her, and that he was changing his attitude
+toward her Aunt Elinor. Sometimes she saw him watching Elinor from under
+half-closed eyelids.
+
+But she could not fill her days with anxieties and suspicions, and she
+turned to Louis Akers as a flower to the open day. He at least was what
+he appeared to be. There was nothing mysterious about him.
+
+He came in daily, big, dominant and demonstrative, filling the house
+with his presence, and demanding her in a loud, urgent voice. Hardly had
+the door slammed before he would call:
+
+"Lily! Where are you?"
+
+Sometimes he lifted her off her feet and held her to him.
+
+"You little whiffet!" he would say. "I could crush you to death in my
+arms."
+
+Had his wooing all been violent she might have tired sooner, because
+those phases of his passion for her tired her. But there were times when
+he put her into a chair and sat on the floor at her feet, his handsome
+face uplifted to hers in a sort of humble adoration, his arms across her
+knees. It was not altogether studied. He was a born wooer, but he had
+his hours of humility, of vague aspirations. His insistent body was
+always greater than his soul, but now and then, when he was physically
+weary, he had a spiritual moment.
+
+"I love you, little girl," he would say.
+
+It was in one of those moments that she extracted a promise from him.
+He had been, from his position on the floor, telling her about the
+campaign.
+
+"I don't like your running against my father, Louis."
+
+"He couldn't have got it, anyhow. And he doesn't want it. I do, honey.
+I need it in my business. When the election's over you're going to marry
+me."
+
+She ignored that.
+
+"I don't like the men who come here, Louis. I wish they were not friends
+of yours."
+
+"Friends of mine! That bunch?"
+
+"You are always with them."
+
+"I draw a salary for being with them, honey."
+
+"But what do you draw a salary for?" He was immediately on the alert,
+but her eyes were candid and unsuspicious. "They are strikers, aren't
+they?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is it legal business?"
+
+"Partly that."
+
+"Louis, is there going to be a general strike?"
+
+"There may be some bad times coming, honey." He bent his head and kissed
+her hands, lying motionless in her lap. "I wish you would marry me soon.
+I want you. I want to keep you safe."
+
+She drew her hands away.
+
+"Safe from what, Louis?"
+
+He sat back and looked up into her face.
+
+"You must remember, dear, that for all your theories, which are very
+sweet, this is a man's world, and men have rather brutal methods of
+settling their differences."
+
+"And you advocate brutality?"
+
+"Well, the war was brutal, wasn't it? And you were in a white heat
+supporting it, weren't you? How about another war,"--he chose his words
+carefully--"just as reasonable and just? You've heard Doyle. You know
+what I mean."
+
+"Not now!"
+
+He was amazed at her horror, a horror that made her recoil from him and
+push his hands away when he tried to touch her. He got up angrily and
+stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets.
+
+"What the devil did you think all this talk meant?" he demanded. "You've
+heard enough of it."
+
+"Does Aunt Elinor know?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And she approves?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care." Suddenly, with one of the quick changes
+she knew so well, he caught her hands and drawing her to her feet, put
+his arms around her. "All I know is that I love you, and if you say the
+word I'll cut the whole business."
+
+"You would?"
+
+He amended his offer somewhat.
+
+"Marry me, honey," he begged. "Marry me now. Do you think I'll let
+anything in God's world come between us? Marry me, and I'll do more than
+leave them." He was whispering to her, stroking her hair. "I'll cut the
+whole outfit. And on the day I go into your house as your husband I'll
+tell your people some things they want to know. That's a promise."
+
+"What will they do to you?"
+
+"Your people?"
+
+"The others."
+
+He drew himself to his full height, and laughed.
+
+"They'll try to do plenty, old girl," he said, "but I'm not afraid of
+them, and they know it. Marry me, Lily," he urged. "Marry me now. And
+we'll beat them out, you and I."
+
+He gave her a sense of power, over him and over evil. She felt suddenly
+an enormous responsibility, that of a human soul waiting to be uplifted
+and led aright.
+
+"You can save me, honey," he whispered, and kneeling suddenly, he kissed
+the toe of her small shoe.
+
+He was strong. But he was weak too. He needed her. "I'll do it, Louis,"
+she said. "You--you will be good to me, won't you?"
+
+"I'm crazy about you."
+
+The mood of exaltation upheld her through the night, and into the next
+day. Elinor eyed her curiously, and with some anxiety. It was a long
+time since she had been a girl, going about star-eyed with power over a
+man, but she remembered that lost time well.
+
+At noon Louis came in for a hasty luncheon, and before he left he
+drew Lily into the little study and slipped a solitaire diamond on her
+engagement finger. To Lily the moment was almost a holy one, but he
+seemed more interested in the quality of the stone and its appearance on
+her hand than in its symbolism.
+
+"Got you cinched now, honey. Do you like it?"
+
+"It makes me feel that I don't belong to myself any longer."
+
+"Well, you've passed into good hands," he said, and laughed his great,
+vibrant laugh. "Costing me money already, you mite!"
+
+A little of her exaltation died then. But perhaps men were like that,
+shyly covering the things they felt deepest.
+
+She was rather surprised when he suggested keeping the engagement a
+secret.
+
+"Except the Doyles, of course," he said. "I am not taking any chances on
+losing you, child."
+
+"Not mother?"
+
+"Not unless you want to be kidnaped and taken home. It's only a matter
+of a day or two, anyhow."
+
+"I want more time than that. A month, anyhow."
+
+And he found her curiously obstinate and determined. She did not
+quite know herself why she demanded delay, except that she shrank from
+delivering herself into hands that were so tender and might be so cruel.
+It was instinctive, purely.
+
+"A month," she said, and stuck to it.
+
+He was rather sulky when he went away, and he had told her the exact
+amount he had paid for her ring.
+
+Having forced him to agree to the delay, she found her mood of
+exaltation returning. As always, it was when he was not with he that she
+saw him most clearly, and she saw his real need for her. She had a sense
+of peace, too, now that at last something was decided. Her future, for
+better or worse, would no longer be that helpless waiting which had
+been hers for so long. And out of her happiness came a desire to do kind
+things, to pat children on the head, to give alms to beggars, and--to
+see Willy Cameron.
+
+She came downstairs that afternoon, dressed for the street.
+
+"I am going out for a little while, Aunt Nellie," she said, "and when I
+come back I want to tell you something."
+
+"Perhaps. I can guess."
+
+"Perhaps you can."
+
+She was singing to herself as she went out the door.
+
+Elinor went back heavy-hearted to her knitting. It was very difficult
+always to sit by and wait. Never to raise a hand. Just to wait and
+watch. And pray.
+
+Lily was rather surprised, when she reached the Eagle Pharmacy, to find
+Pink Denslow coming out. It gave her a little pang, too; he looked so
+clean and sane and normal, so much a part of her old life. And it hurt
+her, too, to see him flush with pleasure at the meeting.
+
+"Why, Lily!" he said, and stood there, gazing at her, hat in hand, the
+sun on his gleaming, carefully brushed hair. He was quite inarticulate
+with happiness. "I--when did you get back?"
+
+"I have not been away, Pink. I left home--it's a long story. I am
+staying with my aunt, Mrs. Doyle."
+
+"Mrs. Doyle? You are staying there?"
+
+"Why not? My father's sister."
+
+His young face took on a certain sternness.
+
+"If you knew what I suspect about Doyle, Lily, you wouldn't let the same
+roof cover you." But he added, rather wistfully, "I wish I might see you
+sometimes."
+
+Lily's head had gone up a trifle. Why did her old world always try to
+put her in the wrong? She had had to seek sanctuary, and the Doyle house
+had been the only sanctuary she knew.
+
+"Since you feel as you do, I'm afraid that's impossible. Mr. Doyle's
+roof is the only roof I have."
+
+"You have a home," he said, sturdily.
+
+"Not now. I left, and my grandfather won't have me back. You mustn't
+blame him, Pink. We quarreled and I left. I was as much responsible as
+he was."
+
+For a moment after she turned and disappeared inside the pharmacy door
+he stood there, then he put on his hat and strode down the street,
+unhappy and perplexed. If only she had needed him, if she had not looked
+so self-possessed and so ever so faintly defiant, as though she dared
+him to pity her, he would have known what to do. All he needed was to be
+needed. His open face was full of trouble. It was unthinkable that Lily
+should be in that center of anarchy; more unthinkable that Doyle might
+have filled her up with all sorts of wild ideas. Women were queer; they
+liked theories. A man could have a theory of life and play with it and
+boast about it, but never dream of living up to it. But give one to a
+woman, and she chewed on it like a dog on a bone. If those Bolshevists
+had got hold of Lily--!
+
+The encounter had hurt Lily, too. The fine edge of her exaltation was
+gone, and it did not return during her brief talk with Willy Cameron.
+He looked much older and very thin; there were lines around his eyes
+she had never seen before, and she hated seeing him in his present
+surroundings. But she liked him for his very unconsciousness of those
+surroundings. One always had to take Willy Cameron as he was.
+
+"Do you like it, Willy?" she asked. It had dawned on her, with a sort
+of panic, that there was really very little to talk about. All that they
+had had in common lay far in the past.
+
+"Well, it's my daily bread, and with bread costing what it does, I cling
+to it like a limpet to a rock."
+
+"But I thought you were studying, so you could do something else."
+
+"I had to give up the night school. But I'll get back to it sometime."
+
+She was lost again. She glanced around the little shop, where once
+Edith Boyd had manicured her nails behind the counter, and where now a
+middle-aged woman stood with listless eyes looking out over the street.
+
+"You still have Jinx, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes. I--"
+
+Lily glanced up as he stopped. She had drawn off her gloves, and his
+eyes had fallen on her engagement ring. To Lily there had always been a
+feeling of unreality about his declaration of love for her. He had
+been so restrained, so careful to ask nothing in exchange, so without
+expectation of return, that she had put it out of her mind as an
+impulse. She had not dreamed that he could still care, after these
+months of silence. But he had gone quite white.
+
+"I am going to be married, Willy," she said, in a low tone. It is
+doubtful if he could have spoken, just then. And as if to add a
+finishing touch of burlesque to the meeting, a small boy with a swollen
+jaw came in just then and demanded something to "make it stop hurting."
+
+He welcomed the interruption, she saw. He was very professional
+instantly, and so absorbed for a moment in relieving the child's pain
+that he could ignore his own.
+
+"Let's see it," he said in a businesslike, slightly strained voice.
+"Better have it out, old chap. But I'll give you something just to ease
+it up a bit."
+
+Which he proceeded to do. When he came back to Lily he was quite calm
+and self-possessed. As he had never thought of dramatizing himself, nor
+thought of himself at all, it did not occur to him that drama requires
+setting, that tragedy required black velvet rather than tooth-brushes,
+and that a small boy with an aching tooth was a comedy relief badly
+introduced.
+
+All he knew was that he had somehow achieved a moment in which to steady
+himself, and to find that a man can suffer horribly and still smile. He
+did that, very gravely, when he came back to Lily.
+
+"Can you tell me about it?"
+
+"There is not very much to tell. It is Louis Akers."
+
+The middle-aged clerk had disappeared.
+
+"Of course you have thought over what that means, Lily."
+
+"He wants me to marry him. He wants it very much, Willy. And--I know you
+don't like him, but he has changed. Women always think they have changed
+men, I know. But he is very different."
+
+"I am sure of that," he said, steadily.
+
+There was something childish about her, he thought. Childish and
+infinitely touching. He remembered a night at the camp, when some of the
+troops had departed for over-seas, and he had found her alone and crying
+in her hut. "I just can't let them go," she had sobbed. "I just can't.
+Some of them will never come back."
+
+Wasn't there something of that spirit in her now, the feeling that she
+could not let Akers go, lest worse befall him? He did not know. All he
+knew was that she was more like the Lily Cardew he had known then than
+she had been since her return. And that he worshiped her.
+
+But there was anger in him, too. Anger at Anthony Cardew. Anger at the
+Doyles. And a smoldering, bitter anger at Louis Akers, that he should
+take the dregs of his life and offer them to her as new wine. That he
+should dare to link his scheming, plotting days to this girl, so wise
+and yet so ignorant, so clear-eyed and yet so blind.
+
+"Do they know at home?"
+
+"I am going to tell mother to-day."
+
+"Lily," he said, slowly, "there is one thing you ought to do. Go home,
+make your peace there, and get all this on the right footing. Then have
+him there. You have never seen him in that environment, yet that is the
+world he will have to live in, if you marry him. See how he fits there."
+
+"What has that got to do with it?"
+
+"Think a minute. Am I quite the same to you here, as I was in the camp?"
+
+He saw her honest answer in her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The new movement was growing rapidly, and with a surprising catholicity
+of range. Already it included lawyers and doctors, chauffeurs, butchers,
+clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truck gardeners from the surrounding
+county, railroad employees, and some of the strikers from the mills,
+men who had obeyed their union order to quit work, but had obeyed it
+unwillingly; men who resented bitterly the invasion of the ranks of
+labor by the lawless element which was fomenting trouble.
+
+Dan had joined.
+
+On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers, one
+of the cards of the new Vigilance Committee was being inspected with
+cynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices in the
+Searing Building. They studied it with interest, while the man who had
+brought it stood by.
+
+"Where'd you pick it up, Cusick?"
+
+"One of our men brought it into the store. Said you might want to see
+it."
+
+The three men bent over it.
+
+The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. During the
+day two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made a pretense
+of business at such times as the door opened, or when an occasional
+client, seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates. At such times the
+clerks were politely regretful. The firm's contracts were all they could
+handle for months ahead.
+
+There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably
+professional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls,
+waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved to
+be accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or less fluency, with
+Croats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.
+
+There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pails and
+brushes, soap and ladders. But there was a great safe also, and its
+compartments were filled with pamphlets in many tongues, a supply
+constantly depleted and yet never diminishing. Workmen, carrying out the
+pails of honest labor, carried them loaded down with the literature it
+was their only business to circulate.
+
+Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrine
+of no God; of no government, and of no church; of the confiscation of
+private property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape, arson and
+pillage.
+
+And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Its theatres
+were crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels. Two classes of people
+were spending money prodigally; women with shawls over their heads,
+women who in all their peasant lives had never owned a hat, drove in
+automobiles to order their winter supply of coal, and vast amounts of
+liquors were being bought by the foreign element against the approaching
+prohibition law, and stored in untidy cellars.
+
+On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reaction
+from war. The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of the
+wealthy, and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall. Among
+the list of debutantes Lily's name always appeared.
+
+And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were being ground
+the professional and salaried men with families, the women clerks, the
+vast army who asked nothing but the right to work and live. They went
+through their days doggedly, with little anxious lines around their
+eyes, suffering a thousand small deprivations, bewildered, tortured with
+apprehension of to-morrow, and yet patiently believing that, as things
+could not be worse, they must soon commence to improve.
+
+"It's bound to clear up soon," said Joe Wilkinson over the back fence
+one night late in June, to Willy Cameron. Joe supported a large family
+of younger brothers and sisters in the house next door, and was employed
+in a department store. "I figure it this way--both sides need each
+other, don't they? Something like marriage, you know. It'll all be over
+in six months. Only I'm thanking heaven just now it's summer, because
+our kids are hell on shoes."
+
+"I hope so," said Willy Cameron. "What are you doing over there,
+anyhow?"
+
+"Wait and see," said Joe, cryptically. "If you think you're going to be
+the only Central Park in this vicinity you've got to think again." He
+hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons were searching
+for worms in the overturned garden mold. "How's Edith?" he asked.
+
+"She's all right, Joe."
+
+"Seeing anybody yet?"
+
+"Not yet. In a day or so she'll be downstairs."
+
+"You might tell her I've been asking about her."
+
+There was something in Joel's voice that caught Willy Cameron's
+attention. He thought about Joe a great deal that night. Joe was another
+one who must never know about Edith's trouble. The boy had little
+enough, and if he had built a dream about Edith Boyd he must keep his
+dream. He was rather discouraged that night, was Willy Cameron, and he
+began to think that dreams were the best things in life. They were a
+sort of sanctuary to which one fled to escape realities. Perhaps no
+reality was ever as beautiful as one's dream of it.
+
+Lily had passed very definitely out of his life. Sometimes during his
+rare leisure he walked to Cardew Way through the warm night, and past
+the Doyle house, but he never saw her, and because it did not occur to
+him that she might want to see him he never made an attempt to call.
+Always after those futile excursions he was inclined to long silences,
+and only Jinx could have told how many hours he sat in his room at
+night, in the second-hand easy chair he had bought, pipe in hand and
+eyes on nothing in particular, lost in a dream world where the fields
+bore a strong resemblance to the parade ground of an army camp, and
+through which field he and Lily wandered like children, hand in hand.
+
+But he had many things to think of. So grave were the immediate
+problems, of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd and Edith, that a little of his
+fine frenzy as to the lurking danger of revolution departed from him.
+The meetings in the back room at the pharmacy took on a political
+bearing, and Hendricks was generally the central figure. The ward felt
+that Mr. Hendricks was already elected, and called him "Mr. Mayor." At
+the same time the steel strike pursued a course of comparative calm. At
+Friendship and at Baxter there had been rioting, and a fatality or two,
+but the state constabulary had the situation well in hand. On a Sunday
+morning Willy Cameron went out to Baxter on the trolley, and came
+home greatly comforted. The cool-eyed efficiency of the state police
+reassured him. He compared them, disciplined, steady, calm with the
+calmness of their dangerous calling, with the rabble of foreigners who
+shuffled along the sidewalks, and he felt that his anxiety had been
+rather absurd.
+
+He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentioned in
+the newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spent much
+time in searching for these notices, and then in painfully cutting them
+out and pasting them in a book. On those days when there was nothing
+about him she felt thwarted, and was liable to sharp remarks on
+newspapers in general, and on those of the city in particular.
+
+Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off like
+other strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd, having plowed the field for
+sedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a talk with
+Edith.
+
+She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early in
+July, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches, and he placed
+her, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor. Dan had brought her
+down and had made a real effort to be kind, but his suspicion of the
+situation made it difficult for him to dissemble, and soon he went out.
+Ellen was on the doorstep, and through the open window came the shrieks
+of numerous little Wilkinsons wearing out expensive shoe-leather on the
+brick pavement.
+
+They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Cameron talking
+with a sort of determined optimism. After a time he realized that she
+was not even listening.
+
+"I wish you'd close the window," she said at last. "Those crazy
+Wilkinson kids make such a racket. I want to tell you something."
+
+"All right." He closed the window and stood looking down at her. "Are
+you sure you want me to hear it?" he asked gravely.
+
+"Yes. It is not about myself. I've been reading the newspapers while
+I've been shut away up there, Willy. It kept me from thinking. And if
+things are as bad as they say I'd better tell you, even if I get into
+trouble doing it. I will, probably. Murder's nothing to them."
+
+"Who are 'them'?"
+
+"You get the police to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, in the
+Searing Building."
+
+"Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that? The police will
+want something definite to go on."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"I don't know very much. I met somebody there, once or twice, at night.
+And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer of the desk in the
+back room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn't matter now. Tell them
+to examine the safe, too. I don't know what's in it. Dynamite, maybe."
+
+"What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn't
+much to go on."
+
+"When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk," she said
+briefly, and before that sordid picture Willy Cameron was silent. After
+a time he said:
+
+"You won't tell me the name of the man you met there?"
+
+"No. Don't ask me, Willy. That's between him and me." He got up and took
+a restless turn or two about the little rooms. Edith's problem had begun
+to obsess him. Not for long would it be possible to keep her condition
+from Mrs. Boyd. He was desperately at a loss for some course to pursue.
+
+"Have you ever thought," he said at last, "that this man, whoever he is,
+ought to marry you?"
+
+Edith's face set like a flint.
+
+"I don't want to marry him," she said. "I wouldn't marry him if he was
+the last man on earth."
+
+He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixed on
+Louis Akers, but he could not be sure.
+
+"I won't tell you his name, either," Edith added, shrewishly. Then her
+voice softened. "I will tell you this, Willy," she said wistfully. "I
+was a good girl until I knew him. I'm not saying that to let myself out.
+It's the truth."
+
+"You're a good girl now," he said gravely.
+
+Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he was going out.
+
+"I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks," he said. "And we may
+go on and have a talk with the Chief of Police. If you are right it may
+be important."
+
+After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen now and
+then looked in to see if she was comfortable.
+
+Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse at
+that. But suppose they trapped Louis Akers in the Searing Building?
+
+Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back with her
+the news of the family. At first she had sternly refused to talk about
+the Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room had been long and
+monotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken the form, when she
+could talk, of incessant questions.
+
+So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leaving
+home, and called her a poor thing in her heart. Quite lately she had
+heard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably would be, soon.
+Now her motives were mixed, and her emotions confused. She had wanted
+to tell Willy Cameron what she knew, but she wanted Lily to marry Louis
+Akers. She wanted that terribly. Then Lily would be out of the way,
+and--Willy was not like Dan; he did not seem to think her forever lost.
+He had always been thoughtful, but lately he had been very tender with
+her. Men did strange things sometimes. He might be willing to forget,
+after a long time. She could board the child out somewhere, if it lived.
+Sometimes they didn't live.
+
+But if they arrested Louis, Lily Cardew would fling him aside like an
+old shoe.
+
+She closed her eyes. That opened a vista of possibilities she would not
+face.
+
+She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs, moved
+to sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its close. If that
+were life she did not want it, with its drab days and futile effort, its
+incessant deprivations, its hands, gnarled with work that got nowhere,
+its greatest blessing sleep and forgetfulness.
+
+She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away.
+
+"I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother," she said from the
+doorway. "How's the pain down your arm?"
+
+"Bring me the mucilage, Edie," requested Mrs. Boyd. She was propped up
+in bed and surrounded by newspapers. "I've found Willy's name again.
+I've got fourteen now. Where's the scissors?"
+
+Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know, and still
+sit among her pillows, snipping?
+
+"I wonder," said Mrs. Boyd, "did anybody feed Jinx? That Ellen is so
+saving that she grudges him a bone."
+
+"He looks all right," said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe the Lord
+did that for people, when they reached a certain point. Maybe He took
+away the fear of death, by showing after years of it that life was not
+so valuable after all. She remembered her own facing of eternity, and
+her dread of what lay beyond. She had prayed first, because she wanted
+to have some place on the other side. She had prayed to be received
+young and whole and without child. And her mother--
+
+Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater than
+life, and that was love. Her mother was upheld by love. That was what
+the eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the love
+of her starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing death, because his
+hand was close by to hold to.
+
+For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw what
+love might be, and might do. She held out both hands in the darkness,
+but no strong and friendly clasp caught them close. If she could only
+have him to cling to, to steady her wavering feet along the gray path
+that stretched ahead, years and years of it. Youth. Middle age. Old age.
+
+"I'd only drag him down," she muttered bitterly.
+
+Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's story,
+and together late that evening they saw the Chief of Police at his
+house. Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated putting a watch
+on the offices of the Myers Housecleaning Company and thus ultimately
+getting the heads of the organization. But the Chief was unwilling to
+delay.
+
+"Every day means more of their infernal propaganda," he said, "and if
+this girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to get the
+outfit now. Those clerks, for instance--we'll get some information out
+of them. That sort always squeals. They're a cheap lot."
+
+"Going to ball it up, of course," Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly, on the
+way home. "Won't wait, because if Akers gets in he's out, and he wants
+to make a big strike first. I'll drop in to-morrow evening and tell you
+what's happened."
+
+He came into the pharmacy the next evening, with a bundle of red-bound
+pamphlets under his arm, and a look of disgust on his face.
+
+"What did I tell you, Cameron?" he demanded, breathing heavily. "Yes,
+they got them all right. Got a safe full of stuff so inflammable that,
+since I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow up myself. It's worse than
+that first lot I showed you. They got the two clerks, and a half-dozen
+foreigners, too. And that's all they got."
+
+"They won't talk?"
+
+"Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the Myers
+Housecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault, and
+they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false arrest.
+They'll have to let them go, son. Here. You can do most everything. Can
+you read Croatian? No? Well, here's something in English to cut your
+wisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the government is where these fellows
+start."
+
+It was intelligent, that propaganda. Willy Cameron thought he saw behind
+it Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew the discontents of
+the world, and would fatten by them; men who, secretly envious of the
+upper classes and unable to attain to them, would pull all men to their
+own level, or lower. Men who cloaked their own jealousies with the garb
+of idealism. Intelligent it was, dangerous, and imminent.
+
+The pamphlets spoke of "the day." It was a Prussian phrase. The
+revolution was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered loot as a
+reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust and
+greed and idleness.
+
+At a signal the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and rule
+itself.
+
+Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out at the
+city he loved.
+
+"Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?" he asked. "Will our
+people take it up? Is the American nation going crazy?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Willy Cameron stoutly. "They're about as able to
+overthrow the government as you are to shove over the Saint Elmo Hotel."
+
+"I could do that, with a bomb."
+
+"No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizeable hole in it. It's
+the hole we don't want."
+
+Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+To old Anthony the early summer had been full of humiliations, which he
+carried with an increased arrogance of bearing that alienated even his
+own special group at his club.
+
+"Confound the man," said Judge Peterson, holding forth on the golf links
+one Sunday morning while Anthony Cardew, hectic with rage, searched for
+a lost ball and refused to drop another. "He'll hold us up all morning,
+for that ball, just as he tries to hold up all progress." He lowered his
+voice. "What's happened to the granddaughter, anyhow?"
+
+Senator Lovell lighted a cigarette.
+
+"Turned Bolshevist," he said, briefly.
+
+The Judge gazed at him.
+
+"That's a pretty serious indictment, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, that's what I hear. She's living in Jim Doyle's house. I guess
+that's the answer. Hey, Cardew! D'you want these young cubs behind us to
+play through, or are you going to show some sense and come on?"
+
+Howard, fighting his father tooth and nail, was compelled to a reluctant
+admiration of his courage. But there was no cordiality between them.
+They were in accord again, as to the strike, although from different
+angles. Both of them knew that they were fighting for very life; both
+of them felt that the strikers' demands meant the end of industry, meant
+that the man who risked money in a business would eventually cease to
+control that business, although if losses came it would be he, and
+not the workmen, who bore them. Howard had gone as far as he could in
+concessions, and the result was only the demand for more. The Cardews,
+father and son, stood now together, their backs against a wall, and
+fought doggedly.
+
+But only anxiety held them together.
+
+His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty, but he
+was rather late with his support, and in private he retained his cynical
+attitude. He had not come over at all until he learned that Louis Akers
+was an opposition candidate. At that his wrath knew no bounds and the
+next day he presented a large check to the campaign committee.
+
+Mr. Hendricks, hearing of it, was moved to a dry chuckle.
+
+"Can't you hear him?" he demanded. "He'd stalk into headquarters as
+important as an office boy who's been sent to the bank for money, and
+he'd slam down his check and say just two words."
+
+"Which would be?" inquired Willy Cameron.
+
+"'Buy 'em'," quoted Mr. Hendricks. "The old boy doesn't know that things
+have changed since the 80's. This city has changed, my lad. It's voting
+now the way it thinks, right or wrong. That's why these foreign language
+papers can play the devil with us. The only knowledge the poor wretches
+have got of us is what they're given to read. And most of it stinks of
+sedition. Queer thing, this thinking. A fellow can think himself into
+murder."
+
+The strike was going along quietly enough. There had been rioting
+through the country, but not of any great significance. It was in
+reality a sort of trench warfare, with each side dug in and waiting for
+the other to show himself in the open. The representatives of the press,
+gathered in the various steel cities, with automobiles arranged for
+to take them quickly to any disturbance that might develop, found
+themselves with little news for the telegraph, and time hung heavy on
+their hands.
+
+On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner, and
+realized with a shock that she was looking thin and much older. He
+kissed her and then held her off and looked at her.
+
+"You've got to keep your courage up, dear," he said. "I don't think it
+will be long now."
+
+"Have you seen her?"
+
+"No. But something has happened. Don't look like that, Grace. It's
+not--"
+
+"She hasn't married that man?"
+
+"No. Not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't stay there.
+Even Elinor--" he checked himself. "I'll tell you after dinner."
+
+Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one speech
+rather at length.
+
+"So far as I can make out, Howard," he said, "this man Hendricks is
+getting pretty strong. He has a young fellow talking for him who gets
+over pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had better be bought
+off. He goes around shouting that he's a plain man, after the support of
+the plain people. Although I'm damned if I know what he means by that."
+
+Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. He placed
+the blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings away from home as
+possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to
+the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over
+to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool and his creature, merely
+staying in his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to
+his lawyers with new protests almost daily! A man was no longer master
+even in his own home. His employees would not work for him, his family
+disobeyed him, his government held him up and shook him. In the good old
+days--
+
+"I'm going out," he said, as he rose from the table. "Grace, that chef
+is worse than the last. You'd better send him off."
+
+"I can't get any one else. I have tried for weeks. There are no servants
+anywhere."
+
+"Try New York."
+
+"I have tried--it is useless."
+
+No cooks, either. No servants. Even Anthony recognized that, with the
+exception of Grayson, the servants in his house were vaguely hostile
+to the family. They gave grudging service, worked short hours, and,
+the only class of labor to which the high cost of food was a negligible
+matter, demanded wages he considered immoral.
+
+"I don't know what the world's coming to," he snarled. "Well, I'm off.
+Thank God, there are still clubs for a man to go to."
+
+"I want to have a talk with you, father."
+
+"I don't want to talk."
+
+"You needn't. I want you to listen, and I want Grace to hear, too."
+
+In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Grayson had
+brought liqueurs and coffee and had gone, Howard drew the card from his
+pocket.
+
+"I met young Denslow to-day," he said. "He came in to see me. As a
+matter of fact, I signed a card he had brought along, and I brought one
+for you, sir. Shall I read it?"
+
+"You evidently intend to."
+
+Howard read the card slowly. Its very simplicity was impressive, as
+impressive as it had been when Willy Cameron scrawled the words on the
+back of an old envelope. Anthony listened.
+
+"Just what does that mean?"
+
+"That the men behind this movement believe that there is going to be a
+general strike, with an endeavor to turn it into a revolution. Perhaps
+only local, but these things have a tendency to spread. Denslow had some
+literature which referred to an attempt to take over the city. They have
+other information, too, all pointing the same way."
+
+"Strikers?"
+
+"Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born. Their plans are
+fairly comprehensive; they mean to dynamite the water works, shut down
+the gas and electric plants, and cut off all food supplies. Then when
+they have starved and terrorized us into submission, we'll accept their
+terms."
+
+"What terms?"
+
+"Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose. They intend to take over the
+banks, for one thing."
+
+"I don't believe it. It's incredible."
+
+"They meant to do it in Seattle."
+
+"And didn't. Don't forget that."
+
+"They may have learned some things from Seattle," Howard said quietly.
+
+"We have the state troops."
+
+"What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the same
+time? Or rioting in other places, carefully planned to draw the troops
+and constabulary away?"
+
+In the end old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced. But
+he had no faith in the plain people, and said so. "They'll see property
+destroyed and never lift a hand," he said. "Didn't I stand by in
+Pittsburgh during the railroad riots, and watch them smile while the
+yards burned? Because the railroads meant capital to them, and they hate
+capital."
+
+"Precisely," said Howard, "but after twenty-four hours they were
+fighting like demons to restore law and order. It is"--he fingered the
+card--"to save that twenty-four hours that this organization is being
+formed. It is secret. Did I tell you that? And the idea originated with
+the young man you spoke about as supporting Hendricks--you met him here
+once, a friend of Lily's. His name is Cameron--William Wallace Cameron."
+
+Old Anthony remained silent, but the small jagged vein on his forehead
+swelled with anger. After a time:
+
+"I suppose Doyle is behind this?" he asked. "It sounds like him."
+
+"That is the supposition. But they have nothing on him yet; he is too
+shrewd for that. And that leads to something else. Lily cannot continue
+to stay there."
+
+"I didn't send her there."
+
+"Actually, no. In effect--but we needn't go into that now. The situation
+is very serious. I can imagine that nothing could fit better into his
+plans than to have her there. She gives him a cachet of respectability.
+Do you want that?"
+
+"She is probably one of them now. God knows how much of his rotten
+doctrine she has absorbed."
+
+Howard flushed, but he kept his temper.
+
+"His theories, possibly. His practice, no. She certainly has no idea...
+it has come to this, father. She must have a home somewhere, and if it
+cannot be here, Grace and I must make one for her elsewhere."
+
+Probably Anthony Cardew had never respected Howard more than at that
+moment, or liked him less.
+
+"Both you and Grace are free to make a home where you please."
+
+"We prefer it here, but you must see yourself that things cannot go on
+as they are. We have waited for you to see that, all three of us, and
+now this new situation makes it imperative to take some action."
+
+"I won't have that fellow Akers coming here."
+
+"He would hardly come, under the circumstances. Besides, her friendship
+with him is only a part of her revolt. If she comes home it will be with
+the understanding that she does not see him again."
+
+"Revolt?" said old Anthony, raising his eyebrows.
+
+"That is what it actually was. She found her liberty interfered with,
+and she staged her own small rebellion. It was very human, I think."
+
+"It was very Cardew," said old Anthony, and smiled faintly. He had, to
+tell the truth, developed a grudging admiration for his granddaughter in
+the past two months. He saw in her many of his own qualities, good and
+bad. And, more than he cared to own, he had missed her and the young
+life she had brought into the quiet house. Most important of all, she
+was the last of the Cardews. Although his capitulation when it came was
+curt, he was happier than he had been for weeks.
+
+"Bring her home," he said, "but tell her about Akers. If she says that
+is off, I'll forget the rest."
+
+On her way to her room that night Grace Cardew encountered Mademoiselle,
+a pale, unhappy Mademoiselle, who seemed to spend her time mostly in
+Lily's empty rooms or wandering about corridors. Whenever the three
+members of the family were together she would retire to her own
+quarters, and there feverishly with her rosary would pray for a
+softening of hearts. She did not comprehend these Americans, who were so
+kind to those beneath them and so hard to each other.
+
+"I wanted to see you, Mademoiselle," Grace said, not very steadily. "I
+have good news for you."
+
+Mademoiselle began to tremble. "She is coming? Lily is coming?"
+
+"Yes. Will you have some fresh flowers put in her rooms in the morning?"
+
+Suddenly Mademoiselle forgot her years of repression, and flinging her
+arms around Grace's neck she kissed her. Grace held her for a moment,
+patting her shoulder gently.
+
+"We must try to make her very happy, Mademoiselle. I think things will
+be different now."
+
+Mademoiselle stood back and wiped her eyes.
+
+"But she must be different, too," she said. "She is sweet and good,
+but she is strong of will, too. The will to do, to achieve, that is
+one thing, and very good. But the will to go one's own way, that is
+another."
+
+"The young are always headstrong, Mademoiselle."
+
+But, alone later on, her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered. If
+youth were the indictment against Lily, was she not still young? It took
+years, or suffering, or sometimes both, to break the will of youth and
+chasten its spirit. God grant Lily might not have suffering.
+
+It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself,
+and thus save her the humiliation of coming back alone. All morning
+housemaids were busy in Lily's rooms. Rugs were shaken, floors waxed
+and rubbed, the silver frames and vases in her sitting room polished
+to refulgence. And all morning Mademoiselle scolded and ran suspicious
+fingers into corners, and arranged and re-arranged great boxes of
+flowers.
+
+Long before the time she had ordered the car Grace was downstairs,
+dressed for the street, and clad in cool shining silk, was pacing the
+shaded hall. There was a vague air of expectation about the old house.
+In a room off the pantry the second man was polishing the buttons of
+his livery, using a pasteboard card with a hole in it to save the fabric
+beneath. Grayson pottered about in the drawing room, alert for the
+parlor maid's sins of omission.
+
+The telephone in the library rang, and Grayson answered it, while Grace
+stood in the doorway.
+
+"A message from Miss Lily," he said. "Mrs. Doyle has telephoned that
+Miss Lily is on her way here."
+
+Grace was vaguely disappointed. She had wanted to go to Lily with her
+good news, to bring her home bag and baggage, to lead her into the house
+and to say, in effect, that this was home, her home. She had felt that
+they, and not Lily, should take the first step.
+
+She went upstairs, and taking off her hat, smoothed her soft dark hair.
+She did not want Lily to see how she had worried; she eyed herself
+carefully for lines. Then she went down, to more waiting, and for the
+first time, to a little doubt.
+
+Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been. There was no doubt
+about her close embrace of her mother, her happiness at seeing her. She
+did not remove her gloves, however, and after she had put Grace in a
+chair and perched herself on the arm of it, there was a little pause.
+Each was preparing to tell something, each hesitated. Because Grace's
+task was the easier it was she who spoke first.
+
+"I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear," she said. "I--we
+want you to come home to us again."
+
+There was a queer, strained silence.
+
+"Who wants me?" Lily asked, unsteadily.
+
+"All of us. Your grandfather, too. He expects to find you here to-night.
+I can explain to your Aunt Elinor over the telephone, and we can send
+for your clothes."
+
+Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room. When she came
+back her eyes were filled with tears, and her left hand was bare.
+
+"It nearly kills me to hurt you," she said, "but--what about this?"
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+Grace seemed frozen in her chair. At the sight of her mother's face Lily
+flung herself on her knees beside the chair.
+
+"Mother, mother," she said, "you must know how I love you. Love you
+both. Don't look like that. I can't bear it."
+
+Grace turned away her face.
+
+"You don't love us. You can't. Not if you are going to marry that man."
+
+"Mother," Lily begged, desperately, "let me come home. Let me bring him
+here. I'll wait, if you'll only do that. He is different; I know all
+that you want to say about his past. He has never had a real chance
+in all his life. He won't belong at first, but--he's a man, mother, a
+strong man. And it's awfully important. He can do so much, if he only
+will. And he says he will, if I marry him."
+
+"I don't understand you," Grace said coldly. "What can a man like that
+do, but wreck all our lives?"
+
+Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down. "I'll tell you
+about that later," she said, and slowly got to her feet. "Is that all,
+mother? You won't see him? I can't bring him here? Isn't there any
+compromise? Won't you meet me half-way?"
+
+"When you say half-way, you mean all the way, Lily."
+
+"I wanted you so," Lily said, drearily, "I need you so just now. I am
+going to be married, and I have no one to go to. Aunt Elinor doesn't
+understand, either. Every way I look I find--I suppose I can't come back
+at all, then."
+
+"Your grandfather's condition was that you never see this Louis Akers
+again."
+
+Lily's resentment left her. Anger was a thing for small matters, trivial
+affairs. This that was happening, an irrevocable break with her family,
+was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears. She wondered dully if
+any man were worth all this. Perhaps she knew, sub-consciously, that
+Louis Akers was not. All her exaltation was gone, and in its stead was a
+sort of dogged determination to see the thing through now, at any cost;
+to re-make Louis into the man he could be, to build her own house of
+life, and having built it, to live in it as best she could.
+
+"That is a condition I cannot fulfill, mother. I am engaged to him."
+
+"Then you love him more than you do any of us, or all of us."
+
+"I don't know. It is different," she said vaguely.
+
+She kissed her mother very tenderly when she went away, but there was
+a feeling of finality in them both. Mademoiselle, waiting at the top of
+the stairs, heard the door close and could not believe her ears. Grace
+went upstairs, her face a blank before the servants, and shut herself
+in her room. And in Lily's boudoir the roses spread a heavy, funereal
+sweetness over the empty room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder.
+In some cities there had been rioting, but half-hearted and
+easily controlled. Almost without exception it was the foreign and
+unassimilated element that broke the peace. Alien women spat on the
+state police, and flung stones at them. Here and there property
+was destroyed. A few bomb outrages filled the newspapers with great
+scare-heads, and sent troops and a small army of secret service men here
+and there.
+
+In the American Federation of Labor a stocky little man grimly fought to
+oppose the Radical element, which was slowly gaining ground, and at the
+same time to retain his leadership. The great steel companies, united
+at last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded, stood
+doggedly and courageously together, waiting for a return of sanity to
+the world. The world seemed to have gone mad. Everywhere in the country
+production was reduced by the cessation of labor, and as a result the
+cost of living was mounting.
+
+And every strike lost in the end. Labor had yet to learn that to cease
+to labor may express a grievance, but that in itself it righted no
+wrongs. Rather, it turned that great weapon, public opinion, without
+which no movement may succeed, against it. And that to stand behind
+the country in war was not enough. It must stand behind the country in
+peace.
+
+It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest
+link. The weak link in the labor chain was its Radical element. Rioters
+were arrested with union cards in their pockets. In vain the unions
+protested their lack of sympathy with the unruly element. The vast
+respectable family of union labor found itself accused of the sins of
+the minority, and lost standing thereby.
+
+At Friendship the unruly element was very strong. For a time it held its
+meetings in a hall. When that was closed it resorted to the open air.
+
+On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused
+polo field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers, and
+to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being built
+around the field, with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In
+a few days the fence was finished, only to be partly demolished the next
+night, secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to
+hold meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly
+held in the woods near the town, but the rendezvous was not located.
+
+On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found one
+morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate was shot
+through the heart, from ambush.
+
+Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic riotings
+began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause, and to end as
+suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts,
+but one or two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not
+all foreign strikers from the mills. They were garment workers, hotel
+waiters, a rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to
+no end, apparently. They began with a chance word, fought their furious
+way for an hour or so, and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and
+torn clothing behind them.
+
+On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable
+size. The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majority of
+the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons, lengths
+of pipe and short, wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until
+the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriously reenforced by
+a cool-headed number of citizens, led by a tall thin man who limped
+slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous support with a few words
+and considerable skill.
+
+The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to investigate
+an arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard a conversation between
+two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the battle, for comfort and a
+little conversation.
+
+"Can you beat that, Henry?" said one. "Where the hell'd they come from?"
+
+"Search me," said Henry. "D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too.
+D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how
+to fight, I'll tell the world."
+
+The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee. Willy
+Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or intention,
+purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contrary to the plans of
+their leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black eye at home after the
+recent outburst, sized up the situation shrewdly.
+
+"You can boil a kettle too hard," he said, "and then the lid pops off.
+Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire a little high,
+that's all. They'll quit now, because they want to get us off guard
+later. You and your committee can take a vacation, unless you can set
+them to electioneering for me. They've had enough for a while, the
+devils. They'll wait now for Akers to get in and make things easy for
+them. Mind my words, boy. That's the game."
+
+And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of order still occurred,
+but no big ones. To the headquarters in the Denslow Bank came an
+increasing volume of information, to be duly docketed and filed. Some of
+it was valueless. Now and then there came in something worth following
+up. Thus one night Pink and a picked band, following a vague clew, went
+in automobiles to the state borderline, and held up and captured two
+trucks loaded with whiskey and destined for Friendship and Baxter. He
+reported to Willy Cameron late that night.
+
+"Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road," he said. "Hurt like
+sin to do it, though. Felt like the fellow who shot the last passenger
+pigeon."
+
+But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, in the
+Boyd house things were rapidly approaching a climax, and that through
+Dan. He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched. The strike
+was on his nerves; he felt his position keenly, resented Willy Cameron
+supporting the family, and had developed a curious jealousy of his
+mother's affection for him.
+
+Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an open break
+came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go to work again.
+They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to and from the kitchen,
+carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift could not make it other than
+scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plate away.
+
+"Going back to work, are you?" he sneered. "And how long do you think
+you'll be able to work?"
+
+"You keep quiet," Edith flared at him. "I'm going to work. That's all
+you need to know. I can't sit here and let a man who doesn't belong
+to us provide every bite we eat, if you can." Willy Cameron got up and
+closed the door, for Mrs. Boyd an uncanny ability to hear much that went
+on below.
+
+"Now," he said when he came back, "we might as well have this out. Dan
+has a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plan something." He
+turned to Dan. "It must be kept from your mother, Dan."
+
+"Plan something!" Dan snarled. "I know what to plan, all right. I'll
+find the--" he broke into foul, furious language, but suddenly Willy
+Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.
+
+"I know who it is," Dan said, more quietly, "and he's got to marry her,
+or I'll kill him."
+
+"You know, do you? Well, you don't," Edith said, "and I won't marry him
+anyhow."
+
+"You will marry him. Do you think I'm going to see mother disgraced,
+sick as she is, and let you get away with it? Where does Akers live? You
+know, don't you? You've been there, haven't you?"
+
+All Edith's caution was forgotten in her shame and anger.
+
+"Yes, I know," she said, hysterically, "but I won't tell you. And I
+won't marry him. I hate him. If you go to him he'll beat you to death."
+Suddenly the horrible picture of Dan in Akers' brutal hands overwhelmed
+her. "Dan, you won't go?" she begged. "He'll kill you."
+
+"A lot you'd care," he said, coldly. "As if we didn't have enough
+already! As if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson, next door, and
+been a decent woman. And instead, you're a--"
+
+"Be quiet, Dan," Willy Cameron interrupted him. "That sort of talk
+doesn't help any. Edith is right. If you go to Akers there will be a
+fight. And that's no way to protect her."
+
+"God!" Dan muttered. "With all the men in the world, to choose that
+rotten anarchist!"
+
+It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there in the
+badly lighted little room around the disordered table, with Ellen grimly
+listening in the doorway, and the odors of cooking still heavy in
+the air. Edith sat there, her hands on the table, staring ahead, and
+recounted her wrongs. She had never had a chance. Home had always been a
+place to get away from. Nobody had cared what became of her. And hadn't
+she tried to get out of the way? Only they all did their best to make
+her live. She wished she had died.
+
+Dan, huddled low in his chair, his legs sprawling, stared at nothing
+with hopeless eyes.
+
+Afterwards Willy Cameron could remember nothing of the scene in detail.
+He remembered its setting, but of all the argument and quarreling only
+one thing stood out distinctly, and that was Edith's acceptance of Dan's
+accusation. It was Akers, then. And Lily Cardew was going to marry him.
+Was in love with him.
+
+"Does he know how things are?" he asked.
+
+She nodded. "Yes."
+
+"Does he offer to do anything?"
+
+"Him? He does not. And don't you go to him and try to get him to marry
+me. I tell you I'd die first."
+
+He left them there, sitting in the half light, and going out into the
+hall picked up his hat. Mrs. Boyd heard him and called to him, and
+before he went out he ran upstairs to her room. It seemed to him, as he
+bent over her, that her lips were bluer than ever, her breath a little
+shallower and more difficult. Her untouched supper tray was beside her.
+
+"I wasn't hungry," she explained. "Seems to me, Willy, if you'd let
+me go downstairs so I could get some of my own cooking I'd eat better.
+Ellen's all right, but I kind o' crave sweet stuff, and she don't like
+making desserts."
+
+"You'll be down before long," he assured her. "And making me pies.
+Remember those pies you used to bake?"
+
+"You always were a great one for my pies," she said, complacently.
+
+He kissed her when he left. He had always marveled at the strange lack
+of demonstrativeness in the household, and he knew that she valued his
+small tendernesses.
+
+"Now remember," he said, "light out at ten o'clock, and no going
+downstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke. When you
+do, it's my pipe."
+
+"I don't think you hardly ever go to bed, Willy."
+
+"Me? Get too much sleep. I'm getting fat with it."
+
+The stale little joke was never stale with her. He left her smiling, and
+went down the stairs and out into the street.
+
+He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to find out
+from him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd's accusation.
+He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty before he did
+anything. Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men. If he could get the
+facts from Louis Akers--but he had no idea of what he would do then. He
+couldn't very well tell Lily, but her people might do something. Or Mrs.
+Doyle.
+
+He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than
+marry Akers, under the circumstances. That her failure to marry Louis
+Akers would mean anything as to his own relationship with her he never
+even considered. All that had been settled long ago, when she said she
+did not love him.
+
+At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for an hour
+or two he walked the streets. The city seemed less majestic to him than
+usual; its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, it is true, but those
+very streets hid also vice and degradation, and ugly passions. They
+sheltered, but also they concealed.
+
+At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told that Mr.
+Akers had come in.
+
+It was Akers himself who opened the door. Because the night was hot he
+had shed coat and shirt, and his fine torso, bare to the shoulders and
+at the neck, gleamed in the electric light. Willy Cameron had not seen
+him since those spring days when he had made his casual, bold-eyed
+visits to Edith at the pharmacy, and he had a swift insight into the
+power this man must have over women. He himself was tall; but Akers was
+taller, fully muscled, his head strongly set on a neck like a column.
+But he surmised that the man was soft, out of condition. And he had lost
+the first elasticity of youth.
+
+Akers' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness when
+he opened the door.
+
+"Well!" he said. "Making a late call, aren't you?"
+
+"What I had to say wouldn't wait."
+
+Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in.
+The room was very hot, for a small fire, littered as to its edges with
+papers, burned in the grate. Although he knew that Akers had guessed the
+meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, there was a moment or two
+when each sparred for an opening.
+
+"Sit down. Have a cigarette?"
+
+"No, thanks." He remained standing.
+
+"Or a high-ball? I still have some fairly good whiskey."
+
+"No. I came to ask you a question, Mr. Akers."
+
+"Well, answering questions is one of the best little things I do."
+
+"You know about Edith Boyd's condition. She says you are responsible. Is
+that true?"
+
+Louis Akers was not unprepared. Sooner or later he had known that Edith
+would tell. But what he had not counted on was that she would tell
+any one who knew Lily. He had felt that her leaving the pharmacy had
+eliminated that chance. "What do you mean, her condition?"
+
+"You know. She says she has told you."
+
+"You're pretty thick with her yourself, aren't you?"
+
+"I happen to live at the Boyd house."
+
+He was keeping himself well under control, but Akers saw his hand
+clench, and resorted to other tactics. He was not angry himself, but he
+was wary now; he considered that life was unnecessarily complicated, and
+that he had a distinct grievance.
+
+"I have asked you a question, Mr. Akers."
+
+"You don't expect me to answer it, do you?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"If you have come here to talk to me about marrying her--"
+
+"She won't marry you," Willy Cameron said steadily. "That's not the
+point I want your own acknowledgment of responsibility, that's all."
+
+Akers was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved. He lighted a cigarette
+and over the match stared at the other man's quiet face.
+
+"No!" he said suddenly. "I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility. She
+knew her way around long before I ever saw her. Ask her. She can't lie
+about it. I can produce other men to prove what I say. I played around
+with her, but I don't know whose child that is, and I don't believe she
+does."
+
+"I think you are lying."
+
+"All right. But I can produce the goods."
+
+Willy Cameron went very pale. His hands were clenched again, and Akers
+eyed him warily.
+
+"None of that," he cautioned. "I don't know what interest you've got in
+this, and I don't give a God-damn. But you'd better not try any funny
+business with me."
+
+Willy Cameron smiled. Much the sort of smile he had worn during the
+rioting.
+
+"I don't like to soil my hands on you," he said, "but I don't mind
+telling you that any man who ruins a girl's life and then tries to get
+out of it by defaming her, is a skunk."
+
+Akers lunged at him.
+
+Some time later Mr. William Wallace Cameron descended to the street.
+He wore his coat collar turned up to conceal the absence of certain
+articles of wearing apparel which he had mysteriously lost. And he wore,
+too, a somewhat distorted, grim and entirely complacent smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+The city had taken the rioting with a weary philosophy. It was tired of
+fighting. For two years it had labored at high tension for the European
+war. It had paid taxes and bought bonds, for the war. It had saved and
+skimped and denied itself, for the war. And for the war it had made
+steel, steel for cannon and for tanks, for ships and for railroads. It
+had labored hard and well, and now all it wanted was to be allowed to
+get back to normal things. It wanted peace.
+
+It said, in effect: "I have both fought and labored, sacrificed and
+endured. Give me now my rest of nights, after a day's work. Give me
+marriage and children. Give me contentment. Give me the things I have
+loved long since, and lost awhile."
+
+And because the city craved peace, it was hard to rouse it to its
+danger. It was war-weary, and its weariness was not of apathy, but of
+exhaustion. It was not yet ready for new activity.
+
+Then, the same night that had seen Willy Cameron's encounter with Akers,
+it was roused from its lethargy. A series of bomb outrages shook the
+downtown district. The Denslow Bank was the first to go. Willy Cameron,
+inspecting a cut lip in his mirror, heard a dull explosion, and ran down
+to the street. There he was joined by Joe Wilkinson, in trousers over
+his night shirt, and as they looked, a dull red glare showed against
+the sky. Joe went back for more clothing, but Willy Cameron ran down the
+street. At the first corner he heard a second explosion, further away
+and to the east, but apparently no fire followed it. That, he learned
+later, was the City Club, founded by Anthony Cardew years before.
+
+The Denslow Bank was burning. The facade had been shattered and from the
+interior already poured a steady flow of flame and smoke. He stood among
+the crowd, while the engines throbbed and the great fire hose lay
+along the streets, and watched the little upper room where the precious
+records of the Committee were burning brightly. The front wall gone,
+the small office stood open to the world, a bright and shameless thing,
+flaunting its nakedness to the crowd below.
+
+He wondered why Providence should so play into the hands of the enemy.
+
+After a time he happened on Pink Denslow, wandering alone on the
+outskirts of the crowd.
+
+"Just about kill the governor, this," said Pink, heavily. "Don't suppose
+the watchmen got out, either. Not that they'd care," he added, savagely.
+
+"How about the vaults? I suppose they are fireproof?"
+
+"Yes. Do you realize that every record we've got has gone? D'you suppose
+those fellows knew about them?"
+
+Willy Cameron had been asking himself the same question.
+
+"Trouble is," Pink went on, "you don't know who to trust. They're not
+all foreigners. Let's get away from here; it makes me sick."
+
+They wandered through the night together, almost unconsciously in the
+direction of the City Club, but within a block of it they realized that
+something was wrong. A hospital ambulance dashed by, its gong ringing
+wildly, and a fire engine, not pumping, stood at the curb.
+
+"Come on," Pink said suddenly. "There were two explosions. It's just
+possible--"
+
+The club was more sinister than the burning bank; it was a mass of grim
+wreckage, black and gaping, with now and then the sound of settling
+masonry, and already dotted with the moving flash-lights of men who
+searched.
+
+To Pink this catastrophe was infinitely greater than that of the bank.
+Men he knew had lived there. There were old club servants who were like
+family retainers; one or two employees were ex-service men for whom he
+had found employment. He stood there, with Willy Cameron's hand on his
+arm, with a new maturity and a vast suffering in his face.
+
+"Before God," he said solemnly, "I swear never to rest until the fellows
+behind this are tried, condemned and hanged. You've heard it, Cameron."
+
+The death list for that night numbered thirteen, the two watchmen at
+the bank and eleven men at the club, two of them members. Willy Cameron,
+going home at dawn, exhausted and covered with plaster dust, bought
+an extra and learned that a third bomb, less powerful, had wrecked the
+mayor's house. It had been placed under the sleeping porch, and but for
+the accident of a sick baby the entire family would have been wiped out.
+
+Even his high courage began to waver. His records were gone; that
+was all to do over again. But what seemed to him the impasse was this
+fighting in the dark. An unseen enemy, always. And an enemy which
+combined with skill a total lack of any rules of warfare, which killed
+here, there and everywhere, as though for the sheer joy of killing. It
+struck at the high but killed the low. And it had only begun.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Dominant family traits have a way of skipping one generation and
+appearing in the next. Lily Cardew at that stage of her life had a
+considerable amount of old Anthony's obstinacy and determination,
+although it was softened by a long line of Cardew women behind her,
+women who had loved, and suffered dominance because they loved. Her very
+infatuation for Louis Akers, like Elinor's for Doyle, was possibly an
+inheritance from her fore-mothers, who had been wont to overlook the
+evil in a man for the strength in him. Only Lily mistook physical
+strength for moral fibre, insolence and effrontery for courage.
+
+In both her virtues and her faults, however, irrespective of heredity,
+Lily represented very fully the girl of her position and period. With no
+traditions to follow, setting her course by no compass, taught to think
+but not how to think, resentful of tyranny but unused to freedom,
+she moved ahead along the path she had elected to follow, blindly and
+obstinately, yet unhappy and suffering.
+
+Her infatuation for Louis Akers had come to a new phase of its rapid
+development. She had reached that point where a woman realizes that the
+man she loves is, not a god of strength and wisdom, but a great child
+who needs her. It is at that point that one of two things happens: the
+weak woman abandons him, and follows her dream elsewhere. The woman
+of character, her maternal instinct roused, marries him, bears him
+children, is both wife and mother to him, and finds in their united
+weaknesses such strength as she can.
+
+In her youth and self-sufficiency Lily stood ready to give, rather than
+to receive. She felt now that he needed her more than she needed him.
+There was something unconsciously patronizing those days in her attitude
+toward him, and if he recognized it he did not resent it. Women had
+always been "easy" for him. Her very aloofness, her faint condescension,
+her air of a young grande dame, were a part of her attraction for him.
+
+Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when
+it gains sight, it dies. Already Lily was seeing him with the critical
+eyes of youth, his loud voice, his over-fastidious dress, his occasional
+grossnesses. To offset these she placed vast importance on his promise
+to leave his old associates when she married him.
+
+The time was very close now. She could not hold him off much longer,
+and she began to feel, too, that she must soon leave the house on Cardew
+Way. Doyle's attitude to her was increasingly suspicious and ungracious.
+She knew that he had no knowledge of Louis's promise, but he began to
+feel that she was working against him, and showed it.
+
+And in Louis Akers too she began to discern an inclination not to pull
+out until after the election. He was ambitious, and again and again he
+urged that he would be more useful for the purpose in her mind if he
+were elected first.
+
+That issue came to a climax the day she had seen her mother and learned
+the terms on which she might return home. She was alarmed by his noisy
+anger at the situation.
+
+"Do sit down, Louis, and be quiet," she said. "You have known their
+attitude all along, haven't you?"
+
+"I'll show them," he said, thickly. "Damned snobs!" He glanced at her
+then uneasily, and her expression put him on his guard. "I didn't mean
+that, little girl. Honestly I didn't. I don't care for myself. It's
+you."
+
+"You must understand that they think they are acting for my good. And
+I am not sure," she added, her clear eyes on him, "that they are not
+right. You frighten me sometimes, Louis."
+
+But a little later he broke out again. If he wasn't good enough to enter
+their house, he'd show them something. The election would show them
+something. They couldn't refuse to receive the mayor of the city.
+She saw then that he was bent on remaining with Doyle until after the
+election.
+
+Lily sat back, listening and thinking. Sometimes she thought that he
+did not love her at all. He always said he wanted her, but that was
+different.
+
+"I think you love yourself more than you love me, Louis," she said, when
+he had exhausted himself. "I don't believe you know what love is."
+
+That brought him to his knees, his arms around her, kissing her hands,
+begging her not to give him up, and once again her curious sense of
+responsibility for him triumphed.
+
+"You will marry me soon, dear, won't you?" he implored her. But she
+thought of Willy Cameron, oddly enough, even while his arms were around
+her; of the difference in the two men. Louis, big, crouching, suppliant
+and insistent; Willy Cameron, grave, reserved and steady, taking what
+she now knew was the blow of her engagement like a gentleman and a
+soldier.
+
+They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions of men
+in love, the men who offer much and give little, the others who, out of
+a deep humility, offer little and give everything they have.
+
+In the end, nothing was settled. After he had gone Lily, went up to
+Elinor's room. She had found in Elinor lately a sort of nervous tension
+that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily told her of
+her visit home, and of her determination to marry Louis within the next
+few days. Elinor had dropped her sewing and clenched her hands in her
+lap.
+
+"Not soon, Lily!" she said. "Oh, not soon. Wait a little--wait two
+months."
+
+"Two months?" Lily said wonderingly. "Why two months?"
+
+"Because, at the end of two months, nothing would make you marry him,"
+Elinor said, almost violently. "I have sat by and waited, because I
+thought you would surely see your mistake. But now--Lily, do you envy me
+my life?"
+
+"No," Lily said truthfully; "but you love him."
+
+Elinor sat, her eyes downcast and brooding.
+
+"You are different," she said finally. "You will break, where I have
+only bent."
+
+But she said no more about a delay. She had been passive too long to be
+able to take any strong initiative now. And all her moral and physical
+courage she was saving for a great emergency.
+
+Cardew Way was far from the center of town, and Lily knew nothing of the
+bomb outrages of that night.
+
+When she went down to breakfast the next morning she found Jim Doyle
+pacing the floor of the dining room in a frenzy of rage, a newspaper
+clenched in his hand. By the window stood Elinor, very pale and with
+slightly reddened eyes. They had not heard her, and Doyle continued a
+furious harangue.
+
+"The fools!" he said. "Damn such material as I have to work with! This
+isn't the time, and they know it. I've warned them over and over. The
+fools!"
+
+Elinor saw her then, and made a gesture of warning. But it was too late.
+Lily had a certain quality of directness, and it did not occur to her to
+dissemble.
+
+"Is anything wrong?" she asked, and went at once to Elinor. She had once
+or twice before this stood between them for Elinor's protection.
+
+"Everything is as happy as a May morning," Doyle sneered. "Your Aunt
+Elinor has an unpleasant habit of weeping for joy."
+
+Lily stiffened, but Elinor touched her arm.
+
+"Sit down and eat your breakfast, Lily," she said, and left the room.
+
+Doyle stood staring at Lily angrily. He did not know how much she
+had heard, how much she knew. At the moment he did not care. He had
+a reckless impulse to tell her the truth, but his habitual caution
+prevailed. He forced a cold smile.
+
+"Don't bother your pretty head about politics," he said.
+
+Lily was equally cold. Her dislike of him had been growing for weeks,
+coupled to a new and strange distrust.
+
+"Politics? You seem to take your politics very hard."
+
+"I do," he said urbanely. "Particularly when I am fighting my wife's
+family. May I pour you some coffee?"
+
+And pour it he did, eyeing her furtively the while, and brought it to
+her.
+
+"May I give you a word of advice, Lily?" he said. "Don't treat your
+husband to tears at breakfast--unless you want to see him romping off to
+some other woman."
+
+"If he cared to do that I shouldn't want him anyhow."
+
+"You're a self-sufficient child, aren't you? Well, the best of us do it,
+sometimes."
+
+He had successfully changed the trend of her thoughts, and he went out,
+carrying the newspaper with him.
+
+Nevertheless, he began to feel that her presence in the house was a
+menace. With all her theories he knew that a word of the truth would
+send her flying, breathless with outrage, out of his door. He could
+quite plainly visualize that home-coming of hers. The instant steps that
+would be taken against him, old Anthony on the wire appealing to the
+governor, Howard closeted with the Chief of Police, an instant closing
+of the net. And he was not ready for the clash.
+
+No. She must stay. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling
+and mouthing! In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced
+the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and
+not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in
+the hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself
+the head, not of the nation--there would be no nation, as such--but of
+the country. The very incidents of the night before, blundering as they
+were, showed him the ease with which the new force could be applied.
+
+He was drunk with power.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon, in the person of Pink
+Denslow. She had assumed some of Elinor's cares for the day, for Elinor
+herself had not been visible since breakfast. It soothed the girl to
+attend to small duties, and she was washing and wiping Elinor's small
+stock of fine china when the bell rang.
+
+"Mr. Denslow is calling," said Jennie. "I didn't know if you'd see him,
+so I said I didn't know if you were in."
+
+Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him. He was
+covered with plaster dust, even to the brim of his hat, and his hands
+were scratched and rough.
+
+"Pink!" she said. "Why, what is the matter?"
+
+For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the first
+time in his life perhaps, entirely indifferent to it.
+
+"I've been digging in the ruins," he said. "Is that man Doyle in the
+house?"
+
+Her color faded. Suddenly she noticed a certain wildness about Pink's
+eyes, and the hard strained look of his mouth.
+
+"What ruins, Pink?" she managed to ask.
+
+"All the ruins," he said. "You know, don't you? The bank, our bank, and
+the club?"
+
+It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw it
+all, a dreadful picture which had somehow superimposed upon it a vision
+of Jim Doyle with the morning paper, and the thing that this was not the
+time for.
+
+"That's all," he finished. "Eleven at the club, two of them my own
+fellows. In France, you know. I found one of them myself, this morning."
+He stared past her, over her head. "Killed for nothing, the way the
+Germans terrorized Belgium. Haven't you seen the papers?"
+
+"No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course. Lily, I want you to
+leave here. If you don't, if you stay now, you're one of them, whether
+you believe what they preach or not. Don't you see that?"
+
+She was not listening. Her faith was dying hard, and the mental shock
+had brought her dizziness and a faint nausea. He stood watching her, and
+when she glanced up at him it seemed to her that Pink was hard. Hard and
+suspicious, and the suspicion was for her. It was incredible.
+
+"Do you believe what they preach?" he demanded. "I've got to know, Lily.
+I've suffered the tortures of the damned all night."
+
+"I didn't know it meant this."
+
+"Do you?" he repeated.
+
+"No. You ought to know me better than that. But I don't believe that it
+started here, Pink. He was very angry this morning, and he wouldn't let
+me see the paper."
+
+"He's behind it all right," Pink said grimly. "Maybe he didn't plant the
+bombs, but his infernal influence did it, just the same. Do you mean
+to say you've lived here all this time and don't know he is plotting a
+revolution? What if he didn't authorize these things last night? He is
+only waiting, to place a hundred bombs instead of three. A thousand,
+perhaps."
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"We've got their own statements. Department of Justice found them. The
+fools, to think they can overthrow the government! Can you imagine men
+planning to capture this city and hold it?"
+
+"It wouldn't be possible, Pink?"
+
+"It isn't possible now, but they'll make a try at it."
+
+There was a short pause, with Lily struggling to understand. Pink's
+set face relaxed somewhat. All that night he had been fighting for his
+belief in her.
+
+"I never dreamed of it, Pink. I suppose all the talk I've heard meant
+that, but I never--are you sure? About Jim Doyle, I mean."
+
+"We know he is behind it. We haven't got the goods on him yet, but we
+know. Cameron knows. You ask him and he'll tell you."
+
+"Willy Cameron?"
+
+"Yes. He's had some vision, while the rest of us--! He's got a lot of us
+working now, Lily. We are on the right trail, too, although we lost some
+records last night that put us back a couple of months. We'll get them,
+all right. We'll smash their little revolution into a cocked hat."
+It occurred to him, then, that this house was a poor place for such a
+confidence. "I'll tell you about it later. Get your things now, and let
+me take you home."
+
+But Lily's problem was too complex for Pink's simple remedy. She was
+stricken with sudden conviction; the very mention of Willy Cameron gave
+Pink's statements authority. But to go like that, to leave Elinor in
+that house, with all that it implied, was impossible. And there was her
+own private problem to dispose of.
+
+"I'll go this afternoon, Pink. I'll promise you that. But I can't go
+with you now. I can't. You'll have to take my word, that's all. And you
+must believe I didn't know."
+
+"Of course you didn't know," he said, sturdily. "But I hate like thunder
+to go and leave you here." He picked up his hat, reluctantly. "If I can
+do anything--"
+
+Lily's mind was working more clearly now. This was the thing Louis Akers
+had been concerned with, then, a revolution against his country. But
+it was the thing, too, that he had promised to abandon. He was not a
+killer. She knew him well, and he was not a killer. He had got to a
+certain point, and then the thing had sickened him. Even without her he
+would never have gone through with it. But it would be necessary now to
+get his information quickly. Very quickly.
+
+"Suppose," she said, hesitatingly, "suppose I tell you that I think I am
+going to be able to help you before long?"
+
+"Help? I want you safe. This is not work for women."
+
+"But suppose I can bring you a very valuable ally?" she persisted. "Some
+one who knows all about certain plans, and has changed his views about
+them?"
+
+"One of them?"
+
+"He has been."
+
+"Is he selling his information?"
+
+"In a way, yes," said Lily, slowly.
+
+"Ware the fellow who sells information," Pink said. "But we'll be glad
+to have it. We need it, God knows. And--you'll leave?"
+
+"I couldn't stay, could I?"
+
+He kissed her hand when he went away, doing it awkwardly and
+self-consciously, but withal reverently. She wondered, rather dully, why
+she could not love Pink. A woman would be so safe with him, so sure.
+
+She had not even then gathered the full force of what he had told her.
+But little by little things came back to her; the man on guard in the
+garden; the incident of the locked kitchen door; Jim Doyle once talking
+angrily over a telephone in his study, although no telephone, so far as
+she knew, was installed in the room; his recent mysterious absences, and
+the increasing visits of the hateful Woslosky.
+
+She went back to Louis. This was what he had meant. He had known all
+along, and plotted with them; even if his stomach had turned now, he
+had been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him; she saw
+him, misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding phrases, lured on
+by one of those wild dreams of empire to which men were sometimes given.
+She did not love him any more; she was sorry for him.
+
+She saw her position with the utmost clearness. To go home was to
+abandon him, to lose him for those who needed what he could give, to
+send him back to the enemy. She had told Pink she could secure an ally
+for a price, and she was the price. There was not an ounce of melodrama
+in her, as she stood facing the situation. She considered, quite simply,
+that she had assumed an obligation which she must carry out. Perhaps her
+pride was dictating to her also. To go crawling home, bowed to the dust,
+to admit that life had beaten her, to face old Anthony's sneers and her
+mother's pity--that was hard for any Cardew.
+
+She remembered Elinor's home-comings of years ago, the strained air of
+the household, the whispering servants, and Elinor herself shut away,
+or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father was
+out of the house.
+
+No, she could not face that.
+
+Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass; she faced that
+uncompromisingly. She would marry Louis, and hold him to his promise,
+and so perhaps out of all this misery some good would come. But at the
+thought of marriage she found herself trembling violently. With no love
+and no real respect to build on, with an intuitive knowledge of the
+man's primitive violences, the reluctance toward marriage with him which
+she had always felt crystallized into something very close to dread.
+
+But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and fully
+determined. At Elinor's door she tapped lightly, and she heard movements
+within. Then Elinor opened the door wide. She had been lying on her bed,
+and automatically after closing the door she began to smooth it. Lily
+felt a wave of intense pity for her.
+
+"I wish you would go away from here, Aunt Elinor," she said.
+
+Elinor glanced up, without surprise.
+
+"Where could I go?"
+
+"If you left him definitely, you could go home."
+
+Elinor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly to
+desperation.
+
+"You know what is going on," she said, her voice strained. "You don't
+believe it is right; you know it is wicked. Clothe it in all the fine
+language in the world, Aunt Elinor, and it is still wicked. If you stay
+here you condone it. I won't. I am going away."
+
+"I wish you had never come, Lily."
+
+"It's too late for that," Lily said, stonily. "But it is not too late
+for you to get away."
+
+"I shall stay," Elinor said, with an air of finality. But Lily made one
+more effort.
+
+"He is killing you."
+
+"No, he is killing himself." Suddenly Elinor flared into a passionate
+outburst. "Don't you think I know where all this is leading? Do you
+believe for a moment that I think all this can lead to anything but
+death? It is a madness, Lily; they are all mad, these men. Don't you
+know that I have talked and argued and prayed, against it?"
+
+"Then come away. You have done all you could, and you have failed,
+haven't you?"
+
+"It is not time for me to go," Elinor said. And Lily, puzzled and
+baffled, found herself again looking into Elinor's quiet, inscrutable
+eyes.
+
+Elinor had taken it for granted that the girl was going home, and
+together they packed almost in silence. Once Elinor looked up from
+folding a garment, and said:
+
+"You said you had not understood before, but that now you do. What did
+you mean?"
+
+"Pink Denslow was here."
+
+"What does he know?"
+
+"Do you think I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor? It isn't that I don't
+trust you. You must believe that, but don't you see that so long as you
+stay here--he said that to me--you are one of them."
+
+Elinor resumed her folding.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I am one of them," she said quietly. "And you are right.
+You must not tell me anything. Pink is Henry Denslow's son, I suppose."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do they--still live in the old house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Elinor continued her methodical work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Willy Cameron was free that evening. Although he had not slept at all
+the night before, he felt singularly awake and active. The Committee
+had made temporary quarters of his small back room at the pharmacy,
+and there had sat in rather depressed conclave during a part of the
+afternoon. Pink Denslow had come in late, and had remained, silent and
+haggard, through the debate.
+
+There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get files
+and card indexes. Greater secrecy was to be preserved and enjoined, the
+location of the office to be known only to a small inner circle,
+and careful policing of it and of the building which housed it to be
+established. As a further safeguard, two duplicate files would be kept
+in other places. The Committee groaned over its own underestimate of the
+knowledge of the radicals.
+
+The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the bank
+building where their file was kept, and the club, where nine-tenths
+of the officers of the Committee were members. The significance of the
+double outrage was unquestionable.
+
+When the meeting broke up Pink remained behind. He found it rather
+difficult to broach the matter in his mind. It was always hard for him
+to talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had had a growing conviction
+that Willy Cameron found it equally difficult. He wondered if Cameron,
+too, was in love with Lily. There had been a queer look in his face on
+those rare occasions when Pink had mentioned her, a sort of exaltation,
+and an odd difficulty afterwards in getting back to the subject in hand.
+
+Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for Willy
+Cameron, a strange, loyal, half wistful, totally unselfish devotion. It
+had steadied him, when the loss of Lily might have made him reckless,
+and had taken the form in recent weeks of finding innumerable business
+opportunities, which Willy Cameron cheerfully refused to take.
+
+"I'll stay here until this other thing is settled," was Willy's
+invariable answer. "I have a certain amount of time here, and the
+fellows can drop in to see me without causing suspicion. In an office it
+would be different. And besides, I can't throw Mr. Davis down. His wife
+is in bad shape."
+
+So, that afternoon, Pink waited until the Committee had dispersed, and
+then said, with some difficulty:
+
+"I saw her, Cameron. She has promised to leave."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"This afternoon. I wanted to take her away, but she had some things to
+do."
+
+"Then she hadn't known before?"
+
+"No. She thought it was just talk. And they'd kept the papers from her.
+She hadn't heard about last night. Well, that's all. I thought you'd
+want to know."
+
+Pink started out, but Willy Cameron called him back.
+
+"Have any of your people any influence with the Cardews?"
+
+"No one has any influence with the Cardews, if you mean the Cardew men.
+Why?"
+
+"Because Cardew has got to get out of the mayoralty campaign. That's
+all."
+
+"That's a-plenty," said Pink, grinning. "Why don't you go and tell him
+so?"
+
+"I'm thinking of it. He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll defeat
+Hendricks by splitting the vote, and let the other side in. And you know
+what that means."
+
+"I know it," Pink observed, "but Mr. Cardew doesn't, and he won't after
+you've told him. They've put a lot of money in, and once a Cardew has
+invested in a thing he holds on like death. Especially the old man.
+Wouldn't wonder he was the fellow who pounded the daylights out of Akers
+last night," he added.
+
+Willy Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door into
+the shop, and opened a window.
+
+"Akers?" he inquired.
+
+"Noon edition has it," Pink said. "Claims to have been attacked in his
+rooms by two masked men. Probably wouldn't have told it, but the doctor
+talked. Looks as though he could wallop six masked men, doesn't he?"
+
+"Yes," said Willy Cameron, reflectively. "Yes; he does, rather."
+
+He felt more hopeful than he had for days. Lily on her way home, clear
+once more of the poisonous atmosphere of Doyle and his associates; Akers
+temporarily out of the way, perhaps for long enough to let the normal
+influences of her home life show him to her in a real perspective; and a
+rather unholy but very human joy that he had given Akers a part of what
+was coming to him--all united to cheer him. He saw Lily going home, and
+a great wave of tenderness flooded him. If only they would be tactful
+and careful, if only they would be understanding and kind. If they would
+only be normal and every-day, and accept her as though she had never
+been away. These people were so hedged about with conventions and
+restrictions, they put so much emphasis on the letter and so little on
+the spirit. If only--God, if only they wouldn't patronize her!
+
+His mother would have known how to receive her. He felt, that afternoon,
+a real homesickness for his mother. He saw her, ample and comfortable
+and sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed to
+ignore the soul, and yet bringing healing with her every matter-of-fact
+movement.
+
+If only Lily could have gone back to her, instead of to that great
+house, full of curious eyes and whispering voices.
+
+He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper. Mr.
+Hendricks had lost flesh and some of his buoyancy, but he was
+persistently optimistic.
+
+"Up to last night I'd have said we were done, son," he observed. "But
+this bomb business has settled them. The labor vote'll split on it, sure
+as whooping cough."
+
+"They've bought a half-page in all the morning papers, disclaiming all
+responsibility and calling on all citizens to help them in protecting
+private property."
+
+"Have they, now," said Hendricks, with grudging admiration. "Can you
+beat that? Where do they get the money, anyhow? If I lost my watch these
+days I'd have to do some high-finance before I'd be able to advertise
+for it."
+
+"All right, see Cardew," were his parting words. "But he doesn't want
+this election any more than I want my right leg. He'll stick. You can
+talk, Cameron, I'll say it. But you can't pry him off with kind words,
+any more than you can a porous plaster."
+
+Behind Mr. Hendricks' colloquialisms there was something sturdy and
+fine. His very vernacular made him popular; his honesty was beyond
+suspicion. If he belonged to the old school in politics, he had most
+of its virtues and few of its vices. He would take care of his friends,
+undoubtedly, but he was careful in his choice of friends. He would make
+the city a good place to live in. Like Willy Cameron, he saw it, not
+a center of trade so much as a vast settlement of homes. Business
+supported the city in his mind, not the city business.
+
+Nevertheless the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of a
+desperate remedy for a desperate disease that Willy Cameron, after a
+careful toilet, rang the bell of the Cardew house that night. He had no
+hope of seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were under one roof
+gave him a sense of nearness and of comfort in her safety.
+
+Dinner was recently over, and he found both the Cardews, father and son,
+in the library smoking. He had arrived at a bad moment, for the bomb
+outrage, coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home under the given
+conditions, had roused Anthony to a cold rage, and left Howard with a
+feeling of helplessness.
+
+Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and offered
+him a chair.
+
+"I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron," he said. "You made me
+wish I could have had your support."
+
+"I came to talk about that. I am sorry to have to come in the evening,
+but I am not free at any other time."
+
+"When we go into politics," said old Anthony in his jibing voice, "the
+ordinary amenities have to go. When you are elected, Howard, I shall
+live somewhere else."
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+"I don't think you will be put to that inconvenience, Mr. Cardew."
+
+"What's that?" Old Anthony's voice was incredulous. Here, in his own
+house, this whipper-snapper--
+
+"I am sure Mr. Howard Cardew realizes he cannot be elected."
+
+The small ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal for the
+family. Howard glanced at him, and said urbanely:
+
+"Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron? Or a liqueur?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you. If I can have a few minutes' talk with you--"
+
+"If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you that
+I am heavily interested in this matter myself," said old Anthony. "I
+have put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out,
+I want to hear it. You've played the devil with us already, with your
+independent candidate who can't talk English."
+
+Willy Cameron kept his temper.
+
+"No," he said, slowly. "It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks
+withdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out."
+
+Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.
+
+"It's like this," Willy Cameron said. "Your son knows it. Even if we
+drop out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly--and I mean that--nobody
+with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city.
+There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you a
+fact."
+
+Howard had listened attentively and without anger. "For a long time, Mr.
+Cameron," he said, "I have been urging men of--of position in the city,
+to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professional
+politician. I went in, without much hope of election, to--well, you can
+say to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me, so
+much as to show my willingness to serve."
+
+Old Anthony recovered his voice.
+
+"The Cardews made this town, sir," he barked. "Willingness to serve,
+piffle! We need a business man to run the city, and by God, we'll get
+it!"
+
+"You'll get an anarchist," said Willy Cameron, slightly flushed.
+
+"If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick.
+And how do we know that your Vigilance Committee isn't a trick, too?
+You try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do heaven
+knows what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals to
+the public imagination. You don't say anything about votes, but you see
+that they vote for your man. Isn't that true?"
+
+"Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Akers is an
+anarchist. He calls himself something else, but that's what it amounts
+to. And those bombs last night were not imaginary."
+
+The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on Anthony
+Cardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Akers defeated.
+The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough, in
+Willy Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard.
+What Willy Cameron told about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of
+his daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing about
+Cameron himself. Something of fearlessness and honesty that began,
+slowly, to dispose Anthony in his favor.
+
+It was Howard who held out.
+
+"If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking,"
+he said, quietly obstinate. "Grant your point, that I'm defeated. All
+right, I'll be defeated--but I won't quit."
+
+And Anthony Cardew, confronted by that very quality of obstinacy which
+had been his own weapon for so many years, retired in high dudgeon to
+his upper rooms. He was living in a strange new world, a reasonable soul
+on an unreasonable earth, an earth where a man's last sanctuary, his
+club, was blown up about him, and a man's family apparently lived only
+to thwart him.
+
+With Anthony gone, Howard dropped the discussion with the air of a man
+who has made a final stand.
+
+"What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly," he observed,
+"because--you probably do not know this--my sister married him some
+years ago. It was a most unhappy affair."
+
+"I do know it. For that reason I am glad that Miss Lily has come home."
+
+"Has come home? She has not come home, Mr. Cameron. There was a
+condition we felt forced to make, and she refused to agree to it.
+Perhaps we were wrong. I--"
+
+Willy Cameron got up.
+
+"Was that to-day?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"But she was coming home to-day. She was to leave there this afternoon."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Denslow saw her there this afternoon. She agreed to leave at once. He
+had told her of the bombs, and of other things. She hadn't understood
+before, and she was horrified. It is just possible Doyle wouldn't let
+her go."
+
+"But--that's ridiculous. She can't be a prisoner in my sister's house."
+
+"Will you telephone and find out if she is there?" Howard went to the
+telephone at once. It seemed to Willy Cameron that he stood there for
+uncounted years, and as though, through all that eternity of waiting, he
+knew what the answer would be. And that he knew, too, what that answer
+meant, where she had gone, what she had done. If only she had come to
+him. If only she had come to him. He would have saved her from herself.
+He--
+
+"She is not there," Howard Cardew said, in a voice from which all life
+had gone. "She left this afternoon, at four o'clock. Of course she has
+friends. Or she may have gone to a hotel. We had managed to make it
+practically impossible for her to come home."
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at his watch. He had discounted the worst before
+it came, and unlike the older man, was ready for action. It was he who
+took hold of the situation.
+
+"Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels," he said. "And if you
+will drop me downtown--I'll tell you where--I'll follow up something
+that has just occurred to me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+In one way Howard had been correct in his surmise. It had been Lily's
+idea to go to a hotel until she had made some definite plan. She would
+telephone Louis then, and the rest--she did not think beyond that. She
+called a taxi and took a small bag with her, but in the taxicab she
+suddenly realized that she could not go to any of the hotels she knew.
+She would be recognized at once.
+
+She wanted a little time to herself, time to think. And before it was
+discovered that she had left Cardew Way she must see Louis, and judge
+again if he intended to act in good faith. While he was with her,
+reiterating his promises, she believed him, but when he was gone, she
+always felt, a curious doubt.
+
+She thought then of finding a quiet room somewhere, and stopping the
+cab, bought a newspaper. It was when she was searching for the "rooms
+for rent" column that she saw he had been attacked and slightly injured.
+
+They had got him. He had said that if they ever suspected him of playing
+them false they would get him, and now they had done so. That removed
+the last doubt of his good faith from her mind. She felt indignation and
+dismay, and a sort of aching consciousness that always she brought only
+trouble to the people who cared for her; she felt that she was going
+through her life, leaving only unhappiness behind her.
+
+He had suffered, and for her.
+
+She told the chauffeur to go to the Benedict Apartments, and sitting
+back read the notice again. He had been attacked by two masked men and
+badly bruised, after putting up a terrific resistance. They would
+wear masks, of course. They loved the theatrical. Their very flag was
+theatrical. And he had made a hard fight That was like him, too; he was
+a fighter.
+
+She was a Cardew, and she loved strength. There were other men, men like
+Willy Cameron, for instance, who were lovable in many ways, but they
+were not fighters. They sat back, and let life beat them, and they took
+the hurt bravely and stoically. But they never got life by the throat
+and shook it until it gave up what they wanted.
+
+She had never been in a bachelors' apartment house before, and she
+was both frightened and self-conscious. The girl at the desk eyed her
+curiously while she telephoned her message, and watched her as she moved
+toward the elevator. "Ever seen her before?" she said to the hall boy.
+
+"No. She's a new one."
+
+"Face's kind of familiar to me," said the telephone girl, reflectively.
+"Looks worried, doesn't she? Two masked men! Huh! All Sam took up there
+last night was a thin fellow with a limp."
+
+The hall boy grinned.
+
+"Then his limp didn't bother him any. Sam says y'ought to seen that
+place."
+
+In the meantime, outside the door of Akers' apartment, Lily's fine
+courage almost left her. Had it not been for the eyes of the elevator
+man, fixed on her while he lounged in his gateway, she might have gone
+away, even then. But she stood there, committed to a course of action,
+and rang.
+
+Louis himself admitted her, an oddly battered Louis, in a dressing gown
+and slippers; an oddly watchful Louis, too, waiting, after the manner of
+men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat would jump.
+He had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge. All day he had sat
+there, unable to go out, and had wondered just when Cameron would see
+her and tell her about Edith Boyd. For, just as Willy Cameron rushed him
+for the first time, there had been something from between clenched teeth
+about marrying another girl, under the given circumstances. Only that
+had not been the sort of language in which it was delivered.
+
+"I just saw about it in the newspaper," Lily said. "How dreadful,
+Louis."
+
+He straightened himself and drew a deep breath. The game was still his,
+if he played it right.
+
+"Bad enough, dear," he said, "but I gave them some trouble, too." He
+pushed a chair toward her. "It was like you to come. But I don't like
+your seeing me all mussed up, little girl."
+
+He made a move then to kiss her, but she drew back.
+
+"Please!" she said. "Not here. And I can't sit down. I can't stay. I
+only came because I wanted to tell you something and I didn't want to
+telephone it. Louis, Jim Doyle knew about those bombs last night. He
+didn't want it to happen before the election, but--that doesn't alter
+the fact, does it?"
+
+"How do you know he knew?"
+
+"I do know. That's all. And I have left Aunt Elinor's."
+
+"No!"
+
+"I couldn't stay, could I?" She looked up at him, the little wistful
+glance that Willy always found so infinitely touching, like the appeal
+of a willful but lovable child, that has somehow got into trouble. "And
+I can't go home, Louis, unless I--"
+
+"Unless you give me up," he finished for her. "Well?"
+
+She hesitated. She hated making terms with him, and yet somehow she must
+make terms.
+
+"Well?" he repeated. "Are you going to throw me over?"
+
+Apparently merely putting the thought into words crystallized all his
+fears of the past hours; seeing her there, too, had intensified his want
+of her. She stood there, where he had so often dreamed of seeing her,
+but still holding him off with the aloofness that both chilled and
+inflamed him, and with a question in her eyes. He held out his arms, but
+she drew back.
+
+"Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them, if I marry
+you, and doing all you can to stop them?"
+
+"You know I mean it."
+
+"Then--I'll not go home."
+
+"You are going to marry me? Now?"
+
+"Whenever you say."
+
+Suddenly she was trembling violently, and her lips felt dry and stiff.
+He pushed her into a chair, and knelt down beside her.
+
+"You poor little kid," he said, softly.
+
+Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts; Lily his, in his arms,
+in spite of that white-faced drug clerk with the cold eyes; himself in
+the Cardew house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardew at his own
+cynical game; and persistently held back and often rising again to the
+surface, Woslosky and Doyle and the others, killers that they were,
+pursuing him with their vengeance over the world. They would have to be
+counted in; they were his price, as he, had he known it, was Lily's.
+
+"My wife!" he said. "My wife."
+
+She stiffened in his arms.
+
+"I must go, Louis," she said. "I can't stay here. I felt very queer
+downstairs. They all stared so."
+
+There was a clock on the mantel shelf, and he looked at it. It was a
+quarter before five.
+
+"One thing is sure, Lily," he said. "You can't wander about alone,
+and you are right--you can't stay here. They probably recognized you
+downstairs. You are pretty well known."
+
+For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised herself,
+and that the net, of her own making, was closing fast about her.
+
+"I wish I hadn't come."
+
+"Why? We can fix that all right in a jiffy."
+
+But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final struggle.
+In a few days, even to-morrow, but not just then. He listened,
+impatiently, his eyes on the clock. Beside it in the mirror he saw his
+own marred face, and it added to his anger. In the end he took control
+of the situation; went into his bedroom, changed into a coat, and came
+out again, ready for the street. He telephoned down for a taxicab, and
+then confronted her, his face grim.
+
+"I've let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily," he said.
+"Now I'm in charge. It won't be to-morrow or next week or next month. It
+will be now. You're here. You've given them a chance to talk downstairs.
+You've nowhere to go, and you're going to marry me at once."
+
+In the cab he explained more fully. They would get a license, and then
+go to one of the hotels. There they could be married, in their own
+suite.
+
+"All regularly and in order, honey," he said, and kissed her hand. She
+had hardly heard. She was staring ahead, not thinking, not listening,
+not seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man before her, of his
+sheer physical proximity, of his increasing exuberance.
+
+"I'm mad about you, girl," he said. "Mad. And now you are going to be
+mine, until death do us part."
+
+She shivered and drew away, and he laughed a little. Girls were like
+that, at such times. They always took a step back for every two steps
+forward. He let her hand go, and took a careful survey of his face in
+the mirror of the cab. The swelling had gone down, but that bruise below
+his eye would last for days. He cursed under his breath.
+
+
+It was after nine o'clock when one of the Cardew cars stopped not far
+from the Benedict Apartments, and Willy Cameron got out.
+
+He was quite certain that Louis Akers would know where Lily was, and
+he anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor. There might
+be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the
+night before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if
+he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white
+throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more
+than a ripple of excitement.
+
+"Well, look who's here!" muttered the telephone girl, and watched his
+approach, with its faint limp, over the top of her desk. Behind, from
+his cage, the elevator man was staring with avid interest.
+
+"I suppose Mr. Akers is in?" said Willy Cameron, politely. The girl
+smiled up at him.
+
+"I'll say he ought to be, after last night! What're you going to do now?
+Kill him?"
+
+In spite of his anxiety there was a faint twinkle in Willy Cameron's
+eyes.
+
+"No," he said slowly. "No. I think not. I want to talk to him."
+
+"Sam," called the telephone girl, "take this gentleman up to
+forty-three."
+
+"Forty-three's out." Sam partly shut the elevator door; he had seen
+Forty-three's rooms the night before, and he had the discretion of his
+race. "Went out with a lady at quarter to five."
+
+Willy Cameron took a step or two toward the cage.
+
+"You don't happen to be lying, I suppose?"
+
+"No, sir!" said Sam. "I'll take you up to look, if you like. And about
+an hour ago he sent a boy here with a note, to get some of his clothes.
+The young lady at the desk was out at the movies at the time."
+
+"I was getting my supper, Sam."
+
+Willy Cameron had gone very white.
+
+"Did the boy say where he was taking the things?"
+
+"To the Saint Elmo Hotel, sir."
+
+On the street again Willy Cameron took himself fiercely in hand. There
+were a half-dozen reasons why Akers might go to the Saint Elmo. He
+might, for one thing, have thought that he, Cameron, would go back to
+the Benedict. He might be hiding from Dan, or from reporters. But there
+had been, apparently, no attempt to keep his new quarters secret. If
+Lily was at the Saint Elmo--
+
+He found a taxicab, and as it drew up at the curb before the hotel he
+saw the Cardew car moving away. It gave him his first real breath for
+twenty minutes. Lily was not there.
+
+But Louis Akers was. He got his room number from a clerk and went up,
+still determinedly holding on to himself. Afterwards he had no clear
+recollection of any interval between the Benedict and the moment he
+found himself standing outside a door on an upper floor of the Saint
+Elmo. From that time on it was as clear as crystal, his own sudden calm,
+the overturning of a chair inside, a man's voice, slightly raised, which
+he recognized, and then the thin crash of a wineglass dropped or thrown
+to the floor.
+
+He opened the door and went in.
+
+In the center of the sitting room a table was set, and on it the
+remains of a dinner for two. Akers was standing by the table, his chair
+overturned behind him, a splintered glass at his feet, staring angrily
+at the window. Even then Willy Cameron saw that he had had too much to
+drink, and that he was in an ugly mood. He was in dinner clothes, but
+with his bruised face and scowling brows he looked a sinister imitation
+of a gentleman.
+
+By the window, her back to the room, was Lily.
+
+Neither of them glanced at the door. Evidently the waiter had been
+moving in and out, and Akers considered him as little as he would a dog.
+
+"Come and sit down," he said angrily. "I've quit drinking, I tell you.
+Good God, just because I've had a little wine--and I had the hell of a
+time getting it--you won't eat and won't talk. Come here."
+
+"I'm not hungry."
+
+"Come here."
+
+"Stay where you are, Lily," said Willy Cameron, from inside the closed
+door. "Or perhaps you'd better get your wraps. I came to take you home."
+
+Akers had wheeled at the voice, and now stood staring incredulously.
+First anger, and then a grin of triumph, showed in his face. Drink had
+made him not so much drunk as reckless. He had lost last night, but
+to-day he had won.
+
+"Hello, Cameron," he said.
+
+Willy Cameron ignored him.
+
+"Will you come?" he said to Lily.
+
+"I can't, Willy."
+
+"Listen, Lily dear," he said gravely. "Your father is searching the city
+for you. Do you know what that means? Don't you see that you must go
+home at once? You can't dine here in a private suite, like this, and not
+expose yourself to all sorts of talk."
+
+"Go on," said Akers, leering. "I like to hear you."
+
+"Especially," continued Willy Cameron, "with a man like this."
+
+Akers took a step toward him, but he was not too sure of himself, and
+he knew now that the other man had a swing to his right arm like the
+driving rod of a locomotive. He retreated again to the table, and his
+hand closed over a knife there.
+
+"Louis!" Lily said sharply.
+
+He picked up the knife and smiled at her, his eyes cunning. "Not going
+to kill him, my dear," he said. "Merely to give him a hint that I'm not
+as easy as I was last night."
+
+That was a slip, and he knew it. Lily had left the window and come
+forward, a stricken slip of a girl, and he turned to her angrily.
+
+"Go into the other room and close the door," he ordered. "When I've
+thrown this fellow out, you can come back."
+
+But Lily's eyes were fixed on Willy Cameron's face.
+
+"It was you last night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because," Willy Cameron said steadily, "he had got a girl into trouble,
+and then insulted her. I wouldn't tell you, but you've got to know the
+truth before it's too late."
+
+Lily threw out both hands dizzily, as though catching for support. But
+she steadied herself. Neither man moved.
+
+"It is too late, Willy," she said. "I have just married him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+At midnight Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired and broken man.
+Grace had been lying awake in her bedroom, puzzled by his unexplained
+absence, and brooding, as she now did continually, over Lily's absence.
+
+At half past eleven she heard Anthony Cardew come in and go upstairs,
+and for some time after that she heard him steadily pacing back and
+forth overhead. Sometimes Grace felt sorry for Anthony. He had made
+himself at such cost, and now when he was old, he had everything and yet
+nothing.
+
+They had never understood women, these Cardews. Howard was gentle with
+them where Anthony was hard, but he did not understand, either. She
+herself, of other blood, got along by making few demands, but the Cardew
+women were as insistent in their demands as the men. Elinor, Lily--She
+formed a sudden resolution, and getting up, dressed feverishly. She had
+no plan in her mind, nothing but a desperate resolution to put Lily's
+case before her grandfather, and to beg that she be brought home without
+conditions.
+
+She was frightened as she went up the stairs. Never before had she
+permitted things to come to an issue between herself and Anthony. But
+now it must be done. She knocked at the door.
+
+Anthony Cardew opened it. The room was dark, save for one lamp burning
+dimly on a great mahogany table, and Anthony's erect figure was little
+more than a blur of black and white.
+
+"I heard you walking about," she said breathlessly. "May I come in and
+talk to you?"
+
+"Come in," he said, with a sort of grave heaviness. "Shall I light the
+other lamps?"
+
+"Please don't."
+
+"Will you sit down? No? Do you mind if I do? I am very tired. I suppose
+it is about Lily?"
+
+"Yes. I can't stand it any longer. I can't."
+
+Sitting under the lamp she saw that he looked very old and very weary. A
+tired little old man, almost a broken one.
+
+"She won't come back?"
+
+"Not under the conditions. But she must come back, father. To let her
+stay on there, in that house, after last night--"
+
+She had never called him "father" before. It seemed to touch him.
+
+"You're a good woman, Grace," he said, still heavily. "We Cardews all
+marry good women, but we don't know how to treat them. Even Howard--"
+His voice trailed off. "No, she can't stay there," he said, after a
+pause.
+
+"But--I must tell you--she refuses to give up that man."
+
+"You are a woman, Grace. You ought to know something about girls. Does
+she actually care for him, or is it because he offers the liberty
+she thinks we fail to give her? Or"--he smiled faintly--"is it Cardew
+pig-headedness?"
+
+Grace made a little gesture of despair.
+
+"I don't know. She wanted to come home. She begged--it was dreadful."
+Grace hesitated. "Even that couldn't be as bad as this, father," she
+said. "We have all lived our own lives, you and Howard and myself, and
+now we won't let her do it."
+
+"And a pretty mess we have made of them!" His tone was grim. "No, I
+can't say that we offer her any felicitous examples. But the fellow's
+plan is transparent enough. He is ambitious. He sees himself installed
+here, one of us. Mark my words, Grace, he may love the child, but his
+real actuating motive is that. He's a Radical, because since he can't
+climb up, he'll pull down. But once let him get his foot on the Cardew
+ladder, and he'll climb, over her, over all of us."
+
+He sat after that, his head dropped on his chest, his hands resting on
+the arms of his chair, in a brooding reverie. Grace waited.
+
+"Better bring her home," he said finally. "Tell her I surrender. I want
+her here. Let her bring that fellow here, too, if she has to see him.
+But for God's sake, Grace," he added, with a flash of his old fire,
+"show her some real men, too."
+
+Suddenly Grace bent over and kissed him. He put up his hand, and patted
+her on the shoulder.
+
+"A good woman, Grace," he said, "and a good daughter to me. I'm sorry.
+I'll try to do better."
+
+As Grace straightened she heard the door close below, and Howard's
+voice. Almost immediately she heard him coming up the staircase, and
+going out into the hall she called softly to him.
+
+"Where are you?" he asked, looking up. "Is father there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I want you both to come down to the library, Grace."
+
+She heard him turn and go slowly down the stairs. His voice had been
+strained and unnatural. As she turned she found Anthony behind her.
+
+"Something has happened!"
+
+"I rather think so," said old Anthony, slowly.
+
+They went together down the stairs.
+
+In the library Lily was standing, facing the door, a quiet figure,
+listening and waiting. Howard had dropped into a chair and was staring
+ahead. And beyond the circle of lights was a shadowy figure, vaguely
+familiar, tall, thin, and watchful. Willy Cameron.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+The discovery that Lily had left his house threw Jim Doyle into a
+frenzy. The very manner of her going filled him with dark suspicion.
+Either she had heard more that morning than he had thought, or--In his
+cunning mind for weeks there had been growing a smoldering suspicion
+of his wife. She was too quiet, too acquiescent. In the beginning, when
+Woslosky had brought the scheme to him, and had promised it financial
+support from Europe, he had taken a cruel and savage delight in
+outlining it to her, in seeing her cringe and go pale.
+
+He had not feared her then. She had borne with so much, endured,
+tolerated, accepted, that he had not realized that she might have a
+breaking point.
+
+The plan had appealed to his cynical soul from the first. It was the
+apotheosis of cynicism, this reducing of a world to its lowest level.
+And it had amused him to see his wife, a gentlewoman born, bewildered
+before the chaos he depicted.
+
+"But--it is German!" she had said.
+
+"I bow before intelligence. It is German. Also it is Russian. Also it
+is of all nations. All this talk now, of a League of Nations, a few dull
+diplomats acting as God over the peoples of the earth!" His eyes blazed.
+"While the true league, of the workers of the world, is already in
+effect!"
+
+But he watched her after that, not that he was afraid of her, but
+because her re-action as a woman was important. He feared women in the
+movement. It had its disciples, fervent and eloquent, paid and unpaid
+women agitators, but he did not trust them. They were invariably women
+without home ties, women with nothing to protect, women with everything
+to gain and nothing to lose. The woman in the home was a natural
+anti-radical. Not the police, not even the army, but the woman in the
+home was the deadly enemy of the great plan.
+
+He began to hate Elinor, not so much for herself, as for the women she
+represented. She became the embodiment of possible failure. She stood in
+his path, passively resistant, stubbornly brave.
+
+She was not a clever woman, and she was slow in gathering the full
+significance of a nation-wide general strike, that with an end of all
+production the non-producing world would be beaten to its knees. And
+then she waited for a world movement, forgetting that a flame must start
+somewhere and then spread. But she listened and learned. There was a
+great deal of talk about class and mass. She learned that the mass, for
+instance, was hungry for a change. It would welcome any change. Woslosky
+had been in Russia when the Kerensky regime was overthrown, and had seen
+that strange three days when the submerged part of the city filled the
+streets, singing, smiling, endlessly walking, exalted and without guile.
+
+No problems troubled them. They had ceased to labor, and that was
+enough.
+
+Had it not been for its leaders, the mass would have risen like a tide,
+and ebbed again.
+
+Elinor had struggled to understand. This was not Socialism. Jim had been
+a Socialist for years. He had believed that the gradual elevation of the
+few, the gradual subjection of the many, would go on until the majority
+would drag the few down to their own level. But this new dream was
+something immediate. At her table she began to hear talk of substituting
+for that slow process a militant minority. She was a long time, months,
+in discovering that Jim Doyle was one of the leaders of that militant
+minority, and that the methods of it were unspeakably criminal.
+
+Then had begun Elinor Doyle's long battle, at first to hold him back,
+and that failing, the fight between her duty to her husband and that to
+her country. He had been her one occupation and obsession too long to
+be easily abandoned, but she was sturdily national, too. In the end she
+made her decision. She lived in his house, mended his clothing, served
+his food, met his accomplices, and--watched.
+
+She hated herself for it. Every fine fiber of her revolted. But as time
+went on, and she learned the full wickedness of the thing, her days
+became one long waiting. She saw one move after another succeed, strike
+after strike slowing production, and thus increasing the cost of living.
+She saw the growing discontent and muttering, the vicious circle of
+labor striking for more money, and by its own ceasing of activity making
+the very increases they asked inadequate. And behind it all she saw
+the ceaseless working, the endless sowing, of a grim-faced band of
+conspirators.
+
+She was obliged to wait. A few men talking in secret meetings, a hidden
+propaganda of crime and disorder--there was nothing to strike at. And
+Elinor, while not clever, had the Cardew shrewdness. She saw that,
+like the crisis in a fever, the thing would have to come, be met, and
+defeated.
+
+She had no hope that the government would take hold. Government was
+aloof, haughty, and secure in its own strength. Just now, too, it was
+objective, not subjective. It was like a horse set to win a race, and
+unconscious of the fly on its withers. But the fly was a gadfly.
+
+Elinor knew Doyle was beginning to suspect her. Sometimes she thought
+he would kill her, if he discovered what she meant to do. She did
+not greatly care. She waited for some inkling of the day set for the
+uprising in the city, and saved out of her small house allowance by
+innumerable economies and subterfuges. When she found out the time she
+would go to the Governor of the State. He seemed to be a strong man,
+and she would present him facts. Facts and names. Then he must act--and
+quickly.
+
+Cut off from her own world, and with no roots thrown out in the new, she
+had no friends, no one to confide in or of whom to ask assistance. And
+she was afraid to go to Howard. He would precipitate things. The leaders
+would escape, and a new group would take their places. Such a group, she
+knew, stood ready for that very emergency.
+
+On the afternoon of Lily's departure she heard Doyle come in. He had not
+recovered from his morning's anger, and she heard his voice, raised in
+some violent reproof to Jennie. He came up the stairs, his head sagged
+forward, his every step deliberate, heavy, ominous. He had an evening
+paper in his hand, and he gave it to her with his finger pointing to a
+paragraph.
+
+"You might show that to the last of the Cardews," he sneered.
+
+It was the paragraph about Louis Akers. Elinor read it. "Who were the
+masked men?" she asked. "Do you know?"
+
+"I wish to God I did. I'd--Makes him a laughing stock, of course. And
+just now, when--Where's Lily?"
+
+Elinor put down the paper.
+
+"She is not here. She went home this afternoon."
+
+He stared at her, angrily incredulous.
+
+"Home?"
+
+"This afternoon."
+
+She passed him and went out into the hall. But he followed her and
+caught her by the arm as she reached the top of the staircase.
+
+"What made her go home?"
+
+"I don't know, Jim."
+
+"She didn't say?"
+
+"Don't hold me like that. No."
+
+She tried to free her arm, but he held her, his face angry and
+suspicious.
+
+"You are lying to me," he snarled. "She gave you a reason. What was it?"
+
+Elinor was frightened, but she had not lost her head. She was thinking
+rapidly.
+
+"She had a visitor this afternoon, a young man. He must have told her
+something about last night. She came up and told me she was going."
+
+"You know he told her something, don't you?"
+
+"Yes." Elinor had cowered against the wall. "Jim, don't look like that.
+You frighten me. I couldn't keep her here. I--"
+
+"What did he tell her?"
+
+"He accused you."
+
+He was eyeing her coldly, calculatingly. All his suspicions of the past
+weeks suddenly crystallized. "And you let her go, after that," he said
+slowly. "You were glad to have her go. You didn't deny what she said.
+You let her run back home, with what she had guessed and what you told
+her to-day. You--"
+
+He struck her then. The blow was as remorseless as his voice, as
+deliberate. She fell down the staircase headlong, and lay there, not
+moving.
+
+The elderly maid came running from the kitchen, and found him half-way
+down the stairs, his eyes still calculating, but his body shaking.
+
+"She fell," he said, still staring down. But the servant faced him, her
+eyes full of hate.
+
+"You devil!" she said. "If she's dead, I'll see you hang for it."
+
+But Elinor was not dead. Doctor Smalley, making rounds in a nearby
+hospital and answering the emergency call, found her lying on her bed,
+fully conscious and in great pain, while her husband bent over her in
+seeming agony of mind. She had broken her leg. He sent Doyle out during
+the setting. It was a principle of his to keep agonized husbands out of
+the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Life had beaten Lily Cardew. She went about the house, pathetically
+reminiscent of Elinor Doyle in those days when she had sought sanctuary
+there; but where Elinor had seen those days only as interludes in her
+stormy life, Lily was finding a strange new peace. She was very tender,
+very thoughtful, insistently cheerful, as though determined that her own
+ill-fortune should not affect the rest of the household.
+
+But to Lily this peace was not an interlude, but an end. Life for her
+was over. Her bright dreams were gone, her future settled. Without so
+putting it, even to herself, she dedicated herself to service, to small
+kindnesses, and little thoughtful acts. She was, daily and hourly,
+making reparation to them all for what she had cost them, in hope.
+
+That was the thing that had gone out of life. Hope. Her loathing of
+Louis Akers was gone. She did not hate him. Rather she felt toward him a
+sort of numbed indifference. She wished never to see him again, but the
+revolt that had followed her knowledge of the conditions under which he
+had married her was gone. She tried to understand his viewpoint, to make
+allowances for his lack of some fundamental creed to live by. But as the
+days went on, with that healthy tendency of the mind to bury pain, she
+found him, from a figure that bulked so large as to shut out all the
+horizon of her life, receding more and more.
+
+But always he would shut off certain things. Love, and marriage, and of
+course the hope of happiness. Happiness was a thing one earned, and she
+had not earned it.
+
+After the scene at the Saint Elmo, when he had refused to let her go,
+and when Willy Cameron had at last locked him in the bedroom of the
+suite and had taken her away, there had followed a complete silence.
+She had waited for some move or his part, perhaps an announcement of the
+marriage in the newspapers, but nothing had appeared. He had commenced
+a whirlwind campaign for the mayoralty and was receiving a substantial
+support from labor.
+
+The months at the house on Cardew Way seemed more and more dream-like,
+and that quality of remoteness was accentuated by the fact that she
+had not been able to talk to Elinor. She had telephoned more than once
+during the week, but a new maid had answered. Mrs. Doyle was out. Mrs.
+Doyle was unable to come to the telephone. The girl was a foreigner,
+with something of Woslosky's burr in her voice.
+
+Lily had not left the house since her return. During that family
+conclave which had followed her arrival, a stricken thing of few words
+and long anxious pauses, her grandfather had suggested that. He had
+been curiously mild with her, her grandfather. He had made no friendly
+overtures, but he had neither jibed nor sneered.
+
+"It's done," he had said briefly. "The thing now is to keep her out of
+his clutches." He had turned to her. "I wouldn't leave the house for few
+days, Lily."
+
+It was then that Willy Cameron had gone. Afterwards she thought that
+he must have been waiting, patiently protective, to see how the old man
+received her.
+
+Her inability to reach Elinor began to dismay her, at last. There was
+something sinister about it, and finally Howard himself went to the
+Doyle house. Lily had come back on Thursday, and on the following
+Tuesday he made his call, timing it so that Doyle would probably be away
+from home. But he came back baffled.
+
+"She was not at home," he said. "I had to take the servant's word for
+it, but I think the girl was lying."
+
+"She may be ill. She almost never goes out."
+
+"What possible object could they have in concealing her illness?" Howard
+said impatiently.
+
+But he was very uneasy, and what Lily had told him since her return only
+increased his anxiety. The house was a hotbed of conspiracy, and for her
+own reasons Elinor was remaining there. It was no place for a sister
+of his. But Elinor for years had only touched the outer fringes of
+his life, and his days were crowded with other things; the increasing
+arrogance of the strikers, the utter uselessness of trying to make
+terms with them, his own determination to continue to fight his futile
+political campaign. He put her out of his mind.
+
+Then, at the end of another week, a curious thing happened. Anthony and
+Lily were in the library. Old Anthony without a club was Old Anthony
+lost, and he had developed a habit, at first rather embarrassing to the
+others, of spending much of his time downstairs. He was no sinner turned
+saint. He still let the lash of his tongue play over the household, but
+his old zest in it seemed gone. He made, too, small tentative overtures
+to Lily, intended to be friendly, but actually absurdly self-conscious.
+Grace, watching him, often felt him rather touching. It was obvious to
+her that he blamed himself, rather than Lily, for what had happened.
+
+On this occasion he had asked Lily to read to him.
+
+"And leave out the politics," he had said, "I get enough of that
+wherever I go."
+
+As she read she felt him watching her, and in the middle of a paragraph
+he suddenly said:
+
+"What's become of Cameron?"
+
+"He must be very busy. He is supporting Mr. Hendricks, you know."
+
+"Supporting him! He's carrying him on his back," grunted Anthony. "What
+is it, Grayson?"
+
+"A lady--a woman--calling on Miss Cardew."
+
+Lily rose, but Anthony motioned her back.
+
+"Did she give any name?"
+
+"She said to say it was Jennie, sir."
+
+"Jennie! It must be Aunt Elinor's Jennie!"
+
+"Send her in," said Anthony, and stood waiting Lily noticed his face
+twitching; it occurred to her then that this strange old man might still
+love his daughter, after all the years, and all his cruelty.
+
+It was the elderly servant from the Doyle house who came in, a tall
+gaunt woman, looking oddly unfamiliar to Lily in a hat.
+
+"Why, Jennie!" she said. And then: "Is anything wrong?"
+
+"There is and there isn't," Jennie said, somberly. "I just wanted to
+tell you, and I don't care if he kills me for it. It was him that threw
+her downstairs. I heard him hit her."
+
+Old Anthony stiffened.
+
+"He threw Aunt Elinor downstairs?"
+
+"That's how she broke her leg."
+
+Sheer amazement made Lily inarticulate.
+
+"But they said--we didn't know--do you mean that she has been there all
+this time, hurt?"
+
+"I mean just that," said Jennie, stolidly. "I helped set it, with him
+pretending to be all worked up, for the doctor to see. He got rid of
+me all right. He's got one of his spies there now, a Bolshevik like
+himself. You can ask the neighbors."
+
+Howard was out, and when the woman had gone Anthony ordered his car.
+Lily, frightened by the look on his face, made only one protest.
+
+"You mustn't go alone," she said. "Let me go, too. Or take
+Grayson--anybody."
+
+But he went alone; in the hall he picked up his hat and stick, and drew
+on his gloves.
+
+"What is the house number?"
+
+Lily told him and he went out, moving deliberately, like a man who has
+made up his mind to follow a certain course, but to keep himself well in
+hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Acting on Willy Cameron's suggestion, Dan Boyd retained his membership
+in the union and frequented the meetings. He learned various things,
+that the strike vote had been padded, for instance, and that the
+Radicals had taken advantage of the absence of some of the conservative
+leaders to secure such support as they had received. He found the better
+class of workmen dissatisfied and unhappy. Some of them, men who loved
+their tools, had resented the order to put them down where they were and
+walk out, and this resentment, childish as it seemed, was an expression
+of their general dissatisfaction with the autocracy they had themselves
+built up.
+
+Finally Dan's persistent attendance and meek acquiescence, added to his
+war record, brought him reward. He was elected member of a conference to
+take to the Central Labor Council the suggestion for a general strike.
+It was arranged that the delegates take the floor one after the other,
+and hold it for as long as possible. Then they were to ask the President
+of the Council to put the question.
+
+The arguments were carefully prepared. The general strike was to be
+urged as the one salvation of the labor movement. It would prove the
+solidarity of labor. And, at the Council meeting a few days later, the
+rank and file were impressed by the arguments. Dan, gnawing his nails
+and listening, watched anxiously. The idea was favorably received,
+and the delegates went back to their local unions, to urge, coerce and
+threaten.
+
+Not once, during the meeting, had there been any suggestion of violence,
+but violence was in the air, nevertheless. The quantity of revolutionary
+literature increased greatly during the following ten days, and now it
+was no longer furtively distributed. It was sold or given away at all
+meetings; it flooded the various headquarters with its skillful compound
+of lies and truth. The leaders notified of the situation, pretended
+that it was harmless raving, a natural and safe outlet for suppressed
+discontents.
+
+Dan gathered up an armful of it and took it home. On a Sunday following,
+there was a mass meeting at the Colosseum, and a business agent of
+one of the unions made an impassioned speech. He recited old and new
+grievances, said that the government had failed to live up to its
+promises, that the government boards were always unjust to the workers,
+and ended with a statement of the steel makers' profits. Dan turned
+impatiently to a man beside him.
+
+"Why doesn't he say how much of that profit the government gets?" he
+demanded.
+
+But the man only eyed him suspiciously.
+
+Dan fell silent. He knew it was wrong, but he had no gift of tongue.
+It was at that meeting that for the first time he heard used the word
+"revolution."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Old Anthony's excursion to his daughter's house had not prospered.
+During the drive to Cardew Way he sat forward on the edge of the seat of
+his limousine, his mouth twitching with impatience and anger, his stick
+tightly clutched in his hand. Almost before the machine stopped he was
+out on the pavement, scanning the house with hostile eyes.
+
+The building was dark. Paul, the chauffeur, watching curiously, for
+the household knew that Anthony Cardew had sworn never to darken his
+daughter's door, saw his erect, militant figure enter the gate and lose
+itself in the shadow of the house. There followed a short interval of
+nothing in particular, and then a tall man appeared in the rectangle of
+light which was the open door.
+
+Jim Doyle was astounded when he saw his visitor. Astounded and alarmed.
+But he recovered himself quickly, and smiled.
+
+"This is something I never expected to see," he said, "Mr. Anthony
+Cardew on my doorstep."
+
+"I don't give a damn what you expected to see," said Mr. Anthony Cardew.
+"I want to see my daughter."
+
+"Your daughter? You have said for a good many years that you have no
+daughter."
+
+"Stand aside, sir. I didn't come here to quibble."
+
+"But I love to quibble," sneered Doyle. "However, if you insist--I might
+as well tell you, I haven't the remotest intention of letting you in."
+
+"I'll ask you a question," said old Anthony. "Is it true that my
+daughter has been hurt?"
+
+"My wife is indisposed. I presume we are speaking of the same person."
+
+"You infernal scoundrel," shouted Anthony, and raising his cane, brought
+it down with a crack on Doyle's head. The chauffeur was half-way up
+the walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the
+light, reel, recover and raise his fist, but he did not bring it down.
+
+"Stop that!" yelled the chauffeur, and came on like a charging steer.
+When he reached the steps old Anthony was hanging his stick over his
+left forearm, and Doyle was inside the door, trying to close it. This
+was difficult, however, because Anthony had quietly put his foot over
+the sill.
+
+"I am going to see my daughter, Paul," said Anthony Cardew. "Can you
+open the door?"
+
+"Open it!" Paul observed truculently. "Watch me!"
+
+He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent him
+sprawling inside at Doyle's feet. He was up in an instant, squared to
+fight, but he only met Jim Doyle's mocking smile. Doyle stood, arms
+folded, and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house. Whatever he feared
+he covered with the cynical mask that was his face.
+
+He made no move, offered no speech.
+
+"Is she upstairs?"
+
+"She is asleep. Do you intend to disturb her?"
+
+"I do," said old Anthony grimly. "I'll go first, Paul. You follow me,
+but I'd advise you to come up backwards."
+
+Suddenly Doyle laughed.
+
+"What!" he said, "Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble
+home, and anticipating violence! You underestimate the honor you are
+doing me."
+
+He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the
+two men had reached the top. Then he followed them. The mask had dropped
+from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it. If she talked,
+he would kill her. But she knew that. She was not a fool.
+
+Elinor lay in the bed, listening. She had recognized her father's voice,
+and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief. They had
+found her. They had come to take her away. For she knew now that she was
+a prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner.
+The girl downstairs was one of them, and her jailer. A jailer who fed
+her, and gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was
+all.
+
+Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the
+night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his suspicions. He
+had found first her little store of money, and that had angered him. In
+the end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook
+in which for months she had kept her careful records. Here and there,
+scattered among house accounts, were the names of the radical members
+of The Central Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and
+carefully remembered. He had read them out to her as he came to them,
+suffering as she was, and she had expected death then. But he had not
+killed her. He had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a
+mad-eyed fanatic named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once
+daily. In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning
+of all punishments; he told her of the movement's progress, of its
+ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of its inevitable success.
+What buildings and homes were to be bombed, the Cardew house first among
+them; what leading citizens were to be held as hostages, with all that
+that implied; and again the Cardews headed the list.
+
+When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present,
+solicitous and attentive. She got out of her bed one day, and dragging
+her splinted leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing a note and
+finding some opportunity of giving it to the doctor. Only to discover
+that they had taken away her pen, pencils and paper.
+
+She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment. Olga
+had helped her back into bed without a word, but from that time on had
+spent most of her day on the upper floor. Not until Doyle came in would
+she go downstairs to prepare his food.
+
+Elinor lay in her bed and listened to her father coming up the stairs.
+She knew, before he reached the top, that Doyle would never let her be
+taken away. He would kill her first. He might kill Anthony Cardew. She
+had a sickening sense of tragedy coming up the staircase, tragedy which
+took the form of her father's familiar deliberate step. Perhaps had she
+known of the chauffeur's presence she might have chanced it, for every
+fiber of her tired body was crying for release. But she saw only her
+father, alone in that house with Doyle and the smoldering Russian.
+
+The key turned in the lock.
+
+Anthony Cardew stood in the doorway, looking at her. With her long hair
+in braids, she seemed young, almost girlish. She looked like the little
+girl who had gone to dancing school in short white frocks and long black
+silk stockings, so many years ago.
+
+"I've just learned about it, Elinor," he said. He moved to the bed and
+stood beside it, looking down, but he did not touch her. "Are you able
+to be taken away from here?"
+
+She knew that Doyle was outside, listening, and she hardened her heart
+for the part she had to play. It was difficult; she was so infinitely
+moved by her father's coming, and in the dim light he, too, looked like
+himself of years ago.
+
+"Taken away? Where?" she asked.
+
+"You don't want to stay here, do you?" he demanded bluntly.
+
+"This is my home, father."
+
+"Good God, home! Do you mean to tell me that, with all you must know
+about this man, you still want to stay with him?"
+
+"I have no other home."
+
+"I am offering you one."
+
+Old Anthony was bewildered and angry. Elinor put out a hand to touch
+him, but he drew back.
+
+"After he has thrown you downstairs and injured you--"
+
+"How did you hear that?"
+
+"The servant you had here came to see me to-night, Elinor. She said
+that that blackguard outside there had struck you and you fell down the
+stairs. If you tell me that's the truth I'll break every bone in his
+body."
+
+Sheer terror for Anthony made her breathless.
+
+"But it isn't true," she said wildly. "You mustn't think that. I fell. I
+slipped and fell."
+
+"Then," said Anthony, speaking slowly, "you are not a prisoner here?"
+
+"A prisoner? I'd be a prisoner anywhere, father. I can't walk."
+
+"That door was locked."
+
+She was fighting valiantly for him.
+
+"I can't walk, father. I don't require a locked door to keep me in."
+
+He was too confused and puzzled to notice the evasion.
+
+"Do you mean to say that you won't let me have you taken home? You are
+still going to stay with this man? You know what he is, don't you?"
+
+"I know what you think he is." She tried to smile, and he looked away
+from her quickly and stared around the room, seeing nothing, however.
+Suddenly he turned and walked to the door; but he stopped there, his
+hand on the knob, and us face twitching.
+
+"Once more, Elinor," he said, "I ask you if you will let me take you
+back with me. This is the last time. I have come, after a good many
+years of bad feeling, to make my peace with you and to offer you a home.
+Will you come?"
+
+"No."
+
+Her courage almost failed her. She lay back, her eyes closed and her
+face colorless. The word itself was little more than a whisper.
+
+Her father opened the door and went out. She heard him going down the
+stairs, heard other footsteps that followed him, and listened in an
+agony of fear that Doyle would drop him in the hall below. But nothing
+happened. The outside door closed, and after a moment she opened her
+eyes. Doyle was standing by the bed.
+
+"So," he said, "you intend to give me the pleasure of your society for
+some time, do you?"
+
+She said nothing. She was past any physical fear for herself.
+
+"You liar!" he said softly. "Do you think I don't understand why you
+want to remain here? You are cleverer than I thought you were, but you
+are not as clever as I am. You'd have done better to have let him take
+you away."
+
+"You would have killed him first."
+
+"Perhaps I would." He lighted a cigarette. "But it is a pleasant thought
+to play with, and I shall miss it when the thing is fait accompli. I see
+Olga has left you without ice water. Shall I bring you some?"
+
+He was still smiling faintly when he brought up the pitcher, some time
+later, and placed it on the stand beside the bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+In the Boyd house things went on much as before, but with a new
+heaviness. Ellen, watching keenly, knew why the little house was so
+cheerless and somber. It had been Willy Cameron who had brought to
+it its gayer moments, Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming doors and
+whistling; Willy racing up the stairs with something hot for Mrs. Boyd's
+tray; Willy at the table, making them forget the frugality of the meals
+with campaign anecdotes; Willy, lamenting the lack of a chance to fish,
+and subsequently eliciting a rare smile from Edith by being discovered
+angling in the kitchen sink with a piece of twine on the end of his
+umbrella.
+
+Rather forced, some of it, but eminently good for all of them. And then
+suddenly it ceased. He made an effort, but there was no spontaneity in
+him. He came in quietly, never whistled, and ate very little. He began
+to look almost gaunt, too, and Edith, watching him with jealous, loving
+eyes, gave voice at last to the thought that was in her mind.
+
+"I wish you'd go away," she said, "and let us fight this thing out
+ourselves. Dan would have to get something to do, then, for one thing."
+
+"But I don't want to go away, Edith."
+
+"Then you're a fool," she observed, bitterly. "You can't help me any,
+and there's no use hanging mother around your neck."
+
+"She won't be around any one's neck very long, Edith dear."
+
+"After that, will you go away?"
+
+"Not if you still want me."
+
+"Want you!"
+
+Dan was out, and Ellen had gone up for the invalid's tray. They were
+alone together, standing in the kitchen doorway.
+
+Suddenly Edith, beside him, ran her hand through his arm.
+
+"If I had been a different sort of girl, Willy, do you think--could you
+ever have cared for me?"
+
+"I never thought about you that way," he said, simply. "I do care for
+you. You know that."
+
+She dropped her hand.
+
+"You are in love with Lily Cardew. That's why you don't--I've known it
+all along, Willy. I used to think you'd get over it, never seeing her
+and all that. But you don't, do you?" She looked up at him. "The real
+thing lasts, I suppose. It will with me. I wish to heaven it wouldn't."
+
+He was most uncomfortable, but he drew her hand within his arm again and
+held it there.
+
+"Don't get to thinking that you care anything about me," he said.
+"There's not as much love in the world as there ought to be, and we all
+need to hold hands, but--don't fancy anything like that."
+
+"I wanted to tell you. If I hadn't known about her I wouldn't have told
+you, but--you said it when you said there's not as much love as there
+ought to be. I'm gone, but I guess my caring for you hasn't hurt me any.
+It's the only reason I'm alive to-day."
+
+She freed her hand, and stood staring out over the little autumn
+garden. There was such brooding trouble in her face that he watched her
+anxiously.
+
+"I think mother suspects," she said at last.
+
+"I hope not, Edith."
+
+"I think she does. She watches me all the time, and she asked to see Dan
+to-night. Only he didn't come home."
+
+"You must deny it, Edith," he said, almost fiercely. "She must not know,
+ever. That is one thing we can save her, and must save her."
+
+But, going upstairs as usual before he went out, he realized that Edith
+was right, and that matters had reached a crisis. The sick woman had
+eaten nothing, and her eyes were sunken and anxious. There was an
+unspoken question in them, too, as she turned them on him. Most
+significant of all, the little album was not beside her, nor the usual
+litter of newspapers on the bed.
+
+"I wish you weren't going out, Willy," she said querulously. "I want to
+talk to you about something."
+
+"Can't we discuss it in the morning?"
+
+"I won't sleep till I get it off my mind, Willy." But he could not face
+that situation then. He needed time, for one thing. Surely there must be
+some way out, some way to send this frail little woman dreamless to her
+last sleep, life could not be so cruel that death would seem kind.
+
+He spoke at three different meetings that night, for the election was
+close at hand. Pink Denslow took him about in his car, and stood waiting
+for him at the back of the crowd. In the intervals between hall and hall
+Pink found Willy Cameron very silent and very grave, but he could not
+know that the young man beside him was trying to solve a difficult
+question. Which was: did two wrongs ever make a right?
+
+At the end of the last meeting Willy Cameron decided to walk home.
+
+"I have some things to think over. Pink," he said. "Thanks for the car.
+It saves a lot of time."
+
+Pink sat at the wheel, carefully scrutinizing Willy. It struck him then
+that Cameron looked fagged and unhappy.
+
+"Nothing I can do, I suppose?"
+
+"Thanks, no."
+
+Pink knew nothing of Lily's marriage, nor of the events that had
+followed it. To his uninquiring mind all was as it should be with her;
+she was at home again, although strangely quiet and very sweet, and
+her small world was at peace with her. It was all right with her, he
+considered, although all wrong with him. Except that she was strangely
+subdued, which rather worried him. It was not possible, for instance,
+to rouse her to one of their old red-hot discussions on religion, or
+marriage, or love.
+
+"I saw Lily Cardew this afternoon, Cameron."
+
+"Is she all right?" asked Willy Cameron, in a carefully casual tone.
+
+"I don't know." Pink's honest voice showed perplexity. "She looks all
+right, and the family's eating out of her hand.. But she's changed
+somehow. She asked for you."
+
+"Thanks. Well, good-night, old man."
+
+Willy Cameron was facing the decision of his life that night, as he
+walked home. Lily was gone, out of his reach and out of his life. But
+then she had never been within either. She was only something wonderful
+and far away, like a star to which men looked and sometimes prayed. Some
+day she would be free again, and then in time she would marry. Some one
+like Pink, her own sort, and find happiness.
+
+But he knew that he would always love her, to the end of his days, and
+even beyond, in that heaven in which he so simply believed. All the
+things that puzzled him would be straightened out there, and perhaps a
+man who had loved a woman and lost her here would find her there, and
+walk hand in hand with her, through the bright days of Paradise.
+
+Not that that satisfied him. He was a very earthly lover, with the
+hungry arms of youth. He yearned unspeakably for her. He would have
+died for her as easily as he would have lived for her, but he could do
+neither.
+
+That was one side of him. The other, having put her away in that warm
+corner of his heart which was hers always, was busy with the practical
+problem of the Boyds. He saw only one way out, and that way he had been
+seeing with increasing clearness for several days. Edith's candor that
+night, and Mrs. Boyd's suspicions, clearly pointed to it. There was one
+way by which to save Edith and her child, and to save the dying woman
+the agony of full knowledge.
+
+Edith was sitting on the doorstep, alone. He sat down on the step below
+her, rather silent, still busy with his problem. Although the night was
+warm, the girl shivered.
+
+"She's not asleep. She's waiting for me to go up, Willy. She means to
+call me in and ask me."
+
+"Then I'd better say what I have to say quickly. Edith, will you marry
+me?"
+
+She drew off and looked at him.
+
+"I'd better explain what I mean," he said, speaking with some
+difficulty. "I mean--go through the ceremony with me. I don't mean
+actual marriage. That wouldn't be fair to either of us, because you know
+that I care for some one else."
+
+"But you mean a real marriage?"
+
+"Of course. Your child has the right to a name, dear. And, if you don't
+mind telling a lie to save our souls, and for her peace of mind, we can
+say that it took place some time ago."
+
+She gazed at him dazedly. Then something like suspicion came into her
+face.
+
+"Is it because of what I told you to-night?"
+
+"I had thought of it before. That helped, of course."
+
+It seemed so surprisingly simple, put into words, and the light on the
+girl's face was his answer. A few words, so easily spoken, and two lives
+were saved. No, three, for Edith's child must be considered.
+
+"You are like God," said Edith, in a low voice. "Like God." And fell to
+soft weeping. She was unutterably happy and relieved. She sat there, not
+daring to touch him, and looked out into the quiet street. Before her
+she saw all the things that she had thought were gone; honor, a place
+in the world again, the right to look into her mother's eyes; she saw
+marriage and happy, golden days. He did not love her, but he would be
+hers, and perhaps in His own good time the Manager of all destinies
+would make him love her. She would try so hard to deserve that.
+
+Mrs. Boyd was asleep when at last Edith went up the staircase, and
+Ellen, lying sleepless on her cot in the hot attic room, heard the girl
+softly humming to herself as she undressed, and marveled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+When Lily had been at home for some time, and Louis Akers had made no
+attempt to see her, or to announce the marriage, the vigilance of the
+household began to relax. Howard Cardew had already consulted the family
+lawyer about an annulment, and that gentleman had sent a letter to
+Akers, which had received no reply.
+
+Then one afternoon Grayson, whose instructions had been absolute as to
+admitting Akers to the house, opened the door to Mrs. Denslow, who was
+calling, and found behind that lady Louis Akers himself. He made an
+effort to close the door behind the lady, but Akers was too quick for
+him, and a scene at the moment was impossible.
+
+He ushered Mrs. Denslow into the drawing room, and coming out, closed
+the doors.
+
+"My instructions, sir, are to say to you that the ladies are not at
+home."
+
+But Akers held out his hat and gloves with so ugly a look that Grayson
+took them.
+
+"I have come to see my wife," he said. "Tell her that, and that if she
+doesn't see me here I'll go upstairs and find her."
+
+When Grayson still hesitated he made a move toward the staircase, and
+the elderly servant, astounded at the speech and the movement, put down
+the hat and faced him.
+
+"I do not recognize any one in the household by that name, sir."
+
+"You don't, don't you? Very well. Tell Miss Cardew I am here, and that
+either she will come down or I'll go up. I'll wait in the library."
+
+He watched Grayson start up the stairs, and then went into the library.
+He was very carefully dressed, and momentarily exultant over the success
+of his ruse, but he was uneasy, too, and wary, and inclined to regard
+the house as a possible trap. He had made a gambler's venture, risking
+everything on the cards he held, and without much confidence in them.
+His vanity declined to believe that his old power over Lily was gone,
+but he had held a purely physical dominance over so many women that he
+knew both his strength and his limitations.
+
+What he could not understand, what had kept him awake so many nights
+since he had seen her, was her recoil from him on Willy Cameron's
+announcement. She had known he had led the life of his sort; he
+had never played the plaster saint to her. And she had accepted her
+knowledge of his connection with the Red movement, on his mere promise
+to reform. But this other, this accident, and she had turned from him
+with a horror that made him furious to remember. These silly star-eyed
+virgins, who accepted careful abstractions and then turned sick at life
+itself, a man was a fool to put himself in their hands.
+
+Mademoiselle was with Lily in her boudoir when Grayson came up, a thin,
+tired-faced, suddenly old Mademoiselle, much given those days to early
+masses, during which she prayed for eternal life for the man who had
+ruined Lily's life, and that soon. To Mademoiselle marriage was a final
+thing and divorce a wickedness against God and His establishment on
+earth.
+
+Lily, rather like Willy Cameron, was finding on her spirit at that time
+a burden similar to his, of keeping up the morale of the household.
+
+Grayson came in and closed the door behind him. Anger and anxiety were
+in his worn old face, and Lily got up quickly. "What is it, Grayson?"
+
+"I'm sorry, Miss Lily. He was in the vestibule behind Mrs. Denslow, and
+I couldn't keep him out. I think he had waited for some one to call,
+knowing I couldn't make a scene."
+
+Mademoiselle turned to Lily.
+
+"You must not see him," she said in rapid French. "Remain here, and I
+shall telephone for your father. Lock your door. He may come up. He will
+do anything, that man."
+
+"I am going down," Lily said quietly. "I owe him that. You need not
+be frightened. And don't tell mother; it will only worry her and do no
+good."
+
+Her heart was beating fast as she went down the stairs. From the drawing
+room came the voices of Grace and Mrs. Denslow, chatting amiably. The
+second man was carrying in tea, the old silver service gleaming. Over
+all the lower floor was an air of peace and comfort, the passionless
+atmosphere of daily life running in old and easy grooves.
+
+When Lily entered the library she closed the door behind her. She had,
+on turning, a swift picture of Grayson, taking up his stand in the hall,
+and it gave her a sense of comfort. She knew he would remain there,
+impassively waiting, so long as Akers was in the house.
+
+Then she faced the man standing by the center table. He made no move
+toward her, did not even speak at once. It left on her the burden of the
+opening, of setting the key of what was to come. She was steady enough
+now.
+
+"Perhaps it is as well that you came, Louis," she said. "I suppose we
+must talk it over some time."
+
+"Yes," he agreed, his eyes on her. "We must. I have married a wife, and
+I want her, Lily."
+
+"You know that is impossible."
+
+"Because of something that happened before I knew you? I never made
+any pretensions about my life before we met. But I did promise to go
+straight if you'd have me, and I have. I've lived up to my bargain. What
+about you?"
+
+"It was not a part of my bargain to marry you while you--I have thought
+and thought, Louis. There is only one thing to be done. You will have to
+divorce me, and marry her."
+
+"Marry her? A girl of the streets, who chooses to say that I am the
+father of her child! It's the oldest trick in the word. Besides--" He
+played his best card--"she won't marry me. Ask Cameron, who chose to
+make himself so damned busy about my affairs. He's in love with her. Ask
+him."
+
+In spite of herself Lily winced. Out of the wreckage of the past few
+weeks one thing had seemed to remain, something to hold to, solid and
+dependable and fine, and that had been Willy Cameron. She had found, in
+these last days, something infinitely comforting in the thought that he
+cared for her. It was because he had cared that he had saved her from
+herself. But, if this were true--
+
+"I am not going back to you, Louis. I think you know that. No amount of
+talking about things can change that."
+
+"Why don't you face life and try to understand it?" he demanded,
+brutally. "Men are like that. Women are like that--sometimes. You can't
+measure human passions with a tape line. That's what you good women try
+to do, and you make life a merry little hell." He made an effort, and
+softened his voice. "I'll be true to you, Lily, if you'll come back."
+
+"No," she said, "you would mean to be, but you would not. You have no
+foundation to build on."
+
+"Meaning that I am not a gentleman."
+
+"Not that. I know you, that's all. I understand so much that I didn't
+before. What you call love is only something different. When that was
+gone there would be the same thing again. You would be sorry, but I
+would be lost."
+
+Her coolness disconcerted him. Two small triangular bits of color showed
+in his face. He had been prepared for tears, even for a refusal to
+return, but this clear-eyed appraisal of himself, and the accuracy of
+it, confused him. He took refuge in the only method he knew; he threw
+himself on her pity; he made violent, passionate love to her, but her
+only expression was one of distaste. When at last he caught her to him
+she perforce submitted, a frozen thing that told him, more than any
+words, how completely he had lost her. He threw her away from him, then,
+baffled and angry.
+
+"You little devil!" he said. "You cold little devil!"
+
+"I don't love you. That's all. I think now that I never did."
+
+"You pretended damned well."
+
+"Don't you think you'd better go?" Lily said wearily. "I don't like to
+hurt you. I am to blame for a great deal. But there is no use going on,
+is there? I'll give you your freedom as soon as I can. You will want
+that, of course."
+
+"My freedom! Do you think I am going to let you go like that? I'll fight
+you and your family in every court in the country before I give you up.
+You can't bring Edith Boyd up against me, either. If she does that I'll
+bring up other witnesses, other men, and she knows it."
+
+Lily was very pale, but still calm. She made a movement toward the bell,
+but he caught her hand before she could ring it.
+
+"I'll get your Willy Cameron, too," he said, his face distorted with
+anger. "I'll get him good. You've done a bad thing for your friends and
+your family to-day, Lily. I'll go the limit on getting back at them.
+I've got the power, and by God, I'll use it."
+
+He flung out into the hall, and toward the door. There he encountered
+Grayson, who reminded him of his hat and gloves, or he would have gone
+without them.
+
+Grayson, going into the library a moment later, found Lily standing
+there, staring ahead and trembling violently. He brought her a cup of
+tea, and stood by, his old face working, while she drank it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+The strike had apparently settled down to the ordinary run of strikes.
+The newspaper men from New York were gradually recalled, as the mill
+towns became orderly, and no further acts of violence took place. Here
+and there mills that had gone down fired their furnaces again and went
+back to work, many with depleted shifts, however.
+
+But the strikers had lost, and knew it. Howard Cardew, facing the
+situation with his customary honesty, saw in the gradual return of
+the men to work only the urgency of providing for their families, and
+realized that it was not peace that was coming, but an armed neutrality.
+The Cardew Mills were still down, but by winter he was confident they
+would be open again. To what purpose? To more wrangling and bickering,
+more strikes? Where was the middle ground? He was willing to give the
+men a percentage of the profits they made. He did not want great wealth,
+only an honest return for his invested capital. But he wanted to manage
+his own business. It was his risk.
+
+The coal miners were going out. The Cardews owned coal mines. The miners
+wanted to work a minimum day for a maximum wage, but the country must
+have coal. Shorter hours meant more men for the mines, and they would
+have to be imported. But labor resented the importation of foreign
+workers.
+
+Again, what was the answer?
+
+Still, he was grateful for peace. The strike dragged on, with only
+occasional acts of violence. From the hill above Baxter a sniper daily
+fired with a long range rifle at the toluol tank in the center of one
+of the mills, and had so far escaped capture, as the tank had escaped
+damage. But he knew well enough that a long strike was playing into the
+hands of the Reds. It was impossible to sow the seeds of revolution
+so long as a man's dinner-pail was full, his rent paid, and his family
+contented. But a long strike, with bank accounts becoming exhausted and
+credit curtailed, would pave the way for revolution.
+
+Old Anthony had had a drastic remedy for strikes.
+
+"Let all the storekeepers, the country over, refuse credit to the
+strikers, and we'd have an end to this mess," he said.
+
+"We'd have an end to the storekeepers, too," Howard had replied, grimly.
+
+One good thing had come out of the bomb outrages. They had had a
+salutary effect on the honest labor element. These had no sympathy with
+such methods and said so. But a certain element, both native and foreign
+born, secretly gloated and waited.
+
+One thing surprised and irritated Howard. Public sentiment was not so
+much with the strikers, as against the mill owners. The strike worked
+a hardship to the stores and small businesses dependent on the
+great mills; they forgot the years when the Cardews had brought them
+prosperity, had indeed made them possible, and they felt now only
+bitter resentment at the loss of trade. In his anger Howard saw them as
+parasites, fattening on the conceptions and strength of those who had
+made the city. They were men who built nothing, originated nothing. Men
+who hated the ladder by which they had climbed, who cared little how
+shaky its foundation, so long as it stood.
+
+In September, lured by a false security, the governor ordered the
+demobilization of the state troops, save for two companies. The men at
+the Baxter and Friendship plants, owned by the Cardews, had voted to
+remain out, but their leaders appeared to have them well in hand, and
+no trouble was anticipated. The agents of the Department of Justice,
+however, were still suspicious. The foreigners had plenty of money.
+Given as they were to hoarding their savings in their homes, the local
+banks were unable to say if they were drawing on their reserves or were
+being financed from the outside.
+
+Shortly before the mayoralty election trouble broke out in the western
+end of the state, and in the north, in the steel towns. There were ugly
+riotings, bombs were sent through the mails, the old tactics of night
+shootings and destruction of property began. In the threatening chaos
+Baxter and Friendship, and the city nearby, stood out by contrast for
+their very orderliness. The state constabulary remained in diminished
+numbers, a still magnificent body of men but far too few for any real
+emergency, and the Federal agents, suspicious but puzzled, were removed
+to more turbulent fields.
+
+The men constituting the Vigilance Committee began to feel a sense
+of futility, almost of absurdity. They had armed and enrolled
+themselves--against what? The growth of the organization slowed down,
+but it already numbered thousands of members. Only its leaders retained
+their faith in its ultimate necessity, and they owed perhaps more than
+they realized to Willy Cameron's own conviction.
+
+It was owing to him that the city was divided into a series of zones, so
+that notification of an emergency could be made rapidly by telephone and
+messenger. Owing to him, too, was a new central office, with some one
+on duty day and night. Rather ironically, the new quarters were the
+dismantled rooms of the Myers Housecleaning Company.
+
+On the day after his proposal to Edith, Willy Cameron received an
+unexpected holiday. Mrs. Davis, the invalid wife of the owner of the
+Eagle Pharmacy, died and the store was closed. He had seen Edith for
+only a few moments that morning, but it was understood then that the
+marriage would take place either that day or the next.
+
+He had been physically so weary the night before that he had slept, but
+the morning found him with a heaviness of spirit that he could not throw
+off. The exaltation of the night before was gone, and all that remained
+was a dogged sense of a duty to be done. Although he smiled at Edith,
+his face remained with her all through the morning.
+
+"I'll make it up to him," she thought, humbly. "I'll make it up to him
+somehow."
+
+Then, with Ellen out doing her morning marketing, she heard the
+feeble thump of a cane overhead which was her mother's signal. She was
+determined not to see her mother again until she could say that she was
+married, but the thumping continued, and was followed by the crash of a
+broken glass.
+
+"She's trying to get up!" Edith thought, panicky. "If she gets up it
+will kill her."
+
+She stood at the foot of the stairs, scarcely breathing, and listened.
+There was a dreadful silence above. She stole up, finally, to where she
+could see her mother. Mrs. Boyd was still in her bed, but lying with
+open eyes, unmoving.
+
+"Mother," she called, and ran in. "Mother."
+
+Mrs. Boyd glanced at her.
+
+"I thought that glass would bring you," she said sharply, but with
+difficulty. "I want you to stand over there and let me look at you."
+
+Edith dropped on her knees beside the bed, and caught her mother's hand.
+
+"Don't! Don't talk like that, mother," she begged. "I know what you
+mean. It's all right, mother. Honestly it is. I--I'm married, mother."
+
+"You wouldn't lie to me, Edith?"
+
+"No. I'm telling you. I've been married a long time. You--don't you
+worry, mother. You just lie there and quit worrying. It's all right."
+
+There was a sudden light in the sick woman's eyes, an eager light that
+flared up and died away again.
+
+"Who to?" she asked. "If it's some corner loafer, Edie--" Edith had
+gained new courage and new facility. Anything was right that drove the
+tortured look from her mother's eyes.
+
+"You can ask him when he comes home this evening."
+
+"Edie! Not Willy?"
+
+"You've guessed it," said Edith, and burying her face in the bed
+clothing, said a little prayer, to be forgiven for the lie and for all
+that she had done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end to earn
+the love of the man who was like God to her.
+
+There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one
+on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable
+suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul.
+
+Mrs. Boyd lay back and closed her eyes.
+
+"I haven't been so tickled since the day you were born," she said.
+
+She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head. When Edith
+moved, a little later, her mother was asleep, with a new look of peace
+on her face.
+
+It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she had
+done. She shrank from doing it. It was one thing for Willy to have done
+it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly afraid of Ellen.
+And Ellen's reception of the news justified her fears.
+
+"And you'd take him that way!" she said, scornfully. "You'd hide behind
+him, besides spoiling his life for him! It sounds like him to offer, and
+it's like you to accept."
+
+"It's to save mother," said Edith, meekly.
+
+"It's to save yourself. You can't fool me. And if you think I'm going to
+sit by and let him do it, you can think again."
+
+"It's as good as done," Edith flashed. "I've told mother."
+
+"That you're going to be, or that you are?"
+
+"That we are married."
+
+"All right," Ellen said triumphantly. "She's quiet and peaceful now,
+isn't she? You don't have to get married now, do you? You take my
+advice, and let it go at that."
+
+It was then that Edith realized what she had done. He would still marry
+her, of course, but behind all his anxiety to save her had been the real
+actuating motive of his desire to relieve her mother's mind. That was
+done now. Then, could she let him sacrifice himself for her?
+
+She could. She could and she would. She set her small mouth firmly, and
+confronted the future; she saw herself, without his strength to support
+her, going down and down. She remembered those drabs of the street on
+whom she had turned such cynical eyes in her virtuous youth, and she saw
+herself one of that lost sisterhood, sodden, hectic, hopeless.
+
+When Willy Cameron left the pharmacy that day it was almost noon. He
+went to the house of mourning first, and found Mr. Davis in a chair in
+a closed room, a tired little man in a new black necktie around a not
+over-clean collar, his occupation of years gone, confronting a new and
+terrible leisure that he did not know how to use.
+
+"You know how it is, Willy," he said, blinking his reddened eyelids.
+"You kind of wish sometimes that you had somebody to help you bear your
+burden, and then it's taken away, but you're kind of bent over and used
+to it. And you'd give your neck and all to have it back."
+
+Willy Cameron pondered that on his way up the street.
+
+There was one great longing in him, to see Lily again. In a few hours
+now he would have taken a wife, and whatever travesty of marriage
+resulted, he would have to keep away from Lily. He meant to play square
+with Edith.
+
+He wondered if it would hurt Lily to see him, remind her of things she
+must be trying to forget. He decided in the end that it would hurt her,
+so he did not go. But he walked, on his way to see Pink Denslow at the
+temporary bank, through a corner of the park near the house, and took a
+sort of formal and heart-breaking farewell of her.
+
+Time had been when life had seemed only a long, long trail, with Lily at
+the end of it somewhere, like water to the thirsty traveler, or home to
+the wanderer; like a camp fire at night. But now, life seemed to him a
+broad highway, infinitely crowded, down which he must move, surrounded
+yet alone.
+
+But at least he could walk in the middle of the road, in the sunlight.
+It was the weaklings who were crowded to the side. He threw up his head.
+
+It had never occurred to him that he was in any, danger, either from
+Louis Akers or from the unseen enemy he was fighting. He had a curious
+lack of physical fear. But once or twice that day, as he went about,
+he happened to notice a small man, foreign in appearance and shabbily
+dressed. He saw him first when he came out of the marriage license
+office, and again when he entered the bank.
+
+He had decided to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask him
+to be present. He meant to tell him the facts. The intimacy between them
+was now very close, and he felt that Pink would understand. He neither
+wanted nor expected approval, but he did want honesty between them. He
+had based his life on honesty.
+
+Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to. It would be hard to set
+before any outsider the conditions at the Boyd house, or his own sense
+of obligation to help. Put into everyday English the whole scheme
+sounded visionary and mock-heroic.
+
+In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with excitement
+written large all over him.
+
+"I sent for you," he said, "because I think we've got something at last.
+One of our fellows has just been in, that storekeeper I told you about
+from Friendship, Cusick. He says he has found out where they're meeting,
+back in the hills. He's made a map of it. Look, here's the town, and
+here's the big hill. Well, behind it, about a mile and a half, there's a
+German outfit, a family, with a farm. They're using the barn, according
+to this chap."
+
+"The barn wouldn't hold very many of them."
+
+"That's the point. It's the leaders. The family has an alibi. It goes in
+to the movies in the town on meeting nights. The place has been searched
+twice, but he says they have a system of patrols that gives them
+warning. The hills are heavily wooded there, and he thinks they have
+rigged up telephones in the trees."
+
+There was a short silence. Willy Cameron studied the rug.
+
+"I had to swear to keep it to ourselves," Pink said at last. "Cusick
+won't let the Federal agents in on it. They've raided him for liquor
+twice, and he's sick as a poisoned pup."
+
+"How about the county detectives?"
+
+"You know them. They'll go in and fight like hell when the time comes,
+but they're likely to gum the game where there's any finesse required.
+We'd better find out for ourselves first."
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+"What you mean is, that it's too good a thing to throw to the other
+fellow. Well, I'm on, if you want me. But I'm no detective."
+
+Pink had come armed for such surrender. He produced a road map of the
+county and spread it on the desk.
+
+"Here's the main road to Friendship," he said, "and here's the road they
+use. But there's another way, back of the hills. Cusick said it was a
+dirt lane, but dry. It's about forty miles by it to a point a mile or so
+behind the farm. He says he doesn't think they use that road. It's too
+far around."
+
+"All right," said Willy Cameron. "We use that road, and get to the farm,
+and what then? Surrender?"
+
+"Not on your life. We hide in the barn. That's all."
+
+"That's enough. They'll search the place, automatically. You're talking
+suicide, you know."
+
+But his mind was working rapidly. He was a country boy, and he knew
+barns. There would be other outbuildings, too, probably a number of
+them. The Germans always had plenty of them. And the information was too
+detailed to be put aside lightly.
+
+"When does he think they will meet again?"
+
+"That's the point," Pink said eagerly. "The family has been all over the
+town this morning. It is going on a picnic, and he says those picnics of
+theirs last half the night. What he got from the noise they were making
+was that they were raising dust again, and something's on for to-night."
+
+"They'll leave somebody there. Their stock has to be looked after."
+
+"This fellow says they drop everything and go. The whole outfit. They're
+as busy raising an alibi as the other lot is raising the devil."
+
+But Willy Cameron was a Scot, and hard-headed.
+
+"It looks too simple, Pink," he said reflectively. He sat for some time,
+filling and lighting his pipe, and considering as he did so. He was
+older than Pink; not much, but he felt extremely mature and very
+responsible.
+
+"What do we know about Cusick?" he asked, finally.
+
+"One of the best men we've got. They've fired his place once, and he's
+keen to get them."
+
+"You're anxious to go?"
+
+"I'm going," said Pink, cheerfully.
+
+"Then I'd better go along and look after you. But I tell you how I see
+it. After I've done that I'll go as far as you like. Either there is
+nothing to it and we're fools for our pains, or there's a lot to it,
+and in that case we are a pair of double-distilled lunatics to go there
+alone."
+
+Pink laughed joyously.
+
+Life had been very dull for him since his return from France. He had
+done considerable suffering and more thinking than was usual with him,
+but he had had no action. But behind his boyish zest there was something
+more, something he hid as he did the fact that he sometimes said his
+prayers; a deep and holy thing, that always gave him a lump in his
+throat at Retreat, when the flag came slowly down and the long lines of
+men stood at attention. Something he was half ashamed and half proud of,
+love of his country.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of
+a small printing shop in the heart of the city. It went on to the
+accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two
+printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the front and rear
+entrances.
+
+Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him,
+smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper from Friendship, Cusick. In a
+corner on the table, scowling, sat Louis Akers.
+
+"I don't know why you're so damned suspicious, Jim," he was saying.
+"Cusick says the stall about the Federal agents went all right."
+
+"Like a house a-fire," said Cusick, complacently.
+
+"I think, Akers," Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, "that you
+are letting your desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with your
+judgment. If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready to take
+their places."
+
+"Cameron is the brains of the outfit," Akers said sulkily.
+
+"How do you know Cameron will go?"
+
+Akers rose lazily and stretched himself.
+
+"I've got a hunch. That's all."
+
+A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her hand.
+With one hand Akers took the sheets from her; with the other he settled
+his tie. He smiled down at her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Ellen was greatly disturbed. At three o'clock that afternoon she found
+Edith and announced her intention of going out.
+
+"I guess you can get the supper for once," she said ungraciously.
+
+Edith looked up at her with wistful eyes.
+
+"I wish you didn't hate me so, Ellen."
+
+"I don't hate you." Ellen was slightly mollified. "But when I see you
+trying to put your burdens on other people--"
+
+Edith got up then and rather timidly put her arms around Ellen's neck.
+
+"I love him so, Ellen," she whispered, "and I'll try so hard to make him
+happy."
+
+Unexpected tears came into Ellen's eyes. She stroked the girl's fair
+hair.
+
+"Never mind," she said. "The Good Man's got a way of fixing things to
+suit Himself. And I guess He knows best. We do what it's foreordained we
+do, after all."
+
+Mrs. Boyd was sleeping. Edith went back to her sewing. She had depended
+all her life on her mother's needle, and now that that had failed her
+she was hastily putting some clothing into repair. In the kitchen near
+the stove the suit she meant to be married in was hung to dry, after
+pressing. She was quietly happy.
+
+Willy Cameron found her there. He told her of Mrs. Davis' death, and
+then placed the license on the table at her side.
+
+"I think it would be better to-morrow, Edith," he said. He glanced down
+at the needle in her unaccustomed fingers; she seemed very appealing,
+with her new task and the new light in her eyes. After all, it was worth
+while, even if it cost a lifetime, to take a soul out of purgatory.
+
+"I had to tell mother, Willy."
+
+"That's all right Did it cheer her any?"
+
+"Wonderfully. She's asleep now."
+
+He went up to his room, and for some time she heard him moving about.
+Then she heard the scraping of his chair as he drew it to his desk,
+and vaguely wondered. When he came down he had a sealed envelope in his
+hand.
+
+"I am going out, Edith," he said. "I shall be late getting back, and--I
+am going to ask you to do something for me."
+
+She loved doing things for him. She flushed slightly.
+
+"If I am not back here by two o'clock to-night," he said, "I want you to
+open that letter and read it. Then go to the nearest telephone, and call
+up the number I've written down. Ask for the man whose name is given,
+and read him the message."
+
+"Willy!" she gasped. "You are doing something dangerous!"
+
+"What I really expect," he said, smiling down at her, "is to be back,
+feeling more or less of a fool, by eleven o'clock. I'm providing against
+an emergency that will almost surely never happen, and I am depending on
+the most trustworthy person I know."
+
+Very soon after that he went away. She sat for some time after he
+had gone, fingering the blank white envelope and wondering, a little
+frightened but very proud of his trust.
+
+Dan came in and went up the stairs. That reminded her of the dinner, and
+she sat down in the kitchen with a pan of potatoes on her knee. As she
+pared them she sang. She was still singing when Ellen came back.
+
+Something had happened to Ellen. She stood in the kitchen, her hat still
+on, drawing her cotton gloves through her fingers and staring at Edith
+without seeing her.
+
+"You're not sick, are you, Ellen?"
+
+Ellen put down her gloves and slowly took off her hat, still with the
+absorbed eyes of a sleep-walker.
+
+"I'm not sick," she said at last. "I've had bad news."
+
+"Sit down and I'll make you a cup of tea. Then maybe you'll feel like
+talking about it."
+
+"I don't want any tea. Do you know that that man Akers has married Lily
+Cardew?"
+
+"Married her!"
+
+"The devil out of hell that he is." Ellen's voice was terrible. "And
+all the time knowing that you--She's at home, the poor child, and
+Mademoiselle just sat and cried when she told me. It's a secret," she
+added, fiercely. "You keep your mouth shut about it. She never lived
+with him. She left him right off. I wouldn't know it now but the
+servants were talking about the house being forbidden to him, and I went
+straight to Mademoiselle. I said: 'You keep him away from Miss Lily,
+because I know something about him.' It was when I told her that she
+said they were married."
+
+She went out and up the stairs, moving slowly and heavily. Edith sat
+still, the pan on her knee, and thought. Did Willy know? Was that why he
+was willing to marry her? She was swept with bitter jealousy, and added
+to that came suspicion. Something very near the truth flashed into her
+mind and stayed there. In her bitterness she saw Willy telling Lily of
+Akers and herself, and taking her away, or having her taken. It must
+have been something like that, or why had she left him?
+
+But her anger slowly subsided; in the end she began to feel that the new
+situation rendered her own position more secure, even justified her
+own approaching marriage. Since Lily was gone, why should she not marry
+Willy Cameron? If what Ellen had said was true she knew him well enough
+to know that he would deliberately strangle his love for Lily. If it
+were true, and if he knew it.
+
+She moved about the kitchen, making up the fire, working automatically
+in that methodless way that always set Ellen's teeth on edge, and
+thinking. But subconsciously she was listening, too. She had heard Dan
+go into his mother's room and close the door. She was bracing herself
+against his coming down.
+
+Dan was difficult those days, irritable and exacting. Moody, too, and
+much away from home. He hated idleness at its best, and the strike was
+idleness at its worst. Behind the movement toward the general strike,
+too, he felt there was some hidden and sinister influence at work, an
+influence that was determined to turn what had commenced as a labor
+movement into a class uprising.
+
+That very afternoon, for the first time, he had heard whispered the
+phrase: "when the town goes dark." There was a diabolical suggestion in
+it that sent him home with his fists clenched.
+
+He did not go to his mother's room at once. Instead, he drew a chair to
+his window and sat there staring out on the little street. When the town
+went dark, what about all the little streets like this one?
+
+After an hour or so of ominous quiet Edith heard him go into his
+mother's room. Her hands trembled as she closed her door.
+
+She heard him coming down at last, and suddenly remembering the license,
+hid it in a drawer. She knew that he would destroy it if he saw it. And
+Dan's face justified the move. He came in and stood glowering at her,
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"What made you tell that lie to mother?" he demanded.
+
+"She was worried, Dan. And it will be true to-morrow. You--Dan, you
+didn't tell her it was a lie, did you?"
+
+"I should have, but I didn't. What do you mean, it will be true
+to-morrow?"
+
+"We are going to be married to-morrow."
+
+"I'll lock you up first," he said, angrily. "I've been expecting
+something like that. I've watched you, and I've seen you watching him.
+You'll not do it, do you hear? D'you think I'd let you get away with
+that? Isn't it enough that he's got to support us, without your coaxing
+him to marry you?"
+
+She made no reply, but went on with a perfunctory laying of the table.
+Her mouth had gone very dry.
+
+"The poor fish," Dan snarled. "I thought he had some sense. Letting
+himself in for a nice life, isn't he? We're not his kind, and you know
+it. He knows more in a minute than you'll know all your days. In about
+three months he'll hate the very sight of you, and then where'll you
+be?"
+
+When she made no reply, he called to the dog and went out into the yard.
+She saw him there, brooding and sullen, and she knew that he had not
+finished. He would say no more to her, but he would wait and have it out
+with Willy himself.
+
+Supper was silent. No one ate much, and Ellen, coming down with the
+tray, reported Mrs. Boyd as very tired, and wanting to settle down
+early.
+
+"She looks bad to me," she said to Edith. "I think the doctor ought to
+see her."
+
+"I'll go and send him."
+
+Edith was glad to get out of the house. She had avoided the streets
+lately, but as it was the supper hour the pavements were empty. Only
+Joe Wilkinson, bare-headed, stood in the next doorway, and smiled and
+flushed slightly when he saw her.
+
+"How's your mother?" he asked.
+
+"She's not so well. I'm going to get the doctor."
+
+"Do you mind if I get my hat and walk there with you?"
+
+"I'm going somewhere else from there, Joe."
+
+"Well, I'll walk a block or two, anyhow."
+
+She waited impatiently. She liked Joe, but she did not want him then.
+She wanted to think and plan alone and in the open air, away from the
+little house with its odors and its querulous thumping cane upstairs;
+away from Ellen's grim face and Dan's angry one.
+
+He came out almost immediately, followed by a string of little
+Wilkinsons, clamoring to go along.
+
+"Do you mind?" he asked her. "They can trail along behind. The poor kids
+don't get out much."
+
+"Bring them along, of course," she said, somewhat resignedly. And with a
+flash of her old spirit: "I might have brought Jinx, too. Then we'd have
+had a real procession."
+
+They moved down the street, with five little Wilkinsons trailing along
+behind, and Edith was uncomfortably aware that Joe's eyes were upon her.
+
+"You don't look well," he said at last. "You're wearing yourself out
+taking care of your mother, Edith."
+
+"I don't do much for her."
+
+"You'd say that, of course. You're very unselfish."
+
+"Am I?" She laughed a little, but the words touched her. "Don't think
+I'm better than I am, Joe."
+
+"You're the most wonderful girl in the world. I guess you know how I
+feel about that."
+
+"Don't Joe!"
+
+But at that moment a very little Wilkinson fell headlong and burst into
+loud, despairing wails. Joe set her on her feet, brushed her down with
+a fatherly hand, and on her refusal to walk further picked her up and
+carried her. The obvious impossibility of going on with what he had been
+saying made him smile sheepishly.
+
+"Can you beat it?" he said helplessly, "these darn kids--!" But he held
+the child close.
+
+At the next corner he turned toward home. Edith stopped and watched his
+valiant young back, his small train of followers. He was going to be
+very sad when he knew, poor Joe, with his vicarious fatherhood, his
+cluttered, noisy, anxious life.
+
+Life was queer. Queer and cruel.
+
+From the doctor's office, the waiting room lined with patient figures,
+she went on. She had a very definite plan in mind, but it took all
+her courage to carry it through. Outside the Benedict Apartments she
+hesitated, but she went in finally, upheld by sheer determination.
+
+The chair at the telephone desk was empty, but Sam remembered her.
+
+"He's out, miss," he said. "He's out most all the time now, with the
+election coming on."
+
+"What time does he usually get in?"
+
+"Sometimes early, sometimes late," said Sam, watching her. Everything
+pertaining to Louis Akers was of supreme interest those days to the
+Benedict employees. The beating he had received, the coming election,
+the mysterious young woman who had come but once, and the black days
+that had followed his return from the St. Elmo--out of such patchwork
+they were building a small drama of their own. Sam was trying to fit in
+Edith's visit with the rest.
+
+The Benedict was neither more moral nor less than its kind. An
+unwritten law kept respectable women away, but the management showed no
+inclination to interfere where there was no noise or disorder. Employees
+were supposed to see that no feminine visitors remained after midnight,
+that was all.
+
+"You might go up and wait for him," Sam suggested. "That is, if it's
+important."
+
+"It's very important."
+
+He threw open the gate of the elevator hospitably.
+
+At half past ten that night Louis Akers went back to his rooms. The
+telephone girl watched him sharply as he entered.
+
+"There's a lady waiting for you, Mr. Akers."
+
+He swung toward her eagerly.
+
+"A lady? Did she give any name?"
+
+"No. Sam let her in and took her up. He said he thought you wouldn't
+mind. She'd been here before."
+
+The thought of Edith never entered Akers' head. It was Lily, Lily
+miraculously come back to him. Lily, his wife.
+
+Going up in the elevator he hastily formulated a plan of action. He
+would not be too ready to forgive; she had cost him too much. But in the
+end he would take her in his arms and hold her close. Lily! Lily!
+
+It was the bitterness of his disappointment that made him brutal. Wicked
+and unscrupulous as he was with men, with women he was as gentle as he
+was cruel. He put them from him relentlessly and kissed them good-by. It
+was his boast that any one of them would come back to him if he wanted
+her.
+
+Edith, listening for his step, was startled at the change in his face
+when he saw her.
+
+"You!" he said thickly. "What are you doing here?"
+
+"I've been waiting all evening. I want to ask you something."
+
+He flung his hat into a chair and faced her.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Is it true that you are married to Lily Cardew?"
+
+"If I am, what are you going to do about it?" His eyes were wary, but
+his color was coming back. He was breathing more easily.
+
+"I only heard it to-day. I must know, Lou. It's awfully important."
+
+"What did you hear?" He was watching her closely.
+
+"I heard you were married, but that she had left you."
+
+It seemed to him incredible that she had come there to taunt him, she
+who was responsible for the shipwreck of his marriage. That she could
+come there and face him, and not expect him to kill her where she stood.
+
+He pulled himself together.
+
+"It's true enough." He swore under his breath. "She didn't leave me. She
+was taken away. And I'll get her back if I--You little fool, I ought to
+kill you. If you wanted a cheap revenge, you've got it."
+
+"I don't want revenge, Lou."
+
+He caught her by the arm.
+
+"Then what brought you here?"
+
+"I wanted to be sure Lily Cardew was married."
+
+"Well, she is. What about it?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+"That's not all. What about it?"
+
+She looked up at him gravely.
+
+"Because, if she is, I am going to marry Mr. Cameron tomorrow." At the
+sight of his astounded face she went on hastily: "He knows, Lou, and he
+offered anyhow."
+
+"And what," he said slowly, "has my wife to do with that?"
+
+"I wanted to be fair to him. And I think he is--I think he used to be
+terribly in love with her."
+
+Quite apart from his increasing fear of Willy Cameron and his Committee,
+there had been in Akers for some time a latent jealousy of him. In a
+flash he saw the room at the Saint Elmo, and a cold-eyed man inside the
+doorway. The humiliation of that scene had never left him, of his own
+maudlin inadequacy, of hearing from beyond a closed and locked door, the
+closing of another door behind Lily and the man who had taken her away
+from him. A mad anger and jealousy made him suddenly reckless.
+
+"So," he said, "he is terribly in love with my wife, and he intends to
+marry you. That's--interesting. Because, my sweet child, he's got a damn
+poor chance of marrying you, or anybody."
+
+"Lou!"
+
+"Listen," he said deliberately. "Men who stick their heads into the
+lion's jaws are apt to lose them. Our young friend Cameron has done
+that. I'll change the figure. When a man tries to stop a great machine
+by putting his impudent fingers into the cog wheels, the man's a fool.
+He may lose his hand, or he may lose his life."
+
+Fortunately for Edith he moved on that speech to the side table, and
+mixed himself a highball. It gave her a moment to summon her scattered
+wits, to decide on a plan of action. Her early training on the streets,
+her recent months of deceit, helped her now. If he had expected any
+outburst from her it did not come.
+
+"If you mean that he is in danger, I don't believe it."
+
+"All right, old girl. I've told you."
+
+But the whiskey restored his equilibrium again.
+
+"That is," he added slowly, "I've warned you. You'd better warn him.
+He's doing his best to get into trouble."
+
+She knew him well, saw the craftiness come back into his eyes, and met
+it with equal strategy.
+
+"I'll tell him," she said, moving toward the door. "You haven't scared
+me for a minute and you won't scare him. You and your machine!"
+
+She dared not seem to hurry.
+
+"You're a boaster," she said, with the door open. "You always were.
+And you'll never lay a hand on him. You're like all bullies; you're a
+coward!"
+
+She was through the doorway by that time, and in terror for fear, having
+told her so much, he would try to detain her. She saw the idea come into
+his face, too, just as she slipped outside. He made a move toward her.
+
+"I think--" he began.
+
+She slammed the door and ran down the hallway toward the stairs. She
+heard him open the door and come out into the hall, but she was well in
+advance and running like a deer.
+
+"Edith!" he called.
+
+She stumbled on the second flight of stairs and fell a half-dozen steps,
+but she picked herself up and ran on. At the bottom of the lower flight
+she stopped and listened, but he had gone back. She heard the slam of
+his door as he closed it.
+
+But the insistent need of haste drove her on, headlong. She shot through
+the lobby, past the staring telephone girl, and into the street, and
+there settled down into steady running, her elbows close to her sides,
+trying to remember to breathe slowly and evenly. She must get home
+somehow, get the envelope and follow the directions inside. Her thoughts
+raced with her. It was almost eleven o'clock and Willy had been gone for
+hours. She tried to pray, but the words did not come.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+At something after seven o'clock that night Willy Cameron and Pink
+Denslow reached that point on the Mayville Road which had been
+designated by the storekeeper, Cusick. They left the car there, hidden
+in a grove, and struck off across country to the west. Willy Cameron
+had been thoughtful for some time, and as they climbed a low hill, going
+with extreme caution, he said:
+
+"I'm still skeptical about Cusick, Pink. Do you think he's straight?"
+
+"One of the best men we've got," Pink replied, confidently. "He's put us
+on to several things."
+
+"He's foreign born, isn't he?"
+
+"That's his value. They don't suspect him for a minute."
+
+"But--what does he get out of it?"
+
+"Good citizen," said Pink, with promptness. "You've got to remember,
+Cameron, that a lot of these fellows are better Americans than we are.
+They're like religious converts, stronger than the ones born in the
+fold. They're Americans because they want to be. Anyhow, you ought to be
+strong for him, Cameron. He said to tell you, but no one else."
+
+"I'll tell you how strong I am for him later," Willy Cameron said,
+grimly. "Just at this minute I'm waiting to be shown."
+
+They advanced with infinite caution, for the evening was still light.
+Going slowly, it was well after eight and fairly dark before they came
+within sight of the farm buildings in the valley below. Long unpainted,
+they were barely discernable in the shadows of the hills. The land
+around had been carefully cleared, and both men were dismayed at the
+difficulty of access without being seen.
+
+"Doesn't look very good, does it?" Pink observed. "I will say this, for
+seclusion and keeping away unwanted visitors, it has it all over any
+dug-out I ever saw in France."
+
+"Listen!" Willy Cameron said, tensely.
+
+They stood on the alert, but only the evening sounds of country and
+forest rewarded them.
+
+"What was it?" Pink inquired, after perhaps two minutes of waiting.
+
+"Plain scare on my part, probably. I don't so much mind this little
+excursion, Pink, as I hate the idea that a certain gentleman named
+Cusick may have a chance to come to our funerals and laugh himself to
+death."
+
+When real darkness had fallen, they had reached the lower fringe of the
+woods. Pink had the fault of the city dweller, however, of being unable
+to step lightly in the dark, and their progress had been less silent
+than it should have been. In spite of his handicap, Willy Cameron made
+his way with the instinctive knowledge of the country bred boy, treading
+like a cat.
+
+"Pretty poor," Pink said in a discouraged whisper, after a twig had
+burst under his foot with a report like the shot of a pistol. "You
+travel like a spook, while I--"
+
+"Listen, Pink. I'm going in alone to look around. Stop muttering and
+listen to me. It's poor strategy not to have a reserve somewhere, isn't
+it?"
+
+"I'm a poor prune at the best," Pink said stubbornly, "but I am not
+going to let you go into that place alone. You can rave all you want."
+
+"Very well. Then we'll both stay here. You are about as quiet as a horse
+going through a corn patch."
+
+After some moments Pink spoke again.
+
+"If you insist on stealing the whole show," he said, sulkily, "what am I
+to do? Run to town for help, if you need it?"
+
+"I'm not going to round up the outfit, if there is one. I haven't lost
+my mind. I'll see what is going on, or about to go on. Then I'll come
+back."
+
+"Here?"
+
+Cameron considered.
+
+"Better meet at the machine," he decided, after a glance at the sky. "In
+half an hour you won't be able to see your hand in front of you. Wait
+here for a half-hour or so, and then start back, and for heaven's sake
+don't shoot at anything you see moving. As a matter of fact, I might
+as well have your revolver. I won't need it, but it may avoid any
+accidental shooting by a youth I both love and admire!"
+
+"If I hear any shooting, I'll come in," Pink said, still sulky.
+
+"Come in and welcome," said Willy Cameron, and Pink knew he was smiling.
+
+He took the revolver and slipped away into the darkness, leaving Pink
+both melancholy and disturbed. Unaccustomed to night in the woods, he
+found his nerves twitching at every sound. In the war there had been a
+definite enemy, definitely placed. Even when he had gone into that vile
+strip between the trenches, there had been a general direction for the
+inimical. Here--
+
+He moved carefully, and stood with his back against a tree.
+
+Not a sound came from the farm buildings. Willy Cameron's progress, too,
+was noiseless. With no way to tell the lapse of time, and gauging it by
+his war experience, when an hour had apparently passed by, he knew that
+Cameron had been gone about ten minutes.
+
+Time dragged on. A cow, unmilked, lowed plaintively once or twice. A
+September night breeze set the dying leaves on the trees to rustling,
+and stirred the dried ones about his feet. Pink's mind, gradually
+reassured, turned to other things. He thought of Lily Cardew, for one.
+Like Willy Cameron, he knew he would always love her, but unlike Willy,
+the first pain of her loss was gone. He was glad that time was over.
+He was glad that she was at home again, safe from those--Some one was
+moving near him, passing within twenty feet. Whoever it was was stepping
+cautiously but blunderingly. It was not Cameron, then. He was a footfall
+only, not even an outline. Before Pink could decide on a line of action,
+the sound was lost.
+
+Every sense acute, he waited. He had decided that if the incident were
+repeated, he would make an effort to get the fellow from behind, but
+there was no return. The wind had died again, and there was no longer
+even the rustling of the leaves to break the utter stillness.
+
+Suddenly he saw a red flash near the barn, and an instant later heard
+the report of a pistol. Came immediately after that a brief fusillade of
+shots, a pause, then two or three scattering ones.
+
+With the first shot Pink started running. He was vaguely conscious of
+other steps near him, running also, but he could see nothing. His whole
+mind was set on finding Willy Cameron. Alone he had not a chance, but
+two of them together could put up a fight. He pelted along, stumbling,
+recovering, stumbling again.
+
+Another shot was fired. They hadn't got him yet, or they wouldn't be
+shooting. He raised his voice in a great call.
+
+"Cameron! Here! Cameron!"
+
+He ran into a low fence then, and it threw him. He had hardly got to
+his knees before the other running figure had hurled itself on him, and
+struck him with the butt of a revolver. He dropped flat and lay still.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+For weeks Woslosky had known of the growing strength of the Vigilance
+Committee, and that it was arming steadily.
+
+It threatened absolutely the success of his plans. Even the election of
+Akers and the changes he would make in the city police; even the ruse
+of other strikes and machine-made riotings to call away the state
+troops,--none of these, or all of them, would be effectual against an
+organized body of citizens, duly called to the emergency.
+
+And such an organization was already effected. Within a week, when the
+first card reached his hands, it had grown to respectable proportions.
+Woslosky went to Doyle, and they made their counter-moves quickly. No
+more violence. A seemingly real but deceptive orderliness. They were
+dealing with inflammatory material, however, and now and then it got
+out of hand. Unlike Doyle the calculating, who made each move slowly and
+watched its results with infinite zest, the Pole chafed under delay.
+
+"We can't hold them much longer," he complained, bitterly. "This thing
+of holding them off until after the election--and until Akers takes
+office--it's got too many ifs in it."
+
+"It was haste lost Seattle," said Doyle, as unmoved as Woslosky was
+excited.
+
+Woslosky did not like Louis Akers. What was more important, he
+distrusted him. When he heard of his engagement to Lily Cardew he warned
+Doyle about him.
+
+"He's in this thing for what he can get out of it," he said. "He'll go
+as far as he can, with safety, to be accepted by the Cardews."
+
+"Exactly," was Doyle's dry comment, "with safety, you said. Well, he
+knows you and he knows me, and he'll he straight because he's afraid not
+to be."
+
+"When there's a woman in it!" said the Pole, skeptically.
+
+But Doyle only smiled. He had known many women and loved none of them,
+and he was temperamentally unable to understand the type of man who saw
+the world through a woman's eyes and in them.
+
+So Woslosky was compelled to watch the growth of Willy Cameron's
+organization, and to hold in check the violent passions he had himself
+roused, and to wait, gnawing his nails with inaction and his heart with
+rage. But these certain things he discovered:
+
+That the organization's growth was coincident with a new interest in
+local politics, as though some vital force had wakened the plain people
+to a sense of responsibility.
+
+That a drug clerk named Cameron was the founder and moving spirit of the
+league, and that he was, using Hendricks' candidacy as a means, rousing
+the city to a burning patriotic activity that Mr. Woslosky regarded as
+extremely pernicious.
+
+And that this same Willy Cameron had apparently a knowledge of certain
+plans, which was rather worse than pernicious. Mr. Woslosky's name for
+it was damnable.
+
+For instance, there were the lists of the various city stores and their
+estimated contents, missing from Mr. Woslosky's own inconspicuous trunk
+in a storage house. On that had been based the plan for feeding the
+revolution, by the simple expedient of exchanging by organized pillage
+the contents of the city stores for food stuffs from the farmers in
+outlying districts.
+
+Revolution, according to Mr. Woslosky, could only be starved out. He had
+no anxiety as to troops which would be sent against them, because he had
+a cynical belief that a man's country was less to him than various other
+things, including his stomach. He believed that all armies were riddled
+with sedition and fundamentally opposed to law.
+
+Copies of other important matters, too, were missing. Lists of officials
+for the revolutionary city government and of deputies to take the places
+of the disbanded police, plans for manning, by the radicals, the city
+light, water and power plants; a schedule of public eating houses to
+take the place of the restaurants.
+
+Woslosky began to find this drug clerk with the ridiculous given name
+getting on his nerves. He considered him a dangerous enemy to progress,
+that particular form of progress which Mr. Woslosky advocated, and
+he suspected him of a lack of ethics regarding trunks in storage. Mr.
+Woslosky had the old-world idea that the best government was a despotism
+tempered by assassination. He thought considerably about Willy Cameron.
+
+But the plan concerning the farm house was, in the end, devised by Louis
+Akers. Woslosky was skeptical. It was true that Cameron might stick his
+head into the lion's jaws, but precautions had been known to be taken at
+such times to prevent their closing. However, the Pole was desperate.
+
+He took six picked men with him that afternoon to the farm, and made a
+strategic survey of the situation. The house was closed and locked,
+but he was not concerned with the house. Cusick had told Denslow the
+meetings were held late at night in the barn, and to the barn Woslosky
+repaired, sawed-off shotgun under his coat and cigarette in mouth, and
+inspected it with his evil smile. Two men, young and reckless, might
+easily plan to conceal themselves under the hay in the loft, and--
+
+Woslosky put down his gun and went down into the cow barn below,
+whistling softly to himself. He began to enjoy the prospect. He gathered
+some eggs from the feed boxes, carrying them in his hat, and breaking
+the lock of the kitchen door he and his outfit looted the closet
+there and had an early supper, being careful to extinguish the fire
+afterwards.
+
+Not until dusk was falling did he post his men, three outside among
+the outbuildings, one as a sentry near the woods, and two in the barn
+itself. He himself took up his station inside the barn door, sitting on
+the floor with his gun across his knees. Looking out from there, he saw
+the sharp flash of a hastily extinguished match, and snarled with anger.
+He had forbidden smoking.
+
+"I've got to go out," he said cautiously. "Don't you fools shoot me when
+I come back."
+
+He slipped out into what was by that time complete blackness.
+
+Some five minutes later he came back, still noiselessly, and treading
+like a cat. He could only locate the barn door by feeling for it, and
+above the light scraping of his fingers he could hear, inside, cautious
+footsteps over the board floor. He scowled again. Damn this country
+quiet, anyhow! But he had found the doorway, and was feeling his way
+through when he found himself caught and violently thrown. The fall
+and the surprise stunned him. He lay still for an infuriated helpless
+second, with a knee on his chest and both arms tightly held, to hear one
+of his own men above him saying:
+
+"Got him, all right. Woslosky, you've got the rope, haven't you?"
+
+"You fool!" snarled Woslosky from the floor, "let me up. You've half
+killed me. Didn't I tell you I was going out?"
+
+He scrambled to his feet, and to an astounded silence.
+
+"But you came in a couple of minutes ago. Somebody came in. You heard
+him, Cusick, didn't you?"
+
+Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost with
+the same movement drew a searchlight and flashed it over the place. It
+was apparently empty.
+
+The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp questions.
+Both men had heard the cautious entrance they had taken for his own,
+both men had remained silent and unsuspicious, and both were positive
+whoever had come in had not gone out again.
+
+He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search. The
+summer's hay filled one end, but it was closely packed below and offered
+no refuge. Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash in his pocket,
+Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going softly. He listened at
+the top, and then searched it with the light, holding it far to the left
+for a possible bullet. The loft was empty. He climbed into it and walked
+over it, gun in one hand and flash in the other, searching for some
+buried figure. But there was nothing. The loft was fragrant with the
+newly dried hay, sweet and empty. Woslosky descended the ladder again,
+the flash extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering.
+Cusick was a man without imagination, and he had sworn that some one had
+come in. Then--
+
+Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited
+flutterings first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who roosted
+on the roof. Woslosky listened and slowly smiled.
+
+"We've got him, boys," he said, without excitement. "Outside, and call
+the others. He's on the roof."
+
+Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others
+coming pell-mell toward him. He flung a guard of all five of them around
+the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward.
+The very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore
+softly. In the hope of drawing an answering flash he fired, but without
+result. The explosion echoed and reechoed, died away.
+
+He called to Cusick, and had him try the same experiment, following the
+line of the gutter as nearly as possible in the darkness, on that side,
+and emptying his revolver. Still silence.
+
+Woslosky began to doubt. The pigeons might have seen his flashlight,
+might have heard his own stealthy movements. He was intensely irritated.
+The shooting, if the alarm had been false, had ruined everything. He
+saw, as in a vision, Doyle's sneering face when he told him. Beside him
+Cusick was reloading his revolver in the darkness.
+
+Then, out of the night, came a call from the direction of the woods, and
+unintelligible at that distance.
+
+"What's that?" Cusick said hoarsely.
+
+Woslosky made no reply. He was listening. Some one was approaching, now
+running, now stopping as though confused. Woslosky held his gun ready,
+and waited. Then, from a distance, he heard his name called.
+
+He stepped inside the door of the barn and showed the light for a
+moment. Soon after the sentry floundered in, breathless and excited.
+
+"I got one of them," he gasped. "Hit him with my gun. He's lying back by
+the stone fence."
+
+"Did you call out, or did he?"
+
+"He did. That's how I knew it wasn't one of our fellows. He called
+Cameron, so he's the other one."
+
+Woslosky drew a deep breath. Then it was Cameron on the roof. It was
+Cameron they wanted.
+
+"He'll sleep for an hour or two, if he ever wakes up," Pink's assailant
+boasted. But Woslosky was taking no chances that night. He sent two men
+after Pink, and began to pace the floor thoughtfully. If he could have
+waited for daylight it would have been simple enough, but he did not
+know how much time he had. He did not underestimate young Cameron's
+intelligence, and it had occurred to him that that young Scot might
+cannily have provided against his failure to return. Then, too, the
+state constabulary had an uncomfortable habit of riding lonely back
+roads at night, and shots could be heard a long distance off.
+
+He had never surveyed the barn roof closely, but he knew that it was
+steeply pitched. Cameron, then, was probably braced somewhere in the
+gutter. The departure of the two men had left him short-handed, and he
+waited impatiently for their return. With a ladder, provided it could be
+quietly placed, a man could shoot from a corner along two sides of the
+roof. With two ladders, at diagonal corners, they could get him. But a
+careful search discovered no ladders on the place.
+
+He went out, and standing close against the wall for protection, called
+up.
+
+"We know you're there, Cameron," he said. "If you come down we won't
+hurt you. If you don't, we'll get you, and you know it."
+
+But he received no reply.
+
+Soon after that the two men carried in Pink Denslow, and laid him on the
+floor of the barn. Then Woslosky tried again, more reckless this time
+with anger. He stood out somewhat from the wall and called:
+
+"One more chance, Cameron, or we'll put a bullet through your friend
+here. Come down, or we'll--"
+
+Something struck him heavily and he fell, with a bullet in the shoulder.
+He struggled to his feet and gained the shelter of the wall, his face
+twisted with pain.
+
+"All right," he said, "if that's the way you feel about it!"
+
+He regained the barn and had his arm supported in an extemporized sling.
+Then he ordered Pink to be tied, and fighting down his pain considered
+the situation. Cameron was on the roof, and armed. Even if he had no
+extra shells he still had five shots in reserve, and he would not waste
+any of them. Whoever tried to scale the walls would be done in at once;
+whoever attempted to follow him to the roof by way of the loft would
+be shot instantly. And his own condition demanded haste; the bullet,
+striking from above, had broken his arm. Every movement was torture.
+
+He thought of setting fire to the barn. Then Cameron would have the
+choice of two things, to surrender or to be killed. He might get some of
+them first, however. Well, that was a part of the game.
+
+He delivered a final ultimatum from the shelter of the doorway.
+
+"I've just thought of something, Cameron," he called. "We're going to
+fire the barn. Your young friend is here, tied, and we'll leave him
+here. Do you get that? Either throw down that gun of yours, and come
+down, or I'm inclined to think you'll be up against it. I'll give you a
+minute or so to think it over."
+
+At half-past eleven o'clock that night the first of four automobiles
+drove into Friendship. It was driven by a hatless young man in a
+raincoat over a suit of silk pajamas, and it contained four County
+detectives and the city Chief of Police. Behind it, but well
+outdistanced, came the other cars, some of them driven by leading
+citizens in a state of considerable deshabille.
+
+At a cross street in Friendship the lead car drew up, and flashlights
+were turned on a road map in the rear of the car. There was some
+argument over the proper road, and a member of the state constabulary,
+riding up to investigate, showed a strong inclination to place them
+under arrest.
+
+It took a moment to put him right.
+
+"Wish I could go along," he said, wistfully. "The place you want is back
+there. I can't leave the town, but I'll steer you out. You'll probably
+run into some of our fellows back there."
+
+He rode on ahead, his big black horse restive in the light from the
+lamps behind him. At the end of a lane he stopped.
+
+"Straight ahead up there," he said. "You'll find--"
+
+He broke off and stared ahead to where a dull red glare, reflected on
+the low hanging clouds, had appeared over the crest of the hill.
+
+"Something doing up there," he called suddenly. "Let's go."
+
+He jerked his revolver free, dug his heels into the flanks of his horse,
+and was off on a dead run. Half way up the hill the car passed him, the
+black going hard, and its rider's face, under the rim of his uniform
+hat, a stern profile. His reins lay loose on the animal's neck, and he
+was examining his gun.
+
+The road mounted to a summit, and dipped again. They were in a long
+valley, and the burning barn was clearly outlined at the far end of it.
+One side was already flaming, and tongues of fire leaped out through the
+roof. The men in the car were standing now, doors open, ready to leap,
+while the car lurched and swayed over the uneven road. Behind them they
+heard the clatter of the oncoming horse.
+
+As they drew nearer they could see three watching figures against the
+burning building, and as they turned into the lane which led to the
+barnyard a shot rang out and one of the figures dropped and lay still.
+There was a cry of warning from somewhere, and before the detectives
+could leap from the car, the group had scattered, running wildly. The
+state policeman threw his horse back on its hunches, and fired without
+apparently taking aim at one of the running shadows. The man threw up
+his arms and fell. The state policeman galloped toward him, dismounted
+and bent over him.
+
+Firing as they ran, detectives leaped out of the car and gave chase,
+and so it was that the young gentleman in bedroom slippers and pajamas,
+standing in his car and shielding his eyes against the glare, saw a
+curious thing.
+
+First of all, the roof blazed up brightly, and he perceived a human
+figure, hanging by its hands from the eaves and preparing to drop. The
+young gentleman in pajamas was feeling rather out of things by that
+time, so he made a hasty exit from his car toward the barn, losing a
+slipper as he did so, and yelling in a slightly hysterical manner. It
+thus happened that he and the dropping figure reached the same spot at
+almost the same moment, one result of which was that the young gentleman
+in pajamas found himself struck a violent blow with a doubled-up fist,
+and at the same moment his bare right foot was tramped on with extreme
+thoroughness.
+
+The young gentleman in pajamas reeled back dizzily and gave tongue,
+while standing on one foot. The person he addressed was the state
+constable, and his instructions were to get the fugitive and kill him.
+But the fugitive here did a very strange thing. Through the handkerchief
+which it was now seen he wore tied over his mouth, he told the running
+policeman to go to perdition, and then with seeming suicidal intent
+rushed into the burning barn. From it he emerged a moment later,
+dragging a figure bound hand and foot, blackened with smoke, and with
+its clothing smoldering in a dozen places; a figure which alternately
+coughed and swore in a strangled whisper, but which found breath for
+a loud whoop almost immediately after, on its being immersed, as it
+promptly was, in a nearby horse-trough.
+
+Very soon after that the other cars arrived. They drew up and men
+emerged from them, variously clothed and even more variously armed, but
+all they saw was the ruined embers of the barn, and in the glow
+five figures. Of the five one lay, face up to the sky, as though the
+prostrate body followed with its eyes the unkillable traitor soul of
+one Cusick, lately storekeeper at Friendship. Woslosky, wounded for
+the second time, lay on an automobile rug on the ground, conscious
+but sullenly silent. On the driving seat of an automobile sat a young
+gentleman with an overcoat over a pair of silk pajamas, carefully
+inspecting the toes of his right foot by the light of a match, while
+another young gentleman with a white handkerchief around his head was
+sitting on the running board of the same car, dripping water and rather
+dazedly staring at the ruins.
+
+And beside him stood a gaunt figure, blackened of face, minus eyebrows
+and charred of hair, and considerably torn as to clothing. A figure
+which seemed disinclined to talk, and which gave its explanations
+in short, staccato sentences. Having done which, it relapsed into
+uncompromising silence again.
+
+Some time later the detectives returned. They had made no further
+captures, for the refugees had known the country, and once outside the
+light from the burning barn search was useless. The Chief of Police
+approached Willy Cameron and stood before him, eyeing him severely.
+
+"The next time you try to raid an anarchist meeting, Cameron," he said,
+"you'd better honor me with your confidence. You've probably learned a
+lesson from all this."
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at him, and for the first time that night, smiled.
+
+"I have," he said; "I'll never trust a pigeon again." The Chief thought
+him slightly unhinged by the night's experience.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Edith Boyd's child was prematurely born at the Memorial Hospital early
+the next morning. It lived only a few moments, but Edith's mother never
+knew either of its birth or of its death.
+
+When Willy Cameron reached the house at two o'clock that night he found
+Dan in the lower hall, a new Dan, grave and composed but very pale.
+
+"Mother's gone, Willy," he said quietly. "I don't think she knew
+anything about it. Ellen heard her breathing hard and went in, but she
+wasn't conscious." He sat down on the horse-hair covered chair by the
+stand. "I don't know anything about these things," he observed, still
+with that strange new composure. "What do you do now?"
+
+"Don't worry about that, Dan, just now. There's nothing to do until
+morning."
+
+He looked about him. The presence of death gave a new dignity to the
+little house. Through the open door he could see in the parlor Mrs.
+Boyd's rocking chair, in which she had traveled so many conversational
+miles. Even the chair had gained dignity; that which it had once
+enthroned had now penetrated the ultimate mystery.
+
+He was shaken and very weary. His mind worked slowly and torpidly, so
+that even grief came with an effort. He was grieved; he knew that. Some
+one who had loved him and depended on him was gone; some one who loved
+life had lost it. He ran his hand over his singed hair.
+
+"Where is Edith?"
+
+Dan's voice hardened.
+
+"She's out somewhere. It's like her, isn't it?"
+
+Willy Cameron roused himself.
+
+"Out?" he said incredulously. "Don't you know where she is?"
+
+"No. And I don't care."
+
+Willy Cameron was fully alert now, and staring down at Dan.
+
+"I'll tell you something, Dan. She probably saved my life to-night. I'll
+tell you how later. And if she is still out there is something wrong."
+
+"She used to stay out to all hours. She hasn't done it lately, but I
+thought--"
+
+Dan got up and reached for his hat.
+
+"Where'll I start to look for her?"
+
+But Willy Cameron had no suggestion to make. He was trying to think
+straight, but it was not easy. He knew that for some reason Edith had
+not waited until midnight to open the envelope. She had telephoned her
+message clearly, he had learned, but with great excitement, saying that
+there was a plot against his life, and giving the farmhouse and the
+message he had left in full; and she had not rung off until she knew
+that a posse would start at once. And that had been before eleven
+o'clock.
+
+Three hours. He looked at his watch. Either she had been hurt or was
+a prisoner, or--he came close to the truth then. He glanced at Dan,
+standing hat in hand.
+
+"We'll try the hospitals first, Dan," he said. "And the best way to do
+that is by telephone. I don't like Ellen being left alone here, so you'd
+better let me do that."
+
+Dan acquiesced unwillingly. He resumed his seat in the hail, and Willy
+Cameron went upstairs. Ellen was moving softly about, setting in order
+the little upper room. The windows were opened, and through them came
+the soft night wind, giving a semblance of life and movement under it to
+the sheet that covered the quiet figure on the bed.
+
+Willy Cameron stood by it and looked down, with a great wave of
+thankfulness in his heart. She had been saved much, and if from some new
+angle she was seeing them now it would be with the vision of eternity,
+and its understanding. She would see how sometimes the soul must lose
+here to gain beyond. She would see the world filled with its Ediths, and
+she would know that they too were a part of the great plan, and that the
+breaking of the body sometimes freed the soul.
+
+He was shy of the forms of religion, but he voiced a small inarticulate
+prayer, standing beside the bed while Ellen straightened the few toilet
+articles on the dresser, that she might have rest, and then a long and
+placid happiness. And love, he added. There would be no Heaven without
+love.
+
+Ellen was looking at him in the mirror.
+
+"Your hair looks queer, Willy," she said. "And I declare your clothes
+are a sight." She turned, sternly. "Where have you been?"
+
+"It's a long story, Ellen. Don't bother about it now. I'm worried about
+Edith."
+
+Ellen's lips closed in a grim line.
+
+"The less said about her the better. She came back in a terrible state
+about something or other, ran in and up to your room, and out again. I
+tried to tell her her mother wasn't so well, but she looked as if she
+didn't hear me."
+
+It was four o'clock in the morning when Willy Cameron located Edith. He
+had gone to the pharmacy and let himself in, intending to telephone,
+but the card on the door, edged with black, gave him a curious sense
+of being surrounded that night by death, and he stood for a moment,
+unwilling to begin for fear of some further tragedy. In that moment,
+what with reaction from excitement and weariness, he had a feeling
+of futility, of struggling to no end. One fought on, and in the last
+analysis it was useless.
+
+"So soon passeth it away, and we are gone."
+
+He saw Mr. Davis, sitting alone in his house; he saw Ellen moving about
+that quiet upper room; he saw Cusick lying on the ground beside the
+smoldering heap that had been the barn, and staring up with eyes that
+saw only the vast infinity that was the sky. All the struggling and the
+fighting, and it came to that.
+
+He picked up the telephone book at last, and finding the hospital list
+in the directory began his monotonous calling of numbers, and still the
+revolt was in his mind. Even life lay through the gates of death; daily
+and hourly women everywhere laid down their lives that some new soul be
+born. But the revulsion came with that, a return to something nearer the
+normal. Daily and hourly women lived, having brought to pass the miracle
+of life.
+
+At half-past four he located Edith at the Memorial, and learned that her
+child had been born dead, but that she was doing well. He was suddenly
+exhausted; he sat down on a stool before the counter, and with his arms
+across it and his head on them, fell almost instantly asleep. When he
+waked it was almost seven and the intermittent sounds of early morning
+came through the closed doors, as though the city stirred but had not
+wakened.
+
+He went to the door and opened it, looking out. He had been wrong
+before. Death was a beginning and not an end; it was the morning of the
+spirit. Tired bodies lay down to sleep and their souls wakened to the
+morning, rested; the first fruits of them that slept.
+
+From the chimneys of the houses nearby small spirals of smoke began to
+ascend, definite promise of food and morning cheer behind the closed
+doors, where the milk bottles stood like small white sentinels and the
+morning paper was bent over the knob. Morning in the city, with children
+searching for lost stockings and buttoning little battered shoes; with
+women hurrying about, from stove to closet, from table to stove; with
+all burdens a little lighter and all thoughts a little kinder. Morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+In her bed in the maternity ward Edith at first lay through the days,
+watching the other women with their babies, and wondering over the
+strange instinct that made them hover, like queer mis-shaped ministering
+angels, over the tiny quivering bundles. Some of them were like herself,
+or herself as she might have been, bearing their children out of
+wedlock. Yet they faced their indefinite futures impassively, content
+in relief from pain, in the child in their arms, in present peace and
+security. She could not understand.
+
+She herself felt no sense of loss. Having never held her child in her
+arms she did not feel them empty.
+
+She had not been told of her mother's death; men were not admitted to
+the ward, but early on that first morning, when she lay there, hardly
+conscious but in an ecstasy of relief from pain, Ellen had come. A tired
+Ellen with circles around her eyes, and a bag of oranges in her arms.
+
+"How do you feel?" she had asked, sitting down self-consciously beside
+the bed. The ward had its eyes on her.
+
+"I'm weak, but I'm all right. Last night was awful, Ellen."
+
+She had roused herself with an effort. Ellen reminded her of something,
+something that had to do with Willy Cameron. Then she remembered, and
+tried to raise herself in the bed.
+
+"Willy!" she gasped. "Did he come home? Is he all right?"
+
+"He's all right. It was him that found you were here. You lie back now;
+the nurse is looking."
+
+Edith lay down and closed her eyes, and the ecstasy of relief and peace
+gave to her pale face an almost spiritual look. Ellen saw it, and patted
+her arm with a roughened hand.
+
+"You poor thing!" she said. "I've been as mean to you as I knew how to
+be. I'm going to be different, Edith. I'm just a cross old maid, and I
+guess I didn't understand."
+
+"You've been all right," Edith said.
+
+Ellen kissed her when she went away.
+
+So for three days Edith lay and rested. She felt that God had been very
+good to her, and she began to think of God as having given her another
+chance. This time He had let her off, but He had given her a warning.
+He had said, in effect, that if she lived straight and thought straight
+from now on He would forget this thing she had done. But if she did
+not--
+
+Then what about Willy Cameron? Did He mean her to hold him to that now?
+Willy did not love her. Perhaps he would grow to love her, but she was
+seeing things more clearly than she had before, and one of the things
+she saw was that Willy Cameron was a one-woman man, and that she was not
+the woman.
+
+"But I love him so," she would cry to herself.
+
+The ward moved in its orderly routine around her. The babies were
+carried out, bathed and brought back, their nuzzling mouths open for
+the waiting mother-breast. The nurses moved about, efficient, kindly,
+whimsically maternal. Women went out when their hour came, swollen
+of feature and figure, and were wheeled back later on, etherealized,
+purified as by fire, and later on were given their babies. Their faces
+were queer then, frightened and proud at first, and later watchful and
+tenderly brooding.
+
+For three days Edith's struggle went on. She had her strong hours and
+her weak ones. There were moments when, exhausted and yet exalted,
+she determined to give him up altogether, to live the fiction of the
+marriage until her mother's death, and then to give up the house and
+never see him again. If she gave him up she must never see him again. At
+those times she prayed not to love him any longer, and sometimes, for a
+little while after that, she would have peace. It was almost as though
+she did not love him.
+
+But there were the other times, when she lay there and pictured them
+married, and dreamed a dream of bringing him to her feet. He had offered
+a marriage that was not a marriage, but he was a man, and human. He did
+not want her now, but in the end he would want her; young as she was she
+knew already the strength of a woman's physical hold on a man.
+
+Late on the afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a swollen-eyed
+Ellen, dressed in black with black cotton gloves, and a black veil
+around her hat. Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged sense of duty
+of her class, and would as soon have gone to the burying ground in her
+kitchen apron as without black. She stood in the doorway of the ward,
+hesitating, and Edith saw her and knew.
+
+Her first thought was not of her mother at all. She saw only that the
+God who had saved her had made her decision for her, and that now she
+would never marry Willy Cameron. All this time He had let her dream and
+struggle. She felt very bitter.
+
+Ellen came and sat down beside her.
+
+"She's gone. Edith," she said; "we didn't tell you before, but you have
+to know sometime. We buried her this afternoon."
+
+Suddenly Edith forgot Willy Cameron, and God, and Dan, and the years
+ahead. She was a little girl again, and her mother was saying:
+
+"Brush your teeth and say your prayers, Edie. And tomorrow's Saturday.
+So you don't need to get up until you're good and ready."
+
+She lay there. She saw her mother growing older and more frail, the
+house more untidy, and her mother's bright spirit fading to the drab of
+her surroundings. She saw herself, slipping in late at night, listening
+always for that uneasy querulous voice. And then she saw those recent
+months, when her mother had bloomed with happiness; she saw her
+struggling with her beloved desserts, cheerfully unconscious of any
+failure in them; she saw her, living like a lady, as she had said, with
+every anxiety kept from her. There had been times when her thin face had
+been almost illuminated with her new content and satisfaction.
+
+Suddenly grief and remorse overwhelmed her.
+
+"Mother!" she said, huskily. And lay there, crying quietly, with Ellen
+holding her hand. All that was hard and rebellious in Edith Boyd was
+swept away in that rush of grief, and in its place there came a new
+courage and resolution. She would meet the future alone, meet it and
+overcome it. But not alone, either; there was always--
+
+It was a Sunday afternoon, and the nurse had picked up the worn ward
+Bible and was reading from it, aloud. In their rocking chairs in a
+semi-circle around her were the women, some with sleeping babies in
+their arms, others with tense, expectant faces.
+
+"Let not your heart be troubled," read the nurse, in a grave young
+voice. "Ye believe in God. Believe also in Me. In my Father's house--"
+
+There was always God.
+
+Edith Boyd saw her mother in the Father's house, pottering about some
+small celestial duty, and eagerly seeking and receiving approval. She
+saw her, in some celestial rocking chair, her tired hands folded, slowly
+rocking and resting. And perhaps, as she sat there, she held Edith's
+child on her knee, like the mothers in the group around the nurse. Held
+it and understood at last.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+It was at this time that Doyle showed his hand, with his customary
+fearlessness. He made a series of incendiary speeches, the general theme
+being that the hour was close at hand for putting the fear of God into
+the exploiting classes for all time to come. His impassioned oratory,
+coming at the psychological moment, when the long strike had brought its
+train of debt and evictions, made a profound impression. Had he asked
+for a general strike vote then, he would have secured it.
+
+As it was, it was some time before all the unions had voted for it. And
+the day was not set. Doyle was holding off, and for a reason. Day by
+day he saw a growth of the theory of Bolshevism among the so-called
+intellectual groups of the country. Almost every university had its
+radicals, men who saw emerging from Russia the beginning of a new earth.
+Every class now had its Bolshevists. They found a ready market for their
+propaganda, intelligent and insidious as it was, among a certain liberal
+element of the nation, disgruntled with the autocracy imposed upon them
+by the war.
+
+The reaction from that autocracy was a swinging to the other extreme,
+and, as if to work into the hands of the revolutionary party, living
+costs remained at the maximum. The cry of the revolutionists, to all
+enough and to none too much, found a response not only in the anxious
+minds of honest workmen, but among an underpaid intelligentsia. Neither
+political party offered any relief; the old lines no longer held, and
+new lines of cleavage had come. Progressive Republicans and Democrats
+had united against reactionary members of both parties. There were no
+great leaders, no men of the hour.
+
+The old vicious cycle of empires threatened to repeat itself, the old
+story of the many led by the few. Always it had come, autocracy, the too
+great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that power by the
+angry mob. Out of that anarchy the gradual restoration of order by
+the people themselves, into democracy. And then in time again, by that
+steady gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who
+emerged from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was
+autocracy again, and again the vicious circle.
+
+But such movements had always been, in the last analysis, the work of
+the few. It had always been the militant minority which ruled. Always
+the great mass of the people had submitted. They had fought, one way
+or the other when the time came, but without any deep conviction behind
+them. They wanted peace, the right to labor. They warred, to find peace.
+Small concern was it, to the peasant plowing his field, whether one man
+ruled over him or a dozen. He wanted neither place nor power.
+
+It came to this, then, Willy Cameron argued to himself. This new world
+conflict was a struggle between the contented and the discontented. In
+Europe, discontent might conquer, but in America, never. There were too
+many who owned a field or had the chance to labor. There were too many
+ways legitimately to aspire. Those who wanted something for nothing were
+but a handful to those who wanted to give that they might receive.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+Three days before the election, Willy Cameron received a note from Lily,
+sent by hand.
+
+"Father wants to see you to-night," she wrote, "and mother suggests
+that as you are busy, you try to come to dinner. We are dining alone. Do
+come, Willy. I think it is most important."
+
+He took the letter home with him and placed it in a locked drawer of
+his desk, along with a hard and shrunken doughnut, tied with a bow of
+Christmas ribbon, which had once helped to adorn the Christmas tree they
+had trimmed together. There were other things in the drawer; a postcard
+photograph, rather blurred, of Lily in the doorway of her little hut,
+smiling; and the cigar box which had been her cash register at the camp.
+
+He stood for some time looking down at the post card; it did not seem
+possible that in the few months since those wonderful days, life could
+have been so cruel to them both. Lily married, and he himself--
+
+Ellen came up when he was tying his tie. She stood behind him, watching
+him in the mirror.
+
+"I don't know what you've done to your hair, Willy," she said; "it
+certainly looks queer."
+
+"It usually looks queer, so why worry, heart of my heart?" But he turned
+and put an arm around her shoulders. "What would the world be without
+women like you, Ellen?" he said gravely.
+
+"I haven't done anything but my duty," Ellen said, in her prim voice.
+"Listen, Willy. I saw Edith again to-day, and she told me to do
+something."
+
+"To go home and take a rest? That's what you need."
+
+"No. She wants me to tear up that marriage license."
+
+He said nothing for a moment. "I'll have to see her first."
+
+"She said it wouldn't be any good, Willy. She's made up her mind." She
+watched him anxiously. "You're not going to be foolish, are you? She
+says there's no need now, and she's right."
+
+"Somebody will have to look after her."
+
+"Dan can do that. He's changed, since she went." Ellen glanced toward
+Mrs. Boyd's empty room. "You've done enough, Willy. You've seen
+them through, all of them. I--isn't it time you began to think about
+yourself?"
+
+He was putting on his coat, and she picked a bit of thread from it, with
+nervous fingers.
+
+"Where are you going to-night, Willy?"
+
+"To the Cardews. Mr. Cardew has sent for me."
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"Willy, I want to tell you something. The Cardews won't let that
+marriage stand, and you know it. I think she cares for you. Don't look
+at me like that. I do."
+
+"That's because you are fond of me," he said, smiling down at her.
+"I'm not the sort of man girls care about, Ellen. Let's face that. The
+General Manager said when he planned me, 'Here's going to be a fellow
+who is to have everything in the world, health, intelligence, wit and
+the beauty of an Adonis, but he has to lack something, so we'll make it
+that'."
+
+But Ellen, glancing up swiftly, saw that although his tone was light,
+there was pain in his eyes.
+
+He reflected on Edith's decision as he walked through the park toward
+the Cardew house. It had not surprised him, and yet he knew it had cost
+her an effort. How great an effort, man-like, he would never understand,
+but something of what she had gone through he realized. He wondered
+vaguely whether, had there never been a Lily Cardew in his life, he
+could ever have cared for Edith. Perhaps. Not the Edith of the early
+days, that was certain. But this new Edith, with her gentleness and
+meekness, her clear, suffering eyes, her strange new humility.
+
+She had sent him a message of warning about Akers, and from it he had
+reconstructed much of the events of the night she had taken sick.
+
+"Tell him to watch Louis Akers," she had said. "I don't know how near
+Willy was to trouble the other night, Ellen, but they're going to try to
+get him."
+
+Ellen had repeated the message, watching him narrowly, but he had only
+laughed.
+
+"Who are they?" she had persisted.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it some day," he had said. But he had told Dan
+the whole story, and, although he did not know it, Dan had from that
+time on been his self-constituted bodyguard. During his campaign
+speeches Dan was always near, his right hand on a revolver in his coat
+pocket, and for hours at a time he stood outside the pharmacy, favoring
+every seeker for drugs or soap or perfume with a scowling inspection.
+When he could not do it, he enlisted Joe Wilkinson in the evenings, and
+sometimes the two of them, armed, policed the meeting halls.
+
+As a matter of fact, Joe Wilkinson was following him that night. On
+his way to the Cardews Willy Cameron, suddenly remembering the uncanny
+ability of Jinx to escape and trail him, remaining meanwhile at a safe
+distance in the rear, turned suddenly and saw Joe, walking sturdily
+along in rubber-soled shoes, and obsessed with his high calling of
+personal detective.
+
+Joe, discovered, grinned sheepishly.
+
+"Thought that looked like your back," he said. "Nice evening for a walk,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Let me look at you, Joe," said Willy Cameron. "You look strange to me.
+Ah, now I have it. You look like a comet without a tail. Where's the
+family?"
+
+"Making taffy. How--is Edith?"
+
+"Doing nicely." He avoided the boy's eyes.
+
+"I guess I'd better tell you. Dan's told me about her. I--" Joe
+hesitated. Then: "She never seemed like that sort of a girl," he
+finished, bitterly.
+
+"She isn't that sort of girl, Joe."
+
+"She did it. How could a fellow know she wouldn't do it again?"
+
+"She has had a pretty sad sort of lesson."
+
+Joe, his real business forgotten, walked on with eyes down and shoulders
+drooping.
+
+"I might as well finish with it," he said, "now I've started. I've
+always been crazy about her. Of course now--I haven't slept for two
+nights."
+
+"I think it's rather like this, Joe," Willy Cameron said, after a pause.
+"We are not one person, really. We are all two or three people, and
+all different. We are bad and good, depending on which of us is the
+strongest at the time, and now and then we pay so much for the bad we
+do that we bury that part. That's what has happened to Edith. Unless, of
+course," he added, "we go on convincing her that she is still the thing
+she doesn't want to be."
+
+"I'd like to kill the man," Joe said. But after a little, as they neared
+the edge of the park, he looked up.
+
+"You mean, go on as if nothing had happened?"
+
+"Precisely," said Willy Cameron, "as though nothing had happened."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+The atmosphere of the Cardew house was subtly changed and very friendly.
+Willy Cameron found himself received as an old friend, with no tendency
+to forget the service he had rendered, or that, in their darkest hour,
+he had been one of them.
+
+To his surprise Pink Denslow was there, and he saw at once that Pink
+had been telling them of the night at the farm house. Pink was himself
+again, save for a small shaved place at the back of his head, covered
+with plaster.
+
+"I've told them, Cameron," he said. "If I could only tell it generally
+I'd be the most popular man in the city, at dinners."
+
+"Pair of young fools," old Anthony muttered, with his sardonic smile.
+But in his hand-clasp, as in Howard's, there was warmth and a sort of
+envy, envy of youth and the adventurous spirit of youth.
+
+Lily was very quiet. The story had meant more to her than to the others.
+She had more nearly understood Pink's reference to the sealed envelope
+Willy Cameron had left, and the help sent by Edith Boyd. She connected
+that with Louis Akers, and from that to Akers' threat against Cameron
+was only a step. She was frightened and somewhat resentful, that this
+other girl should have saved him from a revenge that she knew was
+directed at herself. That she, who had brought this thing about, had sat
+quietly at home while another woman, a woman who loved him, had saved
+him.
+
+She was puzzled at her own state of mind.
+
+Dinner was almost gay. Perhaps the gayety was somewhat forced, with Pink
+keeping his eyes from Lily's face, and Howard Cardew relapsing now
+and then into abstracted silence. Because of the men who served, the
+conversation was carefully general. It was only in the library later,
+the men gathered together over their cigars, that the real reason for
+Willy Cameron's summons was disclosed.
+
+Howard Cardew was about to withdraw from the contest. "I'm late in
+coming to this decision," he said. "Perhaps too late. But after a
+careful canvas of the situation, I find you are right, Cameron. Unless
+I withdraw, Akers"--he found a difficulty in speaking the name--"will be
+elected. At least it looks that way."
+
+"And if he is," old Anthony put in, "he'll turn all the devils of hell
+loose on us."
+
+It was late; very late. The Cardews stood ready to flood the papers with
+announcements of Howard's withdrawal, and urging his supporters to vote
+for Hendricks, but the time was short. Howard had asked his campaign
+managers to meet there that night, and also Hendricks and one or two of
+his men, but personally he felt doubtful.
+
+And, as it happened, the meeting developed more enthusiasm than
+optimism. Cardew's withdrawal would be made the most of by the
+opposition. They would play it up as the end of the old regime, the
+beginning of new and better things.
+
+Before midnight the conference broke up, to catch the morning editions.
+Willy Cameron, detained behind the others, saw Lily in the drawing-room
+alone as he passed the door, and hesitated.
+
+"I have been waiting for you, Willy," she said.
+
+But when he went in she seemed to have nothing to say. She sat in a
+low chair, in a soft dark dress which emphasized her paleness. To Willy
+Cameron she had never seemed more beautiful, or more remote.
+
+"Do you remember how you used to whistle 'The Long, Long Trail,' Willy?"
+she said at last. "All evening I have been sitting here thinking what a
+long trail we have both traveled since then."
+
+"A long, hard trail," he assented.
+
+"Only you have gone up, Willy. And I have gone down, into the valley.
+I wish"--she smiled faintly--"I wish you would look down from your peak
+now and then. You never come to see me."
+
+"I didn't know you wanted me," he said bluntly.
+
+"Why shouldn't I want to see you?"
+
+"I couldn't help reminding you of things."
+
+"But I never forget them, anyhow. Sometimes I almost go mad,
+remembering. It isn't quite as selfish as it sounds. I've hurt them all
+so. Willy, do you mind telling me about the girl who opened that letter
+and sent you help?"
+
+"About Edith Boyd? I'd like to tell you, Lily. Her mother is dead, and
+she lost her child. She is in the Memorial Hospital."
+
+"Then she has no one but you?"
+
+"She has a brother."
+
+"Tell me about her sending help that night. She really saved your life,
+didn't she?"
+
+While he was telling her she sat staring straight ahead, her fingers
+interlaced in her lap. She was telling herself that all this could
+not possibly matter to her, that she had cut herself off, finally and
+forever, from the man before her; that she did not even deserve his
+friendship.
+
+Quite suddenly she knew that she did not want his friendship. She wanted
+to see again in his face the look that had been there the night he had
+told her, very simply, that he loved her. And it would never be there;
+it was not there now. She had killed his love. All the light in his face
+was for some one else, another girl, a girl more unfortunate but less
+wicked than herself.
+
+When he stopped she was silent. Then:
+
+"I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not intend
+to tell?"
+
+"That I didn't intend to tell? I have made no reservations, Lily."
+
+"Are you sure? Or don't you realize it yourself?"
+
+"Realize what?" He was greatly puzzled.
+
+"I think, Willy," she said, quietly, "that you care a great deal more
+for Edith Boyd than you think you do."
+
+He looked at her in stupefaction. How could she say that? How could she
+fail to know better than that? And he did not see the hurt behind her
+careful smile.
+
+"You are wrong about that. I--" He made a little gesture of despair. He
+could not tell her now that he loved her. That was all over.
+
+"She is in love with you."
+
+He felt absurd and helpless. He could not deny that, yet how could she
+sit there, cool and faintly smiling, and not know that as she sat there
+so she sat enshrined in his heart. She was his saint, to kneel and pray
+to; and she was his woman, the one woman of his life. More woman than
+saint, he knew, and even for that he loved her. But he did not know the
+barbarous cruelty of the loving woman.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you, Lily," he said, at last. "She--it is
+possible that she thinks she cares, but under the circumstances--"
+
+"Ellen told Mademoiselle you were going to marry her. That's true, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You always said that marriage without love was wicked, Willy."
+
+"Her child had a right to a name. And there were other things. I can't
+very well explain them to you. Her mother was ill. Can't you understand,
+Lily? I don't want to throw any heroics." In his excitement he had
+lapsed into boyish vernacular. "Here was a plain problem, and a simple
+way to solve it. But it is off now, anyhow; things cleared up without
+that."
+
+She got up and held out her hand.
+
+"It was like you to try to save her," she said.
+
+"Does this mean I am to go?"
+
+"I am very tired, Willy."
+
+He had a mad impulse to take her in his arms, and holding her close to
+rest her there. She looked so tired. For fear he might do it he held his
+arms rigidly at his sides.
+
+"You haven't asked me about him," she said unexpectedly.
+
+"I thought you would not care to talk about him. That's over and done,
+Lily. I want to forget about it, myself."
+
+She looked up at him, and had he had Louis Akers' intuitive knowledge of
+women he would have understood then.
+
+"I am never going back to him, Willy. You know that, don't you?"
+
+"I hoped it, of course."
+
+"I know now that I never loved him."
+
+But the hurt of her marriage was still too fresh in him for speech. He
+could not discuss Louis Akers with her.
+
+"No," he said, after a moment, "I don't think you ever did. I'll come in
+some evening, if I may, Lily. I must not keep you up now."
+
+How old he looked, for him! How far removed from those busy, cheerful
+days at the camp! And there were new lines of repression in his face;
+from the nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Above his ears his hair
+showed a faint cast of gray.
+
+"You have been having rather a hard time, Willy, haven't you'?" she
+said, suddenly.
+
+"I have been busy, of course."
+
+"And worried?"
+
+"Sometimes. But things are clearing up now."
+
+She was studying him with the newly opened eyes of love. What was it he
+showed that the other men she knew lacked? Sensitiveness? Kindness? But
+her father was both sensitive and kind. So was Pink, in less degree. In
+the end she answered her own question, and aloud.
+
+"I think it is patience," she said. And to his unspoken question: "You
+are very patient, aren't you?"
+
+"I never thought about it. For heaven's sake don't turn my mind in on
+myself, Lily. I'll be running around in circles like a pup chasing his
+tail."
+
+He made a movement to leave, but she seemed oddly reluctant to let him
+go.
+
+"Do you know that father says you have more influence than any other man
+in the city?"
+
+"That's more kind than truthful."
+
+"And--I think he and grandfather are planning to try to get you, when
+the mills reopen. Father suggested it, but grandfather says you'd have
+the presidency of the company in six months, and he'd be sharpening your
+lead pencils."
+
+Suddenly Willy Cameron laughed, and the tension was broken.
+
+"If he did it with his tongue they'd be pretty sharp," he said.
+
+For just a moment, before he left, they were back to where they had been
+months ago, enjoying together their small jokes and their small mishaps.
+The present fell away, with its hovering tragedy, and they were boy and
+girl together. Exaltation and sacrifice were a part of their love, as
+of all real and lasting passion, but there was always between them also
+that soundest bond of all, liking and comradeship.
+
+"I love her. I like her. I adore her," was the cry in Willy Cameron's
+heart when he started home that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+Elinor Doyle was up and about her room. She walked slowly and with
+difficulty, using crutches, and she spent most of the time at her
+window, watching and waiting. From Lily there came, at frequent
+intervals, notes, flowers and small delicacies. The flowers and food
+Olga brought to her, but the notes she never saw. She knew they came.
+She could see the car stop at the curb, and the chauffeur, his shoulders
+squared and his face watchful, carrying a white envelope up the walk,
+but there it ended.
+
+She felt more helpless than ever. The doctor came less often, but the
+vigilance was never relaxed, and she had, too, less and less hope of
+being able to give any warning. Doyle was seldom at home, and when he
+was he had ceased to give her his taunting information. She was quite
+sure now of his relations with the Russian girl, and her uncertainty
+as to her course was gone. She was no longer his wife. He held another
+woman in his rare embraces, a traitor like himself. It was sordid. He
+was sordid.
+
+Woslosky had developed blood poisoning, and was at the point of death,
+with a stolid policeman on guard at his bedside. She knew that from the
+newspapers she occasionally saw. And she connected Doyle unerringly with
+the tragedy at the farm behind Friendship. She recognized, too, since
+that failure, a change in his manner to her. She saw that he now both
+hated her and feared her, and that she had become only a burden and
+a menace to him. He might decide to do away with her, to kill her.
+He would not do it himself; he never did his own dirty work, but the
+Russian girl--Olga was in love with Jim Doyle. Elinor knew that, as she
+knew many things, by a sort of intuition. She watched them in the room
+together, and she knew that to Doyle the girl was an incident, the
+vehicle of his occasional passion, a strumpet and a tool. He did not
+even like her; she saw him looking at her sometimes with a sort of
+amused contempt. But Olga's somber eyes followed him as he moved, lit
+with passion and sometimes with anger, but always they followed him.
+
+She was afraid of Olga. She did not care particularly about death, but
+it must not come before she had learned enough to be able to send out a
+warning. She thought if it came it might be by poison in the food that
+was sent up, but she had to eat to live. She took to eating only
+one thing on her tray, and she thought she detected in the girl an
+understanding and a veiled derision.
+
+By Doyle's increasing sullenness she knew things were not going well
+with him, and she found a certain courage in that, but she knew him
+too well to believe that he would give up easily. And she drew certain
+deductions from the newspapers she studied so tirelessly. She saw the
+announcement of the unusual number of hunting licenses issued, for one
+thing, and she knew the cover that such licenses furnished armed men
+patrolling the country. The state permitted the sale of fire-arms
+without restriction. Other states did the same, or demanded only the
+formality of a signature, never verified.
+
+Would they never wake to the situation?
+
+She watched the election closely. She knew that if Akers were elected
+the general strike and the chaos to follow would be held back until
+he had taken office and made the necessary changes in the city
+administration, but that if he went down to defeat the Council would
+turn loose its impatient hordes at once.
+
+She waited for election day with burning anxiety. When it came it so
+happened that she was left alone all day in the house. Early in the
+morning Olga brought her a tray and told her she was going out. She was
+changed, the Russian; she had dropped the mask of sodden servility and
+stood before her, erect, cunningly intelligent and oddly powerful.
+
+"I am going to be away all day, Mrs. Doyle," she said, in her excellent
+English. "I have work to do."
+
+"Work?" said Elinor. "Isn't there work to do here?"
+
+"I am not a house-worker. I came to help Mr. Doyle. To-day I shall make
+speeches."
+
+Elinor was playing the game carefully. "But--can you make speeches?" she
+asked.
+
+"Me? That is my work, here, in Russia, everywhere. In Russia it is the
+women who speak, the men who do what the women tell them to do. Here
+some day it will be the same."
+
+Always afterwards Elinor remembered the five minutes that followed, for
+Olga, standing before her, suddenly burst into impassioned oratory.
+She cited the wrongs of the poor under the old regime. She painted in
+glowing colors the new. She was excited, hectic, powerful. Elinor in
+her chair, an aristocrat to the finger-tips, was frightened, interested,
+thrilled.
+
+Long after Olga had gone she sat there, wondering at the real
+conviction, the intensity of passion, of hate and of revenge that
+actuated this newest tool of Doyle's. Doyle and his associates might be
+actuated by self-interest, but the real danger in the movement lay not
+with the Doyles of the world, but with these fanatic liberators. They
+preached to the poor a new religion, not of creed or of Church, but
+of freedom. Freedom without laws of God or of man, freedom of love, of
+lust, of time, of all responsibility. And the poor, weighted with laws
+and cares, longed to throw off their burdens.
+
+Perhaps it was not the doctrine itself that was wrong. It was its
+imposition by force on a world not yet ready for it that was wrong;
+its imposition by violence. It might come, but not this way. Not, God
+preventing, this way.
+
+There was a polling place across the street, in the basement of a school
+house. The vote was heavy and all day men lounged on the pavements,
+smoking and talking. Once she saw Olga in the crowd, and later on Louis
+Akers drove up in an open automobile, handsome, apparently confident,
+and greeted with cheers. But Elinor, knowing him well, gained nothing
+from his face.
+
+Late that night she heard Doyle come in and move about the lower floor.
+She knew every emphasis of his walk, and when in the room underneath she
+heard him settle down to steady, deliberate pacing, she knew that he was
+facing some new situation, and, after his custom, thinking it out alone.
+
+At midnight he came up the stairs and unlocked her door. He entered,
+closing the door behind him, and stood looking at her. His face was so
+strange that she wondered if he had decided to do away with her.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, in an inflectionless voice, "you will be moved by
+automobile to a farm I have selected in the country. You will take only
+such small luggage as the car can carry."
+
+"Is Olga going with me?"
+
+"No. Olga is needed here."
+
+"I suppose I am to understand from this that Louis has been defeated and
+there is no longer any reason for delay in your plans."
+
+"You can understand what you like."
+
+"Am I to know where I am going?"
+
+"You will find that out when you get there. I will tell you this: It is
+a lonely place, without a telephone. You'll be cut off from your family,
+I am afraid."
+
+She gazed at him. It seemed unbelievable to her that she had once lain
+in this man's arms.
+
+"Why don't you kill me, Jim? I know you've thought about it."
+
+"Yes, I've thought of it. But killing is a confession of fear, my dear.
+I am not afraid of you."
+
+"I think you are. You are afraid now to tell me when you are going to
+try to put this wild plan into execution."
+
+He smiled at her with mocking eyes.
+
+"Yes," he agreed again. "I am afraid. You have a sort of diabolical
+ingenuity, not intelligence so much as cunning. But because I always do
+the thing I'm afraid to do, I'll tell you. Of course, if you succeed in
+passing it on--" He shrugged his shoulders. "Very well, then. With your
+usual logic of deduction, you have guessed correctly. Louis Akers has
+been defeated. Your family--and how strangely you are a Cardew!--lost
+its courage at the last moment, and a gentleman named Hendricks is now
+setting up imitation beer and cheap cigars to his friends."
+
+Behind his mocking voice she knew the real fury of the man, kept
+carefully in control by his iron will.
+
+"As you have also correctly surmised," he went on, "there is now nothing
+to be gained by any delay. A very few days, three or four, and--" His
+voice grew hard and terrible--"the first stone in the foundation of
+this capitalistic government will go. Inevitable law, inevitable
+retribution--" His voice trailed off. He turned like a man asleep and
+went toward the door. There he stopped and faced her.
+
+"I've told you," he said darkly. "I am not afraid of you. You can no
+more stop this thing than you can stop living by ceasing to breathe. It
+has come."
+
+She heard him in his room for some time after that, and she surmised
+from the way he moved, from closet to bed and back again, that he was
+packing a bag. At two o'clock she heard Olga coming in; the girl was
+singing in Russian, and Elinor had a sickening conviction that she had
+been drinking. She heard Doyle send her off to bed, his voice angry and
+disgusted, and resume his packing, and ten minutes later she heard a
+car draw up on the street, and knew that he was off, to begin the
+mobilization of his heterogeneous forces.
+
+Ever since she had been able to leave her bed Elinor had been
+formulating a plan of escape. Once the door had been left unlocked, but
+her clothing had been removed from the room, and then, too, she had
+not learned the thing she was waiting for. Now she had clothing, a dark
+dressing gown and slippers, and she had the information. But the door
+was securely locked.
+
+She had often thought of the window, In the day time it frightened her
+to look down, although it fascinated her, too. But at night it seemed
+much simpler. The void below was concealed in the darkness, a soft
+darkness that hid the hard, inhospitable earth. A darkness one could
+fall into and onto.
+
+She was not a brave woman. She had moral rather than physical courage.
+It was easier for her to face Doyle in a black mood than the gulf below
+the window-sill, but she knew now that she must get away, if she were to
+go at all. She got out of bed, and using her crutches carefully moved
+to the sill, trying to accustom herself to the thought of going over the
+edge. The plaster cast on her leg was a real handicap. She must get it
+over first. How heavy it was, and unwieldy!
+
+She found her scissors, and, stripping the bed, sat down to cut and tear
+the bedding into strips. Prisoners escaped that way; she had read about
+such things. But the knots took up an amazing amount of length. It was
+four o'clock in the morning when she had a serviceable rope, and she
+knew it was too short. In the end she tore down the window curtains and
+added them, working desperately against time.
+
+She began to suspect, too, that Olga was not sleeping. She smelled
+faintly the odor of the long Russian cigarettes the girl smoked. She put
+out her light and worked in the darkness, a strange figure of adventure,
+this middle-aged woman with her smooth hair and lined face, sitting in
+her cambric nightgown with her crutches on the floor beside her.
+
+She secured the end of the rope to the foot of her metal bed, pushing
+the bed painfully and cautiously, inch by inch, to the window. And in
+so doing she knocked over the call-bell on the stand, and almost
+immediately she heard Olga moving about.
+
+The girl was coming unsteadily toward the door. If she opened it--
+
+"I don't want anything, Olga," she called, "I knocked the bell over
+accidentally."
+
+Olga hesitated, muttered, moved away again. Elinor was covered with a
+cold sweat.
+
+She began to think of the window as a refuge. Surely nothing outside
+could be so terrible as this house itself. The black aperture seemed
+friendly; it beckoned to her with friendly hands.
+
+She dropped her crutches. They fell with two soft thuds on the earth
+below and it seemed to her that they were a long time in falling. She
+listened after that, but Olga made no sign. Then slowly and painfully
+she worked her injured leg over the sill, and sat there looking down and
+breathing with difficulty. Then she freed her dressing gown around her,
+and slid over the edge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+Election night found various groups in various places. In the back room
+of the Eagle Pharmacy was gathered once again the neighborhood forum, a
+wildly excited forum, which ever and anon pounded Mr. Hendricks on the
+back, and drank round after round of soda water and pop. Doctor Smalley,
+coming in rather late found them all there, calling Mr. Hendricks "Mr.
+Mayor" or "Your Honor," reciting election anecdotes, and prophesying the
+end of the Reds. Only Willy Cameron, sitting on a table near the window,
+was silent.
+
+Mr. Hendricks, called upon for a speech, rose with his soda water glass
+in his hand.
+
+"I've got a toast for you, boys," he said. "You've been talking all
+evening about my winning this election. Well, I've been elected, but I
+didn't win it. It was the plain people of this town who elected me, and
+they did it because my young friend on the table yonder told them to."
+He raised his glass. "Cameron!" he said.
+
+"Cameron! Cameron!" shouted the crowd. "Speech! Cameron!"
+
+But Willy shook his head.
+
+"I haven't any voice left," he said, "and you've heard me say all I know
+a dozen times. The plain truth is that Mr. Hendricks got the election
+because he was the best man, and enough people knew it. That's all."
+
+To Mr. Hendricks the night was one of splendid solemnity. He felt at
+once very strong and very weak, very proud and very humble. He would do
+his best, and if honesty meant anything, the people would have it, but
+he knew that honesty was not enough. The city needed a strong man; he
+hoped that the Good Man who made cities as He made men, both evil and
+good, would lend him a hand with things. As prayer in his mind was
+indissolubly connected with church, he made up his mind to go to church
+the next Sunday and get matters straightened out.
+
+At the same time another group was meeting at the Benedict.
+
+Louis Akers had gone home early. By five o'clock he knew that the
+chances were against him, but he felt a real lethargy as to the outcome.
+He had fought, and fought hard, but it was only the surface mind of him
+that struggled. Only the surface mind of him hated, and had ambitions,
+dreamed revenge. Underneath that surface mind was a sore that ate like a
+cancer, and that sore was his desertion by Lily Cardew. For once in his
+life he suffered, who had always inflicted pain.
+
+At six o'clock Doyle had called him on the telephone and told him that
+Woslosky was dead, but the death of the Pole had been discounted in
+advance, and already his place had been filled by a Russian agent, who
+had taken the first syllable of his name and called himself Ross. Louis
+Akers heard the news apathetically, and went back to his chair again.
+
+By eight o'clock he knew that he had lost the election, but that, too,
+seemed relatively unimportant. He was not thinking coherently, but
+certain vague ideas floated through his mind. There was a law of
+compensation in the universe: it was all rot to believe that one was
+paid or punished in the hereafter for what one did. Hell was real, but
+it was on earth and its place was in a man's mind. He couldn't get away
+from it, because each man carried his own hell around with him. It was
+all stored up there; nothing he had done was left out, and the more he
+put into it the more he got out, when the time came.
+
+This was his time.
+
+Ross and Doyle, with one or two others, found him there at nine o'clock,
+an untasted meal on the table, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes on
+the hearth. In the conference that followed he took but little part. The
+Russian urged immediate action, and Doyle by a saturnine silence tacitly
+agreed with him. But Louis only half heard them. His mind was busy with
+that matter of hell. Only once he looked up. Ross was making use of the
+phrase: "Militant minority."
+
+"Militant minority!" he said scornfully, "you overwork that idea, Ross.
+What we've got here now is a militant majority, and that's what elected
+Hendricks. You're licked before you begin. And my advice is, don't
+begin."
+
+But they laughed at him.
+
+"You act like a whipped dog," Doyle said, "crawling under the doorstep
+for fear somebody else with a strap comes along."
+
+"They're organized against us. We could have put it over six months ago.
+Not now."
+
+"Then you'd better get out," Doyle said, shortly.
+
+"I'm thinking of it."
+
+But Doyle had no real fear of him. He was sulky. Well, let him sulk.
+
+Akers relapsed into silence. His interest in the conspiracy had always
+been purely self-interest; he had never had Woslosky's passion, or
+Doyle's cold fanaticism. They had carried him off his feet with their
+promises, but how much were they worth? They had failed to elect him.
+Every bit of brains, cunning and resource in their organization had been
+behind him, and they had failed.
+
+This matter of hell, now? Suppose one put by something on the other
+account? Suppose one turned square? Wouldn't that earn something?
+Suppose that one went to the Cardews and put all his cards on the table,
+asking nothing in return? Suppose one gave up the by-paths of life,
+and love in a hedgerow, and did the other thing? Wouldn't that earn
+something?
+
+He roused himself and took a perfunctory part in the conversation, but
+his mind obstinately returned to itself. He knew every rendezvous of the
+Red element in the country; he knew where their literature was printed;
+he knew the storehouses of arms and ammunition, and the plans for
+carrying on the city government by the strikers after the reign of
+terrorization which was to subdue the citizens.
+
+Suppose he turned informer? Could he set a price, and that price Lily?
+But he discarded that. He was not selling now, he was earning. He would
+set himself right first, and--provided the government got the leaders
+before those leaders got him, as they would surely try to do--he would
+have earned something, surely.
+
+Lily had come to him once when he called. She might come again, when he
+had earned her.
+
+Doyle sat back in his chair and watched him. He saw that he had gone
+to pieces under defeat, and men did strange things at those times. With
+uncanny shrewdness he gauged Akers' reaction; his loss of confidence
+and, he surmised, his loyalty. He would follow his own interest now, and
+if he thought that it lay in turning informer, he might try it. But it
+would take courage.
+
+When the conference broke up Doyle was sure of where his man stood.
+He was not worried. They did not need Akers any longer. He had been a
+presentable tool, a lay figure to give the organization front, and they
+had over-rated him, at that. He had failed them. Doyle, watching him
+contemptuously, realized in him his own fallacious judgment, and hated
+Akers for proving him wrong.
+
+Outside the building Doyle drew the Russian aside, and spoke to him.
+Ross started, then grinned.
+
+"You're wrong," he said. "He won't try it. But of course he may, and
+we'll see that he doesn't get away with it."
+
+From that time on Louis Akers was under espionage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+DOCTOR Smalley was by way of achieving a practice. During his morning
+and evening office hours he had less and less time to read the papers
+and the current magazines in his little back office, or to compare the
+month's earnings, visit by visit, with the same month of the previous
+year.
+
+He took to making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather to
+the outrage of various head nurses, who did not like the staff to come
+a-visiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every
+bed corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed and combed and
+temperatured, and in the exact center of the bed.
+
+Interns were different. They were like husbands. They came and went,
+seeing things at their worst as well as at their best, but mostly at
+their worst. Like husbands, too, they developed a sort of philosophy as
+to the early morning, and would only make occasional remarks, such as:
+
+"Cyclone struck you this morning, or anything?"
+
+Doctor Smalley, being a bachelor, was entirely blind to the early
+morning deficiencies of his wards. Besides, he was young and had had a
+cold shower and two eggs and various other things, and he saw the
+world at eight A.M. as a good place. He would get into his little car,
+whistling, and driving through the market square he would sometimes
+stop and buy a bag of apples for the children's ward, or a bunch of
+fall flowers. Thus armed, it was impossible for the most austere of head
+nurses to hate him.
+
+"We're not straightened up yet, doctor," they would say.
+
+"Looks all right to me," he would reply cheerfully, and cast an eager
+eye over the ward. To him they were all his children, large and small,
+and if he did not exactly carry healing in his wings, having no wings,
+he brought them courage and a breath of fresh morning air, slightly
+tinged with bay rum, and the feeling that this was a new day. A new
+page, on which to write such wonderful things (in the order book) as:
+"Jennie may get up this afternoon." Or: "Lizzie Smith, small piece of
+beef steak."
+
+On the morning after the election Doctor Smalley rose unusually early,
+and did five minutes of dumb bells, breathing very deep before his
+window, having started the cold water in the tub first. At the end of
+that time he padded in his bare feet to the top of the stairs and called
+in a huge, deep-breathing voice:
+
+"Ten minutes."
+
+These two cryptic words seeming to be perfectly understood below,
+followed the sound of a body plunging into water, a prolonged "Wow!"
+from the bathroom, and noisy hurried splashing. Dressing was a rapid
+process, due to a method learned during college days, which consists
+of wearing as little as possible, and arranging it at night so that two
+thrusts (trousers and under-drawers), one enveloping gesture (shirt and
+under-shirt), and a gymnastic effort of standing first on one leg and
+then on the other (socks and shoes), made a fairly completed toilet.
+
+While putting on his collar and tie the doctor stood again by the
+window, and lustily called the garage across the narrow street.
+
+"Jim!" he yelled. "Annabelle breakfasted yet?"
+
+Annabelle was his shabby little car.
+
+Annabelle had breakfasted, on gasoline, oil and water. The doctor
+finished tying his tie, singing lustily, and went to the door. At the
+door he stopped singing, put on a carefully professional air, restrained
+an impulse to slide down the stair-rail, and descended with the
+dignity of a man with a growing practice and a possible patient in the
+waiting-room.
+
+At half-past seven he was on his way to the hospital. He stopped at the
+market and bought three dozen oranges out of a ten-dollar bill he had
+won on the election, and almost bought a live rabbit because it looked
+so dreary in its slatted box. He restrained himself, because his
+housekeeper had a weakness for stewed rabbit, and turned into Cardew
+Way. He passed the Doyle house slowly, inspecting it as he went, because
+he had a patient there, and because he had felt that there was something
+mysterious about the household, quite aside from the saturnine Doyle
+himself. He knew all about Doyle, of course; all, that is, that there
+was to know, but he was a newcomer to the city, and he did not know that
+Doyle's wife was a Cardew. Sometimes he had felt that he was under
+a sort of espionage all the time he was in the house. But that was
+ridiculous, wasn't it? Because they could not know that he was on the
+Vigilance Committee.
+
+There was something curious about one of the windows. He slowed
+Annabelle and gazed at it. That was strange; there was a sort of white
+rope hanging from Mrs. Doyle's window.
+
+He stopped Annabelle and stared. Then he drew up to the curb and got out
+of the car. He was rather uneasy when he opened the gate and started up
+the walk, but there was no movement of life in the house. At the foot of
+the steps he saw something, and almost stopped breathing. Behind a clump
+of winter-bare shrubbery was what looked like a dark huddle of clothing.
+
+It was incredible.
+
+He parted the branches and saw Elinor Doyle lying there, conscious and
+white with pain. Perhaps never in his life was Doctor Smalley to be so
+rewarded as with the look in her eyes when she saw him.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Doyle!" was all he could think to say.
+
+"I have broken my other leg, doctor," she said, "the rope gave way."
+
+"You come down that rope?"
+
+"I tried to. I was a prisoner. Don't take me back to the house, doctor.
+Don't take me back!"
+
+"Of course I'll not take you back," he said, soothingly. "I'll carry you
+out to my car. It may hurt, but try to be quiet. Can you get your arms
+around my neck?"
+
+She managed that, and he raised her slowly, but the pain must have been
+frightful, for a moment later he felt her arms relax and knew that she
+had fainted. He got to the car somehow, kicked the oranges into the
+gutter, and placed her, collapsed, on the seat. It was only then that
+he dared to look behind him, but the house, like the street, was without
+signs of life. As he turned the next corner, however, he saw Doyle
+getting off a streetcar, and probably never before had Annabelle made
+such speed as she did for the next six blocks.
+
+Hours later Elinor Cardew wakened in a quiet room with gray walls, and
+with the sickening sweet odor of ether over everything. Instead of Olga
+a quiet nurse sat by her bed, and standing by a window, in low-voiced
+conversation, were two men. One she knew, the doctor. The other, a tall
+young man with a slight limp as he came toward her, she had never seen
+before. A friendly young man, thin, and grave of voice, who put a hand
+over hers and said:
+
+"You are not to worry about anything, Mrs. Doyle. You understand me,
+don't you? Everything is all right. I am going now to get your people."
+
+"My husband?"
+
+"Your own people," he said. "I have already telephoned to your brother.
+And the leg's fixed. Everything's as right as rain."
+
+Elinor closed her eyes. She felt no pain and no curiosity. Only there
+was something she had to do, and do quickly. What was it? But she could
+not remember, because she felt very sleepy and relaxed, and as though
+everything was indeed as right as rain.
+
+It was evening when she looked up again, and the room was dark. The
+doctor had gone, and the grave young man was still in the room. There
+was another figure there, tall and straight, and at first she thought it
+was Jim Doyle.
+
+"Jim!" she said. And then: "You must go away, Jim. I warn you. I am
+going to tell all I know."
+
+But the figure turned, and it was Howard Cardew, a tense and strained
+Howard Cardew, who loomed amazingly tall and angry, but not with her.
+
+"I'm sorry, Nellie dear," he said, bending over her. "If we'd only
+known--can you talk now?"
+
+Her mind was suddenly very clear.
+
+"I must. There is very little time."
+
+"I want to tell you something first, Nellie. I think we have located the
+Russian woman, but we haven't got Doyle."
+
+Howard was not very subtle, but Willy Cameron saw her face and
+understood. It was strange beyond belief, he felt, this loyalty of women
+to their men, even after love had gone; this feeling that, having once
+lain in a man's arms, they have taken a vow of protection over that man.
+It was not so much that they were his as that he was theirs. Jim Doyle
+had made her a prisoner, had treated her brutally, was a traitor to her
+and to his country, but--he had been hers. She was glad that he had got
+away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+It was dark when Howard Cardew and Willy Cameron left the hospital.
+Elinor's information had been detailed and exact. Under cover of the
+general strike the radical element intended to take over the city.
+On the evening of the first day of the strike, armed groups from the
+revolutionary party would proceed first to the municipal light plant,
+and, having driven out any employees who remained at their posts,
+or such volunteers as had replaced them, would plunge the city into
+darkness.
+
+Elinor was convinced that following this would come various bomb
+outrages, perhaps a great number of them, but of this she had no
+detailed information. What she did know, however, was the dependence
+that Doyle and the other leaders were placing in the foreign element
+in the nearby mill towns and from one or two mining districts in the
+county.
+
+Around the city, in the mill towns, there were more than forty thousand
+foreign laborers. Subtract from that the loyal aliens, but add a certain
+percentage of the native-born element, members of seditious societies
+and followers of the red flag, and the Reds had a potential army of
+dangerous size.
+
+As an actual fighting force they were much less impressive. Only a small
+percentage, she knew and told them, were adequately armed. There were
+a few machine guns, and some long-range rifles, but by far the greater
+number had only revolvers. The remainder had extemporized weapons, bars
+of iron, pieces of pipe, farm implements, lances of wood tipped with
+iron and beaten out on home forges.
+
+They were a rabble, not an army, without organization and with few
+leaders. Their fighting was certain to be as individualistic as their
+doctrines. They had two elements in their favor only, numbers and
+surprise.
+
+To oppose them, if the worst came, there were perhaps five thousand
+armed men, including the city and county police, the state constabulary,
+and the citizens who had signed the cards of the Vigilance Committee.
+The local post of the American Legion stood ready for instant service,
+and a few national guard troops still remained in the vicinity. "What
+they expect," she said, looking up from her pillows with tragic eyes,
+"is that the police and the troops will join them. You don't think they
+will, do you?"
+
+They reassured her, and after a time she slept again. When she wakened,
+at midnight, the room was empty save for a nurse reading under a night
+lamp behind a screen. Elinor was not in pain. She lay there, listening
+to the night sounds of the hospital, the watchman shuffling along the
+corridor in slippers, the closing of a window, the wail of a newborn
+infant far away.
+
+There was a shuffling of feet in the street below, the sound of many
+men, not marching but grimly walking, bent on some unknown errand. The
+nurse opened the window and looked out.
+
+"That's queer!" she said. "About thirty men, and not saying a word. They
+walk like soldiers, but they're not in uniform."
+
+Elinor pondered that, but it was not for some days that she knew that
+Pink Denslow and a picked number of volunteers from the American Legion
+had that night, quite silently and unemotionally, broken into the
+printing office where Doyle and Akers had met Cusick, and had, not so
+silently but still unemotionally, destroyed the presses and about a ton
+of inflammatory pamphlets.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+There was a little city, and few men within it; And there came a great
+king against it, and besieged it, And built great bulwarks against
+it; Now there was found in it a Poor Wise Man, And he by his wisdom
+delivered the city.--Ecclesiastes IX:14, 15.
+
+The general strike occurred two days later, at mid-day. During the
+interval a joint committee representing the workers, the employers and
+the public had held a protracted sitting, but without result, and by
+one o'clock the city was in the throes of a complete tie-up. Laundry and
+delivery wagons were abandoned where they stood. Some of the street cars
+had been returned to the barns, but others stood in the street where the
+crews had deserted them.
+
+There was no disorder, however, and the city took its difficulties with
+a quiet patience and a certain sense of humor. Bulletins similar to the
+ones used in Seattle began to appear.
+
+"Strikers, the world is the workers' for the taking, and the workers are
+the vast majority in society. Your interests are paramount to those of a
+small, useless band of parasites who exploit you to their advantage. You
+have nothing to lose but your chains and you have a world to gain. The
+world for the workers."
+
+There was one ray of light in the darkness, however. The municipal
+employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go
+dark that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange
+psychology of the mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and by
+three o'clock that afternoon the light plant and city water supply had
+been secured against attack by effectual policing. The power plant for
+the car lines was likewise protected, and at five o'clock a line of
+street cars, stalled on Amanda Street, began to show signs of life.
+
+The first car was boarded by a half dozen youngish men, unobtrusively
+ready for trouble, and headed by a tall youth who limped slightly and
+wore an extremely anxious expression. He went forward and commenced
+a series of experiments with levers and brake, in which process
+incidentally he liberated a quantity of sand onto the rails. A moment
+later the car lurched forward, and then stopped with a jerk.
+
+Willy Cameron looked behind him and grinned. The entire guard was piled
+in an ignoble mass on the floor.
+
+By six o'clock volunteer crews were running a number of cars, and had
+been subjected to nothing worse than abuse. Strikers lined the streets
+and watched them, but the grim faces of the guards kept them back. They
+jeered from the curbs, but except for the flinging of an occasional
+stone they made no inimical move.
+
+By eight o'clock it was clear that the tie-up would be only partial.
+Volunteers from all walks of life were in line at the temporary
+headquarters of the Vigilance Committee and were being detailed, for
+police duty, to bring in the trains with the morning milk, to move
+street cars and trucks. The water plant and the reservoirs were
+protected. Willy Cameron, abandoning his car after the homeward rush of
+the evening, found a line before the Committee Building which extended
+for blocks down the street.
+
+Troops had been sent for, but it took time to mobilize and move them.
+It would be morning before they arrived. And the governor, over the long
+distance wire to the mayor, was inclined to be querulous.
+
+"We'll send them, of course," he said. "But if the strikers are keeping
+quiet--I don't know what the country's coming to. We're holding a
+conference here now. There's rioting breaking out all over the state."
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+There was a conference held in the Mayor's office that night: Cameron
+and Cardew and one or two others of the Vigilance Committee, two agents
+of the government secret service, the captains of the companies of state
+troops and constabulary, the Chief of Police, the Mayor himself, and
+some representatives of the conservative element of organized labor.
+Quiet men, these last, uneasy and anxious, as ignorant as the others of
+which way the black cat, the symbol of sabotage and destruction, would
+jump. The majority of their men would stand for order, they declared,
+but there were some who would go over. They urged, to offset that
+reflection on their organization that the proletariat of the city might
+go over, too.
+
+But, by midnight, it seemed as though the situation was solving itself.
+In the segregated district there had been a small riot, and another
+along the river front, disturbances quickly ended by the police and
+the volunteer deputies. The city had not gone dark. The bombs had not
+exploded. Word came in that by back roads and devious paths the most
+rabid of the agitators were leaving town. And before two o'clock Howard
+Cardew and some of the others went home to bed.
+
+At three o'clock the Cardew doorbell rang, and Howard, not asleep,
+flung on his dressing gown and went out into the hall. Lily was in her
+doorway, intent and anxious.
+
+"Don't answer it, father," she begged. "You don't know what it may be."
+
+Howard smiled, but went back and got his revolver. The visitor was Willy
+Cameron.
+
+"I don't like to waken you," he said, "but word has come in of
+suspicious movements at Baxter and Friendship, and one or two other
+places. It looks like concerted action of some sort."
+
+"What sort of concerted action?"
+
+"They still have one card to play. The foreign element outside hasn't
+been heard from. It looks as though the fellows who left town to-night
+have been getting busy up the river."
+
+"They wouldn't be such fools as to come to the city."
+
+"They've been made a lot of promises. They may be out of hand, you
+know."
+
+While Howard was hastily dressing, Willy Cameron waited below. He caught
+a glimpse of himself in the big mirror and looked away. His face was
+drawn and haggard, his eyes hollow and his collar a wilted string. He
+was dusty and shabby, too, and to Lily, coming down the staircase, he
+looked almost ill.
+
+Lily was in a soft negligee garment, her bare feet thrust into slippers,
+but she was too anxious to be self-conscious.
+
+"Willy," she said, "there is trouble after all?"
+
+"Not in the city. Things are not so quiet up the river."
+
+She placed a hand on his arm.
+
+"Are you and father going up the river?"
+
+He explained, after a momentary hesitation. "It may crystallize into
+something, or it may not," he finished.
+
+"You think it will, don't you?"
+
+"It will be nothing more, at the worst, than rioting."
+
+"But you may be hurt!"
+
+"I may have one chance to fight for my country," he said, rather grimly.
+"Don't begrudge me that." But he added: "I'll not be hurt. The thing
+will blow up as soon as it starts."
+
+"You don't really believe that, do you?"
+
+"I know they'll never get into the city."
+
+But as he moved away she called him back, more breathlessly than ever,
+and quite white.
+
+"I don't want you to go without knowing--Willy, do you remember once
+that you said you cared for me?"
+
+"I remember." He stared straight ahead.
+
+"Are you--all over that?"
+
+"You know better than that, don't you?"
+
+"But I've done so many things," she said, wistfully. "You ought to hate
+me." And when he said nothing, for the simple reason that he could not
+speak: "I've ruined us both, haven't I?"
+
+Suddenly he caught up her hand and, bending over it, held it to his
+lips.
+
+"Always," he said, huskily, "I love you, Lily. I shall always love you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+Howard went back to the municipal building, driving furiously through
+the empty streets. The news was ominous. Small bodies of men, avoiding
+the highways, were focusing at different points in the open country.
+The state police had been fired at from ambush, and two of them had been
+killed. They had ridden into and dispersed various gatherings in the
+darkness, but only to have them re-form in other places. The enemy was
+still shadowy, elusive; it was apparently saving its ammunition. It
+did little shooting, but reports of the firing of farmhouses and of
+buildings in small, unprotected towns began to come in rapidly.
+
+In a short time the messages began to be more significant, indicating
+that the groups were coalescing and that a revolutionary army, with the
+city its objective, was coming down the river, evidently making for the
+bridge at Chester Street.
+
+"They've lighted a fire they can't put out," was Howard's comment. His
+mouth was very dry and his face twitching, for he saw, behind the frail
+barrier of the Chester Street bridge, the quiet houses of the city, the
+sleeping children. He saw Grace and Lily, and Elinor. He was among the
+first to reach the river front.
+
+All through the dawn volunteers labored at the bridge head. Members
+of the Vigilance Committee, policemen and firemen, doctors, lawyers,
+clerks, shop-keepers, they looted the river wharves with willing,
+unskillful hands. They turned coal wagons on their sides, carried
+packing cases and boxes, and, under the direction of men who wore the
+Legion button, built skillfully and well. Willy Cameron toiled with
+the others. He lifted and pulled and struggled, and in the midst of
+his labor he had again that old dream of the city. The city was a vast
+number of units, and those units were homes. Behind each of those men
+there was, somewhere, in some quiet neighborhood, a home. It was for
+their homes they were fighting, for the right of children to play in
+peaceful streets, for the right to go back at night to the rest they had
+earned by honest labor, for the right of the hearth, of lamp-light and
+sunlight, of love, of happiness.
+
+Then, in the flare of a gasoline torch, he came face to face with Louis
+Akers. The two men confronted each other, silently, with hostility.
+Neither moved aside, but it was Akers who spoke first.
+
+"Always busy, Cameron," he said. "What'd the world do without you,
+anyhow?"
+
+"Aren't you on the wrong side of this barricade?"
+
+"Smart as ever," Akers observed, watching him intently. "As it happens,
+I'm here because I want to be, and because I can't get where I ought to
+be."
+
+For a furious moment Willy Cameron thought he was referring to his wife,
+but there was something strange in Akers' tone.
+
+"I could be useful to you fellows," he was saying, "but it seems you
+don't want help. I've been trying to see the Mayor all night."
+
+"What do you want to see him about?"
+
+"I'll tell him that."
+
+Willy Cameron hesitated.
+
+"I think it's a trick, Akers."
+
+"All right. Then go to the devil!"
+
+He turned away sullenly, leaving Willy Cameron still undecided. It would
+be like the man as he knew him, this turning informer when he saw the
+strength of the defense, and Cameron had a flash of intuition, too, that
+Akers might see, in this new role, some possible chance to win back with
+Lily Cardew. He saw how the man's cheap soul might dramatize itself.
+
+"Akers!" he called.
+
+Akers stopped, but he did not turn.
+
+"I've got a car here. If you mean what you say, and it's straight, I'll
+take you."
+
+"Where's the car?"
+
+On their way to it, threading in and out among the toiling crowd,
+Willy Cameron had a chance to observe the change in the other man, his
+drooping shoulders and the almost lassitude of his walk. He went ahead,
+charging the mass and going through it by sheer bulk and weight, his
+hands in his coat pockets, his soft hat pulled low over his face.
+Neither of them noticed that one of the former clerks of the Myers
+Housecleaning Company followed close behind, or that, holding to a tire,
+he rode on the rear of the Cardew automobile as it made its way into the
+center of the city.
+
+In the car Akers spoke only once.
+
+"Where is Howard Cardew?" he asked.
+
+"With the Mayor, probably. I left him there."
+
+It seemed to him that Akers found the answer satisfactory. He sat back
+in the deep seat, and lighted a cigarette.
+
+The Municipal Building was under guard. Willy Cameron went up the steps
+and spoke to the sentry there. It was while his back was turned that the
+sharp crack of a revolver rang out, and he whirled, in time to see Louis
+Akers fall forward on his face and lie still.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+The shadowy groups through the countryside had commenced to coalesce.
+Groups of twenty became a rabble of five hundred. The five hundred grew,
+and joined other five hundreds. From Baxter alone over two thousand
+rioters, mostly foreigners, started out, and by daylight the main body
+of the enemy reached the outskirts of the city, a long, irregular line
+of laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly renewed at the rear
+until the procession covered miles of roadway. They were of all races
+and all types; individually they were, many of them, like boys playing
+truant from school, not quite certain of themselves, smiling and yet
+uneasy, not entirely wicked in intent. But they were shepherded by men
+with cunning eyes, men who knew well that a mob is greater than the
+sum of its parts, more wicked than the individuals who compose it, more
+cruel, more courageous.
+
+As it marched it laughed. It was like a lion at play, ready to leap at
+the first scratch that brought blood.
+
+Where the street car line met the Friendship Road the advance was met
+by the Chief of Police, on horseback and followed by a guard of mounted
+men, and ordered back. The van hesitated, but it was urged ahead,
+pushed on by the irresistible force behind it, and it came on no longer
+singing, but slowly, inevitably, sullenly protesting and muttering. Its
+good nature was gone.
+
+As the Chief turned his horse was shot under him. He took another horse
+from one of his guard, and they retired, moving slowly and with drawn
+revolvers. There was no further shooting at that time, nothing but
+the irresistible advance. The police could no more have held the armed
+rabble than they could have held the invading hordes in Belgium. At the
+end of the street the Chief stopped and looked back. They had passed
+over his dead horse as though it were not there.
+
+In the mill district, which they had now reached, they received
+reenforcements, justifying the judgment of the conference that to have
+erected their barricades there would have been to expose the city's
+defenders to attack from the rear. And the mill district suffered
+comparatively little. It was the business portion of the city toward
+which they turned their covetous eyes, the great stores, the hotels and
+restaurants, the homes of the wealthy.
+
+Pleased by the lack of opposition the mob grew more cheerful. The lion
+played. They pressed forward, wanton and jeering, firing now and then at
+random, breaking windows as they passed, looting small shops which they
+stripped like locusts. Their pockets bulging, and the taste of pillage
+forecasting what was to come, they moved onward more rapidly, shooting
+at upper windows or into the air, laughing, yelling, cursing, talking.
+From the barricades, long before the miles-long column came into view,
+could be heard the ominous far-off muttering of the mob.
+
+It was when they found the bridge barricaded on the far side, however,
+that the lion bared its teeth and snarled. Temporarily checked by the
+play of machine guns which swept the bridge and kept it clear for a
+time, they commenced wild, wasteful firing, from the bridge-head and
+from along the Cardew wharves. Their leaders were prepared, and sent
+snipers into the bridge towers, but the machine guns continued to fire.
+
+That the struggle would be on the bridge Doyle and his Council had
+anticipated from the reports of the night before. They were prepared
+to take a heavy loss on the bridges, but they had not prepared for the
+thing that defeated them; that as the mob is braver than the individual,
+so also it is more cowardly.
+
+Pushed forward from the rear and unable to retreat through the dense
+mass behind that was every moment growing denser, a few hundreds
+found themselves facing the steady machine-gun fire from behind the
+barricades, and unable either to advance or to retire. Thus trapped,
+they turned on their own forces behind them, and tried to fight their
+way to safety, but the inexorable pressure kept on, and the defenders,
+watching and powerless, saw men fling themselves from the bridges and
+disappear in the water below, rather than advance into the machine-gun
+zone. The guns were not firing into the rioters, but before them, to
+hold them back, and into that leaden stream there were no brave spirits
+to hurl themselves.
+
+The trapped men turned on their own and battled for escape. With the
+same violence which had been directed toward the city they now fought
+each other, and the bridge slowly cleared. But the mob did not disperse.
+
+It spread out on the bank across, a howling, frustrated, futile mass,
+disorganized and demoralized, which fired its useless guns across the
+river, which seethed and tossed and struggled, and spent itself in its
+own wild fury. And all the time cool-eyed men, on the wharves across,
+watched and waited for the time to attack.
+
+"They're sick at their stomachs now," said an old army sergeant,
+watching, to Willy Cameron. "The dirty devils! They'll be starting their
+filthy work over there soon, and that's the zero hour."
+
+Willy Cameron nodded. He had seen one young Russian boy with a
+child-like face venture forward alone into the fire zone and drop. He
+still lay there, on the bridge. And all of Willy Cameron was in revolt.
+What had he been told, that boy, that had made him ready to pour out
+his young life like wine? There were others like him in that milling
+multitude on the river bank across, young men who had come to America
+with a dream in their hearts, and America had done this to them. Or had
+she? She had taken them in, but they were not her own, and now, since
+she would not take them, they would take her. Was that it? Was it that
+America had made them her servants, but not her children? He did not
+know.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+Robbed of the city proper, the mob turned on the mill district it
+had invaded. Its dream of lust and greed was over, but it could still
+destroy.
+
+Like a battle charge, as indeed it was, the mounted city and state
+police crossed the bridge. It was followed by the state troops on foot,
+by city policemen in orderly files, and then by the armed citizens.
+The bridge vibrated to the step of marching men, going out to fight for
+their homes. The real battle was fought there, around the Cardew mills,
+a battle where the loyalists were greatly outnumbered, and where the
+rioters fought, according to their teaching, with every trick they could
+devise. Posted in upper windows they fired down from comparative safety;
+ambulances crossed and re-crossed the bridges. The streets were filled
+with rioting men, striking out murderously with bars and spikes. Fires
+flamed up and burned themselves out. In one place, eight blocks of
+mill-workers' houses, with their furnishings, went in a quarter of an
+hour.
+
+Willy Cameron was fighting like a demon. Long ago his reserve of
+ammunition had given out, and he was fighting with the butt end of his
+revolver. Around him had rallied some of the men he knew best, Pink and
+Mr. Hendricks, Doctor Smalley, Dan and Joe Wilkinson, and they stayed
+together as, street by street, the revolutionists were driven back.
+There were dead and wounded everywhere, injured men who had crawled into
+the shelter of doorways and sat or lay there, nursing their wounds.
+
+Suddenly, to his amazement, Willy saw old Anthony Cardew. He had somehow
+achieved an upper window of the mill office building, and he was showing
+himself fearlessly, a rifle in his hands; in his face was a great anger,
+but there was more than that. Willy Cameron, thinking it over later,
+decided that it was perplexity. He could not understand.
+
+He never did understand. For other eyes also had seen old Anthony
+Cardew. Willy Cameron, breasting the mob and fighting madly toward the
+door of the building, with Pink behind him, heard a cheer and an angry
+roar, and, looking up, saw that the old man had disappeared. They found
+him there later on, the rifle beside him, his small and valiant figure
+looking, with eyes no longer defiant, toward the Heaven which puts, for
+its own strange purpose, both evil and good into the same heart.
+
+By eleven o'clock the revolution was over. Sodden groups of men,
+thoroughly cowed and frightened, were on their way by back roads to the
+places they had left a few hours before. They had no longer dreams of
+empire. Behind them they could see, on the horizon, the city itself,
+the smoke from its chimneys, the spires of its churches. Both, homes
+and churches, they had meant to destroy, but behind both there was the
+indestructible. They had failed.
+
+They turned, looked back, and went on.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+On the crest of a hill-top overlooking the city a man was standing,
+looking down to where the softened towers of the great steel bridges
+rose above the river mist like fairy towers. Below him lay the city,
+powerful, significant, important.
+
+The man saw the city only as a vast crucible, into which he had flung
+his all, and out of which had come only defeat and failure. But the
+city was not a crucible. The melting pot of a nation is not a thing of
+cities, but of the human soul.
+
+The city was not a melting pot. It was a sanctuary. The man stood silent
+and morose, his chin dropped on his chest, and stared down.
+
+Beside and somewhat behind him stood a woman, a somber, passionate
+figure, waiting passively. His eyes traveled from the city to her, and
+rested on her, contemptuous, thwarted, cynical.
+
+"You fool," he said, "I hate you, and you know it."
+
+But she only smiled faintly. "We'd better get away now, Jim," she said.
+
+He got into the car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+Late that afternoon Joe Wilkinson and Dan came slowly up the street,
+toward the Boyd house. The light of battle was still in Dan's eyes, his
+clothes were torn and his collar missing, and he walked with the fine
+swagger of the conqueror.
+
+"Y'ask me," he said, "and I'll tell the world this thing's done for. It
+was just as well to let them give it a try, and find out it won't work."
+
+Joe said nothing. He was white and very tired, and a little sick.
+
+"If you don't mind I'll go in your place and wash up," he remarked, as
+they neared the house. "I'll scare the kids to death if they see me like
+this."
+
+Edith was in the parlor. She had sat there almost all day, in an agony
+of fear. At four o'clock the smallest Wilkinson had hammered at the
+front door, and on being admitted had made a shameless demand.
+
+"Bed and thugar," she had said, looking up with an ingratiating smile.
+
+"You little beggar!"
+
+"Bed and thugar."
+
+Edith had got the bread and sugar, and, having lured the baby into
+the parlor, had held her while she ate, receiving now and then an
+exceedingly sticky kiss in payment. After a little the child's head
+began to droop, and Edith drew the small head down onto her breast. She
+sat there, rocking gently, while the chair slowly traveled, according to
+its wont, about the room.
+
+The child brought her comfort. She began to understand those grave
+rocking figures in the hospital ward, women who sat, with eyes that
+seemed to look into distant places, with a child's head on their
+breasts.
+
+After all, that was life for a woman. Love was only a part of the scheme
+of life, a means to an end. And that end was the child.
+
+For the first time she wished that her child had lived.
+
+She felt no bitterness now, and no anger. He was dead. It was hard to
+think of him as dead, who had been so vitally alive. She was sorry he
+had had to die, but death was like love and children, it was a part of
+some general scheme of things. Suppose this had been his child she was
+holding? Would she so easily have forgiven him? She did not know.
+
+Then she thought of Willy Cameron. The bitterness had strangely gone
+out of that, too. Perhaps, vaguely, she began to realize that only young
+love gives itself passionately and desperately, when there is no hope of
+a return, and that the agonies of youth, although terrible enough, pass
+with youth itself.
+
+She felt very old.
+
+Joe found her there, the chair displaying its usual tendency to climb
+the chimney flue, and stood in the doorway, looking at her with haunted,
+hungry eyes. There was a sort of despair in Joe those days, and now he
+was tired and shaken from the battle.
+
+"I'll take her home in a minute," he said, still with the strange eyes.
+
+He came into the room, and suddenly he was kneeling beside the chair,
+his head buried against the baby's warm, round body. His bent shoulders
+shook, and Edith, still with the maternal impulse strong within her, put
+her hand on his bowed head.
+
+"Don't, Joe!"
+
+He looked up.
+
+"I loved you so, Edith!"
+
+"Don't you love me now?"
+
+"God knows I do. I can't get over it. I can't. I've tried, Edith."
+
+He sat back on the floor and looked at her.
+
+"I can't," he repeated. "And when I saw you like that just now, with the
+kid in your arms--I used to think that maybe you and I--"
+
+"I know, Joe. No decent man would want me now."
+
+She was still strangely composed, peaceful, almost detached.
+
+"That!" he said, astonished. "I don't mean that, Edith. I've had my
+fight about that, and got it over. That's done with. I mean--" he got up
+and straightened himself. "You don't care about me."
+
+"But I do care for you. Perhaps not quite the way you care, Joe, but
+I've been through such a lot. I can't seem to feel anything terribly. I
+just want peace."
+
+"I could give you that," he said eagerly.
+
+Edith smiled. Peace, in that noisy house next door, with children and
+kittens and puppies everywhere! And yet it would be peace, after all,
+a peace of the soul, the peace of a good man's love. After a time, too,
+there might come another peace, the peace of those tired women in the
+ward, rocking.
+
+"If you want me, I'll marry you," she said, very simply. "I'll be a good
+wife, Joe. And I want children. I want the right to have them."
+
+He never noticed that the kiss she gave him, over the sleeping baby, was
+slightly tinged with granulated sugar.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his great
+bed. There had been a bad hour; death seems so strangely to erase faults
+and leave virtues. Something strong and vital had gone from the house,
+and the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless steps. In Grace's
+boudoir, Howard was sitting, his arms around his wife, telling her the
+story of the day. At dawn he had notified her by telephone of Akers'
+murder.
+
+"Shall I tell Lily?" she had asked, trembling.
+
+"Do you want to wait until I get back?"
+
+"I don't know how she will take it, Howard. I wish you could be here,
+anyhow."
+
+But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end it
+was Willy Cameron who told her. He had brought back all that was mortal
+of Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession up the
+stairs, had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping to be
+useful. Howard found him there, a strange, disheveled figure, bearing
+the scars of battle, and held out his hand.
+
+"It's hard to thank you, Cameron," he said; "you seem to be always
+about when we need help. And"--he paused--"we seem to have needed it
+considerably lately."
+
+Willy Cameron flushed.
+
+"I feel rather like a meddler, sir."
+
+"Better go up and wash," Howard said. "I'll go up with you."
+
+It happened, therefore, that it was in Howard Cardew's opulent
+dressing-room that Howard first spoke to Willy Cameron of Akers' death,
+pacing the floor as he did so.
+
+"I haven't told her, Cameron." He was anxious and puzzled. "She'll have
+to be told soon, of course. I don't know anything about women. I don't
+know how she'll take it."
+
+"She has a great deal of courage. It will be a shock, but not a grief.
+But I have been thinking--" Willy Cameron hesitated. "She must not feel
+any remorse," he went on. "She must not feel that she contributed to it
+in any way. If you can make that clear to her--"
+
+"Are you sure she did not?"
+
+"It isn't facts that matter now. We can't help those. And no one can
+tell what actually led to his change of heart. It is what she is to
+think the rest of her life."
+
+Howard nodded.
+
+"I wish you would tell her," he said. "I'm a blundering fool when it
+comes to her. I suppose I care too much."
+
+He caught rather an odd look in Willy Cameron's face at that, and
+pondered over it later.
+
+"I will tell her, if you wish."
+
+And Howard drew a deep breath of relief. It was shortly after that he
+broached another matter, rather diffidently.
+
+"I don't know whether you realize it or not, Cameron," he said, "but
+this thing to-day might have been a different story if it had not been
+for you. And--don't think I'm putting this on a reward basis. It's
+nothing of the sort--but I would like to feel that you were working with
+me. I'd hate like thunder to have you working against me," he added.
+
+"I am only trained for one thing."
+
+"We use chemists in the mills."
+
+But the discussion ended there. Both men knew that it would be taken
+up later, at some more opportune time, and in the meantime both had one
+thought, Lily.
+
+So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from Willy
+Cameron. She stood, straight and erect, and heard him through, watching
+him with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain of the day.
+But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one she had known long
+ago, in some infinitely remote past.
+
+"I am sorry," she said, when he finished. "I didn't want him to die. You
+know that, don't you? I never wished him--Willy, I say I am sorry, but I
+don't really feel anything. It's dreadful."
+
+Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for the
+first time in her healthy young life.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She found
+Willy Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a look
+of wild despair in his eyes.
+
+Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her view-point somewhat
+since the spring. After all, what mattered was happiness. Wealth and
+worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end,
+to the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with the
+shades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers over everything.
+
+"She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron," she said. "It was but a crisis
+of the nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands to see you."
+
+Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure,
+which issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went up
+the stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figure
+lost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently moved
+forward on tiptoe. Grayson went into the library and sniffed at the
+unmistakable odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went and
+stood before a great portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood in
+the old man's eyes, but there was a faint smile on his lips. He saw the
+endless procession of life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Then
+death. Grayson was old, but he had lived to see young love in the Cardew
+house. Out of love, life. He addressed a little speech to the picture.
+
+"Wherever you are, sir," he said, "you needn't worry any more. The line
+will carry on, sir. The line will carry on."
+
+Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, and
+gathered Lily close in his arms.
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many changes. It saw,
+slowly emerging from the chaos of war, new nations, like children,
+taking their first feeble steps. It saw a socialism which, born at full
+term might have thrived, prematurely and forcibly delivered, and making
+a valiant but losing fight for life. It saw that war is never good,
+but always evil; that war takes everything and gives nothing, save that
+sometimes a man may lose the whole world and gain his own soul.
+
+It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into the vast democracy
+of heaven, and Louis Akers passed through the Traitors' Gate of eternity
+to be judged and perhaps reprieved. For a man is many men, good and bad,
+and the Judge of the Tower of Heaven is a just Judge.
+
+It saw Jim Doyle a fugitive, Woslosky dead, and the Russian, Ross,
+bland, cunning and eternally plotting, in New England under another
+name. And Mr. Hendricks ordering a new suit for the day of taking
+office. And Doctor Smalley tying a bunch of chrysanthemums on Annabelle,
+against a football game, and taking a pretty nurse to see it.
+
+It saw Ellen roasting a turkey, and a strange young man in the Eagle
+Pharmacy, a young man who did not smoke a pipe, and allowed no visitors
+in the back room. And it saw Willy Cameron in the laboratory of the
+reopened Cardew Mills, dealing in tons instead of grains and drams,
+and learning to touch any piece of metal in the mill with a moistened
+fore-finger before he sat down upon it.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+But it saw more than that.
+
+On the evening of Thanksgiving Day there was an air of repressed
+excitement about the Cardew house. Mademoiselle, in a new silk dress,
+ran about the lower floor, followed by an agitated Grayson with a cloth,
+for Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with trembling hands vases
+of flowers, and spilling water at each shift. At six o'clock had arrived
+a large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear and
+there exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers
+other excitable and emotional women to peep within.
+
+After which he tied it up again and carried it upstairs.
+
+At seven o'clock Elinor Cardew, lovely in black satin, was carried down
+the stairs and placed in a position which commanded both the hall and
+the drawing-room. For some strange reason it was essential that she
+should see both.
+
+At seven-thirty came in a rush:
+
+(a)--Mr. Alston Denslow, in evening clothes and gardenia, and feeling in
+his right waist-coat pocket nervously every few minutes.
+
+(b)--An excited woman of middle age, in a black silk dress still faintly
+bearing the creases of five days in a trunk, and accompanied by a
+mongrel dog, both being taken upstairs by Grayson, Mademoiselle,
+Pink, and Howard Cardew. ("He said Jinx was to come," she explained
+breathlessly to her bodyguard. "I never knew such a boy!")
+
+(c)--Mr. Davis, in a frock coat and white lawn tie, and taken upstairs
+by Grayson, who mistook him for the bishop.
+
+(d)--Aunt Caroline, in her diamond dog collar and purple velvet, and
+determined to make the best of things.
+
+(e)--The real bishop this time, and his assistant, followed by a valet
+with a suitcase, containing the proper habiliments for a prince of the
+church while functioning. (A military term, since the Bishop had been in
+the army.)
+
+(f)--A few unimportant important people, very curious, and the women
+uncertain about the proper garb for a festive occasion in a house of
+mourning.
+
+(g)--Set of silver table vases, belated.
+
+(h)--Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks, Mayor and Mayoress-elect. Extremely
+dignified.
+
+(i)--An overfull taxicab, containing inside it Ellen, Edith, Dan and
+Joe. The overflow, consisting of a tall young man, displaying repressed
+excitement and new evening clothes, with gardenia, sat on the seat
+outside beside the chauffeur and repeated to himself a sort of chant
+accompanied by furious searchings of his pockets. "Money. Checkbook.
+Tickets. Trunk checks," was the burden of his song.
+
+(j)--Doctor Smalley and Annabelle. He left Annabelle outside.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+The city moved on about its business. In thousands of homes the lights
+shone down on little family groups, infinitely tender little groups. The
+workers of the city were there, the doors shut, the fires burning. To
+each man the thing he had earned, not the thing that he took. To all
+men the right to labor, to love, and to rest. To children, the right
+to play. To women, the hearth, and the peace of the hearth. To lovers,
+love, and marriage, and home.
+
+The city moved on about its business, and its business was homes.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+At the great organ behind the staircase the organist sat. In stiff rows
+near him were the Cardew servants, marshaled by Grayson and in their
+best.
+
+Grayson stood, very rigid, and waited. And as he waited he kept his eyes
+on the portrait of old Anthony, in the drawing-room beyond. There was a
+fixed, rapt look in Grayson's eyes, and there was reassurance. It was as
+though he would say to the portrait: "It has all come out very well, you
+see, sir. It always works out somehow. We worry and fret, we old ones,
+but the young come along, and somehow or other they manage, sir."
+
+What he actually said was to tell a house maid to stop sniveling.
+
+Over the house was the strange hush of waiting. It had waited before
+this, for birth and for death, but never before--
+
+The Bishop was waiting also, and he too had his eyes fixed on old
+Anthony's portrait, a straight, level-eyed gaze, as of man to man, as of
+prince of the church to prince of industry. The Bishop's eyes said:
+"All shall be done properly and in order, and as befits the Cardews,
+Anthony."
+
+The Bishop was as successful in his line as Anthony Cardew had been in
+his. He cleared his throat.
+
+The organist sat at the great organ behind the staircase, waiting. He
+was playing very softly, with his eyes turned up. He had played the
+same music many times before, and always he felt very solemn, as one who
+makes history. He sighed. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was only an
+accompaniment to life, to which others sang and prayed, were christened,
+confirmed and married. But what was the song without the music? He
+wished the scullery maid would stop crying.
+
+Grayson touched him on the arm.
+
+"All ready, sir," he said.
+
+*****
+
+Willy Cameron stood at the foot of the staircase, looking up.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
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+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+
+A POOR WISE MAN
+
+by  Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened
+walls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over
+all a gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often
+beauty.  Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges
+rose above the river mist like fairy towers suspended between Heaven
+and earth.  And again the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold,
+while the city lay buried in its smoke shroud, and white ghosts of
+river boats moved spectrally along.
+
+Sometimes it was ugly, sometimes beautiful, but always the city was
+powerful, significant, important.  It was a vast melting pot.  Through
+its gates came alike the hopeful and the hopeless, the dreamers and
+those who would destroy those dreams.  From all over the world there
+came men who sought a chance to labor.  They came in groups, anxious
+and dumb, carrying with them their pathetic bundles, and shepherded
+by men with cunning eyes.
+
+Raw material, for the crucible of the city, as potentially powerful
+as the iron ore which entered the city by the same gate.
+
+The city took them in, gave them sanctuary, and forgot them.  But
+the shepherds with the cunning eyes remembered.
+
+Lily Cardew, standing in the train shed one morning early in March,
+watched such a line go by.  She watched it with interest.  She had
+developed a new interest in people during the year she had been
+away.  She had seen, in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of
+men, transformed in a few hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers,
+beginning already to be actuated by the same motive.  These aliens,
+going by, would become citizens.  Very soon now they would appear
+on the streets in new American clothes of extraordinary cut and
+color, their hair cut with clippers almost to the crown, and
+surmounted by derby hats always a size too small.
+
+Lily smiled, and looked out for her mother.  She was suddenly
+unaccountably glad to be back again.  She liked the smoke and the
+noise, the movement, the sense of things doing.  And the sight of
+her mother, small, faultlessly tailored, wearing a great bunch of
+violets, and incongruous in that work-a-day atmosphere, set her
+smiling again.
+
+How familiar it all was!  And heavens, how young she looked!  The
+limousine was at the curb, and a footman as immaculately turned
+out as her mother stood with a folded rug over his arm.  On the
+seat inside lay a purple box.  Lily had known it would be there.
+They would be ostensibly from her father, because he had not been
+able to meet her, but she knew quite well that Grace Cardew had
+stopped at the florist's on her way downtown and bought them.
+
+A little surge of affection for her mother warmed the girl's eyes.
+The small attentions which in the Cardew household took the place
+of loving demonstrations had always touched her.  As a family the
+Cardews were rather loosely knitted together, but there was
+something very lovable about her mother.
+
+Grace Cardew kissed her, and then held her off and looked at her.
+
+"Mercy, Lily!" she said, "you look as old as I do."
+
+"Older, I hope," Lily retorted.  "What a marvel you are, Grace dear."
+Now and then she called her mother "Grace."  It was by way of being
+a small joke between them, but limited to their moments alone.  Once
+old Anthony, her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been
+rather a row about it.
+
+"I feel horribly old, but I didn't think I looked it."
+
+They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her.  "From your
+father, dear.  He wanted so to come, but things are dreadful at the
+mill.  I suppose you've seen the papers."  Lily opened the box, and
+smiled at her mother.
+
+"Yes, I know.  But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear?
+Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them?  But never mind
+about that; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it.  Have
+you broken the news to grandfather that the last of the Cardews is
+coming home?"
+
+"He sent you all sorts of messages, and he'll see you at dinner."
+
+Lily laughed out at that.
+
+"You darling!" she said.  "You know perfectly well that I am nothing
+in grandfather's young life, but the Cardew women all have what he
+likes to call savoir faire.  What would they do, father and
+grandfather, if you didn't go through life smoothing things for them?"
+
+Grace looked rather stiffly ahead.  This young daughter of hers,
+with her directness and her smiling ignoring of the small subterfuges
+of life, rather frightened her.  The terrible honesty of youth!  All
+these years of ironing the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the
+difficulties between old Anthony and Howard, and now a third
+generation to contend with.  A pitilessly frank and unconsciously
+cruel generation.  She turned and eyed Lily uneasily.
+
+"You look tired," she said, "and you need attention.  I wish you had
+let me send Castle to you."
+
+But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered
+her.  Lovely rather than beautiful, perhaps.  Her face was less
+childish than when she had gone away; there was, in certain of her
+expressions, an almost alarming maturity.  But perhaps that was
+fatigue.
+
+"I couldn't have had Castle, mother.  I didn't need anything.  I've
+been very happy, really, and very busy."
+
+"You have been very vague lately about your work."
+
+Lily faced her mother squarely.
+
+"I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it
+would drive grandfather crazy."
+
+"I thought you were in a canteen."
+
+"Not lately.  I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers
+to camps.  Some of them were going to have babies, too.  It was
+rather awful.  We married quite a lot of them, however."
+
+The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter
+held Grace Cardew dumb.  She nodded, but her eyes had slightly
+hardened.  So this was what war had done to her.  She had had no son,
+and had thanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had
+hated her all her married life for it.  But she had given her
+daughter, her clear-eyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs
+of life.
+
+Her thoughts went back over the years.  To Lily as a child, with
+Mademoiselle always at her elbow, and life painted as a thing of
+beauty.  Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents.  Death was
+a quiet sleep, with heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to
+age, which had wearied and would rest.  Then she remembered the day
+when Elinor Cardew, poor unhappy Elinor, had fled back to Anthony's
+roof to have a baby, and after a few rapturous weeks for Lily the
+baby had died.
+
+"But the baby isn't old," Lily had persisted, standing in front of
+her mother with angry, accusing eyes.
+
+Grace was not an imaginative woman, but she turned it rather neatly,
+as she told Howard later.
+
+"It was such a nice baby," she said, feeling for an idea.  "I think
+probably God was lonely without it, and sent an angel for it again."
+
+"But it is still upstairs," Lily had insisted.  She had had a
+curious instinct for truth, even then.  But there Grace's
+imagination had failed her, and she sent for Mademoiselle.
+Mademoiselle was a good Catholic, and very clear in her own mind,
+but what she left in Lily's brain was a confused conviction that
+every person was two persons, a body and a soul.  Death was simply
+a split-up, then.  One part of you, the part that bathed every
+morning and had its toe-nails cut, and went to dancing school in
+a white frock and thin black silk stockings and carriage boots over
+pumps, that part was buried and would only came up again at the
+Resurrection.  But the other part was all the time very happy, and
+mostly singing.
+
+Lily did not like to sing.
+
+Then there was the matter of tears.  People only cried when they
+hurt themselves.  She had been told that again and again when she
+threatened tears over her music lesson.  But when Aunt Elinor had
+gone away she had found Mademoiselle, the deadly antagonist of
+tears, weeping.  And here again Grace remembered the child's wide,
+insistent eyes.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"She is sorry for Aunt Elinor."
+
+"Because her baby's gone to God?  She ought to be glad, oughtn't
+she?"
+
+"Not that;" said Grace, and had brought a box of chocolates and
+given her one, although they were not permitted save one after each
+meal.
+
+Then Lily had gone away to school.  How carefully the school had
+been selected!  When she came back, however, there had been no more
+questions, and Grace had sighed with relief.  That bad time was over,
+anyhow.  But Lily was rather difficult those days.  She seemed, in
+some vague way, resentful.  Her mother found her, now and then, in
+a frowning, half-defiant mood.  And once, when Mademoiselle had
+ventured some jesting remark about young Alston Denslow, she was
+stupefied to see the girl march out of the room, her chin high, not
+to be seen again for hours.
+
+Grace's mind was sub-consciously remembering those things even when
+she spoke.
+
+"I didn't know you were having to learn about that side of life,"
+she said, after a brief silence.
+
+"That side of life is life, mother," Lily said gravely.  But Grace
+did not reply to that.  It was characteristic of her to follow her
+own line of thought.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't tell your grandfather.  You know he feels
+strongly about some things.  And he hasn't forgiven me yet for
+letting you go."
+
+Rather diffidently Lily put her hand on her mother's.  She gave her
+rare caresses shyly, with averted eyes, and she was always more
+diffident with her mother than with her father.  Such spontaneous
+bursts of affection as she sometimes showed had been lavished on
+Mademoiselle.  It was Mademoiselle she had hugged rapturously on
+her small feast days, Mademoiselle who never demanded affection,
+and so received it.
+
+"Poor mother!" she said, "I have made it hard for you, haven't I?
+Is he as bad as ever?"
+
+She had not pinned on the violets, but sat holding them in her
+hands, now and then taking a luxurious sniff.  She did not seem to
+expect a reply.  Between Grace and herself it was quite understood
+that old Anthony Cardew was always as bad as could be.
+
+"There is some sort of trouble at the mill.  Your father is worried."
+
+And this time it was Lily who did not reply.  She said,
+inconsequentially:
+
+"We're saved, and it's all over.  But sometimes I wonder if we were
+worth saving.  It all seems such a mess, doesn't it?"  She glanced
+out.  They were drawing up before the house, and she looked at her
+mother whimsically.
+
+"The last of the Cardews returning from the wars!" she said.  "Only
+she is unfortunately a she, and she hasn't been any nearer the war
+than the State of Ohio."
+
+Her voice was gay enough, but she had a quick vision of the grim old
+house had she been the son they had wanted to carry on the name,
+returning from France.
+
+The Cardews had fighting traditions.  They had fought in every war
+from the Revolution on.  There had been a Cardew in Mexico in '48,
+and in that upper suite of rooms to which her grandfather had
+retired in wrath on his son's marriage, she remembered her sense of
+awe as a child on seeing on the wall the sword he had worn in the
+Civil War.  He was a small man, and the scabbard was badly worn at
+the end, mute testimony to the long forced marches of his youth.
+Her father had gone to Cuba in '98, and had almost died of typhoid
+fever there, contracted in the marshes of Florida.
+
+Yes, they had been a fighting family.  And now--
+
+Her mother was determinedly gay.  There were flowers in the dark old
+hall, and Grayson, the butler, evidently waiting inside the door,
+greeted her with the familiarity of the old servant who had slipped
+her sweets from the pantry after dinner parties in her little-girl
+years.
+
+"Welcome home, Miss Lily," he said.
+
+Mademoiselle was lurking on the stairway, in a new lace collar over
+her old black dress.  Lily recognized in the collar a great occasion,
+for Mademoiselle was French and thrifty.  Suddenly a wave of warmth
+and gladness flooded her.  This was home.  Dear, familiar home.  She
+had come back.  She was the only young thing in the house.  She would
+bring them gladness and youth.  She would try to make them happy.
+Always before she had taken, but now she meant to give.
+
+Not that she formulated such a thought.  It was an emotion, rather.
+She ran up the stairs and hugged Mademoiselle wildly.
+
+"You darling old thing!" she cried.  She lapsed into French.  "I saw
+the collar at once.  And think, it is over!  It is finished.  And
+all your nice French relatives are sitting on the boulevards in the
+sun, and sipping their little glasses of wine, and rising and bowing
+when a pretty girl passes.  Is it not so?"
+
+"It is so, God and the saints be praised!" said Mademoiselle, huskily.
+
+Grace Cardew followed them up the staircase.  Her French was
+negligible, and she felt again, as in days gone by, shut from the
+little world of two which held her daughter and governess.  Old
+Anthony's doing, that.  He had never forgiven his son his plebeian
+marriage, and an early conversation returned to her.  It was on Lily's
+first birthday and he had made one of his rare visits to the nursery.
+He had brought with him a pearl in a velvet case.
+
+"All our women have their own pearls," he had said.  "She will have
+her grandmother's also when she marries.  I shall give her one the
+first year, two the second, and so on."  He had stood looking down at
+the child critically.  "She's a Cardew," he said at last.  "Which
+means that she will be obstinate and self-willed."  He had paused
+there, but Grace had not refuted the statement.  He had grinned.
+"As you know," he added.  "Is she talking yet?"
+
+"A word or two," Grace had said, with no more warmth in her tone
+than was in his.
+
+"Very well.  Get her a French governess.  She ought to speak French
+before she does English.  It is one of the accomplishments of a lady.
+Get a good woman, and for heaven's sake arrange to serve her
+breakfast in her room.  I don't want to have to be pleasant to any
+chattering French woman at eight in the morning."
+
+"No, you wouldn't," Grace had said.
+
+Anthony had stamped out, but in the hall he smiled grimly.  He did
+not like Howard's wife, but she was not afraid of him.  He respected
+her for that.  He took good care to see that the Frenchwoman was
+found, and at dinner, the only meal he took with the family, he
+would now and then send for the governess and Lily to come in for
+dessert.  That, of course, was later on, when the child was nearly
+ten.  Then would follow a three-cornered conversation in rapid French,
+Howard and Anthony and Lily, with Mademoiselle joining in timidly,
+and with Grace, at the side of the table, pretending to eat and
+feeling cut off, in a middle-class world of her own, at the side of
+the table.  Anthony Cardew had retained the head of his table, and
+he had never asked her to take his dead wife's place.
+
+After a time Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours,
+the fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared
+to see her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was.  She
+made desperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her
+accent was atrocious.  Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily
+would laugh in childish, unthinking mirth.  She gave it up at last.
+
+She never told Howard about it.  He had his own difficulties with
+his father, and she would not add to them.  She managed the house,
+checked over the bills and sent them to the office, put up a
+cheerful and courageous front, and after a time sheathed herself
+in an armor of smiling indifference.  But she thanked heaven when
+the time came to send Lily away to school.  The effort of
+concealing the armed neutrality between Anthony and herself was
+growing more wearing.  The girl was observant.  And Anthony had
+been right, she was a Cardew.  She would have fought her grandfather
+out on it, defied him, accused him, hated him.  And Grace wanted
+peace.
+
+Once again as she followed Lily and Mademoiselle up the stairs she
+felt the barrier of language, and back of it the Cardew pride and
+traditions that somehow cut her off.
+
+But in Lily's rooms she was her sane and cheerful self again.
+Inside the doorway the girl was standing, her eyes traveling over
+her little domain ecstatically.
+
+"How lovely of you not to change a thing, mother!" she said.  "I was
+so afraid--I know how you hate my stuff.  But I might have known
+you wouldn't.  All the time I've been away, sleeping in a dormitory,
+and taking turns at the bath, I have thought of my own little place."
+She wandered around, touching her familiar possessions with caressing
+hands.  "I've a good notion," she declared, "to go to bed immediately,
+just for the pleasure of lying in linen sheets again."  Suddenly she
+turned to her mother.  "I'm afraid you'll find I've made some queer
+friends, mother."
+
+"What do you mean by 'queer'?"
+
+"People no proper Cardew would care to know."  She smiled.  "Where's
+Ellen?  I want to tell her I met somebody she knows out there, the
+nicest sort of a boy."  She went to the doorway and called lustily:
+"Ellen!  Ellen!"  The rustling of starched skirts answered her from
+down the corridor.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't call, dear."  Grace looked anxious.  "You know
+how your grandfather--there's a bell for Ellen."
+
+"What we need around here," said Lily, cheerfully, "is a little more
+calling.  And if grandfather thinks it is unbefitting the family
+dignity he can put cotton in his ears.  Come in, Ellen.  Ellen, do
+you know that I met Willy Cameron in the camp?"
+
+"Willy!" squealed Ellen.  "You met Willy?  Isn't he a fine boy, Miss
+Lily?"
+
+"He's wonderful," said Lily.  "I went to the movies with him every
+Friday night."  She turned to her mother.  "You would like him,
+mother.  He couldn't get into the army.  He is a little bit lame.
+And--" she surveyed Grace with amused eyes, "you needn't think what
+you are thinking.  He is tall and thin and not at all good-looking.
+Is he, Ellen?"
+
+"He is a very fine young man," Ellen said rather stiffly.  "He's
+very highly thought of in the town I come from.  His father was a
+doctor, and his buggy used to go around day, and night.  When he
+found they wouldn't take him as a soldier he was like to break his
+heart."
+
+"Lame?" Grace repeated, ignoring Ellen.
+
+"Just a little.  You forget all about it when you know him.  Don't
+you, Ellen?"
+
+But at Grace's tone Ellen had remembered.  She stiffened, and became
+again a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing,
+rubber-heeled, pink-uniformed lower servant.  She glanced at Mrs.
+Cardew, whose eyebrows were slightly raised.
+
+"Thank you, miss," she said.  And went out, leaving Lily rather
+chilled and openly perplexed.
+
+"Well!" she said.  Then she glanced at her mother.  "I do believe
+you are a little shocked, mother, because Ellen and I have a mutual
+friend in Mr. William Wallace Cameron!  Well, if you want the exact
+truth, he hadn't an atom of use for me until he heard about Ellen."
+She put an arm around Grace's shoulders.  "Brace up, dear," she
+said, smilingly.  "Don't you cry.  I'll be a Cardew bye-and-bye."
+
+"Did you really go to the moving pictures with him?" Grace asked,
+rather unhappily.  She had never been inside a moving picture
+theater.  To her they meant something a step above the corner saloon,
+and a degree below the burlesque houses.  They were constituted of
+bad air and unchaperoned young women accompanied by youths who
+dangled cigarettes from a lower lip, all obviously of the lower
+class, including the cigarette; and of other women, sometimes drab,
+dragged of breast and carrying children who should have been in bed
+hours before; or still others, wandering in pairs, young, painted
+and predatory.  She was not imaginative, or she could not have
+lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house.  She never saw, in the long
+line waiting outside even the meanest of the little theaters that
+had invaded the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cry of
+every human heart for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance,
+the call of adventure and the open road.
+
+"I can't believe it," she added.
+
+Lily made a little gesture of half-amused despair.
+
+"Dearest," she said, "I did.  And I liked it.  Mother, things have
+changed a lot in twenty years.  Sometimes I think that here, in this
+house, you don't realize that--" she struggled for a phrase--"that
+things have changed," she ended, lamely.  "The social order, and
+that sort of thing.  You know.  Caste." She hesitated.  She was
+young and inarticulate, and when she saw Grace's face, somewhat
+frightened.  But she was not old Anthony's granddaughter for nothing.
+"This idea of being a Cardew," she went on, "that's ridiculous, you
+know.  I'm only half Cardew, anyhow.  The rest is you, dear, and
+it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot."
+
+Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she
+paused now and turned.  It was to Grace that she spoke, however.
+
+"They come home like that, all of them," she said.  "In France also.
+But in time they see the wisdom of the old order, and return.  It
+is one of the fruits of war."
+
+Grace hardly heard her.
+
+"Lily," she asked, "you are not in love with this Cameron person,
+are you?"
+
+But Lily's easy laugh reassured her.
+
+"No, indeed," she said.  "I am not.  I shall probably marry beneath
+me, as you would call it, but not William Wallace Cameron.  For one
+thing, he wouldn't have grandfather in his family."
+
+Some time later Mademoiselle tapped at Grace's door, and entered.
+Grace was reclining on a chaise longue, towels tucked about her neck
+and over her pillows, while Castle, her elderly English maid, was
+applying ice in a soft cloth to her face.  Grace sat up.  The towel,
+pinned around her hair like a coif, gave a placid, almost nun-like
+appearance to her still lovely face.
+
+"Well?" she demanded.  "Go out for a minute, Castle."
+
+Mademoiselle waited until the maid had gone.
+
+"I have spoken to Ellen," she said, her voice cautious.  "A young
+man who does not care for women, a clerk in a country pharmacy.
+What is that, Mrs. Cardew?"
+
+"It would be so dreadful, Mademoiselle.  Her grandfather--"
+
+"But not handsome," insisted Mademoiselle, "and lame!  Also, I know
+the child.  She is not in love.  When that comes to her we shall
+know it."
+
+Grace lay back, relieved, but not entirely comforted.
+
+"She is changed, isn't she, Mademoiselle?"
+
+Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"A phase," she said.  She had got the word from old Anthony, who
+regarded any mental attitude that did not conform with his own as
+a condition that would pass.  "A phase, only.  Now that she is back
+among familiar things, she will become again a daughter of the house."
+
+"Then you think this talk about marrying beneath her--"
+
+"She 'as had liberty," said Mademoiselle, who sometimes lost an
+aspirate.  "It is like wine to the young.  It intoxicates.  But it,
+too, passes.  In my country--"
+
+But Grace had, for a number of years, heard a great deal of
+Mademoiselle's country.  She settled herself on her pillows.
+
+"Call Castle, please," she said.  "And--do warn her not to voice
+those ideas of hers to her grandfather.  In a country pharmacy, you
+say?"
+
+"And lame, and not fond of women," corroborated Mademoiselle.  "Ca
+ne pourrait pas etre mieux, n'est-ce pas?"
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Shortly after the Civil War Anthony Cardew had left Pittsburgh and
+spent a year in finding a location for the investment of his small
+capital.  That was in the very beginning of the epoch of steel.
+The iron business had already laid the foundations of its future
+greatness, but steel was still in its infancy.
+
+Anthony's father had been an iron-master in a small way, with a
+monthly pay-roll of a few hundred dollars, and an abiding faith in
+the future of iron.  But he had never dreamed of steel.  But
+"sixty-five" saw the first steel rail rolled in America, and Anthony
+Cardew began to dream.  He went to Chicago first, and from there to
+Michigan, to see the first successful Bessemer converter.  When he
+started east again he knew what he was to make his life work.
+
+He was very young and his capital was small.  But he had an abiding
+faith in the new industry.  Not that he dreamed then of floating
+steel battleships.  But he did foresee steel in new and various uses.
+Later on he was experimenting with steel cable at the very time
+Roebling made it a commercial possibility, and with it the modern
+suspension bridge and the elevator.  He never quite forgave Roebling.
+That failure of his, the difference only of a month or so, was one
+of the few disappointments of his prosperous, self-centered, orderly
+life.  That, and Howard's marriage.  And, at the height of his
+prosperity, the realization that Howard's middle-class wife would
+never bear a son.
+
+The city he chose was a small city then, yet it already showed signs
+of approaching greatness.  On the east side, across the river, he
+built his first plant, a small one, with the blast heated by passing
+through cast iron pipes, with the furnaceman testing the temperature
+with strips of lead and zinc, and the skip hoist a patient mule.
+
+He had ore within easy hauling distance, and he had fuel, and he had,
+as time went on, a rapidly increasing market.  Labor was cheap and
+plentiful, too, and being American-born, was willing and intelligent.
+Perhaps Anthony Cardew's sins of later years were due to a vast
+impatience that the labor of the early seventies was no longer to be
+had.
+
+The Cardew fortune began in the seventies.  Up to that time there
+was a struggle, but in the seventies Anthony did two things.  He
+went to England to see the furnaces there, and brought home a wife,
+a timid, tall Englishwoman of irreproachable birth, who remained
+always an alien in the crude, busy new city.  And he built himself
+a house, a brick house in lower East Avenue, a house rather like
+his tall, quiet wife, and run on English lines.  He soon became
+the leading citizen.  He was one of the committee to welcome the
+Prince of Wales to the city, and from the very beginning he took
+his place in the social life.
+
+He found it very raw at times, crude and new.  He himself lived
+with dignity and elegant simplicity.  He gave now and then lengthy,
+ponderous dinners, making out the lists himself, and handing them
+over to his timid English wife in much the manner in which he gave
+the wine list and the key to the wine cellar to the butler.  And, at
+the head of his table, he let other men talk and listened.  They
+talked, those industrial pioneers, especially after the women had
+gone.  They saw the city the center of great business and great
+railroads.  They talked of its coal, its river, and the great oil
+fields not far away which were then in their infancy.  All of them
+dreamed a dream, saw a vision.  But not all of them lived to see
+their dream come true.
+
+Old Anthony lived to see it.
+
+In the late eighties, his wife having been by that time decorously
+interred in one of the first great mausoleums west of the mountains,
+Anthony Cardew found himself already wealthy.  He owned oil wells
+and coal mines.  His mines supplied his coke ovens with coal, and
+his own river boats, as well as railroads in which he was a director,
+carried his steel.
+
+He labored ably and well, and not for wealth alone.  He was one of
+a group of big-visioned men who saw that a nation was only as great
+as its industries.  It was only in his later years that he loved
+power for the sake of power, and when, having outlived his
+generation, he had developed a rigidity of mind that made him view
+the forced compromises of the new regime as pusillanimous.
+
+He considered his son Howard's quiet strength weakness.  "You have
+no stamina," he would say.  "You have no moral fiber.  For God's
+sake, make a stand, you fellows, and stick to it."
+
+He had not mellowed with age.  He viewed with endless bitterness
+the passing of his own day and generation, and the rise to power of
+younger men; with their "shilly-shallying," he would say.  He was
+an aristocrat, an autocrat, and a survival.  He tied Howard's hands
+in the management of the now vast mills, and then blamed him for
+the results.
+
+But he had been a great man.
+
+He had had two children, a boy and a girl.  The girl had been the
+tragedy of his middle years, and Howard had been his hope.
+
+On the heights outside the city and overlooking the river he owned
+a farm, and now and then, on Sunday afternoons in the eighties, he
+drove out there, with Howard sitting beside him, a rangy boy in
+his teens, in the victoria which Anthony considered the proper
+vehicle for Sunday afternoons.  The farmhouse was in a hollow, but
+always on those excursions Anthony, fastidiously dressed, picking
+his way half-irritably through briars and cornfields, would go to
+the edge of the cliffs and stand there, looking down.  Below was
+the muddy river, sluggish always, but a thing of terror in spring
+freshets.  And across was the east side, already a sordid place,
+its steel mills belching black smoke that killed the green of the
+hillsides, its furnaces dwarfed by distance and height, its rows of
+unpainted wooden structures which housed the mill laborers.
+
+Howard would go with him, but Howard dreamed no dreams.  He was a
+sturdy, dependable, unimaginative boy, watching the squirrels or
+flinging stones over the palisades.  Life for Howard was already
+a thing determined.  He would go to college, and then he would
+come back and go into the mill offices.  In time, he would take
+his father's place.  He meant to do it well and honestly.  He had
+but to follow.  Anthony had broken the trail, only by that time
+it was no longer a trail, but a broad and easy way.
+
+Only once or twice did Anthony Cardew give voice to his dreams.
+Once he said: "I'll build a house out here some of these days.  Good
+location.  Growth of the city is bound to be in this direction."
+
+What he did not say was that to be there, on that hill, overlooking
+his activities, his very own, the things he had builded with such
+labor, gave him a sense of power.  "This below," he felt, with more
+of pride than arrogance, "this is mine.  I have done it.  I, Anthony
+Cardew."
+
+He felt, looking down, the pride of an artist in his picture, of a
+sculptor who, secure from curious eyes, draws the sheet from the
+still moist clay of his modeling, and now from this angle, now from
+that, studies, criticizes, and exults.
+
+But Anthony Cardew never built his house on the cliff.  Time was to
+come when great houses stood there, like vast forts, overlooking,
+almost menacing, the valley beneath.  For, until the nineties,
+although the city distended in all directions, huge, ugly, powerful,
+infinitely rich, and while in the direction of Anthony's farm the
+growth was real and rapid, it was the plain people who lined its
+rapidly extending avenues with their two-story brick houses; little
+homes of infinite tenderness and quiet, along tree-lined streets,
+where the children played on the cobble-stones, and at night the
+horse cars, and later the cable system, brought home tired clerks
+and storekeepers to small havens, already growing dingy from the
+smoke of the distant mills.
+
+Anthony Cardew did not like the plain people.  Yet in the end, it
+was the plain people, those who neither labored with their hands
+nor lived by the labor of others--it was the plain people who
+vanquished him.  Vanquished him and tried to protect him.  But
+could not.  A smallish man, hard and wiry, he neither saved himself
+nor saved others.  He had one fetish, power.  And one pride, his
+line.  The Cardews were iron masters.  Howard would be an iron
+master, and Howard's son.
+
+But Howard never had a son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+All through her teens Lily had wondered about the mystery concerning
+her Aunt Elinor.  There was an oil portrait of her in the library,
+and one of the first things she had been taught was not to speak
+of it.
+
+Now and then, at intervals of years, Aunt Elinor came back.  Her
+mother and father would look worried, and Aunt Elinor herself would
+stay in her rooms, and seldom appeared at meals.  Never at dinner.
+As a child Lily used to think she had two Aunt Elinors, one the
+young girl in the gilt frame, and the other the quiet, soft-voiced
+person who slipped around the upper corridors like a ghost.
+
+But she was not to speak of either of them to her grandfather.
+
+Lily was not born in the house on lower East Avenue.
+
+In the late eighties Anthony built himself a home, not on the farm,
+but in a new residence portion of the city.  The old common, grazing
+ground of family cows, dump and general eye-sore, had become a park
+by that time, still only a potentially beautiful thing, with the
+trees that were to be its later glory only thin young shoots, and on
+the streets that faced it the wealthy of the city built their homes,
+brick houses of square solidity, flush with brick pavements, which
+were carefully reddened on Saturday mornings.  Beyond the pavements
+were cobble-stoned streets.  Anthony Cardew was the first man in the
+city to have a rubber-tired carriage.  The story of Anthony Cardew's
+new home is the story of Elinor's tragedy.  Nor did it stop there.
+It carried on to the third generation, to Lily Cardew, and in the
+end it involved the city itself.  Because of the ruin of one small
+home all homes were threatened.  One small house, and one undying
+hatred.
+
+Yet the matter was small in itself.  An Irishman named Doyle owned
+the site Anthony coveted.  After years of struggle his small grocery
+had begun to put him on his feet, and now the new development of the
+neighborhood added to his prosperity.  He was a dried-up, sentimental
+little man, with two loves, his wife's memory and his wife's garden,
+which he still tended religiously between customers; and one
+ambition, his son.  With the change from common to park, and the
+improvement in the neighborhood, he began to flourish, and he, too,
+like Anthony, dreamed a dream.  He would make his son a gentleman,
+and he would get a shop assistant and a horse and wagon.  Poverty
+was still his lot, but there were good times coming.  He saved
+carefully, and sent Jim Doyle away to college.
+
+He would not sell to Anthony.  When he said he could not sell his
+wife's garden, Anthony's agents reported him either mad or deeply
+scheming.  They kept after him, offering much more than the land was
+worth.  Doyle began by being pugnacious, but in the end he took to
+brooding.
+
+"He'll get me yet," he would mutter, standing among the white phlox
+of his little back garden.  "He'll get me.  He never quits."
+
+Anthony Cardew waited a year.  Then he had the frame building
+condemned as unsafe, and Doyle gave in.  Anthony built his house.
+He put a brick stable where the garden had been, and the night
+watchman for the property complained that a little man, with wild
+eyes, often spent half the night standing across the street, quite
+still, staring over.  If Anthony gave Doyle a thought, it was that
+progress and growth had their inevitable victims.  But on the first
+night of Anthony's occupancy of his new house Doyle shot himself
+beside the stable, where a few stalks of white phlox had survived
+the building operations.
+
+It never reached the newspapers, nor did a stable-boy's story of
+hearing the dying man curse Anthony and all his works.  But
+nevertheless the story of the Doyle curse on Anthony Cardew spread.
+Anthony heard it, and forgot it.  But two days later he was dragged
+from his carriage by young Jim Doyle, returned for the older Doyle's
+funeral, and beaten insensible with the stick of his own carriage
+whip.
+
+Young Doyle did not run away.  He stood by, a defiant figure full
+of hatred, watching Anthony on the cobbles, as though he wanted to
+see him revive and suffer.
+
+"I didn't do it to revenge my father," he said at the trial.  "He
+was nothing to me-- I did it to show old Cardew that he couldn't
+get away with it.  I'd do it again, too."
+
+Any sentiment in his favor died at that, and he was given five years
+in the penitentiary.  He was a demoralizing influence there, already
+a socialist with anarchical tendencies, and with the gift of
+influencing men.  A fluent, sneering youth, who lashed the guards to
+fury with his unctuous, diabolical tongue.
+
+The penitentiary had not been moved then.  It stood in the park, a
+grim gray thing of stone.  Elinor Cardew, a lonely girl always, used
+to stand in a window of the new house and watch the walls.  Inside
+there were men who were shut away from all that greenery around them.
+Men who could look up at the sky, or down at the ground, but never
+out and across, as she could.
+
+She was always hoping some of them would get away.  She hated the
+sentries, rifle on shoulder, who walked their monotonous beats, back
+and forward, along the top of the wall.
+
+Anthony's house was square and substantial, with high ceilings.  It
+was paneled with walnut and furnished in walnut, in those days.  Its
+tables and bureaus were of walnut, with cold white marble tops.  And
+in the parlor was a square walnut piano, which Elinor hated because
+she had to sit there three hours each day, slipping on the top of
+the horsehair-covered stool, to practice.  In cold weather her German
+governess sat in the frigid room, with a shawl and mittens, waiting
+until the onyx clock on the mantel-piece showed that the three hours
+were over.
+
+Elinor had never heard the story of old Michael Doyle, or of his
+son Jim.  But one night--she was seventeen then, and Jim Doyle had
+served three years of his sentence--sitting at dinner with her
+father, she said:
+
+"Some convicts escaped from the penitentiary today, father."
+
+"Don't believe it," said Anthony Cardew.  "Nothing about it in the
+newspapers."
+
+"Fraulein saw the hole."
+
+Elinor had had an Alsatian governess.  That was one reason why
+Elinor's niece had a French one.
+
+"Hole?  What do you mean by hole?"
+
+Elinor shrank back a little.  She had not minded dining with her
+father when Howard was at home, but Howard was at college.  Howard
+had a way of good-naturedly ignoring his father's asperities, but
+Elinor was a suppressed, shy little thing, romantic, aloof, and
+filled with undesired affections.  "She said a hole," she affirmed,
+diffidently.  "She says they dug a tunnel and got out.  Last night."
+
+"Very probably," said Anthony Cardew.  And he repeated, thoughtfully,
+"Very probably."
+
+He did not hear Elinor when she quietly pushed back her chair and
+said "good-night."  He was sitting at the table, tapping on the
+cloth with finger-tips that were slightly cold.  That evening
+Anthony Cardew had a visit from the police, and considerable fiery
+talk took place in his library.  As a result there was a shake-up
+in city politics, and a change in the penitentiary management, for
+Anthony Cardew had a heavy hand and a bitter memory.  And a little
+cloud on his horizon grew and finally settled down over his life,
+turning it gray.  Jim Doyle was among those who had escaped.  For
+three months Anthony was followed wherever he went by detectives,
+and his house was watched at night.  But he was a brave man, and
+the espionage grew hateful.  Besides, each day added to his sense
+of security.  There came a time when he impatiently dismissed the
+police, and took up life again as before.
+
+Then one day he received a note, in a plain white envelope.  It
+said: "There are worse things than death."  And it was signed:
+"J. Doyle."
+
+Doyle was not recaptured.  Anthony had iron gratings put on the
+lower windows of his house after that, and he hired a special
+watchman.  But nothing happened, and at last he began to forget.
+He was building the new furnaces up the river by that time.  The
+era of structural steel for tall buildings was beginning, and he
+bought the rights of a process for making cement out of his furnace
+slag.  He was achieving great wealth, although he did not change
+his scale of living.
+
+Now and then Fraulein braved the terrors of the library, small
+neatly-written lists in her hands.  Miss Elinor needed this or that.
+He would check up the lists, sign his name to them, and Elinor and
+Fraulein would have a shopping excursion.  He never gave Elinor
+money.
+
+On one of the lists one day he found the word, added in Elinor's
+hand: "Horse."
+
+"Horse?" he said, scowling up at Fraulein.  "There are six horses
+in the stable now."
+
+"Miss Elinor thought--a riding horse--"
+
+"Nonsense!"  Then he thought a moment.  There came back to him a
+picture of those English gentlewomen from among whom he had
+selected his wife, quiet-voiced, hard-riding, high-colored girls,
+who could hunt all day and dance all night.  Elinor was a pale
+little thing.  Besides, every gentlewoman should ride.
+
+"She can't ride around here."
+
+"Miss Elinor thought--there are bridle paths near the riding
+academy."
+
+It was odd, but at that moment Anthony Cardew had an odd sort of
+vision.  He saw the little grocer lying stark and huddled among
+the phlox by the stable, and the group of men that stooped over him.
+
+"I'll think about it," was his answer.
+
+But within a few days Elinor was the owner of a quiet mare, stabled
+at the academy, and was riding each day in the tan bark ring between
+its white-washed fences, while a mechanical piano gave an air of
+festivity to what was otherwise rather a solemn business.
+
+Within a week of that time the riding academy had a new instructor,
+a tall, thin young man, looking older than he was, with heavy dark
+hair and a manner of repressed insolence.  A man, the grooms said
+among themselves, of furious temper and cold eyes.
+
+And in less than four months Elinor Cardew ran away from home and
+was married to Jim Doyle.  Anthony received two letters from a
+distant city, a long, ecstatic but terrified one from his daughter,
+and one line on a slip of paper from her husband.  The one line
+read: "I always pay my debts."
+
+Anthony made a new will, leaving Howard everything, and had Elinor's
+rooms closed.  Fraulein went away, weeping bitterly, and time went
+on.  Now and then Anthony heard indirectly from Doyle.  He taught
+in a boys' school for a time, and was dismissed for his radical views.
+He did brilliant editorial work on a Chicago newspaper, but now and
+then he intruded his slant-eyed personal views, and in the end he
+lost his position.  Then he joined the Socialist party, and was
+making speeches containing radical statements that made the police
+of various cities watchful.  But he managed to keep within the
+letter of the law.
+
+Howard Cardew married when Elinor had been gone less than a year.
+Married the daughter of a small hotel-keeper in his college town, a
+pretty, soft-voiced girl, intelligent and gentle, and because
+Howard was all old Anthony had left, he took her into his home.
+But for many years he did not forgive her.  He had one hope, that
+she would give Howard a son to carry on the line.  Perhaps the
+happiest months of Grace Cardew's married life were those before
+Lily was born, when her delicate health was safeguarded in every
+way by her grim father-in-law.  But Grace bore a girl child, and
+very nearly died in the bearing.  Anthony Cardew would never have
+a grandson.
+
+He was deeply resentful.  The proud fabric of his own weaving would
+descend in the fullness of time to a woman.  And Howard himself
+--old Anthony was pitilessly hard in his judgments--Howard was not
+a strong man.  A good man.  A good son, better than he deserved.
+But amiable, kindly, without force.
+
+Once the cloud had lifted, and only once.  Elinor had come home to
+have a child.  She came at night, a shabby, worn young woman, with
+great eyes in a chalk-white face, and Grayson had not recognized
+her at first.  He got her some port from the dining-room before he
+let her go into the library, and stood outside the door, his usually
+impassive face working, during the interview which followed.
+Probably that was Grayson's big hour, for if Anthony turned her out
+he intended to go in himself, and fight for the woman he had petted
+as a child.
+
+But Anthony had not turned her out.  He took one comprehensive
+glance at her thin face and distorted figure.  Then he said:
+
+"So this is the way you come back."
+
+"He drove me out," she said dully.  "He sent me here.  He knew I
+had no place else to go.  He knew you wouldn't want me.  It's
+revenge, I suppose.  I'm so tired, father."
+
+Yes, it was revenge, surely.  To send back to him this soiled and
+broken woman, bearing the mark he had put upon her--that was
+deviltry, thought out and shrewdly executed.  During the next hour
+Anthony Cardew suffered, and made Elinor suffer, too.  But at the
+end of that time he found himself confronting a curious situation.
+Elinor, ashamed, humbled, was not contrite.  It began to dawn on
+Anthony that Jim Doyle's revenge was not finished.  For--Elinor
+loved the man.
+
+She both hated him and loved him.  And that leering Irish devil
+knew it.
+
+He sent for Grace, finally, and Elinor was established in the house.
+Grace and little Lily's governess had themselves bathed her and put
+her to bed, and Mademoiselle had smuggled out of the house the
+garments Elinor had worn into it.  Grace had gone in the motor--one
+of the first in the city--and had sent back all sorts of lovely
+garments for Elinor to wear, and quantities of fine materials to be
+made into tiny garments.  Grace was a practical woman, and she
+disliked the brooding look in Elinor's eyes.
+
+"Do you know," she said to Howard that night, "I believe she is
+quite mad about him still."
+
+"He ought to be drawn and quartered," said Howard, savagely.
+
+Anthony Cardew gave Elinor sanctuary, but he refused to see her
+again.  Except once.
+
+"Then, if it is a boy, you want me to leave him with you?" she asked,
+bending over her sewing.
+
+"Leave him with me!  Do you mean that you intend to go back to that
+blackguard?"
+
+"He is my husband.  He isn't always cruel."
+
+"Good God!" shouted Anthony.  "How did I ever happen to have such
+a craven creature for a daughter?"
+
+"Anyhow," said Elinor, "it will be his child, father."
+
+"When he turned you out, like any drab of the streets!" bellowed
+old Anthony.  "He never cared for you.  He married you to revenge
+himself on me.  He sent you back here for the same reason.  He'll
+take your child, and break its spirit and ruin its body, for the
+same reason.  The man's a maniac."
+
+But again, as on the night she came, he found himself helpless
+against Elinor's quiet impassivity.  He knew that, let Jim Doyle so
+much as raise a beckoning finger, and she would go to him.  He did
+not realize that Elinor had inherited from her quiet mother the
+dog-like quality of love in spite of cruelty.  To Howard he stormed.
+He considered Elinor's infatuation indecent.  She was not a Cardew.
+The Cardew women had some pride.  And Howard, his handsome figure
+draped negligently against the library mantel, would puzzle over
+it, too.
+
+"I'm blessed if I understand it," he would say.
+
+Elinor's child had been a boy, and old Anthony found some balm in
+Gilead.  Jim Doyle had not raised a finger to beckon, and if he knew
+of his son, he made no sign.  Anthony still ignored Elinor, but he
+saw in her child the third generation of Cardews.  Lily he had never
+counted.  He took steps to give the child the Cardew name, and the
+fact was announced in the newspapers.  Then one day Elinor went out,
+and did not come back.  It was something Anthony Cardew had not
+counted on, that a woman could love a man more than her child.
+
+"I simply had to do it, father," she wrote.  "You won't understand,
+of course.  I love him, father.  Terribly.  And he loves me in his
+way, even when he is unfaithful to me.  I know he has been that.
+Perhaps if you had wanted me at home it would have been different.
+But it kills me to leave the baby.  The only reason I can bring
+myself to do it is that, the way things are, I cannot give him the
+things he ought to have.  And Jim does not seem to want him.  He
+has never seen him, for one thing.  Besides--I am being honest--
+I don't think the atmosphere of the way we live would be good for
+a boy."
+
+There was a letter to Grace, too, a wild hysterical document,
+filled with instructions for the baby's care.  A wet nurse, for one
+thing.  Grace read it with tears in her eyes, but Anthony saw in it
+only the ravings of a weak and unbalanced woman.
+
+He never forgave Elinor, and once more the little grocer's curse
+thwarted his ambitions.  For, deprived of its mother's milk, the
+baby died.  Old Anthony sometimes wondered if that, too, had been
+calculated, a part of the Doyle revenge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+While Grace rested that afternoon of Lily's return, Lily ranged over
+the house.  In twenty odd years the neighborhood had changed, and
+only a handful of the old families remained.  Many of the other
+large houses were prostituted to base uses.  Dingy curtains hung at
+their windows, dingy because of the smoke from the great furnaces
+and railroads.  The old Osgood residence, nearby, had been turned
+into apartments, with bottles of milk and paper bags on its
+fire-escapes, and a pharmacy on the street floor.  The Methodist
+Church, following its congregation to the vicinity of old Anthony's
+farm, which was now cut up into city lots, had abandoned the
+building, and it had become a garage.  The penitentiary had been
+moved outside the city limits, and near its old site was a small
+cement-lined lake, the cheerful rendezvous in summer of bathing
+children and thirsty dogs.
+
+Lily was idle, for the first time in months.  She wandered about,
+even penetrating to those upper rooms sacred to her grandfather, to
+which he had retired on Howard's marriage.  How strangely
+commonplace they were now, in the full light of day, and yet, when
+he was in them, the doors closed and only Burton, his valet, in
+attendance, how mysterious they became!
+
+Increasingly, in later years, Lily had felt and resented the
+domination of the old man.  She resented her father's acquiescence
+in that domination, her mother's good-humored tolerance of it.  She
+herself had accepted it, although unwillingly, but she knew, rather
+vaguely, that the Lily Cardew who had gone away to the camp and the
+Lily Cardew who stood that day before her grandfather's throne-like
+chair under its lamp, were two entirely different people.
+
+She was uneasy rather than defiant.  She meant to keep the peace.
+She had been brought up to the theory that no price was too great
+to pay for peace.  But she wondered, as she stood there, if that
+were entirely true.  She remembered something Willy Cameron had
+said about that very thing.
+
+"What's wrong with your grandfather," he had said, truculently, and
+waving his pipe, "is that everybody gets down and lets him walk on
+them.  If everybody lets a man use them as doormats, you can't blame
+him for wiping his feet on them.  Tell him that sometime, and see
+what happens."
+
+"Tell him yourself!" said Lily.
+
+He had smiled cheerfully.  He had an engaging sort of smile.
+
+"Maybe I will," he said.  "I am a rising young man, and my voice
+may some day be heard in the land.  Sometimes I feel the elements
+of greatness in me, sweet child.  You haven't happened to notice
+it yourself, have you?"
+
+He had gazed at her with solemn anxiety through the smoke of his
+pipe, and had grinned when she remained silent.
+
+Lily drew a long breath.  All that delightful fooling was over; the
+hard work was over.  The nights were gone when they would wander
+like children across the parade grounds, or past the bayonet school,
+with its rows of tripods upholding imitation enemies made of sacks
+stuffed with hay, and showing signs of mortal injury with their
+greasy entrails protruding.  Gone, too, were the hours when Willy
+sank into the lowest abyss of depression over his failure to be a
+fighting man.
+
+"But you are doing your best for your country," she would say.
+
+"I'm not fighting for it, or getting smashed up for it.  I don't
+want to be a hero, but I'd like to have had one good bang at them
+before I quit."
+
+Once she had found him in the hut, with his head on a table.  He
+said he had a toothache.
+
+Well, that was all over.  She was back in her grandfather's house,
+and--
+
+"He'll get me too, probably," she reflected, as she went down the
+stairs, "just as he's got all the others."
+
+Mademoiselle was in Lily's small sitting room, while Castle was
+unpacking under her supervision.  The sight of her uniforms made
+Lily suddenly restless.
+
+"How you could wear these things!" cried Mademoiselle.  "You, who
+have always dressed like a princess!"
+
+"I liked them," said Lily, briefly.  "Mademoiselle, what am
+I going to do with myself, now?"
+
+"Do?" Mademoiselle smiled.  "Play, as you deserve, Cherie.  Dance,
+and meet nice young men.  You are to make your debut this fall.
+Then a very charming young man, and marriage."
+
+"Oh!" said Lily, rather blankly.  "I've got to come out, have I?
+I'd forgotten people did such things.  Please run along and do
+something else, Castle.  I'll unpack."
+
+"That is very bad for discipline," Mademoiselle objected when the
+maid had gone.  "And it is not necessary for Mr. Anthony Cardew's
+granddaughter."
+
+"It's awfully necessary for her," Lily observed, cheerfully.  "I've
+been buttoning my own shoes for some time, and I haven't developed
+a spinal curvature yet."  She kissed Mademoiselle's perplexed face
+lightly.  "Don't get to worrying about me," she added.  "I'll shake
+down in time, and be just as useless as ever.  But I wish you'd
+lend me your sewing basket."
+
+"Why?" asked Mademoiselle, suspiciously.
+
+"Because I am possessed with a mad desire to sew on some buttons."
+
+A little later Lily looked up from her rather awkward but industrious
+labors with a needle, and fixed her keen young eyes on Mademoiselle.
+
+"Is there any news about Aunt Elinor?" she asked.
+
+"She is with him," said Mademoiselle, shortly.  "They are here now,
+in the city.  How he dared to come back!"
+
+"Does mother see her?"
+
+"No.  Certainly not."
+
+"Why 'certainly' not?  He is Aunt Elinor's husband.  She isn't
+doing anything wicked."
+
+"A woman who would leave a home like this," said Mademoiselle, "and
+a distinguished family.  Position.  Wealth.  For a brute who beats
+her.  And desert her child also!"
+
+"Does he really beat her?  I don't quite believe that, Mademoiselle."
+
+"It is not a subject for a young girl."
+
+"Because really," Lily went on, "there is something awfully big
+about a woman who will stick to one man like that.  I am quite sure
+I would bite a man who struck me, but--suppose I loved him terribly
+--" her voice trailed off.  "You see, dear, I have seen a lot of
+brutality lately.  An army camp isn't a Sunday school picnic.  And
+I like strong men, even if they are brutal sometimes."
+
+Mademoiselle carefully cut a thread.
+
+"This--you were speaking to Ellen of a young man.  Is he a--what
+you term brutal?"
+
+Suddenly Lily laughed.
+
+"You poor dear!" she said.  "And mother, too, of course!  You're
+afraid I'm in love with Willy Cameron.  Don't you know that if I
+were, I'd probably never even mention his name?"
+
+"But is he brutal?" persisted Mademoiselle.
+
+"I'll tell you about him.  He is a thin, blond young man, tall and
+a bit lame.  He has curly hair, and he puts pomade on it to take the
+curl out.  He is frightfully sensitive about not getting in the army,
+and he is perfectly sweet and kind, and as brutal as a June breeze.
+You'd better tell mother.  And you can tell her he isn't in love
+with me, or I with him.  You see, I represent what he would call
+the monied aristocracy of America, and he has the most fearful ideas
+about us."
+
+"An anarchist, then?" asked.  Mademoiselle, extremely comforted.
+
+"Not at all.  He says he belongs to the plain people.  The people
+in between.  He is rather oratorical about them.  He calls them the
+backbone of the country."
+
+Mademoiselle relaxed.  She had been too long in old Anthony's house
+to consider very seriously the plain people.  Her world, like
+Anthony Cardew's, consisted of the financial aristocracy, which
+invested money in industries and drew out rich returns, while
+providing employment for the many; and of the employees of the
+magnates, who had recently shown strong tendencies toward upsetting
+the peace of the land, and had given old Anthony one or two attacks
+of irritability when it was better to go up a rear staircase if he
+were coming down the main one.
+
+"Wait a moment," said Lily, suddenly.  "I have a picture of him
+somewhere."
+
+She disappeared, and Mademoiselle heard her rummaging through the
+drawers of her dressing table.  She came back with a small
+photograph in her hand.
+
+It showed a young man, in a large apron over a Red Cross uniform,
+bending over a low field range with a long-handled fork in his hand.
+
+"Frying doughnuts," Lily explained.  "I was in this hut at first,
+and I mixed them and cut them, and he fried them.  We made thousands
+of them.  We used to talk about opening a shop somewhere, Cardew and
+Cameron.  He said my name would be fine for business.  He'd fry them
+in the window, and I'd sell them.  And a coffee machine--coffee and
+doughnuts, you know."
+
+"Not--seriously?"
+
+At the expression on Mademoiselle's face Lily laughed joyously.
+
+"Why not?" she demanded.  "And you could be the cashier, like the
+ones in France, and sit behind a high desk and count money all day.
+I'd rather do that than come out," she added.
+
+"You are going to be a good girl, Lily, aren't you?"
+
+"If that means letting grandfather use me for a doormat, I don't
+know."
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"He's old, and I intend to be careful.  But he doesn't own me, body
+and soul.  And it may be hard to make him understand that."
+
+Many times in the next few months Mademoiselle was to remember that
+conversation, and turn it over in her shrewd, troubled mind.  Was
+there anything she could have done, outside of warning old Anthony
+himself?  Suppose she had gone to Mr. Howard Cardew?
+
+"And how," said Mademoiselle, trying to smile, "do you propose to
+assert this new independence of spirit?"
+
+"I am going to see Aunt Elinor," observed Lily.  "There, that's
+eleven buttons on, and I feel I've earned my dinner.  And I'm going
+to ask Willy Cameron to come here to see me.  To dinner.  And as he
+is sure not to have any evening clothes, for one night in their
+lives the Cardew men are going to dine in mufti.  Which is military,
+you dear old thing, for the everyday clothing that the plain people
+eat in, without apparent suffering!"
+
+Mademoiselle got up.  She felt that Grace should be warned at once.
+And there was a look in Lily's face when she mentioned this Cameron
+creature that made Mademoiselle nervous.
+
+"I thought he lived in the country."
+
+"Then prepare yourself for a blow," said Lily Cardew, cheerfully.
+"He is here in the city, earning twenty-five dollars a week in the
+Eagle Pharmacy, and serving the plain people perfectly preposterous
+patent potions--which is his own alliteration, and pretty good,
+I say."
+
+Mademoiselle went out into the hall.  Over the house, always silent,
+there had come a death-like hush.  In the lower hall the footman was
+hanging up his master's hat and overcoat.  Anthony Cardew had come
+home for dinner.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily's return, took a
+walk.  From his boarding house near the Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew
+residence was a half-hour's walk.  There were a number of things he
+had meant to do that evening, with a view to improving his mind, but
+instead he took a walk.  He had made up a schedule for those
+evenings when he was off duty, thinking it out very carefully on the
+train to the city.  And the schedule ran something like this:
+
+Monday:     8-11.  Read History.
+Wednesday:  8-11.  Read Politics and Economics.
+Friday:     8-9:30.  Travel.  9:30-11.  French.
+Sunday:     Hear various prominent divines.
+
+He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because travel was
+with him an indulgence rather than a study.  The longest journey he
+had ever taken in his life was to Washington.  That was early in
+the war, when it did not seem possible that his country would not
+use him, a boy who could tramp incredible miles in spite of his
+lameness and who could shoot a frightened rabbit at almost any
+distance, by allowing for a slight deflection to the right in the
+barrel of his old rifle.
+
+But they had refused him.
+
+"They won't use me, mother," he had said when he got home, home
+being a small neat house on a tidy street of a little country town.
+"I tried every branch, but the only training I've had--well, some
+smart kid said they weren't planning to serve soda water to the
+army.  They didn't want cripples, you see."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't, Willy."
+
+He had been frightfully sorry then and had comforted her at some
+length, but the fact remained.
+
+"And you the very best they've ever had for mixing prescriptions!"
+she had said at last.  "And a graduate in chemistry!"
+
+"Well," he said, "that's that, and we won't worry about it.  There's
+more than one way of killing a cat."
+
+"What do you mean, Willy?  More than one way?"
+
+There was no light of prophecy in William Wallace Cameron's gray
+eyes, however, when he replied: "More than one way of serving my
+country.  Don't you worry.  I'll find something."
+
+So he had, and he had come out of his Red Cross work in the camp
+with one or two things in his heart that had not been there before.
+One was a knowledge of men.  He could not have put into words what
+he felt about men.  It was something about the fundamental
+simplicity of them, for one thing.  You got pretty close to them at
+night sometimes, especially when the homesick ones had gone to bed,
+and the phonograph was playing in a corner of the long, dim room.
+There were some shame-faced tears hidden under army blankets those
+nights, and Willy Cameron did some blinking on his own account.
+
+Then, under all the blasphemy, the talk about women, the surface
+sordidness of their daily lives and thoughts, there was one instinct
+common to all, one love, one hidden purity.  And the keyword to
+those depths was "home."
+
+"Home," he said one day to Lily Cardew.  "Mostly it's the home
+they've left, and maybe they didn't think so much of it then.  But
+they do now.  And if it isn't that, it's the home they want to have
+some day."  He looked at Lily.  Sometimes she smiled at things he
+said, and if she had not been grave he would not have gone on.
+"You know," he continued, "there's mostly a girl some place.  All
+this talk about the nation, now--"  He settled himself on the edge
+of the pine table where old Anthony Cardew's granddaughter had
+been figuring up her week's accounts, and lighted his pipe, "the
+nation's too big for us to understand.  But what is the nation,
+but a bunch of homes?"
+
+"Willy dear," said Lily Cardew, "did you take any money out of the
+cigar box for anything this week?"
+
+"Dollar sixty-five for lard," replied Willy dear.  "As I was saying,
+we've got to think of this country in terms of homes.  Not palaces
+like yours--"
+
+"Good gracious!" said Lily, "I don't live in a palace.  Get my
+pocket-book, will you?  I'm out three dollars somehow, and I'd rather
+make it up myself than add these figures over again.  Go on and talk,
+Willy.  I love hearing you."
+
+"Not palaces like yours," repeated Mr. Cameron, "and not hovels.
+But mostly self-respecting houses, the homes of the plain people.
+The middle class, Miss Cardew.  My class.  The people who never say
+anything, but are squeezed between capital, represented by your
+grandfather, with its parasites, represented by you, and--"
+
+"You represent the people who never say anything," observed the
+slightly flushed parasite of capital, "about as adequately as I
+represent the idle rich."
+
+Yet not even old Anthony could have resented the actual relationship
+between them.  Lily Cardew, working alone in her hut among hundreds
+of men, was as without sex consciousness as a child.  Even then her
+flaming interest was in the private soldiers.  The officers were
+able to amuse themselves; they had money and opportunity.  It was
+the doughboys she loved and mothered.  For them she organized her
+little entertainments.  For them she played and sang in the evenings,
+when the field range in the kitchen was cold, and her blistered
+fingers stumbled sometimes over the keys of the jingling camp piano.
+
+Gradually, out of the chaos of her early impressions, she began to
+divide the men in the army into three parts.  There were the
+American born; they took the war and their part in it as a job to
+be done, with as few words as possible.  And there were the
+foreigners to whom America was a religion, a dream come true, whose
+flaming love for their new mother inspired them to stuttering
+eloquence and awkward gestures.  And then there was a third division,
+small and mostly foreign born, but with a certain percentage of
+native malcontents, who hated the war and sneered among themselves
+at the other dupes who believed that it was a war for freedom.  It
+was a capitalists' war.  They considered the state as an instrument
+of oppression, as a bungling interference with liberty and labor;
+they felt that wealth inevitably brought depravity.  They committed
+both open and overt acts against discipline, and found in their
+arrest and imprisonment renewed grievances, additional oppression,
+tyranny.  And one day a handful of them, having learned Lily's
+identity, came into her hut and attempted to bait her.
+
+"Gentlemen," said one of them, "we have here an example of one of
+the idle rich, sacrificing herself to make us happy.  Now, boys, be
+happy.  Are we all happy?"  He surveyed the group.  "Here, you,"
+he addressed a sullen-eyed squat Hungarian.  "Smile when I tell you.
+You're a slave in one of old Cardew's mills, aren't you?  Well,
+aren't you grateful to him?  Here he goes and sends his
+granddaughter--"
+
+Willy Cameron had entered the room with a platter of doughnuts in
+his hand, and stood watching, his face going pale.  Quite suddenly
+there was a crash, and the gang leader went down in a welter of
+porcelain and fried pastry.  Willy Cameron was badly beaten up, in
+the end, and the beaters were court-martialed.  But something of
+Lily's fine faith in humanity was gone.
+
+"But," she said to him, visiting him one day in the base hospital,
+where he was still an aching, mass of bruises, "there must be
+something behind it.  They didn't hate me.  They only hated my--
+well, my family."
+
+"My dear child," said Willy Cameron, feeling very old and
+experienced, and, it must be confessed, extremely happy, "of course
+there's something behind it.  But the most that's behind it is a lot
+of fellows who want without working what the other fellow's worked
+to get."
+
+It was about that time that Lily was exchanged into the town near
+the camp, and Willy Cameron suddenly found life a stale thing, and
+ashes in the mouth.  He finally decided that he had not been such a
+hopeless fool as to fall in love with her, but that it would be as
+well not to see her too much.
+
+"The thing to do," he reasoned to himself, "is, first of all, not
+to see her.  Or only on Friday nights, because she likes the movies,
+and it would look queer to stop."  Thus Willy Cameron speciously to
+himself, and deliberately ignoring the fact that some twenty-odd
+officers stood ready to seize those Friday nights.  "And then to
+work hard, so I'll sleep better, and not lie awake making a fool of
+myself.  And when I get a bit of idiocy in the daytime, I'd better
+just walk it off.  Because I've got to live with myself a long time,
+probably, and I'm no love-sick Romeo."
+
+Which excellent practical advice had cost him considerable
+shoe-leather at first.  In a month or two, however, he considered
+himself quite cured, and pretended to himself that he was surprised
+to find it Friday again.  But when, after retreat, the band marched
+back again to its quarters playing, for instance, "There's a Long,
+Long Trail," there was something inside him that insisted on seeing
+the years ahead as a long, long trail, and that the trail did not
+lead to the lands of his dreams.
+
+He got to know that very well indeed during the winter that followed
+the armistice.  Because there was work to do he stayed and finished
+up, as did Lily Cardew.  But the hut was closed and she was working
+in the town, and although they kept up their Friday evenings, the
+old intimacy was gone.  And one night she said:
+
+"Isn't it amazing, when you are busy, how soon Friday night comes
+along?"
+
+And on each day of the preceding week he had wakened and said to
+himself:  "This is Monday--"--or whatever it might be--"and in
+four more days it will be Friday."
+
+In February he was sent home.  Lily stayed on until the end of March.
+He went back to his little village of plain people, and took up life
+again as best he could.  But sometimes it seemed to him that from
+behind every fire-lit window in the evenings--he was still wearing
+out shoe-leather, particularly at nights--somebody with a mandolin
+was wailing about the long, long trail.
+
+His mother watched him anxiously.  He was thinner than ever, and
+oddly older, and there was a hollow look about his eyes that hurt
+her.
+
+"Why don't you bring home a bottle of tonic from the store, Willy,"
+she said, one evening when he had been feverishly running through
+the city newspaper.  He put the paper aside hastily.
+
+"Tonic!" he said.  "Why, I'm all right, mother.  Anyhow, I wouldn't
+take any of that stuff."  He caught her eye and looked away.  "It
+takes a little time to get settled again, that's all, mother."
+
+"The Young People's Society is having an entertainment at the church
+to-night, Willy."
+
+"Well, maybe I'll go," he agreed to her unspoken suggestion.  "If
+you insist on making me a society man--"
+
+But some time later he came downstairs with a book.
+
+"Thought I'd rather read," he explained.  "Got a book here on the
+history of steel.  Talk about romances!  Let me read some of it to
+you.  You sit there and close your eyes and just listen to this:
+'The first Cardew furnace was built in 1868.  At that time--'"
+
+Some time later he glanced up.  His mother was quietly sleeping, her
+hands folded in her lap.  He closed the book and sat there, fighting
+again his patient battle with himself.  The book on his knee seemed
+to symbolize the gulf between Lily Cardew and himself.  But the real
+gulf, the unbridgeable chasm, between Lily and himself, was neither
+social nor financial.
+
+"As if that counted, in America," he reflected scornfully.
+
+No.  It was not that.  The war had temporarily broken down the old
+social barriers.  Some of them would never be erected again,
+although it was the tendency of civilization for men to divide
+themselves, rather than to be divided, into the high, the middle
+and the low.  But in his generation young Cameron knew that there
+would be no uncrossable bridge between old Anthony's granddaughter
+and himself, were it not for one thing.
+
+She did not love him.  It hurt his pride to realize that she had
+never thought of him in any terms but that of a pleasant comradeship.
+Hardly even as a man.  Men fought, in war time.  They did not fry
+doughnuts and write letters home for the illiterate.  Any one of
+those boys in the ranks was a better man than he was.  All this
+talk about a man's soul being greater than his body, that was rot.
+A man was as good as the weakest part of him, and no more.
+
+His sensitive face in the lamplight was etched with lines of tragedy.
+He put the book on the table, and suddenly flinging his arms across
+it, dropped his head on them.  The slight movement wakened his
+mother.
+
+"Why, Willy!" she said.
+
+After a moment he looked up.  "I was almost asleep," he explained,
+more to protect her than himself.  "I--I wish that fool Nelson kid
+would break his mandolin--or his neck," he said irritably.  He
+kissed her and went upstairs.  From across the quiet street there
+came thin, plaintive, occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the
+long, long trail.
+
+There was the blood of Covenanters in Willy Cameron's mother, a high
+courage of sacrifice, and an exceedingly shrewd brain.  She lay
+awake that night, carefully planning, and when everything was
+arranged in orderly fashion in her mind, she lighted her lamp and
+carried it to the door of Willy's room.  He lay diagonally across
+his golden-oak bed, for he was very long, and sleep had rubbed away
+the tragic lines about his mouth.  She closed his door and went
+back to her bed.
+
+"I've seen too much of it," she reflected, without bitterness.  She
+stared around the room.  "Too much of it," she repeated.  And
+crawled heavily back into bed, a determined little figure, rather
+chilled.
+
+The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with
+her brother in California.
+
+"I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu," she explained,
+"and James has been wanting me this long time.  I don't want to
+leave you, that's all, Willy.  If you were in the city it would be
+different."
+
+He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth.  He
+no more suspected her of design than of crime.
+
+"Of course you are going," he said, heartily.  "It's the very thing.
+But I like the way you desert your little son!"
+
+"I've been thinking about that, too," she said, pouring his coffee.
+"I--if you were in the city, now, there would always be something
+to do."
+
+He shot her a suspicious glance, but her face was without evidence
+of guile.
+
+"What would I do in the city?"
+
+"They use chemists in the mills, don't they?"
+
+"A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job," he scoffed.  "No city
+for me, mother."
+
+But she knew.  She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous
+pause of the bird whose cage door is suddenly opened.  He would go.
+
+"I'd think about it, anyhow, Willy."
+
+But for a long time after he had gone she sat quietly rocking in her
+rocking chair in the bay window of the sitting room.  It was a
+familiar attitude of hers, homely, middle-class, and in a way
+symbolic.  Had old Anthony Cardew ever visualized so imaginative a
+thing as a Nemesis, he would probably have summoned a vision of a
+huddled figure in his stable-yard, dying, and cursing him as he
+died.  Had Jim Doyle, cunningly plotting the overthrow of law and
+order, been able in his arrogance to conceive of such a thing, it
+might have been Anthony Cardew he saw.  Neither of them, for a
+moment, dreamed of it as an elderly Scotch Covenanter, a plain little
+womanly figure, rocking in a cane-seated rocking chair, and making
+the great sacrifice of her life.
+
+All of which simply explains how, on a March Wednesday evening of
+the great year of peace after much tribulation, Mr. William Wallace
+Cameron, now a clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy, after an hour of
+Politics, and no Economics at all, happened to be taking a walk
+toward the Cardew house.  Such pilgrimages has love taken for many
+years, small uncertain ramblings where the fancy leads the feet and
+far outstrips them, and where heart-hunger hides under various flimsy
+pretexts; a fine night, a paper to be bought, a dog to be exercised.
+
+Not that Willy Cameron made any excuses to himself.  He had a sort
+of idea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would
+through her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him.  But he
+regarded himself with a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up
+a stray dog, he addressed it now and then.
+
+"Even a cat can look at a king," he said once.  And again, following
+some vague train of thought, on a crowded street: "The People's
+voice is a queer thing.  'It is, and it is not, the voice of God.'
+The people's voice, old man.  Only the ones that count haven't got
+a voice."
+
+There were, he felt, two Lily Cardews.  One lived in an army camp,
+and wore plain clothes, and got a bath by means of calculation and
+persistency, and went to the movies on Friday nights, and was quite
+apt to eat peanuts at those times, carefully putting the shells in
+her pocket.
+
+And another one lived inside this great pile of brick,--he was
+standing across from it, by the park railing, by that time--where
+motor cars drew up, and a footman with an umbrella against a light
+rain ushered to their limousines draped women and men in evening
+clothes, their strong blacks and whites revealed in the light of
+the street door.  And this Lily Cardew lived in state, bowed to by
+flunkeys in livery, dressed and undressed--his Scotch sense of
+decorum resented this--by serving women.  This Lily Cardew would
+wear frivolous ball-gowns, such things as he saw in the shop
+windows, considered money only as a thing of exchange, and had
+traveled all over Europe a number of times.
+
+He took his station against the park railings and reflected that it
+was a good thing he had come, after all.  Because it was the first
+Lily whom he loved, and she was gone, with the camp and the rest,
+including war.  What had he in common with those lighted windows,
+with their heavy laces and draperies?
+
+"Nothing at all, old man," he said cheerfully to the dog, "nothing
+at all."
+
+But although the ache was gone when he turned homeward, the dog
+still at his heels, he felt strangely lonely without it.  He
+considered that very definitely he had put love out of his life.
+Hereafter he would travel the trail alone.  Or accompanied only by
+History, Politics, Economics, and various divines on Sunday evenings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"Well, grandfather," said Lily Cardew, "the last of the Cardews is
+home from the wars."
+
+"So I presume," observed old Anthony.  "Owing, however, to your
+mother's determination to shroud this room in impenetrable gloom,
+I can only presume.  I cannot see you."
+
+His tone was less unpleasant than his words, however.  He was in one
+of the rare moods of what passed with him for geniality.  For one
+thing, he had won at the club that afternoon, where every day from
+four to six he played bridge with his own little group, reactionaries
+like himself, men who viewed the difficulties of the younger
+employers of labor with amused contempt.  For another, he and Howard
+had had a difference of opinion, and he had, for a wonder, made
+Howard angry.
+
+"Well, Lily," he inquired, "how does it seem to be at home?"
+
+Lily eyed him almost warily.  He was sometimes most dangerous in
+these moods.
+
+"I'm not sure, grandfather."
+
+"Not sure about what?"
+
+"Well, I am glad to see everybody, of course.  But what am I to do
+with myself?"
+
+"Tut." He had an air of benignantly forgiving her.  "You'll find
+plenty.  What did you do before you went away?"
+
+"That was different, grandfather."
+
+"I'm blessed," said old Anthony, truculently, "if I understand what
+has come over this country, anyhow.  What is different?  We've had
+a war.  We've had other wars, and we didn't think it necessary to
+change the Constitution after them.  But everything that was right
+before this war is wrong after it.  Lot of young idiots coming back
+and refusing to settle down.  Set of young Bolshevists!"
+
+He had always managed to arouse a controversial spirit in the girl.
+
+"Maybe, if it isn't right now, it wasn't right before."  Having
+said it, Lily immediately believed it.  She felt suddenly fired with
+an intense dislike of anything that her grandfather advocated.
+
+"Meaning what?" He fixed her with cold but attentive eyes.
+
+"Oh--conditions," she said vaguely.  She was not at all sure what
+she meant.  And old Anthony realized it, and gave a sardonic chuckle.
+
+"I advise you to get a few arguments from your father, Lily.  He is
+full of them.  If he had his way I'd have a board of my workmen
+running my mills, while I played golf in Florida."
+
+Dinner was a relatively pleasant meal.  In her gradual rehabilitation
+of the house Grace had finally succeeded in doing over the dining
+room.  Over the old walnut paneling she had hung loose folds of faded
+blue Italian velvet, with old silver candle sconces at irregular
+intervals along the walls.  The great table and high-backed chairs
+were likewise Italian, and the old-fashioned white marble fireplace
+had been given an over-mantel, also white, enclosing an old tapestry.
+For warmth of color there were always flowers, and that night there
+were red roses.
+
+Lily liked the luxury of it.  She liked the immaculate dinner dress
+of the two men; she liked her mother's beautiful neck and arms; she
+liked the quiet service once more; she even liked herself, moderately,
+in a light frock and slippers.  But she watched it all with a new
+interest and a certain detachment.  She felt strange and aloof, not
+entirely one of them.  She felt very keenly that no one of them was
+vitally interested in this wonder-year of hers.  They asked her
+perfunctory questions, but Grace's watchful eyes were on the service,
+Anthony was engrossed with his food, and her father--
+
+Her father was changed.  He looked older and care-worn.  For the
+first time she began to wonder about her father.  What was he,
+really, under that calm, fastidiously dressed, handsome exterior?
+Did he mind the little man with the sardonic smile and the swift
+unpleasant humor, whose glance reduced the men who served into
+terrified menials?  Her big, blond father, with his rather slow
+speech, his honest eyes, his slight hesitation before he grasped
+some of the finer nuances of his father's wit.  No, he was not
+brilliant, but he was real, real and kindly.  Perhaps he was strong,
+too.  He looked strong.
+
+With the same pitiless judgment she watched her mother.  Either
+Grace was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's
+tongue.  Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved
+greatly.  Like Aunt Elinor.  Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more
+than she had loved her child.  Quite calmly Lily decided that, as
+between her husband and herself, her mother loved her husband.
+Perhaps that was as it should be, but it added to her sense of
+aloofness.  And she wondered, too, about these great loves that
+seemed to feed on sacrifice.
+
+Anthony, who had a most unpleasant faculty of remembering things,
+suddenly bent forward and observed to her, across the table:
+
+"I should be interested to know, since you regard present conditions
+as wrong, and, I inferred, wrong because of my mishandling of them,
+just what you would propose to do to right them."
+
+"But I didn't say they were wrong, did I?"
+
+"Don't answer a question with a question.  It's a feminine form of
+evasion, because you have no answer and no remedy.  Yet, heaven
+save the country, women are going to vote!"  He pushed his plate
+away and glanced at Grace.  "Is that the new chef's work?"
+
+"Yes.  Isn't it right?"
+
+"Right?  The food is impossible."
+
+"He came from the club."
+
+"Send him back," ordered Anthony.  And when Grace observed that it
+was difficult to get servants, he broke into a cold fury.  What had
+come over the world, anyhow?  Time was when a gentleman's servants
+stayed with the family until they became pensioners, and their
+children took their places. Now--!
+
+Grace said nothing.  Her eyes sought Howard's, and seemed to find
+some comfort there.  And Lily, sorry for her mother, said the first
+thing that came into her head.
+
+"The old days of caste are gone, grandfather.  And service, in your
+sense of the word, went with them."
+
+"Really?" he eyed her.  "Who said that?  Because I daresay it is not
+original."
+
+"A man I knew at camp."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"His name was Willy Cameron."
+
+"Willy Cameron!  Was this--er--person qualified to speak?  Does
+he know anything about what he chooses to call caste?"
+
+"He thinks a lot about things."
+
+"A little less thinking and more working wouldn't hurt the country
+any," observed old Anthony.  He bent forward.  "As my granddaughter,
+and the last of the Cardews," he said, "I have a certain interest in
+the sources of your political opinions.  They will probably, like
+your father's, differ from mine.  You may not know that your father
+has not only opinions, but ambitions."  She saw Grace stiffen, and
+Howard's warning glance at her.  But she saw, too, the look in her
+mother's eyes, infinitely loving and compassionate.  "Dear little
+mother," she thought, "he is her baby, really.  Not I."
+
+She felt a vague stirring of what married love at its best must be
+for a woman, its strange complex of passion and maternity.  She
+wondered if it would ever come to her.  She rather thought not.  But
+she was also conscious of a new attitude among the three at the
+table, her mother's tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared
+shoulders, and across from her her grandfather, fingering the stem
+of his wineglass and faintly smiling.
+
+"It's time somebody went into city politics for some purpose other
+than graft," said Howard.  "I am going to run for mayor, Lily.  I
+probably won't get it."
+
+"You can see," said old Anthony, "why I am interested in your views,
+or perhaps I should say, in Willy Cameron's.  Does your father's
+passion for uplift, for instance, extend to you?"
+
+"Why won't you be elected, father?"
+
+"Partly because my name is Cardew."
+
+Old Anthony chuckled.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, "after the bath-house and gymnasium you have
+built at the mill?  And the laundries for the women--which I
+believe they do not use.  Surely, Howard, you would not accuse the
+dear people of ingratitude?"
+
+"They are beginning to use them, sir." Howard, in his forties, still
+addressed his father as "Sir!"
+
+"Then you admit your defeat beforehand."
+
+"You are rather a formidable antagonist."
+
+"Antagonist!" Anthony repeated in mock protest.  "I am a quiet
+onlooker at the game.  I am amused, naturally.  You must understand,"
+he said to Lily, "that this is a matter of a principle with your
+father.  He believes that he should serve.  My whole contention is
+that the people don't want to be served.  They want to be bossed.
+They like it; it's all they know.  And they're suspicious of a man
+who puts his hand into his own pocket instead of into theirs."
+
+He smiled and sipped his wine.
+
+"Good wine, this," he observed.  "I'm buying all I can lay my hands
+on, against the approaching drought."
+
+Lily's old distrust of her grandfather revived.  Why did people
+sharpen like that with age?  Age should be mellow, like old wine.
+And--what was she going to do with herself?  Already the atmosphere
+of the house began to depress and worry her; she felt a new, almost
+violent impatience with it.  It was so unnecessary.
+
+She went to the pipe organ which filled the space behind the
+staircase, and played a little, but she had never been very
+proficient, and her own awkwardness annoyed her.  In the dining room
+she could hear the men talking, Howard quietly, his father in short
+staccato barks.  She left the organ and wandered into her mother's
+morning room, behind the drawing room, where Grace sat with the
+coffee tray before her.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm going to be terribly on your hands, mother," she
+said, "I don't know what to do with myself, so how can you know
+what to do with me?"
+
+"It is going to be rather stupid for you at first, of course," Grace
+said.  "Lent, and then so many of the men are not at home.  Would
+you like to go South?"
+
+"Why, I've just come home!"
+
+"We can have some luncheons, of course.  Just informal ones.  And
+there will be small dinners.  You'll have to get some clothes.  I
+saw Suzette yesterday.  She has some adorable things."
+
+"I'd love them.  Mother, why doesn't he want father to go into
+politics?"
+
+Grace hesitated.
+
+"He doesn't like change, for one thing.  But I don't know anything
+about politics.  Suzette says--"
+
+"Will he try to keep him from being elected?"
+
+"He won't support him.  Of course I hardly think he would oppose
+him.  I really don't understand about those things."
+
+"You mean you don't understand him.  Well, I do, mother.  He has
+run everything, including father, for so long--"
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"I must, mother.  Why, out at the camp--"  She checked herself.
+"All the papers say the city is badly governed, and that he is
+responsible.  And now he is going to fight his own son!  The more I
+think about it, the more I understand about Aunt Elinor.  Mother,
+where do they live?"
+
+Grace looked apprehensively toward the door.  "You are not allowed
+to visit her."
+
+"You do."
+
+"That's different.  And I only go once or twice a year."
+
+"Just because she married a poor man, a man whose father--"
+
+"Not at all.  That is all dead and buried.  He is a very dangerous
+man.  He is running a Socialist newspaper, and now he is inciting
+the mill men to strike.  He is preaching terrible things.  I haven't
+been there for months."
+
+"What do you mean by terrible things, mother?"
+
+"Your father says it amounts to a revolution.  I believe he calls
+it a general strike.  I don't really know much about it."
+
+Lily pondered that.
+
+"Socialism isn't revolution, mother, is it?  But even then--is all
+this because grandfather drove his father to--"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't, Lily.  Of course it is not that.  I daresay
+he believes what he preaches.  He ought to be put into jail.  Why
+the country lets such men go around, preaching sedition, I don't
+understand."
+
+Lily remembered something else Willy Cameron had said, and promptly
+repeated it.
+
+"We had a muzzled press during the war," she said, "and now we've
+got free speech.  And one's as bad as the other.  She must love him
+terribly, mother," she added.
+
+But Grace harked back to Suzette, and the last of the Cardews harked
+with her.  Later on people dropped in, and Lily made a real attempt
+to get back into her old groove, but that night, when she went
+upstairs to her bedroom, with its bright fire, its bed neatly turned
+down, her dressing gown and slippers laid out, the shaded lamps
+shining on the gold and ivory of her dressing table, she was
+conscious of a sudden homesickness.  Homesickness for her bare
+little room in the camp barracks, for other young lives, noisy,
+chattering, often rather silly, occasionally unpleasant, but young.
+Radiantly, vitally young.  The great house, with its stillness and
+decorum, oppressed her.  There was no youth in it, save hers.
+
+She went to her window and looked out.  Years ago, like Elinor, she
+had watched the penitentiary walls from that window, with their
+endlessly pacing sentries, and had grieved for those men who might
+look up at the sky, or down at the earth, but never out and across,
+to see the spring trees, for instance, or the children playing on
+the grass.  She remembered the story about Jim Doyle's escape, too.
+He had dug a perilous way to freedom.  Vaguely she wondered if he
+were not again digging a perilous way to freedom.
+
+Men seemed always to be wanting freedom, only they had so many
+different ideas of what freedom was.  At the camp it had meant
+breaking bounds, balking the Military Police, doing forbidden things
+generally.  Was that, after all, what freedom meant, to do the
+forbidden thing?  Those people in Russia, for instance, who stole
+and burned and appropriated women, in the name of freedom.  Were
+law and order, then, irreconcilable with freedom?
+
+After she had undressed she rang her bell, and Castle answered it.
+
+"Please find out if Ellen has gone to bed," she said.  "If she has
+not, I would like to talk to her."
+
+The maid looked slightly surprised.
+
+"If it's your hair, Miss Lily, Mrs. Cardew has asked me to look
+after you until she has engaged a maid for you."
+
+"Not my hair," said Lily, cheerfully.  "I rather like doing it
+myself.  I just want to talk to Ellen."
+
+It was a bewildered and rather scandalized Castle who conveyed the
+message to Ellen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"I wish you'd stop whistling that thing," said Miss Boyd, irritably.
+"It makes me low in my mind."
+
+"Sorry," said Willy Cameron.  "I do it because I'm low in my mind."
+
+"What are you low about?"  Miss Boyd had turned toward the rear of
+the counter, where a mirror was pasted to a card above a box of
+chewing gum, and was carefully adjusting her hair net.  "Lady friend
+turned you down?"
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at her.
+
+"I'm low because I haven't got a lady friend, Miss Boyd."  He held
+up a sheet of prescription paper and squinted at it.  "Also because
+the medical profession writes with its feet, apparently.  I've done
+everything to this but dip it in acid.  I've had it pinned to the
+wall, and tried glancing at it as I went past.  Sometimes you can
+surprise them that way.  But it does no good.  I'm going to take it
+home and dream on it, like bride's cake."
+
+"They're awful, aren't they?"
+
+"When I get into the Legislature," said Willy Cameron, "I'm going
+to have a bill passed compelling doctors to use typewriters.  Take
+this now.  Read upside down, its horse liniment.  Read right side
+up, it's poison.  And it's for internal use."
+
+"What d'you mean you haven't got a lady friend?"
+
+"The exact and cruel truth."  He smiled at her, and had Miss Boyd
+been more discerning she might have seen that the smile was slightly
+forced.  Also that his eyes were somewhat sunken in his head.  Which
+might, of course, have been due to too much political economy and
+history, and the eminent divines on Sunday evenings.  Miss Boyd,
+however, was not discerning, and moreover, she was summoning her
+courage to a certain point.
+
+"Why don't you ask me to go to the movies some night?" she said.
+"I like the movies, and I get sick of going alone."
+
+"My dear child," observed Willy Cameron, "if that young man in the
+sack suit who comes in to see you every day were three inches shorter
+and twenty pounds lighter, I'd ask you this minute."
+
+"Oh, him!" said Miss Boyd, with a self-conscious smile.  "I'm
+through with him.  He's a Bolshevik!"
+
+"He has the Bolshevist possessive eye," agreed Willy Cameron,
+readily.  "Does he know you are through with him?  Because that's
+important, too.  You may know it, and I may know it, but if he
+doesn't know it--"
+
+"Why don't you say right out you don't want to take me?"  Willy
+Cameron's chivalrous soul was suddenly shocked.  To his horror he
+saw tears in Miss Boyd's eyes.
+
+"I'm just a plain idiot, Miss Edith," he said.  "I was only fooling.
+It will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the
+movies, or anywhere else.  We'll make it to-night, if that suits you,
+and I'll take a look through the neighborhood at noon and see what's
+worth while."
+
+The Eagle Pharmacy was a small one in a quiet neighborhood.  During
+the entire day, and for three evenings a week, Mr. William Wallace
+Cameron ran it almost single-handed, having only the preoccupied
+assistance of Miss Boyd in the candy and fancy goods.  At the noon
+and dinner hours, and four evenings a week, he was relieved by the
+owner, Mr. Davis, a tired little man with large projecting ears and
+worried, child-like eyes, who was nursing an invalid wife at home.
+A pathetic little man, carrying home with unbounded faith day after
+day bottles of liquid foods and beef capsules, and making wistful
+comments on them when he returned.
+
+"She couldn't seem to keep that last stuff down, Mr. Cameron," he
+would say.  "I'll try something else."
+
+And he would stand before his shelves, eyes upturned, searching,
+eliminating, choosing.
+
+Miss Boyd attended to the general merchandise, sold stationery and
+perfumes, candy and fancy soaps, and in the intervals surveyed the
+world that lay beyond the plate glass windows with shrewd,
+sophisticated young eyes.
+
+"That new doctor across the street is getting busier," she would
+say.  Or, "The people in 42 have got a Ford.  They haven't got room
+for a garage, either.  Probably have to leave it out at nights."
+
+Her sophistication was kindly in the main.  She combined it with an
+easy tolerance of weakness, and an invincible and cheery romanticism,
+as Willy Cameron discovered the night they first went to a moving
+picture theater together.  She frankly wept and joyously laughed,
+and now and then, delighted at catching some film subtlety and
+fearful that he would miss it, she would nudge him with her elbow.
+
+"What d'you think of that?" she would say.  "D'you get it?  He thinks
+he's getting her--Alice Joyce, you know--on the telephone, and it's
+a private wire to the gang."  She was rather quiet after that
+particular speech.  Then she added: "I know a place that's got a
+secret telephone."  But he was absorbed in the picture, and made no
+comment on that.  She seemed rather relieved.
+
+Once or twice she placed an excited hand on his knee.  He was very
+uncomfortable until she removed it, because he had a helpless sort
+of impression that she was not quite so unconscious of it as she
+appeared.  Time had been, and not so long ago, when he might have
+reciprocated her little advance in the spirit in which it was
+offered, might have taken the hand and held it, out of the sheer
+joy of youth and proximity.  But there was nothing of the philanderer
+in the Willy Cameron who sat beside Edith Boyd that night in body,
+while in spirit he was in another state, walking with his slight limp
+over crisp snow and sodden mud, but through magic lands, to the
+little moving picture theater at the camp.
+
+Would he ever see her again?  Ever again?  And if he did, what good
+would it be?  He roused himself when they started toward her home.
+The girl was chattering happily.  She adored Douglas Fairbanks.  She
+knew a girl who had written for his picture but who didn't get one.
+She wouldn't do a thing like that.  "Did they really say things when
+they moved their lips?"
+
+"I think they do," said Willy Cameron.  "When that chap was talking
+over the telephone I could tell what he was saying by-- Look here,
+what did you mean when you said you knew of a place that has a secret
+telephone?"
+
+"I was only talking."
+
+"No house has any business with a secret telephone," he said
+virtuously.
+
+"Oh, forget it.  I say a lot of things I don't mean."  He was a
+little puzzled and rather curious, but not at all disturbed.
+
+"Well, how did you get to know about it?"
+
+"I tell you I was only talking."
+
+He let it drop at that.  The street crowds held and interested him.
+He liked to speculate about them; what life meant to them, in work
+and love and play; to what they were going on such hurrying feet.
+A country boy, the haste of the city impressed him.
+
+"Why do they hurry so?" he demanded, almost irritably.
+
+"Hurrying home, most of them, because they've got to get up in the
+morning and go to work."
+
+"Do you ever wonder about the homes they are hurrying to?"
+
+"Me?  I don't wonder.  I know.  Most of them have to move fast to
+keep up with the rent."
+
+"I don't mean houses," he explained, patiently.  "I mean-- A house
+isn't a home."
+
+"You bet it isn't."
+
+"It's the families I'm talking about.  In a small town you know all
+about people, who they live with, and all that."  He was laboriously
+talking down to her.  "But here--"
+
+He saw that she was not interested.  Something he had said started
+an unpleasant train of thought in her mind.  She was walking faster,
+and frowning slightly.  To cheer her he said:
+
+"I am keeping an eye out for the large young man in the sack suit,
+you know.  If he jumps me, just yell for the police, will you?
+Because I'll probably not be able to."
+
+"I wish you'd let me forget him."
+
+"I will.  The question is, will he?"  But he saw that the subject
+was unpleasant.
+
+"We'll have to do this again.  It's been mighty nice of you to come."
+
+"You'll have to ask me, the next time."
+
+"I certainly will.  But I think I'd better let your family look me
+over first, just so they'll know that I don't customarily steal
+the silver spoons when I'm asked out to dinner.  Or anything like
+that."
+
+"We're just--folks."
+
+"So am I, awfully--folks!  And pretty lonely folks at that.
+Something like that pup that has adopted me, only worse.  He's got
+me, but I haven't anybody."
+
+"You'll not be lonely long." She glanced up at him.
+
+"That's cheering.  Why?"
+
+"Well, you are the sort that makes friends," she said, rather
+vaguely.  "That crowd that drops into the shop on the evenings
+you're there--they're crazy about you.  They like to hear you talk."
+
+"Great Scott!  I suppose I've been orating all over the place!"
+
+"No, but you've got ideas.  You give them something to think about
+when they go home.  I wish I had a mind like yours."
+
+He was so astonished that he stopped dead on the pavement.  "My
+Scottish blood," he said despondently.  "A Scot is always a reformer
+and a preacher, in his heart.  I used to orate to my mother, but she
+liked it.  She is a Scot, too.  Besides, it put her to sleep.  But
+I thought I'd outgrown it."
+
+"You don't make speeches.  I didn't mean that."
+
+But he was very crestfallen during the remainder of the way, and
+rather silent.  He wondered, that night before he went to bed, if he
+had been didactic to Lily Cardew.  He had aired his opinions to her
+at length, he knew.  He groaned as he took off his coat in his cold
+little room at the boarding house which lodged and fed him, both
+indifferently, for the sum of twelve dollars per week.
+
+Jinx, the little hybrid dog, occupied the seat of his one comfortable
+chair.  He eyed the animal somberly.
+
+"Hereafter, old man," he said, "when I feel a spell of oratory coming
+on, you will have to be the audience."  He took his dressing gown
+from a nail behind the door, and commenced to put it on.  Then he
+took it off again and wrapped the dog in it.
+
+"I can read in bed, which you can't," he observed.  "Only, I can't
+help thinking, with all this town to pick from, you might have chosen
+a fellow with two dressing gowns and two chairs."
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+He was extremely quiet all the next day.  Miss Boyd could hear him,
+behind the partition with its "Please Keep Out" sign, fussing with
+bottles and occasionally whistling to himself.  Once it was the "Long,
+Long Trail," and a moment later he appeared in his doorway, grinning.
+
+"Sorry," he said.  "I've got in the habit of thinking to the fool
+thing.  Won't do it again."
+
+"You must be thinking hard."
+
+"I am," he replied, grimly, and disappeared.  She could hear the
+slight unevenness of his steps as he moved about, but there was no
+more whistling.  Edith Boyd leaned both elbows on the top of a
+showcase and fell into a profound and troubled thought.  Mostly her
+thoughts were of Willy Cameron, but some of them were for herself.
+Up dreary and sordid by-paths her mind wandered; she was facing ugly
+facts for the first time, and a little shudder of disgust shook her.
+He wanted to meet her family.  He was a gentleman and he wanted to
+meet her family.  Well, he could meet them all right, and maybe he
+would understand then that she had never had a chance.  In all her
+young life no man had ever proposed letting her family look him over.
+Hardly ever had they visited her at home, and when they did they
+seemed always glad to get away.  She had met them on street corners,
+and slipped back alone, fearful of every creak of the old staircase,
+and her mother's querulous voice calling to her:
+
+"Edie, where've you been all this time?"  And she had lied.  How
+she had lied!
+
+"I'm through with all that," she resolved.  "It wasn't any fun
+anyhow.  I'm sick of hating myself."
+
+
+Some time later Willy Cameron heard the telephone ring, and taking
+pad and pencil started forward.  But Miss Boyd was at the telephone,
+conducting a personal conversation.
+
+"No....  No, I think not....  Look here, Lou, I've said no twice."
+
+There was a rather lengthy silence while she listened.  Then:
+"You might as well have it straight, Lou.  I'm through.... No, I'm
+not sick.  I'm just through.... I wouldn't.... What's the use?"
+
+Willy Cameron, retreating into his lair, was unhappily conscious
+that the girl was on the verge of tears.  He puzzled over the
+situation for some time.  His immediate instinct was to help any
+troubled creature, and it had dawned on him that this composed
+young lady who manicured her nails out of a pasteboard box during
+the slack portion of every day was troubled.  In his abstraction
+he commenced again his melancholy refrain, and a moment later she
+appeared in the doorway:
+
+"Oh, for mercy's sake, stop," she said.  She was very pale.
+
+"Look here, Miss Edith, you come in here and tell me what's wrong.
+Here's a chair.  Now sit down and talk it out.  It helps a lot to
+get things off your chest."
+
+"There's nothing the matter with me.  And if the boss comes in
+here and finds me--"
+
+Quite suddenly she put her head down on the back of the chair and
+began to cry.  He was frightfully distressed.  He poured some
+aromatic ammonia into a medicine glass and picking up her limp hand,
+closed her fingers around it.
+
+"Drink that," he ordered.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I'm not sick," she said.  "I'm only a fool."
+
+"If that fellow said anything over the telephone--!"
+
+She looked up drearily.
+
+"It wasn't him.  He doesn't matter.  It's just--I got to hating
+myself."  She stood up and carefully dabbed her eyes.  "Heavens, I
+must be a sight.  Now don't you get to thinking things, Mr. Cameron.
+Girls can't go out and fight off a temper, or get full and sleep it
+off.  So they cry."
+
+Some time later he glanced out at her.  She was standing before the
+little mirror above the chewing gum, carefully rubbing her cheeks
+with a small red pad.  After that she reached into the show case,
+got out a lip pencil and touched her lips.
+
+"You're pretty enough without all that, Miss Edith."
+
+"You mind your own business," she retorted acidly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life.  The children of
+that group of families which formed the monied aristocracy of the
+city knew only their own small circle.  They met at dancing classes,
+where governesses and occasionally mothers sat around the walls,
+while the little girls, in handmade white frocks of exquisite
+simplicity, their shining hair drawn back and held by ribbon bows,
+made their prim little dip at the door before entering, and the
+boys, in white Eton collars and gleaming pumps, bowed from the
+waist and then dived for the masculine corner of the long room.
+
+No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although now and then
+a brave spirit among the boys would wander, with assumed
+unconsciousness but ears rather pink, to the opposite corner where
+the little girls were grouped like white butterflies milling in the
+sun.
+
+The pianist struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on
+one side, the boys on the other, a long line, with Mrs. Van Buren
+in the center.  Another chord, rather a long one.  Mrs. Van Buren
+curtsied to the girls.  The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself.
+Mrs. Van Buren turned.  Another chord.  The boys bent, rather too
+much, from the waist, while Mrs. Van Buren swept another deep
+curtsey.  The music now, very definite as to time.  Glide and short
+step to the right.  Glide and short step to the left.  Dancing
+school had commenced.  Outside were long lines of motors waiting.
+The governesses chatted, and sometimes embroidered.  Mademoiselle
+tatted.
+
+Alton Denslow was generally known as Pink, but the origin of the
+name was shrouded in mystery.  As "Pink" he had learned to waltz
+at the dancing class, at a time when he was more attentive to the
+step than to the music that accompanied it.  As Pink Denslow he
+had played on a scrub team at Harvard, and got two broken ribs for
+his trouble, and as Pink he now paid intermittent visits to the
+Denslow Bank, between the hunting season in October and polo at
+eastern fields and in California.  At twenty-three he was still the
+boy of the dancing class, very careful at parties to ask his hostess
+to dance, and not noticeably upset when she did, having arranged to
+be cut in on at the end of the second round.
+
+Pink could not remember when he had not been in love with Lily
+Cardew.  There had been other girls, of course, times when Lily
+seemed far away from Cambridge, and some other fair charmer was
+near.  But he had always known there was only Lily.  Once or twice
+he would have become engaged, had it not been for that.  He was a
+blond boy, squarely built, good-looking without being handsome, and
+on rainy Sundays when there was no golf he went quite cheerfully to
+St.  Peter's with his mother, and watched a pretty girl in the choir.
+
+He wished at those times that he could sing.
+
+A pleasant cumberer of the earth, he had wrapped his talents in a
+napkin and buried them by the wayside, and promptly forgotten where
+they were.  He was to find them later on, however, not particularly
+rusty, and he increased them rather considerably before he got
+through.
+
+It was this pleasant cumberer of the earth, then, who on the morning
+after Lily's return, stopped his car before the Cardew house and got
+out.  Immediately following his descent he turned, took a square
+white box from the car, ascended the steps, settled his neck in his
+collar and his tie around it, and rang the bell.
+
+The second man, hastily buttoned into his coat and with a faint odor
+of silver polish about him, opened the door.  Pink gave him his hat,
+but retained the box firmly.
+
+"Mrs. Cardew and Miss Cardew at home?" he asked.  "Yes?  Then you
+might tell Grayson I'm here to luncheon--unless the family is
+lunching out."
+
+"Yes, sir," said the footman.  "No, sir, they are lunching at home."
+
+Pink sauntered into the library.  He was not so easy as his manner
+indicated.  One never knew about Lily.  Sometimes she was in a mood
+when she seemed to think a man funny, and not to be taken seriously.
+And when she was serious, which was the way he liked her--he rather
+lacked humor--she was never serious about him or herself.  It had
+been religion once, he remembered.  She had wanted to know if he
+believed in the thirty-nine articles, and because he had seen them
+in the back of the prayer-book, where they certainly would not be if
+there was not authority for them, he had said he did.
+
+"Well, I don't," said Lily.  And there had been rather a bad
+half-hour, because he had felt that he had to stick to his
+thirty-nine guns, whatever they were.  He had finished on a rather
+desperate note of appeal.
+
+"See here, Lily," he had said.  "Why do you bother your head about
+such things, anyhow?"
+
+"Because I've got a head, and I want to use it."
+
+"Life's too short."
+
+"Eternity's pretty long.  Do you believe in eternity?"  And there
+they were, off again, and of course old Anthony had come in after
+that, and had wanted to know about his Aunt Marcia, and otherwise
+had shown every indication of taking root on the hearth rug.
+
+Pink was afraid of Anthony.  He felt like a stammering fool when
+Anthony was around.  That was why he had invited himself to luncheon.
+Old Anthony lunched at his club.
+
+When he heard Lily coming down the stairs, Pink's honest heart beat
+somewhat faster.  A good many times in France, but particularly on
+the ship coming back, he had thought about this meeting.  In France
+a fellow had a lot of distractions, and Lily had seemed as dear as
+ever, but extremely remote.  But once turned toward home, and she
+had filled the entire western horizon.  The other men had seen
+sunsets there, and sometimes a ship, or a school of porpoises.  But
+Pink had seen only Lily.
+
+She came in.  The dear old girl!  The beautiful, wonderful, dear
+old girl!  The--
+
+"Pink!"
+
+"H--hello, Lily."
+
+"Why, Pink--you're a man!"
+
+"What'd you think I'd be?  A girl?"
+
+"You've grown."
+
+"Oh, now see here, Lily.  I quit growing years ago."
+
+"And to think you are back all right.  I was so worried, Pink."
+
+He flushed at that.
+
+"Needn't have worried," he said, rather thickly.  "Didn't get to the
+front until just before the end.  My show was made a labor division
+in the south of France.  If you laugh, I'll take my flowers and go
+home."
+
+"Why, Pink dear, I wouldn't laugh for anything.  And it was the man
+behind the lines who--"
+
+"Won the war," he finished for her, rather grimly.  "All right, Lily.
+We've heard it before.  Anyhow, it's all done and over, and--I
+brought gardenias and violets.  You used to like 'em."
+
+"It was dear of you to remember."
+
+"Couldn't help remembering.  No credit to me.  I--you were always in
+my mind."
+
+She was busily unwrapping the box.
+
+"Always," he repeated, unsteadily.
+
+"What gorgeous things!" she buried her face in them.
+
+"Did you hear what I said, Lily?"
+
+"Yes, and it's sweet of you.  Now sit down and tell me about things.
+I've got a lot to tell you, too."
+
+He had a sort of quiet obstinacy, however, and he did not sit down.
+When she had done so he stood in front of her, looking down at her.
+
+"You've been in a camp.  I know that.  I heard it over there.  Anne
+Devereaux wrote me.  It worried me because--we had girls in the
+camps over there, and every one of them had a string of suitors a
+mile long."
+
+"Well, I didn't," said Lily, spiritedly.  Then she laughed.  He had
+been afraid she would laugh.  "Oh, Pink, how dear and funny and
+masculine you are!  I have a perfectly uncontrollable desire to kiss
+you."
+
+Which she did, to his amazement and consternation.  Nothing she
+could have done would more effectually have shown him the
+hopelessness of his situation than that sisterly impulse.
+
+"Good Lord," he gasped, "Grayson's in the hall."
+
+"If he comes in I shall probably do it again.  Pink, you darling
+child, you are still the little boy at Mrs. Van Buren's and if you
+would only purse your lips and count one--two--three--Are you
+staying to luncheon?"
+
+He was suffering terribly.  Also he felt strangely empty inside,
+because something that he had carried around with him for a long
+time seemed to have suddenly moved out and left a vacancy.
+
+"Thanks.  I think not, Lily; I've got a lot to do to-day."
+
+She sat very still.  She had had to do it, had had to show him,
+somehow, that she loved him without loving him as he wanted her to.
+She had acted on impulse, on an impulse born of intention, but she
+had hurt him.  It was in every line of his rigid body and set face.
+
+"You're not angry, Pink dear?"
+
+"There's nothing to be angry about," he said, stolidly.  "Things have
+been going on, with me, and staying where they've always been, with
+you.  That's all.  I'm not very keen, you know, and I used to think
+--Your people like me.  I mean, they wouldn't--"
+
+"Everybody likes you, Pink."
+
+"Well, I'll trot along." He moved a step, hesitated.  "Is there
+anybody else, Lily?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"You won't mind if I hang around a bit, then?  You can always send
+me off when you are sick of me.  Which you couldn't if you were fool
+enough to marry me."
+
+"Whoever does marry you, dear, will be a lucky woman."
+
+In the end he stayed to luncheon, and managed to eat a very fair one.
+But he had little lapses into silence, and Grace Cardew drew her own
+shrewd conclusions.
+
+"He's such a nice boy, Lily," she said, after he had gone.  "And
+your grandfather would like it.  In a way I think he expects it."
+
+"I'm not going to marry to please him, mother."
+
+"But you are fond of Alston."
+
+"I want to marry a man, mother.  Pink is a boy.  He will always be a
+boy.  He doesn't think; he just feels.  He is fine and loyal and
+honest, but I would loathe him in a month."
+
+"I wish," said Grace Cardew unhappily, "I wish you had never gone to
+that camp."
+
+All afternoon Lily and Grace shopped.  Lily was fitted into shining
+evening gowns, into bright little afternoon frocks, into Paris wraps.
+The Cardew name was whispered through the shops, and great piles of
+exotic things were brought in for Grace's critical eye.  Lily's own
+attitude was joyously carefree.  Long lines of models walked by,
+draped in furs, in satins and velvet and chiffon, tall girls, most
+of them, with hair carefully dressed, faces delicately tinted and
+that curious forward thrust at the waist and slight advancement of
+one shoulder that gave them an air of languorous indifference.
+
+"The only way I could get that twist," Lily confided to her mother,
+"would be to stand that way and be done up in plaster of paris.  It
+is the most abandoned thing I ever saw."
+
+Grace was shocked, and said so.
+
+Sometimes, during the few hours since her arrival, Lily had wondered
+if her year's experiences had coarsened her.  There were so many
+times when her mother raised her eyebrows.  She knew that she had
+changed, that the granddaughter of old Anthony Cardew who had come
+back from the war was not the girl who had gone away.  She had gone
+away amazingly ignorant; what little she had known of life she had
+learned away at school.  But even there she had not realized the
+possibility of wickedness and vice in the world.  One of the girls
+had run away with a music master who was married, and her name was
+forbidden to be mentioned.  That was wickedness, like blasphemy,
+and a crime against the Holy Ghost.
+
+She had never heard of prostitution.  Near the camp there was a
+district with a bad name, and the girls of her organization were
+forbidden to so much as walk in that direction.  It took her a long
+time to understand, and she suffered horribly when she did.  There
+were depths of wickedness, then, and of abasement like that in the
+world.  It was a bad world, a cruel, sordid world.  She did not want
+to live in it.
+
+She had had to reorganize all her ideas of life after that.  At
+first she was flamingly indignant.  God had made His world clean and
+beautiful, and covered it with flowers and trees that grew, cleanly
+begotten, from the earth.  Why had He not stopped there?  Why had He
+soiled it with passion and lust?
+
+It was a little Red Cross nurse who helped her, finally.
+
+"Very well," she said.  "I see what you mean.  But trees and flowers
+are not God's most beautiful gift to the world."
+
+"I think they are."
+
+"No.  It is love."
+
+"I am not talking about love," said Lily, flushing.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are.  You have never loved, have you?  You are talking
+of one of the many things that go to make up love, and out of that
+one phase of love comes the most wonderful thing in the world.  He
+gives us the child."
+
+And again:
+
+"All bodies are not whole, and not all souls.  It is wrong to judge
+life by its exceptions, or love by its perversions, Lily."
+
+It had been the little nurse finally who cured her, for she secured
+Lily's removal to that shady house on a by-street, where the
+tragedies of unwise love and youth sought sanctuary.  There were
+prayers there, morning and evening.  They knelt, those girls, in
+front of their little wooden chairs, and by far the great majority
+of them quite simply laid their burdens before God, and with an
+equal simplicity, felt that He would help them out.
+
+"We have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep.  We have
+followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.  We
+have offended against Thy holy laws.... Restore Thou those who are
+penitent, according to Thy promises.... And grant, Oh most merciful
+Father, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life."
+
+After a time Lily learned something that helped her.  The soul was
+greater and stronger than the body and than the mind.  The body
+failed.  It sinned, but that did not touch the unassailable purity
+and simplicity of the soul.  The soul, which lived on, was always
+clean.  For that reason there was no hell.
+
+Lily rose and buttoned her coat.  Grace was fastening her sables,
+and making a delayed decision in satins.
+
+"Mother, I've been thinking it over.  I am going to see Aunt Elinor."
+
+Grace waited until the saleswoman had moved away.
+
+"I don't like it, Lily."
+
+"I was thinking, while we were ordering all that stuff.  She is a
+Cardew, mother.  She ought to be having that sort of thing.  And
+just because grandfather hates her husband, she hasn't anything."
+
+"That is rather silly, dear.  They are not in want.  I believe he is
+quite flourishing."
+
+"She is father's sister.  And she is a good woman.  We treat her
+like a leper."
+
+Grace was weakening.  "If you take the car, your grandfather may
+hear of it."
+
+"I'll take a taxi."
+
+Grace followed her with uneasy eyes.  For years she paid a price
+for peace, and not a small price.  She had placed her pride on the
+domestic altar, and had counted it a worthy sacrifice for Howard's
+sake.  And she had succeeded.  She knew Anthony Cardew had never
+forgiven her and would never like her, but he gave her, now and
+then, the tribute of a grudging admiration.
+
+And now Lily had come home, a new and different Lily, with her
+father's lovableness and his father's obstinacy.  Already Grace saw
+in the girl the beginning of a passionate protest against things as
+they were.  Perhaps, had Grace given to Lily the great love of her
+life, instead of to Howard, she might have understood her less
+clearly.  As it was, she shivered slightly as she got into the
+limousine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Lily Cardew inspected curiously the east side neighborhood through
+which the taxi was passing.  She knew vaguely that she was in the
+vicinity of one of the Cardew mills, but she had never visited any
+of the Cardew plants.  She had never been permitted to do so.
+Perhaps the neighborhood would have impressed her more had she not
+seen, in the camp, that life can be stripped sometimes to its
+essentials, and still have lost very little.  But the dinginess
+depressed her.  Smoke was in the atmosphere, like a heavy fog.  Soot
+lay on the window-sills, and mingled with street dust to form little
+black whirlpools in the wind.  Even the white river steamers,
+guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were gray
+with soft coal smoke.  The foam of the river falling in broken
+cataracts from their stern wheels was oddly white in contrast.
+
+Everywhere she began to see her own name.  "Cardew" was on the ore
+hopper cars that were moving slowly along a railroad spur.  One of
+the steamers bore "Anthony Cardew" in tall black letters on its side.
+There was a narrow street called "Cardew Way."
+
+Aunt Elinor lived on Cardew Way.  She wondered if Aunt Elinor found
+that curious, as she did.  Did she resent these ever-present
+reminders of her lost family?  Did she have any bitterness because
+the very grayness of her skies was making her hard old father richer
+and more powerful?
+
+Yet there was comfort, stability and a certain dignity about Aunt
+Elinor's house when she reached it.  It stood in the district, but
+not of it, withdrawn from the street in a small open space which
+gave indication of being a flower garden in summer.  There were two
+large gaunt trees on either side of a brick walk, and that walk had
+been swept to the last degree of neatness.  The steps were freshly
+scoured, and a small brass door-plate, like a doctor's sign, was as
+bright as rubbing could make it.  "James Doyle," she read.
+
+Suddenly she was glad she had come.  The little brick house looked
+anything but tragic, with its shining windows, its white curtains
+and its evenly drawn shades.  Through the windows on the right came
+a flickering light, warm and rosy.  There must be a coal fire there.
+She loved a coal fire.
+
+She had braced herself to meet Aunt Elinor at the door, but an
+elderly woman opened it.
+
+"Mrs. Doyle is in," she said; "just step inside."
+
+She did not ask Lily's name, but left her in the dark little hall
+and creaked up the stairs.  Lily hesitated.  Then, feeling that Aunt
+Elinor might not like to find her so unceremoniously received, she
+pushed open a door which was only partly closed, and made a step
+into the room.  Only then did she see that it was occupied.  A man
+sat by the fire, reading.  He was holding his book low, to get the
+light from the fire, and he turned slowly to glance at Lily.  He
+had clearly expected some one else.  Elinor, probably.
+
+"I beg your pardon," Lily said.  "I am calling on Mrs. Doyle, and
+when I saw the firelight--"
+
+He stood up then, a tall, thin man, with close-cropped gray mustache
+and heavy gray hair above a high, bulging forehead.  She had never
+seen Jim Doyle, but Mademoiselle had once said that he had pointed
+ears, like a satyr.  She had immediately recanted, on finding Lily
+searching in a book for a picture of a satyr.  This man had ears
+pointed at the top.  Lily was too startled then to analyze his face,
+but later on she was to know well the high, intellectual forehead,
+the keen sunken eyes, the full but firmly held mouth and pointed,
+satyr-like ears of that brilliant Irishman, cynic and arch scoundrel,
+Jim Doyle.
+
+He was inspecting her intently.
+
+"Please come in," he said.  "Did the maid take your name?"
+
+"No.  I am Lily Cardew."
+
+"I see." He stood quite still, eyeing her.  "You are Anthony's
+granddaughter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Just a moment."  He went out, closing the door behind him, and she
+heard him going quickly up the stairs.  A door closed above, and a
+weight settled down on the girl's heart.  He was not going to let
+her see Aunt Elinor.  She was frightened, but she was angry, too.
+She would not run away.  She would wait until he came down, and if
+he was insolent, well, she could be haughty.  She moved to the fire
+and stood there, slightly flushed, but very straight.
+
+She heard him coming down again almost immediately.  He was outside
+the door.  But he did not come in at once.  She had a sudden
+impression that he was standing there, his hand on the knob,
+outlining what he meant to say to her when he showed the door to a
+hated Cardew.  Afterwards she came to know how right that impression
+was.  He was never spontaneous.  He was a man who debated everything,
+calculated everything beforehand.
+
+When he came in it was slowly, and with his head bent, as though he
+still debated within himself.  Then:
+
+"I think I have a right to ask what Anthony Cardew's granddaughter
+is doing in my house."
+
+"Your wife's niece has come to call on her, Mr. Doyle."
+
+"Are you quite sure that is all?"
+
+"I assure you that is all," Lily said haughtily.  "It had not
+occurred to me that you would be here."
+
+"I dare say.  Still, strangely enough, I do spend a certain amount
+of time in my home."
+
+Lily picked up her muff.
+
+"If you have forbidden her to come down, I shall go."
+
+"Wait," he said slowly.  "I haven't forbidden her to see you.  I
+asked her to wait.  I wanted a few moments.  You see, it is not
+often that I have a Cardew in my house, and I am a selfish man."
+
+She hated him.  She loathed his cold eyes, his long, slim white
+hands.  She hated him until he fascinated her.
+
+"Sit down, and I will call Mrs. Doyle."
+
+He went out again, but this time it was the elderly maid who went
+up the stairs.  Doyle himself came back, and stood before her on
+the hearth rug.  He was slightly smiling, and the look of uncertainty
+was gone.
+
+"Now that you've seen me, I'm not absolutely poisonous, am I, Miss
+Lily?  You don't mind my calling you that, do you?  You are my niece.
+You have been taught to hate me, of course."
+
+"Yes," said Lily, coldly.
+
+"By Jove, the truth from a Cardew!"  Then: "That's an old habit of
+mine, damning the Cardews.  I'll have to try to get over it, if they
+are going to reestablish family relations."  He was laughing at her,
+Lily knew, and she flushed somewhat.
+
+"I wouldn't make too great an effort, then," she said.
+
+He smiled again, this time not unpleasantly, and suddenly he threw
+into his rich Irish voice an unexpected softness.  No one knew better
+than Jim Doyle the uses of the human voice.
+
+"You mustn't mind me, Miss Lily.  I have no reason to love your
+family, but I am very happy that you came here to-day.  My wife has
+missed her people.  If you'll run in like this now and then it will
+do her worlds of good.  And if my being here is going to keep you
+away I can clear out."
+
+She rather liked him for that speech.  He was totally unlike what
+she had been led to expect, and she felt a sort of resentment toward
+her family for misleading her.  He was a gentleman, on the surface
+at least.  He had not been over-cordial at first, but then who could
+have expected cordiality under the circumstances?  In Lily's defense
+it should be said that the vicissitudes of Elinor's life with Doyle
+had been kept from her always.  She had but two facts to go on: he
+had beaten her grandfather as a young man, for a cause, and he held
+views as to labor which conflicted with those of her family.
+
+Months later, when she learned all the truth, it was too late.
+
+"Of course you're being here won't keep me away, if you care to have
+me come."
+
+He was all dignity and charm then.  They needed youth in that quiet
+place.  They ought all to be able to forget the past, which was
+done with, anyhow.  He showed the first genuine interest she had
+found in her work at the camp, and before his unexpected geniality
+the girl opened like a flower.
+
+And all the time he was watching her with calculating eyes.  He was
+a gambler with life, and he rather suspected that he had just drawn
+a valuable card.
+
+"Thank you," he said gravely, when she had finished.  "You have done
+a lot to bridge the gulf that lies--I am sure you have noticed it
+--between the people who saw service in this war and those who
+stayed at home."
+
+Suddenly Lily saw that the gulf between her family and herself was
+just that, which was what he had intended.
+
+When Elinor came in they were absorbed in conversation, Lily flushed
+and eager, and her husband smiling, urbane, and genial.
+
+To Lily, Elinor Doyle had been for years a figure of mystery.  She
+had not seen her for many years, and she had, remembered a thin,
+girlish figure, tragic-eyed, which eternally stood by a window in
+her room, looking out.  But here was a matronly woman, her face
+framed with soft, dark hair, with eyes like her father's, with
+Howard Cardew's ease of manner, too, but with a strange passivity,
+either of repression or of fires early burned out and never renewed.
+
+Lily was vaguely disappointed.  Aunt Elinor, in soft gray silk,
+matronly, assured, unenthusiastically pleased to see her; Doyle
+himself, cheerful and suave; the neat servant; the fire lit,
+comfortable room,--there was no drama in all that, no hint of
+mystery or tragedy.  All the hatred at home for an impulsive assault
+of years ago, and--this!
+
+"Lily, dear!" Elinor said, and kissed her.  "Why, Lily, you are a
+woman!"
+
+"I am twenty, Aunt Elinor."
+
+"Yes, of course.  I keep forgetting.  I live so quietly here that
+the days go by faster than I know."  She put Lily back in her chair,
+and glanced at her husband.
+
+"Is Louis coming to dinner, Jim?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I suppose you cannot stay, Lily?"
+
+"I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor.  Only mother knows that I am here."
+
+Aunt Elinor smiled her quiet smile.
+
+"I understand, dear.  How are they all?"
+
+"Grandfather is very well.  Father looks tired.  There is some trouble
+at the mill, I think."
+
+Elinor glanced at Doyle, but he said nothing.
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+"She is well."
+
+Lily was commencing to have an odd conviction, which was that her
+Aunt Elinor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle.
+He seemed inclined to make up for Elinor's lack of enthusiasm by
+his own.  He built up a larger fire, and moved her chair near it.
+
+"Weather's raw," he said.  "Sure you are comfortable now?  And why
+not have dinner here?  We have an interesting man coming, and we
+don't often have the chance to offer our guests a charming young
+lady."
+
+"Lily only came home yesterday, Jim," Elinor observed.  "Her own
+people will want to see something of her.  Besides, they do no
+know she is here."
+
+Lily felt slightly chilled.  For years she had espoused her Aunt
+Elinor's cause; in the early days she had painfully hemstitched a
+small handkerchief each fall and had sent it, with much secrecy, to
+Aunt Elinor's varying addresses at Christmas.  She had felt a
+childish resentment of Elinor Doyle's martyrdom.  And now--
+
+"Her father and grandfather are dining out to-night."  Had Lily
+looked up she would have seen Doyle's eyes fixed on his wife,
+ugly and menacing.
+
+"Dining out?" Lily glanced at him in surprise.
+
+"There is a dinner to-night, for the--"  He checked himself "The
+steel manufacturers are having a meeting," he finished.  "I believe
+to discuss me, among other things.  Amazing the amount of
+discussion my simple opinions bring about."
+
+Elinor Doyle, unseen, made a little gesture of despair and surrender.
+
+"I hope you will stay, Lily," she said.  "You can telephone, if you
+like.  I don't see you often, and there is so much I want to ask
+you."
+
+In the end Lily agreed.  She would find out from Grayson if the men
+were really dining out, and if they were Grayson would notify her
+mother that she was staying.  She did not quite know herself why
+she had accepted, unless it was because she was bored and restless
+at home.  Perhaps, too, the lure of doing a forbidden thing
+influenced her sub-consciously, the thought that her grandfather
+would detest it.  She had not forgiven him for the night before.
+
+Jim Doyle left her in the back hall at the telephone, and returned
+to the sitting room, dosing the door behind him.  His face was set
+and angry.
+
+"I thought I told you to be pleasant."
+
+"I tried, Jim.  You must remember I hardly know her."  She got up
+and placed her hand on his arm, but he shook it off.  "I don't
+understand, Jim, and I wish you wouldn't.  What good is it?"
+
+"I've told you what I want.  I want that girl to come here, and to
+like coming here.  That's plain, isn't it?  But if you're going to
+sit with a frozen face-- She'll be useful.  Useful as hell to a
+preacher."
+
+"I can't use my family that way."
+
+"You and your family!  Now listen, Elinor.  This isn't a matter o
+the Cardews and me.  It may be nothing, but it may be a big thing.
+I hardly know yet--"  His voice trailed off; he stood with his head
+bent, lost in those eternal calculations with which Elinor Doyle
+was so familiar.
+
+The doorbell rang, and was immediately followed by the opening and
+closing of the front door.
+
+From her station at the telephone Lily Cardew saw a man come in,
+little more than a huge black shadow, which placed a hat on the
+stand and then, striking a match, lighted the gas overhead.  In the
+illumination he stood before the mirror, smoothing back his shining
+black hair.  Then he saw her, stared and retreated into the sitting
+room.
+
+"Got company, I see."
+
+"My niece, Lily Cardew," said Doyle, dryly.
+
+The gentleman seemed highly amused.  Evidently he considered Lily's
+presence in the house in the nature of a huge joke.  He was
+conveying this by pantomime, in deference to the open door, when
+Doyle nodded toward Elinor.
+
+"It's customary to greet your hostess, Louis."
+
+"Easiest thing I do," boasted the new arrival cheerily.  "'Lo, Mrs.
+Doyle.  Is our niece going to dine with us?"
+
+"I don't know yet, Mr. Akers," she said, without warmth.  Louis
+Akers knew quite well that Elinor did not like him, and the thought
+amused him, the more so since as a rule women liked him rather too
+well.  Deep in his heart he respected Jim Doyle's wife, and
+sometimes feared her.  He respected her because she had behind her
+traditions of birth and wealth, things he professed to despise but
+secretly envied.  He feared her because he trusted no woman, and
+she knew too much.
+
+She loved Jim Doyle, but he had watched her, and he knew that
+sometimes she hated Doyle also.  He knew that could be, because
+there had been women he had both loved and hated himself.
+
+Elinor had gone out, and Akers sat down.
+
+"Well," he said, in a lowered tone.  "I've written it."
+
+Doyle closed the door, and stood again with his head lowered,
+considering.
+
+"You'd better look over it," continued Lou.  "I don't want to be
+jailed.  You're better at skating over thin ice than I am.  And
+I've been thinking over the Prohibition matter, Jim.  In a sense
+you're right.  It will make them sullen and angry.  But they won't
+go the limit without booze.  I'd advise cache-ing a lot of it
+somewhere, to be administered when needed."
+
+Doyle returned to his old place on the hearth-rug, still thoughtful.
+He had paid no attention to Aker's views on Prohibition, nor to the
+paper laid upon the desk in the center of the room.
+
+"Do you know that that girl in the hall will be worth forty million
+dollars some day?"
+
+"Some money," said Akers, calmly.  "Which reminds me, Jim, that
+I've got to have a raise.  And pretty soon."
+
+"You get plenty, if you'd leave women alone."
+
+"Tell them to leave me alone, then," said Akers, stretching out his
+long legs.  "All right.  We'll talk about that, after dinner.  What
+about this forty millions?"
+
+Doyle looked at him quickly.  Akers' speech about women had
+crystallized the vague plans which Lily's arrival had suddenly given
+rise to.  He gave the young man a careful scrutiny, from his handsome
+head to his feet, and smiled.  It had occurred to him that the
+Cardew family would loathe a man of Louis Akers' type with an entire
+and whole-hearted loathing.
+
+"You might try to make her have a pleasant evening," he suggested
+dryly.  "And, to do that, it might be as well to remember a number
+of things, one of which is that she is accustomed to the society of
+gentlemen."
+
+"All right, old dear," said Akers, without resentment.
+
+"She hates her grandfather like poison," Doyle went on.  "She doesn't
+know it, but she does.  A little education, and it is just possible--"
+
+"Get Olga.  I'm no kindergarten teacher."
+
+"You haven't seen her in the light yet."
+
+Louis Akers smiled and carefully settled his tie.
+
+Like Doyle, Akers loved the game of life, and he liked playing for
+high stakes.  He had joined forces with Doyle because the game was
+dangerous and exciting, rather than because of any real conviction.
+Doyle had a fanatic faith, with all his calculation, but Louis
+Akers had only calculation and ambition.  A practicing attorney in
+the city, a specialist in union law openly, a Red in secret, he
+played his triple game shrewdly and with zest.
+
+Doyle turned to go, then stopped and came back.  "I was forgetting
+something," he said, slowly.  "What possessed you to take that Boyd
+girl to the Searing Building the other night?"
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Woslosky saw you coming out."
+
+"I had left something there," Akers said sullenly.  "That's the
+truth, whether you believe it or not.  I wasn't there two minutes."
+
+"You're a fool, Louis," Doyle said coldly.  "You'll play that game
+once too often.  What happens to you is your own concern, but what
+may happen to me is mine.  And I'll take mighty good care it doesn't
+happen."
+
+Doyle was all unction and hospitality when he met Lily in the hall.
+At dinner he was brilliant, witty, the gracious host.  Akers played
+up to him.  At the foot of the table Elinor sat, outwardly passive,
+inwardly puzzled, and watched Lily.  She knew the contrast the girl
+must be drawing, between the bright little meal, with its simple
+service and clever talk, and those dreary formal dinners at home
+when old Anthony sometimes never spoke at all, or again used his
+caustic tongue like a scourge.  Elinor did not hate her father; he
+was simply no longer her father.  As for Howard, she had had a
+childish affection for him, but he had gone away early to school,
+and she hardly knew him.  But she did not want his child here,
+drinking in as she was, without clearly understanding what they
+meant, Doyle's theories of unrest and revolution.
+
+"You will find that I am an idealist, in a way," he was saying.
+"That is, if you come often.  I hope you will, by the way.  I am
+perpetually dissatisfied with things as they are, and wanting them
+changed.  With the single exception of my wife"--he bowed to
+Elinor, "and this little party, which is delightful."
+
+"Are you a Socialist?" Lily demanded, in her direct way.
+
+"Well, you might call it that.  I go a bit further."
+
+"Don't talk politics, Jim," Elinor hastily interposed.  He caught
+her eye and grinned.
+
+"I'm not talking politics, my dear." He turned to Lily, smiling.
+
+"For one thing, I don't believe that any one should have a lot of
+money, so that a taxicab could remain ticking away fabulous sums
+while a charming young lady dines at her leisure."  He smiled again.
+
+"Will it be a lot?" Lily asked.  "I thought I'd better keep him,
+because--"  She hesitated.
+
+"Because this neighborhood is unlikely to have a cab stand?  You
+were entirely right.  But I can see that you won't like my
+idealistic community.  You see, in it everybody will have enough,
+and nobody will have too much."
+
+"Don't take him too seriously, Miss Cardew," said Akers, bending
+forward.  "You and I know that there isn't such a thing as too much."
+
+Elinor changed the subject; as a girl she had drawn rather well,
+and she had retained her interest in that form of art.  There was
+an exhibition in town of colored drawings.  Lily should see them.
+But Jim Doyle countered her move.
+
+"I forgot to mention," he said, "that in this ideal world we were
+discussing the arts will flourish.  Not at once, of course,
+because the artists will be fighting--"
+
+"Fighting?"
+
+"Per aspera ad astra," put in Louis Akers.  "You cannot change a
+world in a day, without revolution--"
+
+"But you don't believe that revolution is ever worth while, do you?"
+
+"If it would drive starvation and wretchedness from the world, yes."
+
+Lily found Louis Akers interesting.  Certainly he was very handsome.
+And after all, why should there be misery and hunger in the world?
+There must be enough for all.  It was hardly fair, for instance,
+that she should have so much, and others scarcely anything.  Only
+it was like thinking about religion; you didn't get anywhere with it.
+You wanted to be good, and tried to be.  And you wanted to love God,
+only He seemed so far away, mostly.  And even that was confusing,
+because you prayed to God to be forgiven for wickedness, but it was
+to His Son our Lord one went for help in trouble.
+
+One could be sorry for the poor, and even give away all one had, but
+that would only help a few.  It would have to be that every one who
+had too much would give up all but what he needed.
+
+Lily tried to put that into words.
+
+"Exactly," said Jim Doyle.  "Only in my new world we realize that
+there would be a few craven spirits who might not willingly give up
+what they have.  In that case it would be taken from them."
+
+"And that is what you call revolution?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"But that's not revolution.  It is a sort of justice, isn't it?"
+
+"You think very straight, young lady," said Jim Doyle.
+
+He had a fascinating theory of individualism, too; no man should
+impose his will and no community its laws, on the individual.  Laws
+were for slaves.  Ethics were better than laws, to control.
+
+"Although," he added, urbanely, "I daresay it might be difficult to
+convert Mr. Anthony Cardew to such a belief."
+
+While Louis Akers saw Lily to her taxicab that night Doyle stood
+in the hall, waiting.  He was very content with his evening's work.
+
+"Well?" he said, when Akers returned.
+
+"Merry as a marriage bell.  I'm to show her the Brunelleschi
+drawings to-morrow."
+
+Slightly flushed, he smoothed his hair in front of the mirror over
+the stand.
+
+"She's a nice child," he said.  In his eyes was the look of the
+hunting animal that scents food.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Lily did not sleep very well that night.  She was repentant, for
+one thing, for her mother's evening alone, and for the anxiety in
+her face when she arrived.
+
+"I've been so worried," she said, "I was afraid your grandfather
+would get back before you did."
+
+"I'm sorry, mother dear.  I know it was selfish.  But I've had a
+wonderful evening."
+
+"Wonderful?"
+
+"All sorts of talk," Lily said, and hesitated.  After all, her
+mother would not understand, and it would only make her uneasy.
+"I suppose it is rank hearsay to say it, but I like Mr. Doyle."
+
+"I detest him."
+
+"But you don't know him, do you?"
+
+"I know he is stirring up all sorts of trouble for us.  Lily, I
+want you to promise not to go back there."
+
+There was a little silence.  A small feeling of rebellion was
+rising in the girl's heart.
+
+"I don't see why.  She is my own aunt."
+
+"Will you promise?"
+
+"Please don't ask me, mother.  I--oh, don't you understand?  It
+is interesting there, that's all.  It isn't wrong to go.  And the
+moment you forbid it you make me want to go back."
+
+"Were there any other people there to dinner?"  Grace asked, with
+sudden suspicion.
+
+"Only one man.  A lawyer named Akers."
+
+The name meant nothing to Grace Cardew.
+
+"A young man?"
+
+"Not very young.  In his thirties, I should think," Lily hesitated
+again.  She had meant to tell her mother of the engagement for the
+next day, but Grace's attitude made it difficult.  To be absolutely
+forbidden to meet Louis Akers at the gallery, and to be able to
+give no reason beyond the fact that she had met him at the Doyle
+house, seemed absurd.
+
+"A gentleman?"
+
+"I hardly know," Lily said frankly.  "In your sense of the word,
+perhaps not, mother.  But he is very clever."
+
+Grace Cardew sighed and picked up her book.  She never retired until
+Howard came in.  And Lily went upstairs, uneasy and a little defiant.
+She must live her own life, somehow; have her own friends; think her
+own thoughts.  The quiet tyranny of the family was again closing down
+on her.  It would squeeze her dry, in the end, as it had her mother
+and Aunt Elinor.
+
+She stood for a time by her window, looking out at the city.  Behind
+her was her warm, luxurious room, her deep, soft bed.  Yet all
+through the city there were those who did not sleep warm and soft.
+Close by, perhaps, in that deteriorated neighborhood, there were
+children that very night going to bed hungry.
+
+Because things had always been like that, should they always be so?
+Wasn't Mr. Doyle right, after all?  Only he went very far.  You
+couldn't, for instance, take from a man the thing he had earned.
+What about the people who did not try to earn?
+
+She rather thought she would be clearer about it if she talked to
+Willy Cameron.
+
+She went to bed at last, a troubled young thing in a soft white
+night-gown, passionately in revolt against the injustice which gave
+to her so much and to others so little.  And against that quiet
+domestic tyranny which was forcing her to her first deceit.
+
+Yet the visit to the gallery was innocuous enough.  Louis Akers
+met her there, and carefully made the rounds with her.  Then he
+suggested tea, and chose a quiet tea-room, and a corner.
+
+"I'll tell you something, now it's over," he said, his bold eyes
+fixed on hers.  "I loathe galleries and pictures.  I wanted to see
+you again.  That's all.  You see, I am starting in by being honest
+with you."
+
+She was rather uncomfortable.
+
+"Why don't you like pictures?"
+
+"Because they are only imitations of life.  I like life."  He pushed
+his teacup away.  "I don't want tea either.  Tea was an excuse,
+too."  He smiled at her.  "Perhaps you don't like honesty," he said.
+"If you don't you won't care for me."
+
+She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness
+and effrontery, but he made her vaguely uneasy.  He knew so many
+things, and yet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her
+family's sense of the word.  He had a curious effect on her, too,
+one that she resented.  He made her insistently conscious of her
+sex.
+
+And of his.  His very deference had something of restraint about it.
+She thought, trying to drink her tea quietly, that he might be very
+terrible if he loved any one.  There was a sort of repressed
+fierceness behind his suavity.
+
+But he interested her, and he was undeniably handsome, not in her
+father's way but with high-colored, almost dramatic good looks.
+There could be no doubt, too, that he was interested in her.  He
+rarely took his eyes off hers.  Afterwards she was to know well
+that bold possessive look of his.
+
+It was just before they left that he said:
+
+"I am going to see you again, you know.  May I come in some
+afternoon?"
+
+Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments, and she raised
+frank eyes to his.
+
+"I am afraid not," she said.  "You see, you are a friend of Mr.
+Doyle's, and you must know that my people and Aunt Elinor's husband
+are on bad terms."
+
+"What has that got to do with you and me?"  Then he laughed.  "Might
+be unpleasant, I suppose.  But you go to the Doyles'."
+
+She was very earnest.
+
+"My mother knows, but my grandfather wouldn't permit it if he knew."
+
+"And you put up with that sort of thing?"  He leaned closer to her.
+"You are not a baby, you know.  But I will say you are a good sport
+to do it, anyhow."
+
+"I'm not very comfortable about it."
+
+"Bosh," he said, abruptly.  "You go there as often as you can.
+Elinor Doyle's a lonely woman, and Jim is all right.  You pick your
+own friends, my child, and live your own life.  Every human being
+has that right."
+
+He helped her into a taxi at the door of the tea shop, giving her
+rather more assistance than she required, and then standing
+bare-headed in the March wind until the car had moved away.  Lily,
+sitting back in her corner, was both repelled and thrilled.  He was
+totally unlike the men she knew, those carefully repressed,
+conventional clean-cut boys, like Pink Denslow.  He was raw,
+vigorous and possibly brutal.  She did not quite like him, but she
+found herself thinking about him a great deal.
+
+The old life was reaching out its friendly, idle hands toward her.
+The next day Grace gave a luncheon for her at the house, a gay
+little affair of color, chatter and movement.  But Lily found
+herself with little to say.  Her year away had separated her from
+the small community of interest that bound the others together, and
+she wondered, listening to them in her sitting room later, what
+they would all talk about when they had exchanged their bits of
+gossip, their news of this man and that.  It would all be said so
+soon.  And what then?
+
+Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small
+circle, carefully guarded.  They belonged together, they and the
+men who likewise belonged.  Now and then there would be changes.
+A new man, of irreproachable family connections would come to live
+in the city, and cause a small flurry.  Then in time he would be
+appropriated.  Or a girl would come to visit, and by the same
+system of appropriation would come back later, permanently.  Always
+the same faces, the same small talk.  Orchids or violets at
+luncheons, white or rose or blue or yellow frocks at dinners and
+dances.  Golf at the country club.  Travel, in the Cardew private
+car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting.
+Winter at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at seeing moving picture
+stars and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand.  One never
+had a chance to meet them.
+
+And, in quiet intervals, this still house, and grandfather shut
+away in his upstairs room, but holding the threads of all their
+lives as a spider clutches the diverging filaments of its web.
+
+"Get in on this, Lily," said a clear young voice.  "We're talking
+about the most interesting men we met in our war work.  You ought
+to have known a lot of them."
+
+"I knew a lot of men.  They were not so very interesting.  There
+was a little nurse--"
+
+"Men, Lily dear."
+
+"There was one awfully nice boy.  He wasn't a soldier,  but he was
+very kind to the men.  They adored him."
+
+"Did he fall in love with your?"
+
+"Not a particle."
+
+"Why wasn't he a soldier?"
+
+"He is a little bit lame.  But he is awfully nice."
+
+"But what is extraordinary about him, then?"
+
+"Not a thing, except his niceness."
+
+But they were surfeited with nice young men.  They wanted something
+dramatic, and Willy Cameron was essentially undramatic.  Besides, it
+was quite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical
+handicap made him unacceptable to them.
+
+"Don't be ridiculous, Lily.  You're hiding some one behind this
+kind person.  You must have met somebody worth while."
+
+"Not in the camp.  I know a perfectly nice Socialist, but he was not
+in the army.  Not a Socialist, really.  Much worse.  He believes in
+having a revolution."
+
+That stirred them somewhat.  She saw their interested faces turned
+toward her.
+
+"With a bomb under his coat, of course, Lily."
+
+"He didn't bulge."
+
+"Good-looking?"
+
+"Well, rather."
+
+"How old is he, Lily?" one of them asked, suspiciously.
+
+"Almost fifty, I should say."
+
+"Good heavens!"
+
+Their interest died.  She could have revived it, she knew, if she
+mentioned Louis Akers; he would have answered to their prime requisite
+in an interesting man.  He was both handsome and young.  But she felt
+curiously disinclined to mention him.
+
+The party broke up.  By ones and twos luxuriously dressed little
+figures went down the great staircase, where Grayson stood in the
+hall and the footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars.
+Mademoiselle, watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall,
+felt a sense of comfort and well-being after they had all gone.
+This was as it should be.  Lily would take up life again where she
+had left it off, and all would be well.
+
+It was now the sixth day, and she had not yet carried out that
+absurd idea of asking Ellen's friend to dinner.
+
+Lily was, however, at that exact moment in process of carrying it
+out.
+
+"Telephone for you, Mr. Cameron."
+
+"Thanks.  Coming," sang out Willy Cameron.
+
+Edith Boyd sauntered toward his doorway.
+
+"It's a lady."
+
+"Woman," corrected Willy Cameron.  "The word 'lady' is now obsolete,
+since your sex has entered the economic world."  He put on his coat.
+
+"I said 'lady' and that's what I mean," said Edith.  "'May I speak
+to Mr. Cameron?'" she mimicked.  "Regular Newport accent."
+
+Suddenly Willy Cameron went rather pale.  If it should be Lily Cardew
+--but then of course it wouldn't be.  She had been home for six days,
+and if she had meant to call--
+
+"Hello," he said.
+
+It was Lily.  Something that had been like a band around his heart
+suddenly loosened, to fasten about his throat.  His voice sounded
+strangled and strange.
+
+"Why, yes," he said, in the unfamiliar voice.  "I'd like to come,
+of course."
+
+Edith Boyd watched and listened, with a slightly strained look in
+her eyes.
+
+"To dinner?  But--I don't think I'd better come to dinner."
+
+"Why not, Willy?"
+
+Mr. William Wallace Cameron glanced around.  There was no one about
+save Miss Boyd, who was polishing the nails of one hand on the palm
+of the other.
+
+"May I come in a business suit?"
+
+"Why, of course.  Why not?"
+
+"I didn't know," said Willy Cameron.  "I didn't know what your people
+would think.  That's all.  To-morrow at eight, then.  Thanks."
+
+He hung up the receiver and walked to the door, where he stood
+looking out and seeing nothing.  She had not forgotten.  He was going
+to see her.  Instead of standing across the street by the park fence,
+waiting for a glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the
+room with her.  There would be--eight from eleven was three--three
+hours of her.
+
+What a wonderful day it was!  Spring was surely near.  He would like
+to be able to go and pick up Jinx, and then take a long walk through
+the park.  He needed movement.  He needed to walk off his excitement
+or he felt that he might burst with it.
+
+"Eight o'clock!" said Edith.  "I wish you joy, waiting until eight
+for supper."
+
+He had to come back a long, long way to her.
+
+"'May I come in a business suit?'" she mimicked him.  "My evening
+clothes have not arrived yet.  My valet's bringing them up to town
+to-morrow."
+
+Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist,
+he caught the bitterness under her raillery.  It puzzled him.
+
+"It's a young lady I knew at camp.  I was in an army camp, you know."
+
+"Is her name a secret?"
+
+"Why, no.  It is Cardew.  Miss Lily Cardew."
+
+"I believe you--not."
+
+"But it is," he said, genuinely concerned.  "Why in the world should
+I give you a wrong name?"
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his face.
+
+"No.  You wouldn't.  But it makes me laugh, because--well, it was
+crazy, anyhow."
+
+"What was crazy?"
+
+"Something I had in my mind.  Just forget it.  I'll tell you what
+will happen, Mr. Cameron.  You'll stay here about six weeks.  Then
+you'll get a job at the Cardew Mills.  They use chemists there, and
+you will be--"
+
+She lifted her finger-tips and blew along them delicately.
+
+"Gone--like that," she finished.
+
+Sometimes Willy Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd.  The large young
+man, for instance, whose name he had learned was Louis Akers, did
+not come any more.  Not since that telephone conversation.  But he
+had been distinctly a grade above that competent young person,
+Edith Boyd, if there were such grades these days; fluent and
+prosperous-looking, and probably able to offer a girl a good home.
+But she had thrown him over.  He had heard her doing it, and when he
+had once ventured to ask her about Akers she had cut him off curtly.
+
+"I was sick to death of him.  That's all," she had said.
+
+But on the night of Lily's invitation he was to hear more of Louis
+Akers.
+
+It was his evening in the shop.  One day he came on at seven-thirty
+in the morning and was off at six, and the next he came at ten and
+stayed until eleven at night.  The evening business was oddly
+increasing.  Men wandered in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a
+tooth-brush, and sat or stood around for an hour or so; clerks whose
+families had gone to the movies, bachelors who found their lodging
+houses dreary, a young doctor or two, coming in after evening office
+hours to leave a prescription, and remaining to talk and listen.
+Thus they satisfied their gregarious instinct while within easy call
+of home.
+
+The wealthy had their clubs.  The workmen of the city had their
+balls and sometimes their saloons.  But in between was that vast,
+unorganized male element which was neither, and had neither.  To
+them the neighborhood pharmacy, open in the evening, warm and bright,
+gave them a rendezvous.  They gathered there in thousands, the
+country over.  During the war they fought their daily battles there,
+with newspaper maps.  After the war the League of Nations, local
+politics, a bit of neighborhood scandal, washed down with soft drinks
+from the soda fountain, furnished the evening's entertainment.
+
+The Eagle Pharmacy had always been the neighborhood club, but with
+the advent of Willy Cameron it was attaining a new popularity.  The
+roundsman on the beat dropped in, the political boss of the ward,
+named Hendricks, Doctor Smalley, the young physician who lived across
+the street, and others.  Back of the store proper was a room, with
+the prescription desk at one side and reserve stock on shelves around
+the other three.  Here were a table and a half dozen old chairs, a
+war map, still showing with colored pins the last positions before
+the great allied advance, and an ancient hat-rack, which had held
+from time immemorial an umbrella with three broken ribs and a pair
+of arctics of unknown ownership.
+
+"Going to watch this boy," Hendricks confided to Doctor Smalley a
+night or two after Lily's return, meeting him outside.  "He sure
+can talk."
+
+Doctor Smalley grinned.
+
+"He can read my writing, too, which is more than I can do myself.
+What do you mean, watch him?"
+
+But  whatever his purposes Mr. Hendricks kept them to himself.  A
+big, burly man, with a fund of practical good sense a keen
+knowledge of men, he had gained a small but loyal following.  He
+was a retired master plumber, with a small income from careful
+investments, and he had a curious, almost fanatic love for the city.
+
+"I was born here," he would say, boastfully.  "And I've seen it grow
+from fifty thousand to what it's got now.  Some folks say it's dirty,
+but it's home to me, all right."
+
+But on the evening of Lily's invitation the drug store forum found
+Willy Cameron extremely silent.  He had been going over his
+weaknesses, for the thought of Lily always made him humble, and one
+of them was that he got carried away by things and talked too much.
+He did not intend to do that the next night, at the Cardew's.
+
+"Something's scared him off," said Mr. Hendricks to Doctor Smalley,
+after a half hour of almost taciturnity, while Willy Cameron smoked
+his pipe and listened.  "Watch him rise to this, though." And aloud:
+
+"Why don't you fellows drop the League of Nations, which none of you
+knows a damn about anyhow, and get to the thing that's coming in
+this country?"
+
+"I'll bite," said Mr. Clarey, who sold life insurance in the daytime
+and sometimes utilized his evenings in a similar manner.  "What's
+coming to this country?"
+
+"Revolution."
+
+The crowd laughed.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Hendricks.  "Laugh while you can.  I saw the
+Chief of Police to-day, and he's got a line of conversation that
+makes a man feel like taking his savings out of the bank and burying
+them in the back yard."
+
+Willy Cameron took his pipe out of his mouth, but remained dumb.
+
+Mr. Hendricks nudged Doctor Smalley, who rose manfully to the
+occasion.  "What does he say?"
+
+"Says the Russians have got a lot of paid agents here.  Not all
+Russians either.  Some of our Americans are in it.  It's to begin
+with a general strike."
+
+"In this town?"
+
+"All over the country.  But this is a good field for them.  The
+crust's pretty thin here, and where that's the case there is likely
+to be earthquakes and eruptions.  The Chief says they're bringing
+in a bunch of gunmen, wobblies and Bolshevists from every industrial
+town on the map.  Did you get that, Cameron?  Gunmen!"
+
+"Any of you men here dissatisfied with this form of government?"
+inquired Willy, rather truculently.
+
+"Not so you could notice it," said Mr. Clarey.  "And once the
+Republican party gets in--"
+
+"Then there will never be a revolution."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's why," said Willy Cameron.  "Of course you are worthless now.
+You aren't organized.  You don't know how many you are or how strong
+you are.  You can't talk.  You sit back and listen until you believe
+that this country is only capital and labor.  You get squeezed in
+between them.  You see labor getting more money than you, and howling
+for still more.  You see both capital and labor raising prices until
+you can't live on what you get.  There are a hundred times as many
+of you as represent capital and labor combined, and all you do is
+loaf here and growl about things being wrong.  Why don't you do
+something?  You ought to be running this country, but you aren't.
+You're lazy.  You don't even vote.  You leave running the country
+to men like Mr. Hendricks here."
+
+Mr. Hendricks was cheerfully unirritated.
+
+"All right, son," he said, "I do my bit and like it.  Go on.  Don't
+stop to insult me.  You can do that any time."
+
+"I've been buying a seditious weekly since I came," said Willy
+Cameron.  "It's preaching a revolution, all right.  I'd like to see
+its foreign language copies.  They'll never overthrow the government,
+but they may try.  Why don't you fellows combine to fight them?  Why
+don't you learn how strong you are?  Nine-tenths of the country,
+and milling like sheep with a wolf around!"
+
+Mr. Hendricks winked at the doctor.
+
+"What'd I tell you?" whispered Hendricks.  "Got them, hasn't he?  If
+he'd suggest arming them with pop bottles and attacking that gang of
+anarchists at the cobbler's down the street, they'd do it this minute."
+
+"All right, son," he offered.  "We'll combine.  Anything you say
+goes.  And we'll get the Jim Doyle-Woslosky-Louis Akers outfit first.
+I know a first-class brick wall--"
+
+"Akers?" said Willy Cameron.  "Do you know him?"
+
+"I do," said Hendricks.  "But that needn't prejudice you against me
+any.  He's a bad actor, and as smooth as butter.  D'you know what
+their plan is?  They expect to take the city.  This city!  The--"
+Mr. Hendrick's voice was lost in fury.
+
+"Talk!" said the roundsman.  "Where'd the police be, I'm asking?"
+
+"The police," said Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, "are as filled
+with sedition as a whale with corset bones.  Also the army.  Also the
+state constabulary."
+
+"The hell they are," said the roundsman aggressively.  But Willy
+Cameron was staring through the smoke from his pipe at the crowd.
+
+"They might do it, for a while," he said thoughtfully.  "There's a
+tremendous foreign population in the mill towns around, isn't there?
+Does anybody in the crowd own a revolver?  Or know how to use it
+if he has one."
+
+"I've got one," said the insurance agent.  "Don't know how it would
+work.  Found my wife nailing oilcloth with it the other day."
+
+"Very well.  If we're a representative group, they wouldn't need a
+battery of eight-inch guns, would they?"
+
+A little silence fell on the group.  Around them the city went about
+its business; the roar of the day had softened to muffled night
+sounds, as though one said: "The city sleeps.  Be still."  The red
+glare of the mills was the fire on the hearth.  The hills were its
+four protecting walls.  And the night mist covered it like a blanket.
+
+"Here's one representative of the plain people," said Mr. Hendricks,
+"who is going home to get some sleep.  And tomorrow I'll buy me a
+gun, and if I can keep the children out of the yard I'll learn to
+use it."
+
+For a long time after he went home that night Willy Cameron paced
+the floor of his upper room, paced it until an irate boarder below
+hammered on his chandelier.  Jinx followed him, moving sedately
+back and forth, now and then glancing up with idolatrous eyes.
+Willy Cameron's mind was active and not particularly coordinate.
+The Cardews and Lily; Edith Boyd and Louis Akers; the plain people;
+an army marching to the city to loot and burn and rape, and another
+army meeting it, saying: "You shall not pass"; Abraham Lincoln,
+Russia, Lily.
+
+His last thought, of course, was of Lily Cardew.  He had neglected
+to cover Jinx, and at last the dog leaped on the bed and snuggled
+close to him.  He threw an end of the blanket over him and lay
+there, staring into the darkness.  He was frightfully lonely.  At
+last he fell asleep, and the March wind, coming in through the open
+window, overturned a paper leaning against his collar box, on
+which he had carefully written:
+
+                     Have suit pressed.
+                     Buy new tie.
+                     Shirts from laundry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Going home that night Mr. Hendricks met Edith Boyd, and accompanied
+her for a block or two.  At his corner he stopped.
+
+"How's your mother, Edith?"
+
+It was Mr. Hendricks' business to know his ward thoroughly.
+
+"About the same.  She isn't really sick, Mr. Hendricks.  She's just
+low spirited, but that's enough.  I hate to go home."
+
+Hendricks hesitated.
+
+"Still, home's a pretty good place," he said.  "Especially for a
+pretty girl."  There was unmistakable meaning in his tone, and she
+threw up her head.
+
+"I've got to get some pleasure out of life, Mr. Hendricks."
+
+"Sure you have," he agreed affably.  "But playing around with Louis
+Akers is like playing with a hand-grenade, Edith."  She said nothing.
+"I'd cut him out, little girl.  He's poor stuff.  Mind, I'm not
+saying he's a fool, but he's a bad actor.  Now if I was a pretty
+girl, and there was a nice fellow around like this Cameron, I'd be
+likely to think he was all right.  He's got brains."  Mr. Hendricks
+had a great admiration for brains.
+
+"I'm sick of men."
+
+He turned at her tone and eyed her sharply.
+
+"Well, don't judge them all by Akers.  This is my corner.  Good-night.
+Not afraid to go on by yourself, are you?"
+
+"If I ever was I've had a good many chances to get over it."
+
+He turned the corner, but stopped and called after her.
+
+"Tell Dan I'll be in to see him soon, Edith.  Haven't seen him since
+he came back from France."
+
+"All right."
+
+She went on, her steps lagging.  She hated going home.  When she
+reached the little house she did not go in at once.  The March night
+was not cold, and she sat the step, hoping to see her mother's light
+go out in the second-story front windows.  But it continued to burn
+steadily, and at last, with a gesture of despair, she rose and
+unlocked the door.
+
+Almost at once she heard footsteps above, and a peevish voice.
+
+"That you, Edie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"D'you mind bringing up the chloroform liniment and rubbing my back?"
+
+"I'll bring it, mother."
+
+She found it on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen.  She could
+hear the faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered
+floor, and then silence.  She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes
+on her, and something crunched under her foot.  She felt like
+screaming.  That new clerk at the store was always talking about
+homes.  What did he know of squalid city houses, with their insects
+and rats, their damp, moldy cellars, their hateful plumbing?  A
+thought struck her.  She lighted the gas and stared around.  It was
+as she had expected.  The dishes had not been washed.  They were
+piled in the sink, and a soiled dish-towel had been thrown over them.
+
+She lowered the gas and went upstairs.  The hardness had, somehow,
+gone out of her when she thought of Willy Cameron.
+
+"Back bad again, is it?" she asked.
+
+"It's always bad.  But I've got a pain in my left shoulder and down
+my arm that's driving me crazy.  I couldn't wash the dishes."
+
+"Never mind the dishes.  I'm not tired.  Now crawl into bed and let
+me rub you."
+
+Mrs. Boyd complied.  She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties,
+who had set out to conquer life and had been conquered by it.  The
+hopeless drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by the
+incident of her widowhood, and stretched ahead hopelessly.  She had
+accepted Dan's going to France resignedly, with neither protest nor
+undue anxiety.  She had never been very close to Dan, although she
+loved him more than she did Edith.  She was the sort of woman who
+has no fundamental knowledge of men.  They had to be fed and mended
+for, and they had strange physical wants that made a great deal of
+trouble in the world.  But mostly they ate and slept and went to work
+in the morning, and came home at night smelling of sweat and beer.
+
+There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life,
+however.  And through it she had seen Edith well married, with
+perhaps a girl to do the house work, and a room where Edith's mother
+could fold her hands and sit in the long silences without thought
+that were her sanctuary against life.
+
+"Is that the place, mother?"
+
+"Yes."  Edith's unwonted solicitude gave her courage.
+
+"Edie, I want to ask you something."
+
+"Well?" But the girl stiffened.
+
+"Lou hasn't been round, lately."
+
+"That's all over, mother."
+
+"You mean you've quarreled?  Oh, Edie, and me planning you'd have a
+nice home and everything."
+
+"He never meant to marry me, if that's what you mean."
+
+Mrs. Boyd turned on her back impatiently.
+
+"You could have had him.  He was crazy about you.  Trouble is with
+you, you think you've got a fellow hard and fast, and you begin
+acting up.  Then, first thing you know--"
+
+Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl.  "Listen,
+mother," she said.  "I give you my word, Lou'd run a mile if he
+thought any girl wanted to marry him.  I know him better than you
+do.  If any one ever does rope him in, he'll stick about three
+months, and then beat it."
+
+"I don't know why we have to have men, anyhow.  Put out the gas,
+Edie.  No, don't open the window.  The night air makes me cough."
+
+Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen.  Something
+would have to be done about the house.  Dan was taking to staying
+out at nights, because the untidy rooms repelled him.  And there was
+the question of food.  Her mother had never learned to cook, and
+recently more and more of the food had been something warmed out of
+a tin.  If only they could keep a girl, one who would scrub and wash
+dishes.  There was a room on the third floor, an attic, full now of
+her mother's untidy harborings of years, that might be used for a
+servant.  Or she could move up there, and they could get a roomer.
+The rent would pay a woman to come in now and then to clean up.
+
+She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had
+in mind was Willy Cameron.  But the knowledge that he knew the
+Cardews had somehow changed all that.  She couldn't picture him
+going from this sordid house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still,
+returning to it afterwards.  She saw him there, at the Cardews,
+surrounded by bowing flunkies--a picture of wealth gained from the
+movies--and by women who moved indolently, trailing through long
+vistas of ball room and conservatory in low gowns without sleeves,
+and draped with ropes of pearls.  Women who smoked cigarettes after
+dinner and played bridge for money.
+
+She hated the Cardews.
+
+On her way to her room she paused at her mother's door.
+
+"Asleep yet, mother?"
+
+"No.  Feel like I'm not going to sleep at all."
+
+"Mother," she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, "we've got
+to change things around here.  It isn't fair to Dan, for one thing.
+We've got to get a girl to do the work.  And to do that we'll have
+to rent a room."
+
+She heard the thin figure twist impatiently.
+
+"I've never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I'm not going
+to let the neighbors begin looking down on me now."
+
+"Now, listen, mother--"
+
+"Go on away, Edie."
+
+"But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out
+all but three evenings a week.  I don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the
+store isn't satisfied where he is.  He's got a dog, and they haven't
+any yard.  We've got a yard."
+
+"I won't be bothered with any dog," said the querulous voice, from
+the darkness.
+
+With a gesture of despair the girl turned away.  What was the use,
+anyhow?  Let them go on, then, her mother and Dan.  Only let them
+let her go on, too.  She had tried her best to change herself, the
+house, the whole rotten mess.  But they wouldn't let her.
+
+Her mood of disgust continued the next morning.  When, at eleven
+o'clock, Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she
+looked at him somberly but without disdain.  Lou or somebody else,
+what did it matter?  So long as something took her for a little
+while away from the sordidness of home, its stale odors, its
+untidiness, its querulous inmates.
+
+"What's got into you lately, Edith?" he inquired, lowering his voice.
+"You used to be the best little pal ever.  Now the other day, when
+I called up--"
+
+"Had the headache," she said laconically.  "Well?"
+
+"Want to play around this evening?"
+
+She hesitated.  Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be
+that night, and her face hardened.  Had any one told Edith that she
+was beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, with
+his exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and his
+sentimental whistling, she would have laughed.  But he gave her
+something that the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of
+self-respect.  It was perhaps not so much that she cared for him,
+as that he enabled her to care more for herself.
+
+But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew.
+
+"I might, depending on what you've got to offer."
+
+"I've got a car now, Edith.  I'm not joking.  There was a lot of
+outside work, and the organization came over.  I've been after it
+for six months.  We can have a ride, and supper somewhere.  How's
+the young man with the wooden leg?"
+
+"If you want to know I'll call him out and let him tell you."
+
+"Quick, aren't you?"  He smiled down at where she stood, firmly
+entrenched behind a show case.  "Well, don't fall in love with him.
+That's all.  I'm a bad man when I'm jealous."
+
+He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him.   He
+did not know, nor would have cared had he known, that her acceptance
+of his invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of
+youth, and of the fact that Willy Cameron was dining at the Cardews
+that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Howard Cardew was in his dressing room, sitting before the fire.
+His man had put out his dinner clothes and retired, and Howard was
+sifting before the fire rather listlessly.
+
+In Grace's room, adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices.
+Before Lily's return, now and then when he was tired Grace and he
+had dined by the fire in her boudoir.  It had been very restful.
+He was still in love with his wife, although, as in most marriages,
+there was one who gave more than the other.  In this case it was
+Grace who gave, and Howard who received.  But he loved her.  He
+never thought of other women.  Only his father had never let him
+forget her weaknesses.
+
+Sometimes he was afraid that he was looking at Grace with his
+father's eyes, rather than his own.
+
+He had put up a hard fight with his father.  Not about Grace.  That
+was over and done with, although it had been bad while it lasted.
+But his real struggle had been to preserve himself, to keep his
+faiths and his ideals, and even his personality.  In the inessentials
+he had yielded easily, and so bought peace.  Or perhaps a truce, of
+a sort.  But for the essentials he was standing with a sort of
+dogged conviction that if he lowered his flag it would precipitate a
+crisis.  He was not brilliant, but he was intelligent, progressive
+and kindly.  He knew that his father considered him both stupid and
+obstinate.
+
+There was going to be a strike.  The quarrel now was between
+Anthony's curt "Let them strike," and his own conviction that a
+strike at this time might lead to even worse things.  The men's
+demands were exorbitant.  No business, no matter how big, could
+concede them and live.  But Howard was debating another phase of
+the situation.
+
+Not all the mills would go down.  A careful canvass of some of the
+other independent concerns had shown the men eighty, ninety, even
+one hundred per cent, loyal.  Those were the smaller plants, where
+there had always been a reciprocal good feeling between the owners
+and the men; there the men knew the owners, and the owners knew the
+men, who had been with them for years.
+
+But the Cardew Mills would go down.  There had been no liaison
+between the Cardews and the workmen.  The very magnitude of the
+business forbade that.  And for many years, too, the Cardews had
+shown a gross callousness to the welfare of the laborers.  Long
+ago he had urged on his father the progressive attitude of other
+steel men, but Anthony had jeered, and when Howard had forced the
+issue and gained concessions, it was too late.  The old grievances
+remained in too many minds.  To hate the Cardews bad become a habit.
+Their past sins would damn them now.  The strike was wrong, a
+wicked thing.  It was without reason and without aim.  The men were
+knocking a hole in the boat that floated them.  But--
+
+There was a tap at his door, and he called "Come in." From her
+babyhood Lily had had her own peculiar method of signaling that she
+stood without, a delicate rapid tattoo of finger nails on the panel.
+He watched smilingly for her entrance.
+
+"Well!" she said.  "Thank goodness you haven't started to dress.  I
+tried to get here earlier, but my hair wouldn't go up, I want to
+make a good impression to-night."
+
+"Is there a dinner on?  I didn't know it."
+
+"Not a dinner.  A young man.  I came to see what you are going to
+wear."
+
+"Really!  Well, I haven't a great variety.  The ordinary dinner
+dress of a gentleman doesn't lend itself to any extraordinary
+ornamentation.  If you like, I'll pin on that medal from the Iron
+and Steel--Who's coming, Lily?"
+
+"Grayson says grandfather's dining out."
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"What a piece of luck!  I mean--you know what he'd say if I asked
+him not to dress for dinner."
+
+"Am I to gather that you are asking me?"
+
+"You wouldn't mind, would you?  He hasn't any evening clothes."
+
+"Look here, Lily," said her father, sitting upright.  "Who is coming
+here to-night?  And why should he upset the habits of the entire
+family?"
+
+"Willy Cameron.  You know, father.  And he has the queerest ideas
+about us.  Honestly.  And I want him to like us, and it's such a
+good chance, with grandfather out."
+
+He ignored that.
+
+"How about our liking him?"
+
+"Oh, you'll like him.  Everybody does.  You will try to make a good
+impression, won't you, father?"
+
+He got up, and resting his hands on her shoulders, smiled down into
+her upturned face.  "I will," he said.  "But I think I should tell
+you that your anxiety arouses deep and black suspicions in my mind.
+Am I to understand that you have fixed your young affections on
+this Willy Cameron, and that you want your family to help you in
+your dark designs?"
+
+Lily laughed.
+
+"I love him," she said.  "I really do.  I could listen to him for
+hours.  But people don't want to marry Willy Cameron.  They just
+love him."
+
+There was born in Howard's mind a vision of a nice pink and white
+young man, quite sexless, whom people loved but did not dream of
+marrying.
+
+"I see," he said slowly.  "Like a puppy."
+
+"Not at all like a puppy."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not subtle, my dear.  Well, ring for Adams, and
+--you think he wouldn't care for the medal?"
+
+"I think he'd love it.  He'd probably think some king gave it to
+you.  I'm sure he believes that you and grandfather habitually
+hobnob with kings."  She turned to go out.  "He doesn't approve
+of kings."
+
+"You are making me extremely uneasy," was her father's shot.  "I
+only hope I acquit myself well."
+
+"Hurry, then.  He is sure to be exactly on the hour."  Howard was
+still smiling slightly to himself when, a half-hour later, he
+descended the staircase.  But he had some difficulty first in
+reconciling his preconceived idea of Willy with the tall young man,
+with the faint unevenness of step, who responded to his greeting so
+calmly and so easily.  "We are always glad to see any of Lily's
+friends."
+
+"It is very good of you to let me come, sir."
+
+Why, the girl was blind.  This was a man, a fine, up-standing fellow,
+with a clean-cut, sensitive face, and honest, almost beautiful eyes.
+How did women judge men, anyhow?
+
+And, try as he would, Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willy
+Cameron that night.  He tried him out on a number of things.  In
+religion, for instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the
+church had not come up fully during the war.
+
+"Religion isn't a matter only of churches any more," said Mr.
+Cameron.  "It has to go out into the streets, I think, sir.
+It's a-well, Christ left the tabernacle, you remember."
+
+That was all right.  Howard felt that himself sometimes.  He was a
+vestryman at Saint Peter's, and although he felt very devout during
+the service, especially during the offertory, when the music filled
+the fine old building, he was often conscious that he shed his
+spirituality at the door, when he glanced at the sky to see what
+were the prospects for an afternoon's golf.
+
+In politics Willy Cameron was less satisfactory.
+
+"I haven't decided, yet," he said.  "I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916,
+but although I suppose parties are necessary, I don't like to feel
+that I am party-bound.  Anyhow, the old party lines are gone.  I
+rather look--"
+
+He stopped.  That terrible speech of Edith Boyd's still rankled.
+
+"Go on, Willy," said Lily.  "I told them they'd love to you talk."
+
+"That's really all, sir," said Willy Cameron, unhappily.  "I am a
+Scot, and to start a Scot on reform is fatal."
+
+"Ah, you believe in reform?"
+
+"We are not doing very well as we are, sir."
+
+"I should like extremely to know how you feel about things," said
+Howard, gravely.
+
+"Only this: So long as one party is, or is considered, the
+representative of capital, the vested interests, and the other of
+labor, the great mass of the people who are neither the one nor
+the other cannot be adequately represented."
+
+"And the solution?"
+
+"Perhaps a new party.  Or better still, a liberalizing of the
+Republican."
+
+"Before long," said Lily suddenly, "there will be no state.  There
+will be enough for everybody, and nobody will have too much."
+
+Howard smiled at her indulgently.
+
+"How do you expect to accomplish this ideal condition?"
+
+"That's the difficulty about it," said Lily, thoughtfully.  "It
+means a revolution.  It would be peaceful, though.  The thing to do
+is to convince people that it is simple justice, and then they will
+divide what they have."
+
+"Why, Lily!" Grace's voice was anxious.  "That's Socialism."
+
+But Howard only smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject.  Every
+one had these attacks of idealism in youth.  They were the
+exaggerated altruism of adolescence; a part of its dreams and
+aspirations.  He changed the subject.
+
+"I like the boy," he said to Grace, later, over the cribbage board
+in the morning room.  "He has character, and a queer sort of
+magnetism.  It mightn't be a bad thing--"
+
+Grace was counting.
+
+"I forgot to tell you; I think she refused Pink Denslow the other
+day."
+
+"I rather gathered, from the way she spoke of young Cameron, that
+she isn't interested there either."
+
+"Not a bit," said Grace, complacently.  "You needn't worry about him."
+
+Howard smiled.  He was often conscious that after all the years of
+their common life, his wife's mind and his traveled along parallel
+lines that never met.
+
+Willy Cameron was extremely happy.  He had brought his pipe along,
+although without much hope, but the moment they were settled by the
+library fire Lily had suggested it.
+
+"You know you can't talk unless you have it in your hand to wave
+around," she said.  "And I want to know such a lot of things.  Where
+you live, and all that."
+
+"I live in a boarding house.  More house than board, really.  And
+the work's all right.  I'm going to study metallurgy some day.
+There are night courses at the college, only I haven't many nights."
+
+He had lighted his pipe, and kept his eyes on it mostly, or on the
+fire.  He was afraid to look at Lily, because there was something
+he could not keep out of his eyes, but must keep from her.  It had
+been both better and worse than he had anticipated, seeing her in
+her home.  Lily herself had not changed.  She was her wonderful self,
+in spite of her frock and her surroundings.  But the house, her
+people, with their ease of wealth and position, Grace's slight
+condescension, the elaborate simplicity of dining, the
+matter-of-course-ness of the service.  It was not that Lily was
+above him.  That was ridiculous.  But she was far removed from him.
+
+"There is something wrong with you, Willy," she said unexpectedly.
+"You are not happy, or you are not well.  Which is it?  You are
+awfully thin, for one thing."
+
+"I'm all right," he said, evading her eyes.
+
+"Are you lonely?  I don't mean now, of course."
+
+"Well, I've got a dog.  That helps.  He's a helpless sort of mutt.
+I carry his meat home from the shop in my pocket, and I feel like
+a butcher's wagon, sometimes.  But he's taken a queer sort of
+liking to me, and he is something to talk to."
+
+"Why didn't you bring him along?"
+
+Dogs were forbidden in the Cardew house, by old Anthony's order, as
+were pipes, especially old and beloved ones, but Lily was entirely
+reckless.
+
+"He did follow me.  He's probably sitting on the doorstep now.  I
+tried to send him back, but he's an obstinate little beast."
+
+Lily got up.
+
+"I am going to bring him in," she said.  "And if you'll ring that
+bell we'll get him some dinner."
+
+"I'll get him, while you ring."
+
+Half an hour later Anthony Cardew entered his house.  He had spent
+a miserable evening.  Some young whipper snapper who employed a
+handful of men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew,
+was a clog in the wheel of progress.  Not in so many words, but he
+had said: "Tempora mutantur, Mr. Cardew.  And the wise employer
+meets those changes half-way."
+
+"You young fools want to go all the way."
+
+"Not at all.  We'll meet them half-way, and stop."
+
+"Bah!" said Anthony Cardew, and had left the club in a temper.  The
+club was going to the dogs, along with the rest of the world.  There
+was only a handful of straight-thinking men like himself left in it.
+Lot of young cravens, letting their men dominate them and intimidate
+them.
+
+So he slammed into his house, threw off his coat and hat, and--
+sniffed.  A pungent, acrid odor was floating through a partly closed
+door.  Anthony Cardew flung open the door and entered.
+
+Before the fire, on a deep velvet couch, sat his granddaughter.
+Beside her was a thin young man in a gray suit, and the thin young
+man was waving an old pipe about, and saying:
+
+"Tempora mutantur, Lily.  The wise employer--"
+
+"I am afraid, sir," said Anthony, in a terrible voice, "that you are
+not acquainted with the rules of my house.  I object to pipes.  There
+are cigars in the humidor behind you."
+
+"Very sorry, Mr. Cardew," Willy Cameron explained.  "I didn't know.
+I'll put it away, sir."
+
+But Anthony was not listening.  His eyes had traveled from an empty
+platter on the hearth-rug to a deep chair where Jinx, both warm and
+fed at the same time, and extremely distended with meat, lay
+sleeping.  Anthony put out a hand and pressed the bell beside him.
+
+"I want you to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather."  Lily was rather pale,
+but she had the Cardew poise.  "He was in the camp when I was."
+
+Grayson entered on that, however, and Anthony pointed to Jinx.
+
+"Put that dog out," he said, and left the room, his figure rigid
+and uncompromising.
+
+"Grayson," Lily said, white to the lips, "that dog is to remain
+here.  He's perfectly quiet.  And, will you find Ellen and ask her
+to come here?"
+
+"Haven't I made enough trouble?" asked Willy Cameron, unhappily.
+"I can see her again, you know."
+
+"She's crazy to see you, Willy.  And besides--"
+
+Grayson had gone, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"Don't you see?" she said.  "The others have always submitted.  I
+did, too.  But I can't keep it up, Willy.  I can't live here and
+let him treat me like that.  Or my friends.  I know what will happen.
+I'll run away, like Aunt Elinor."
+
+"You must not do that, Lily." He was very grave.
+
+"Why not?  They think she is unhappy.  She isn't.  She ran away and
+married a man she cared about.  I may call you up some day and ask
+you to marry me!" she added, less tensely.  "You would be an
+awfully good husband, you know."
+
+She looked up at him, still angry, but rather amused with this new
+conceit.
+
+"Don't!"
+
+She was startled by the look on his face.
+
+"You see," he said painfully, "what only amuses you in that idea
+is--well, it doesn't amuse me, Lily."
+
+"I only meant--" she was very uncomfortable.  "You are so real and
+dependable and kind, and I--"
+
+"I know what you mean.  Like Jinx, there.  I'm sorry!  I didn't mean
+that.  But you must not talk about marrying me unless you mean it.
+You see, I happen to care."
+
+"Willy!"
+
+"It won't hurt you to know, although I hadn't meant to tell you.
+And of course, you know, I am not asking you to marry me.  Only I'd
+like you to feel that you can count on me, always.  The one person
+a woman can count on is the man who loves her."
+
+And after a little silence:
+
+"You see, I know you are not in love with me.  I cared from the
+beginning, but I always knew that."
+
+"I wish I did." She was rather close to tears.  She had not felt at
+all like that with Pink.  But, although she knew he was suffering,
+his quietness deceived her.  She had the theory of youth about love,
+that it was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate.  She
+thought that love demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and
+then asks.  She could not know how he felt about his love for her,
+that it lay in a sort of cathedral shrine in his heart.  There were
+holy days when saints left their niches and were shown in city
+streets, but until that holy day came they remained in the church.
+
+"You will remember that, won't you?"
+
+"I'll remember, Willy."
+
+"I won't be a nuisance, you know.  I've never had any hope, so I
+won't make you unhappy.  And don't be unhappy about me, Lily.  I
+would rather love you, even knowing I can't have you, than be
+loved by anybody else."
+
+Perhaps, had he shown more hurt, he would have made it seem more
+real to her.  But he was frightfully anxious not to cause her pain.
+
+"I'm really very happy, loving you," he added, and smiled down at
+her reassuringly.  But he had for all that a wild primitive impulse
+which almost overcame him for a moment, to pick her up in his arms
+and carry her out the door and away with him.  Somewhere, anywhere.
+Away from that grim old house, and that despotic little man, to
+liberty and happiness and--William Wallace Cameron.
+
+Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired
+painstakingly about his mother, and his uncle in California, and
+the Presbyterian minister.  But she was uncomfortable and uneasy
+and refused to sit down, and Willy watched her furtively slipping
+out again with a slight frown.  It was not right, somehow, this
+dividing of the world into classes, those who served and those who
+were served.  But he had an idea that it was those below who made
+the distinction, nowadays.  It was the masses who insisted on
+isolating the classes.  They made kings, perhaps that they might
+some day reach up and pull them off their thrones.  At the top of
+the stairs Ellen found Mademoiselle, who fixed her with cold eyes.
+
+"What were you doing down there," she demanded.
+
+"Miss Lily sent for me, to see that young man I told you about."
+
+"How dare you go down?  And into the library?"
+
+"I've just told you," said Ellen, her face setting.  "She sent for
+me."
+
+"Why didn't you say you were in bed?"
+
+"I'm no liar, Mademoiselle.  Besides, I guess it's no crime to see
+a boy I've known all his life, and his mother and me like sisters."
+
+"You are a fool," said Mademoiselle, and turning clumped back in
+her bedroom slippers to her room.
+
+Ellen went up to her room.  Heretofore she had given her allegiance
+to Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew, and in a more remote fashion, to
+Howard.  But Ellen, crying angry tears in her small white bed that
+night, sensed a new division in the family, with Mademoiselle and
+Anthony and Howard and Grace on one side, and Lily standing alone,
+fighting valiantly for the right to live her own life, to receive
+her own friends, and the friends of her friends, even though one
+of these latter might be a servant in her own house.
+
+Yet Ellen, with the true snobbishness of the servants' hall,
+disapproved of Lily's course while she admired it.
+
+"But they're all against her," Ellen reflected.  "The poor thing!
+And just because of Willy Cameron.  Well, I'll stand by her, if
+they throw me out for it."
+
+In her romantic head there formed strange, delightful visions.
+Lily eloping with Willy Cameron, assisted by herself.  Lily in the
+little Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes
+and her charm, and being sponsored by Ellen.  The excitement of the
+village, and the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first
+call, and were cards necessary?
+
+Into Ellen's not very hard-working but monotonous life had comes
+its first dream of romance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+For three weeks Lily did not see Louis Akers, nor did she go back
+to the house on Cardew Way.  She hated doing clandestine or forbidden
+things, and she was, too, determined to add nothing to the tenseness
+she began to realize existed at home.  She went through her days,
+struggling to fit herself again into the old environment, reading
+to her mother, lending herself with assumed enthusiasm to such small
+gayeties as Lent permitted, and doing penance in a dozen ways for
+that stolen afternoon with Louis Akers.
+
+She had been forbidden to see him again.  It had come about by
+Grace's confession to Howard as to Lily's visit to the Doyles.  He
+had not objected to that.
+
+"Unless Doyle talks his rubbish to her," he said.  "She said
+something the other night that didn't sound like her.  Was any one
+else there?"
+
+"An attorney named Akers," she said.
+
+And at that Howard had scowled.
+
+"She'd better keep away altogether," he observed, curtly.  "She
+oughtn't to meet men like that."
+
+"Shall I tell her?"
+
+"I'll tell her," he said.  And tell her he did, not too tactfully,
+and man-like shielding her by not telling her his reasons.
+
+"He's not the sort of man I want you to know," he finished.  "That
+ought to be sufficient.  Have you seen him since?"
+
+Lily flushed, but she did not like to lie.
+
+"I had tea with him one afternoon.  I often have tea with men,
+father.  You know that."
+
+"You knew I wouldn't approve, or you would have mentioned it."
+
+Because he felt that he had been rather ruthless with her, he stopped
+in at the jeweler's the next morning and sent her a tiny jeweled
+watch.  Lily was touched and repentant.  She made up her mind not to
+see Louis Akers again, and found a certain relief in the decision.
+She was conscious that he had a peculiar attraction for her, a purely
+emotional appeal.  He made her feel alive.  Even when she disapproved
+of him, she was conscious of him.  She put him resolutely out of her
+mind, to have him reappear in her dreams, not as a lover, but as some
+one dominant and insistent, commanding her to do absurd,
+inconsequential things.
+
+Now and then she saw Willy Cameron, and they had gone back,
+apparently, to the old friendly relationship.  They walked together,
+and once they went to the moving pictures, to Grace's horror.  But
+there were no peanuts to eat, and instead of the jingling camp piano
+there was an orchestra, and it was all strangely different.  Even
+Willy Cameron was different.  He was very silent, and on the way
+home he did not once speak of the plain people.
+
+Louis Akers had both written and telephoned her, but she made
+excuses, and did not see him, and the last time he had hung up the
+receiver abruptly.  She felt an odd mixture of relief and regret.
+
+Then, about the middle of April, she saw him again.
+
+Spring was well on by that time.  Before the Doyle house on Cardew
+Way the two horse-chestnuts were showing great red-brown buds, ready
+to fall into leaf with the first warm day, and Elinor, assisted by
+Jennie, the elderly maid, was finishing her spring house-cleaning.
+The Cardew mansion showed window-boxes at each window, filled by the
+florist with spring flowers, to be replaced later by summer ones.
+A potted primrose sat behind the plate glass of the Eagle Pharmacy,
+among packets of flower seeds and spring tonics, its leaves
+occasionally nibbled by the pharmacy cat, out of some atavistic
+craving survived through long generations of city streets.
+
+The children's playground near the Lily furnace was ready; Howard
+Cardew himself had overseen the locations of the swings and
+chute-the-chutes.  And at Friendship an army of workers was
+sprinkling and tamping the turf of the polo field.  After two years
+of war, there was to be polo again that spring and early summer.
+The Cherry Hill Hunt team was still intact, although some of the
+visiting outfits had been badly shot to pieces by the war.  But
+the war was over.  It lay behind, a nightmare to be forgotten as
+soon as possible.  It had left its train of misery and debt, but
+--spring had come.
+
+On a pleasant Monday, Lily motored out to the field with Pink
+Denslow.  It had touched her that he still wanted her, and it had
+offered an escape from her own worries.  She was fighting a sense
+of failure that day.  It seemed impossible to reconcile the warring
+elements at home.  Old Anthony and his son were quarreling over the
+strike, and Anthony was jibing constantly at Howard over the
+playground.  It was not so much her grandfather's irritability that
+depressed her as his tyranny over the household, and his attitude
+toward her mother roused her to bitter resentment.
+
+The night before she had left the table after one of his scourging
+speeches, only to have what amounted to a scene with her mother
+afterward.
+
+"But I cannot sit by while he insults you, mother."
+
+"It is just his way.  I don't mind, really.  Oh, Lily, don't destroy
+what I have built up so carefully.  It hurts your father so."
+
+"Sometimes," Lily said slowly, "he makes me think Aunt Elinor's
+husband was right.  He believes a lot of things--"
+
+"What things?" Grace had asked, suspiciously.
+
+Lily hesitated.
+
+"Well, a sort of Socialism, for one thing, only it isn't exactly
+that.  It's individualism, really, or I think so; the sort of thing
+that this house stifles."  Grace was too horrified for speech.
+"I don't want to hurt you, mother, but don't you see?  He tyrannizes
+over all of us, and it's bad for our souls.  Why should he bellow
+at the servants?  Or talk to you the way he did to-night?"  She
+smiled faintly.  "We're all drowning, and I want to swim, that's all.
+Mr. Doyle--"
+
+"You are talking nonsense," said Grace sharply.  "You have got a lot
+of ideas from that wretched house, and now you think they are your
+own.  Lily, I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles I
+shall take you abroad."
+
+Lily turned and walked out of the room, and there was something
+suggestive of old Anthony in the pitch of her shoulders.  Her anger
+did not last long, but her uneasiness persisted.  Already she knew
+that she was older in many ways than Grace; she had matured in the
+past year more than her mother in twenty, and she felt rather like
+a woman obeying the mandates of a child.
+
+But on that pleasant Monday she was determined to be happy.
+
+"Old world begins to look pretty, doesn't it?" said Pink, breaking
+in on her thoughts.
+
+"Lovely."
+
+"It's not a bad place to live in, after all," said Pink, trying to
+cheer his own rather unhappy humor.  "There is always spring to
+expect, when we get low in winter.  And there are horses and dogs,
+and--and blossoms on the trees, and all that."  What he meant was,
+"If there isn't love."
+
+"You are perfectly satisfied with things just as they are, aren't
+you?" Lily asked, half enviously.
+
+"Well, I'd change some things."  He stopped.  He wasn't going to
+go round sighing like a furnace.  "But it's a pretty good sort of
+place.  I'm for it."
+
+"Have you sent your ponies out?"
+
+"Only two.  I want to show you one I bought from the Government
+almost for nothing.  Remount man piped me off.  Light in flesh,
+rather, but fast.  Handy, light mouth--all he needs is a bit of
+training."
+
+They had been in the open country for some time, but now they were
+approaching the Cardew's Friendship plant.  The furnaces had covered
+the fields with a thin deposit of reddish ore dust.  Such blighted
+grass as grew had already lost its fresh green, and the trees showed
+stunted blossoms.  The one oasis of freshness was the polo field
+itself, carefully irrigated by underground pipes.  The field, with
+its stables and grandstand, had been the gift of Anthony Cardew,
+thereby promoting much discussion with his son.  For Howard had
+wanted the land for certain purposes of his own, to build a clubhouse
+for the men at the plant, with a baseball field.  Finding his father
+obdurate in that, he had urged that the field be thrown open to the
+men and their families, save immediately preceding and during the
+polo season.  But he had failed there, too.  Anthony Cardew had
+insisted, and with some reason, that to use the grounds for band
+concerts and baseball games, for picnics and playgrounds, would ruin
+the turf for its legitimate purpose.
+
+Howard had subsequently found other land, and out of his own private
+means had carried out his plans, but the location was less desirable.
+And he knew what his father refused to believe, that the polo ground,
+taking up space badly needed for other purposes, was a continual
+grievance.
+
+Suddenly Pink stared ahead.
+
+"I say," he said, "have they changed the rule about that sort of
+thing?"
+
+He pointed to the field.  A diamond had been roughly outlined on it
+with bags of sand, and a ball-game was in progress, boys playing,
+but a long line of men watching from the side lines.
+
+"I don't know, but it doesn't hurt anything."
+
+"Ruins the turf, that's all."  He stopped the car and got out.
+"Look at this sign.  It says 'ball-playing or any trespassing
+forbidden on these grounds.' I'll clear them off."
+
+"I wouldn't, Pink.  They may be ugly."
+
+But he only smiled at her reassuringly, and went off.  She watched
+him go with many misgivings, his sturdy young figure, his careful
+dress, his air of the young aristocrat, easy, domineering,
+unconsciously insolent.  They would resent him, she knew, those men
+and boys.  And after all, why should they not use the field?  There
+was injustice in that sign.
+
+Yet her liking and real sympathy were with Pink.
+
+"Pink!" she called, "Come back here.  Let them alone."
+
+He turned toward her a face slightly flushed with indignation and
+set with purpose.
+
+"Sorry.  Can't do it, Lily.  This sort of thing's got to be stopped."
+
+She felt, rather hopelessly, that he was wrong, but that he was
+right, too.  The grounds were private property.  She sat back and
+watched.
+
+Pink was angry.  She could hear his voice, see his gestures.  He was
+shooing them off like a lot of chickens, and they were laughing.
+The game had stopped, and the side lines were pressing forward.
+There was a moment's debate, with raised voices, a sullen muttering
+from the crowd, and the line closing into a circle.  The last thing
+she saw before it closed was a man lunging at Pink, and his
+counter-feint.  Then some one was down.  If it was Pink he was not
+out, for there was fighting still going on.  The laborers working
+on the grounds were running.
+
+Lily stood up in the car, pale and sickened.  She was only vaguely
+conscious of a car that suddenly left the road, and dashed
+recklessly across the priceless turf, but she did see, and recognize,
+Louis Akers as he leaped from it and flinging men this way and that
+disappeared into the storm center.  She could hear his voice, too,
+loud and angry, and see the quick dispersal of the crowd.  Some of
+the men, foreigners, passed quite near to her, and eyed her either
+sullenly or with mocking smiles.  She was quite oblivious of them.
+She got out and ran with shaking knees across to where Pink lay on
+the grass, his profile white and sharply chiseled, with two or three
+men bending over him.
+
+Pink was dead.  Those brutes had killed him.  Pink.
+
+He was not dead.  He was moving his arms.
+
+Louis Akers straightened when he saw her and took off his hat.
+
+"Nothing to worry about, Miss Cardew," he said.  "But what sort of
+idiocy--!  Hello, old man, all right now?"
+
+Pink sat up, then rose stiffly and awkwardly.  He had a cut over one
+eye, and he felt for his handkerchief.
+
+"Fouled me," he said.  "Filthy lot, anyhow.  Wonder they didn't walk
+on me when I was down."  He turned to the grounds-keeper, who had
+come up.  "You ought to know better than to let those fellows cut up
+this turf," he said angrily.  "What're you here for anyhow?"
+
+But he was suddenly very sick.  He looked at Lily, his face drawn and
+blanched.
+
+"Got me right," he muttered.  "I--"
+
+"Get into my car," said Akers, not too amiably.  "I'll drive you to
+the stables.  I'll be back, Miss Cardew."
+
+Lily went back to the car and sat down.  She was shocked and startled,
+but she was strangely excited.  The crowd had beaten Pink, but it
+had obeyed Louis Akers like a master.  He was a man.  He was a strong
+man.  He must be built of iron.  Mentally she saw him again, driving
+recklessly over the turf, throwing the men to right and left, hoarse
+with anger, tall, dominant, powerful.
+
+It was more important that a man be a man than that he be a gentleman.
+
+After a little he drove back across the field, sending the car
+forward again at reckless speed.  Some vision of her grandfather,
+watching the machine careening over the still soft and spongy turf
+and leaving deep tracks behind it, made her smile.  Akers leaped
+out.
+
+"No need to worry about our young friend," he said cheerfully.  "He
+is alternately being very sick at his stomach and cursing the poor
+working man.  But I think I'd better drive you back.  He'll be poor
+company, I'll say that."
+
+He looked at her, his bold eyes challenging, belying the amiable
+gentleness of his smile.
+
+"I'd better let him know."
+
+"I told him.  He isn't strong for me.  Always hate the fellow who
+saves you, you know.  But he didn't object."
+
+Lily moved into his car obediently.  She felt a strange inclination
+to do what this man wanted.  Rather, it was an inability to oppose
+him.  He went on, big, strong, and imperious.  And he carried one
+along.  It was easy and queer.  But she did, unconsciously, what
+she had never done with Pink or any other man; she sat as far away
+from him on the wide seat as she could.
+
+He noticed that, and smiled ahead, over the wheel.  He had been
+infuriated over her avoidance of him, but if she was afraid of him--
+
+"Bully engine in this car.  Never have to change a gear."
+
+"You certainly made a road through the field."
+
+"They'll fix that, all right.  Are you warm enough?"
+
+"Yes, thank you."
+
+"You have been treating me very badly, you know, Miss Cardew."
+
+"I have been frightfully busy."
+
+"That's not true, and you know it.  You've been forbidden to see
+me, haven't you?"
+
+"I have been forbidden to go back to Cardew Way."
+
+"They don't know about me, then?"
+
+"There isn't very much to know, is there?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't fence with me," he said impatiently.  "I told
+you once I was frank.  I want you to answer one question.  If this
+thing rested with you, would you see me again?"
+
+"I think I would, Mr. Akers," she said honestly.
+
+Had she ever known a man like the one beside her, she would not
+have given him that opportunity.  He glanced sharply around, and
+then suddenly stopped the car and turned toward her.
+
+"I'm crazy about you, and you know it," he said.  And roughly,
+violently, he caught her to him and kissed her again and again.  Her
+arms were pinned to her sides, and she was helpless.  After a brief
+struggle to free herself she merely shut her eyes and waited for
+him to stop.
+
+"I'm mad about you," he whispered.
+
+Then he freed her.  Lily wanted to feel angry, but she felt only
+humiliated and rather soiled.  There were men like that, then, men
+who gave way to violent impulses, who lost control of themselves
+and had to apologize afterwards.  She hated him, but she was sorry
+for him, too.  He would have to be so humble.  She was staring ahead,
+white and waiting for his explanation, when he released the brake
+and started the car forward slowly.
+
+"Well?" he said, with a faint smile.
+
+"You will have to apologize for that, Mr. Akers."
+
+"I'm damned if I will.  That man back there, Denslow--he's the sort
+who would kiss a girl and then crawl about it afterwards.  I won't.
+I'm not sorry.  A strong man can digest his own sins.  I kissed you
+because I wanted to.  It wasn't an impulse.  I meant to when we
+started.  And you're only doing the conventional thing and pretending
+to be angry.  You're not angry.  Good God, girl, be yourself once in
+a while."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand you." Her voice was haughty.  "And I
+must ask you to stop the car and let me get out."
+
+"I'll do nothing of the sort, of course.  Now get this straight,
+Miss Cardew.  I haven't done you any harm.  I may have a brutal way
+of showing that I'm crazy about you, but it's my way.  I'm a man,
+and I'm no hand kisser."
+
+And when she said nothing:
+
+"You think I'm unrestrained, and I am, in a way.  But if I did what
+I really want to do, I'd not take you home at all.  I'd steal you.
+You've done something to me, God knows what."
+
+"Then I can only say I'm sorry," Lily said slowly.
+
+She felt strangely helpless and rather maternal.  With all his
+strength this sort of man needed to be protected from himself.  She
+felt no answering thrill whatever to his passion, but as though,
+having told her he loved her, he had placed a considerable
+responsibility in her hands.
+
+"I'll be good now," he said.  "Mind, I'm not sorry.  But I don't
+want to worry you."
+
+He made no further overtures to her during the ride, but he was
+neither sulky nor sheepish.  He feigned an anxiety as to the
+threatened strike, and related at great length and with extreme
+cleverness of invention his own efforts to prevent it.
+
+"I've a good bit of influence with the A.F.L.," he said.  "Doyle's
+in bad with them, but I'm still solid.  But it's coming, sure as
+shooting.  And they'll win, too."
+
+He knew women well, and he saw that she was forgiving him.  But she
+would not forget.  He had a cynical doctrine, to the effect that a
+woman's first kiss of passion left an ineradicable mark on her, and
+he was quite certain that Lily had never been so kissed before.
+
+Driving through the park he turned to her:
+
+"Please forgive me," he said, his mellow voice contrite and
+supplicating.  "You've been so fine about it that you make me
+ashamed."
+
+"I would like to feel that it wouldn't happen again: That's all."
+
+"That means you intend to see me again.  But never is a long word.
+I'm afraid to promise.  You go to my head, Lily Cardew."  They were
+halted by the traffic, and it gave him a chance to say something he
+had been ingeniously formulating in his mind.  "I've known lots of
+girls.  I'm no saint.  But you are different.  You're a good woman.
+You could do anything you wanted with me, if you cared to."
+
+And because she was young and lovely, and because he was always the
+slave of youth and beauty, he meant what he said.  It was a lie, but
+he was lying to himself also, and his voice held unmistakable
+sincerity.  But even then he was watching her, weighing the effect
+of his words on her.  He saw that she was touched.
+
+He was very well pleased with himself on his way home.  He left the
+car at the public garage, and walked, whistling blithely, to his
+small bachelor apartment.  He was a self-indulgent man, and his
+rooms were comfortable to the point of luxury.  In the sitting room
+was a desk, as clean and orderly as Doyle's was untidy.  Having put
+on his dressing gown he went to it, and with a sheet of paper before
+him sat for some time thinking.
+
+He found his work irksome at times.  True, it had its interest.  He
+was the liaison between organized labor, which was conservative in
+the main, and the radical element, both in and out of the
+organization.  He played a double game, and his work was always the
+same, to fan the discontent latently smoldering in every man's soul
+into a flame.  And to do this he had not Doyle's fanaticism.
+Personally, Louis Akers found the world a pretty good place.  He
+hated the rich because they had more than he had, but he scorned
+the poor because they had less.  And he liked the feeling of power
+he had when, on the platform, men swayed to his words like wheat to
+a wind.
+
+Personal ambition was his fetish, as power was Anthony Cardew's.
+Sometimes he walked past the exclusive city clubs, and he dreamed of
+a time when he, too, would have the entree to them.  But time was
+passing.  He was thirty-three years old when Jim Doyle crossed his
+path, and the clubs were as far away as ever.  It was Doyle who
+found the weak place in his armor, and who taught him that when one
+could not rise it was possible to pull others down.
+
+But it was Woslosky, the Americanized Pole; who had put the thing
+in a more appealing form.
+
+"Our friend Doyle to the contrary," he said cynically, "we cannot
+hope to contend against the inevitable.  The few will always govern
+the many, in the end.  It will be the old cycle, autocracy, anarchy,
+and then democracy; but out of this last comes always the one man
+who crowns himself or is crowned.  One of the people.  You, or
+myself, it may be."
+
+The Pole had smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Akers did not go to work immediately.  He sat for some time, a
+cigarette in his hand, his eyes slightly narrowed.  He believed that
+he could marry Lily Cardew.  It would take time and all his skill,
+but he believed he could do it.  His mind wandered to Lily herself,
+her youth and charm, her soft red mouth, the feel of her warm young
+body in his arms.  He brought himself up sharply.  Where would such
+a marriage take him?
+
+He pondered the question pro and con.  On the one hand the Cardews,
+on the other, Doyle and a revolutionary movement.  A revolution
+would be interesting and exciting, and there was strong in him the
+desire to pull down.  But revolution was troublesome.  It was violent
+and bloody.  Even if it succeeded it would be years before the
+country would be stabilized.  This other, now--
+
+He sat low in his chair, his long legs stretched out in his favorite
+position, and dreamed.  He would not play the fool like Doyle.  He
+would conciliate the family.  In the end he would be put up at the
+clubs; he might even play polo.  His thoughts wandered to Pink
+Denslow at the polo grounds, and he grinned.
+
+"Young fool!" he reflected.  "If I can't beat his time--"  He
+ordered dinner to be sent up, and mixed himself a cocktail, using
+the utmost care in its preparation.  Drinking it, he eyed himself
+complacently in the small mirror over the mantel.  Yes, life was
+not bad.  It was damned interesting.  It was a game.  No, it was
+a race where a man could so hedge his bets that he stood to gain,
+whoever won.
+
+When there was a knock at the door he did not turn.  "Come in,"
+he said.
+
+But it was not the waiter.  It was Edith Boyd.  He saw her through
+the mirror, and so addressed her.
+
+"Hello, sweetie," he said.  Then he turned.  "You oughtn't to come
+here, Edith.  I've told you about that."
+
+"I had to see you, Lou."
+
+"Well, take a good look, then," he said.  Her coming fitted in well
+with the complacence of his mood.  Yes, life was good, so long as
+it held power, and drink, and women.
+
+He stooped to kiss her, but although she accepted the caress, she
+did not return it.
+
+"Not mad at me, Miss Boyd, are you?"
+
+"No.  Lou, I'm frightened!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+On clear Sundays Anthony Cardew played golf all day.  He kept his
+religious observances for bad weather, but at such times as he
+attended service he did it with the decorum and dignity of a Cardew,
+who bowed to his God but to nothing else.  He made the responses
+properly and with a certain unction, and sat during the sermon with
+a vigilant eye on the choir boys, who wriggled.  Now and then,
+however, the eye wandered to the great stained glass window which
+was a memorial to his wife.  It said beneath: "In memoriam, Lilian
+Lethbridge Cardew."
+
+He thought there was too much yellow in John the Baptist.  On the
+Sunday afternoon following her ride into the city with Louis Akers,
+Lily found herself alone.  Anthony was golfing and Grace and Howard
+had motored out of town for luncheon.  In a small office near the
+rear of the hall the second man dozed, waiting for the doorbell.
+There would be people in for tea later, as always on Sunday
+afternoons; girls and men, walking through the park or motoring up
+in smart cars, the men a trifle bored because they were not golfing
+or riding, the girls chattering about the small inessentials which
+somehow they made so important.
+
+Lily was wretchedly unhappy.  For one thing, she had begun to feel
+that Mademoiselle was exercising over her a sort of gentle espionage,
+and she thought her grandfather was behind it.  Out of sheer
+rebellion she had gone again to the house on Cardew Way, to find
+Elinor out and Jim Doyle writing at his desk.  He had received her
+cordially, and had talked to her as an equal.  His deferential
+attitude had soothed her wounded pride, and she had told him
+something--very little--of the situation at home.
+
+"Then you are still forbidden to come here?"
+
+"Yes.  As if what happened years ago matters now, Mr. Doyle."
+
+He eyed her.
+
+"Don't let them break your spirit, Lily," he had said.  "Success
+can make people very hard.  I don't know myself what success would
+do to me.  Plenty, probably."  He smiled.  "It isn't the past your
+people won't forgive me, Lily.  It's my failure to succeed in what
+they call success."
+
+"It isn't that," she had said hastily.  "It is--they say you are
+inflammatory.  Of course they don't understand.  I have tried to
+tell them, but--"
+
+"There are fires that purify," he had said, smilingly.
+
+She had gone home, discontented with her family's lack of vision,
+and with herself.
+
+She was in a curious frame of mind.  The thought of Louis Akers
+repelled her, but she thought of him constantly.  She analyzed him
+clearly enough; he was not fine and not sensitive.  He was not even
+kind.  Indeed, she felt that he could be both cruel and ruthless.
+And if she was the first good woman he had ever known, then he
+must have had a hateful past.
+
+The thought that he had kissed her turned her hot with anger and
+shame at such times, but the thought recurred.
+
+Had she had occupation perhaps she might have been saved, but she
+had nothing to do.  The house went on with its disciplined service;
+Lent had made its small demands as to church services, and was over.
+The weather was bad, and the golf links still soggy with the spring
+rains.  Her wardrobe was long ago replenished, and that small
+interest gone.
+
+And somehow there had opened a breach between herself and the little
+intimate group that had been hers before the war.  She wondered
+sometimes what they would think of Louis Akers.  They would admire
+him, at first, for his opulent good looks, but very soon they would
+recognize what she knew so well--the gulf between him and the men
+of their own world, so hard a distinction to divine, yet so real for
+all that.  They would know instinctively that under his veneer of
+good manners was something coarse and crude, as she did, and they
+would politely snub him.  She had no name and no knowledge for the
+urge in the man that she vaguely recognized and resented.  But she
+had a full knowledge of the obsession he was becoming in her mind.
+
+"If I could see him here," she reflected, more than once, "I'd get
+over thinking about him.  It's because they forbid me to see him.
+It's sheer contrariness."
+
+But it was not, and she knew it.  She had never heard of his theory
+about the mark on a woman.
+
+She was hating herself very vigorously on that Sunday afternoon.
+Mademoiselle and she had lunched alone in Lily's sitting-room, and
+Mademoiselle had dozed off in her chair afterwards, a novel on her
+knee.  Lily was wandering about downstairs when the telephone rang,
+and she had a quick conviction that it was Louis Akers.  It was
+only Willy Cameron, however, asking her if she cared to go for a
+walk.
+
+"I've promised Jinx one all day," he explained, "and we might as
+well combine, if you are not busy."
+
+She smiled at that.
+
+"I'd love it," she said.  "In the park?"
+
+"Wait a moment." Then: "Yes, Jinx says the park is right."
+
+His wholesome nonsense was good for her.  She drew a long breath.
+
+"You are precisely the person I need to-day," she said.  "And come
+soon, because I shall have to be back at five."
+
+When he came he was very neat indeed, and most scrupulous as to his
+heels being polished.  He was also slightly breathless.
+
+"Had to sew a button on my coat," he explained.  "Then I found I'd
+sewed in one of my fingers and had to start all over again."
+
+Lily was conscious of a change in him.  He looked older, she thought,
+and thinner.  His smile, when it came, was as boyish as ever, but
+he did not smile so much, and seen in full daylight he was shabby.
+He seemed totally unconscious of his clothes, however.
+
+"What do you do with yourself, Willy?" she asked.  "I mean when you
+are free?"
+
+"Read and study.  I want to take up metallurgy pretty soon.  There's
+a night course at the college."
+
+"We use metallurgists in the mill.  When you are ready I know father
+would be glad to have you."
+
+He flushed at that.
+
+"Thanks," he said.  "I'd rather get in, wherever I go, by what I
+know, and not who I know."
+
+She felt considerably snubbed, but she knew his curious pride.  After
+a time, while he threw a stick into the park lake and Jinx retrieved
+it, he said:
+
+"What do you do with yourself these days, Lily?"
+
+"Nothing.  I've forgotten how to work, I'm afraid.  And I'm not very
+happy, Willy.  I ought to be, but I'm just--not."
+
+"You've learned what it is to be useful," he observed gravely, "and
+now it hardly seems worth while just to live, and nothing else.  Is
+that it?"
+
+"I suppose."
+
+"Isn't there anything you can do?"
+
+"They won't let me work, and I hate to study."
+
+There was a silence.  Willy Cameron sat on the bench, bent and
+staring ahead.  Jinx brought the stick, and, receiving no attention,
+insinuated a dripping body between his knees.  He patted the dog's
+head absently.
+
+"I have been thinking about the night I went to dinner at your house,"
+he said at last.  "I had no business to say what I said then.  I've
+got a miserable habit of saying just what comes into my mind, and
+I've been afraid, ever since, that it would end in your not wanting
+to see me again.  Just try to forget it happened, won't you?"
+
+"I knew it was an impulse, but it made me very proud, Willy."
+
+"All right," he said quietly.  "And that's that.  Now about your
+grandfather.  I've had him on my mind, too.  He is an old man, and
+sometimes they are peculiar.  I am only sorry I upset him.  And you
+are to forget that, too."
+
+In spite of herself she laughed, rather helplessly.
+
+"Is there anything I am to remember?"
+
+He smiled too, and straightened himself, like a man who has got
+something off his chest.
+
+"Certainly there is, Miss Cardew.  Me.  Myself.  I want you to know
+that I'm around, ready to fetch and carry like Jinx here, and about
+as necessary, I suppose.  We are a good bit alike, Jinx and I.  We're
+satisfied with a bone, and we give a lot of affection.  You won't
+mind a bone now and then?"
+
+His cheerful tone reassured the girl.  There was no real hurt, then.
+
+"That's nice of you, you know."
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "you know there are men who prefer a dream
+to reality.  Perhaps I'm like that.  Anyhow, that's enough about me.
+Do you know that there is a strike coming?"
+
+"Yes.  I ought to tell you, Willy.  I think the men are right."
+
+He stared at her incredulously.
+
+"Right?" he said.  "Why, my dear child, most of them want to strike
+about as much as I want delirium tremens.  I've talked to them, and
+I know."
+
+"A slave may be satisfied if he has never known freedom."
+
+"Oh, fudge," said Willy Cameron, rudely.  "Where do you get all that?
+You're quoting; aren't you?  The strike, any strike, is an
+acknowledgment of weakness.  It is a resort to the physical because
+the collective mentality of labor isn't as strong as the other side.
+Or labor thinks it isn't, which amounts to the same thing.  And
+there is a fine line between the fellow who fights for a principle
+and the one who knocks people down to show how strong he is."
+
+"This is a fight for a principle, Willy."
+
+"Fine little Cardew you are!" he scoffed.  "Don't make any mistake.
+There have been fights by labor for a principle, and the principle
+won, as good always wins over evil.  But this is different.  It's
+a direct play by men who don't realize what they are doing, into the
+hands of a lot of--well, we'll call them anarchists.  It's
+Germany's way of winning the war.  By indirection."
+
+"If by anarchists you mean men like my uncle--"
+
+"I do," he said grimly.  "That's a family accident and you can't
+help it.  But I do mean Doyle.  Doyle and a Pole named Woslosky,
+and a scoundrel of an attorney here in town, named Akers, among others."
+
+"Mr. Akers is a friend of mine, Willy."
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"If they have been teaching you their dirty doctrines, Lily," he said
+at last, "I can only tell you this.  They can disguise it in all the
+fine terms they want.  It is treason, and they are traitors.  I know.
+I've had a talk with the Chief of Police."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"How well do you know Louis Akers?"
+
+"Not very well."  But there were spots of vivid color flaming in her
+cheeks.  He drew a long breath.
+
+"I can't retract it," he said.  "I didn't know, of course.  Shall we
+start back?"
+
+They were very silent as they walked.  Willy Cameron was pained and
+anxious.  He knew Akers' type rather than the man himself, but he
+knew the type well.  Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal
+who attracted girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made
+passionate, pagan love promiscuously, and put the responsibility for
+the misery they caused on the Creator because He had made them as
+they were.
+
+He was agonized by another train of thought.  For him Lily had always
+been something fine, beautiful, infinitely remote.  There were other
+girls, girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less,
+with the soil of life.  Even when they kept clean they saw it all
+about them, and looked on it with shrewd, sophisticated eyes.  But
+Lily was--Lily.  The very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as
+he had seen him look at Edith Boyd made him cold with rage.
+
+"Do you mind if I say something?"
+
+"That sounds disagreeable.  Is it?"
+
+"Maybe, but I'm going to anyhow, Lily.  I don't like to think of you
+seeing Akers.  I don't know anything against him, and I suppose if I
+did I wouldn't tell you.  But he is not your sort."
+
+An impulse of honesty prevailed with her.
+
+"I know that as well as you do.  I know him better than you do.  But,
+he stands for something, at least," she added rather hotly.  "None
+of the other men I know stand for anything very much.  Even you,
+Willy."
+
+"I stand for the preservation of my country," he said gravely.  "I
+mean, I represent a lot of people who--well, who don't believe that
+change always means progress, and who do intend that the changes
+Doyle and Akers and that lot want they won't get.  I don't believe
+--if you say you want what they want--that you know what you are
+talking about."
+
+"Perhaps I am more intelligent than you think I am."
+
+He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of
+arguing with her.
+
+"Do your people know that you are seeing Louis Akers!"
+
+"You are being rather solicitous, aren't you?"
+
+"I am being rather anxious.  I wouldn't dare, of course, if we
+hadn't been such friends.  But Akers is wrong, wrong every way, and
+I have to tell you that, even if it means that you will never see
+me again.  He takes a credulous girl--"
+
+"Thank you!"
+
+"And talks bunk to her and possibly makes love to her--"
+
+"Haven't we had enough of Mr. Akers?" Lily asked coldly.  "If you
+cannot speak of anything else, please don't talk."
+
+The result of which was a frozen silence until they reached the
+house.
+
+"Good-by," she said primly.  "It was very nice of you to call me up.
+Good-by, Jinx."  She went up the steps, leaving him bare-headed and
+rather haggard, looking after her.
+
+He took the dog and went out into the country on foot, tramping
+through the mud without noticing it, and now and then making little
+despairing gestures.  He was helpless.  He had cut himself off from
+her like a fool.  Akers.  Akers and Edith Boyd.  Other women.
+Akers and other women.  And now Lily.  Good God, Lily!
+
+Jinx was tired.  He begged to be carried, planting two muddy feet
+on his master's shabby trouser leg, and pleading with low whines.
+Willy Cameron stooped and, gathering up the little animal, tucked
+him under his arm.  When it commenced to rain he put him under his
+coat and plunged his head through the mud and wet toward home.
+
+Lily had entered the house in a white fury, but a moment later she
+was remorseful.  For one thing, her own anger bewildered her.  After
+all, he had meant well, and it was like him to be honest, even if
+it cost him something he valued.
+
+She ran to the door and looked around for him, but he had
+disappeared.  She went in again, remorseful and unhappy.  What had
+come over her to treat him like that?  He had looked almost stricken.
+
+"Mr. Akers is calling, Miss Cardew," said the footman.  "He is in
+the drawing-room."
+
+Lily went in slowly.
+
+Louis Akers had been waiting for some time.  He had lounged into the
+drawing-room, with an ease assumed for the servant's benefit, and
+had immediately lighted a cigarette.  That done, and the servant
+departed, he had carefully appraised his surroundings.  He liked
+the stiff formality of the room.  He liked the servant in his dark
+maroon livery.  He liked the silence and decorum.  Most of all, he
+liked himself in these surroundings.  He wandered around, touching
+a bowl here, a vase there, eyeing carefully the ancient altar cloth
+that lay on a table, the old needle-work tapestry on the chairs.
+
+He saw himself fitted into this environment, a part of it; coming
+down the staircase, followed by his wife, and getting into his
+waiting limousine; sitting at the head of his table, while the
+important men of the city listened to what he had to say.  It would
+come, as sure as God made little fishes.  And Doyle was a fool.  He,
+Louis Akers, would marry Lily Cardew and block that other game.  But
+he would let the Cardews know who it was who had blocked it and saved
+their skins.  They'd have to receive him after that; they would
+cringe to him.
+
+Then, unexpectedly, he had one of the shocks of his life.  He had
+gone to the window and through it he saw Lily and Willy Cameron
+outside.  He clutched at the curtain and cursed under his breath,
+apprehensively.  But Willy Cameron did not come in; Akers watched
+him up the street with calculating, slightly narrowed eyes.  The
+fact that Lily Cardew knew the clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an
+unexpected complication.  His surprise was lost in anxiety.  But
+Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather pale and unsmiling,
+found him facing the door, his manner easy, his head well up, and
+drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height.  She found her
+poise entirely gone, and it was he who spoke first.
+
+"I know," he said.  "You didn't ask me, but I came anyhow."
+
+She held out her hand rather primly.
+
+"It is very good of you to come."
+
+"Good!  I couldn't stay away."
+
+He took her outstretched hand, smiling down at her, and suddenly
+made an attempt to draw her to him.
+
+"You know that, don't you?"
+
+"Please!"
+
+He let her go at once.  He had not played his little game so long
+without learning its fine points.  There were times to woo a woman
+with a strong arm, and there were other times that required other
+methods.
+
+"Right-o," he said, "I'm sorry.  I've been thinking about you so
+much that I daresay I have got farther in our friendship than I
+should.  Do you know that you haven't been out of my mind since
+that ride we had together?"
+
+"Really?  Would you like some tea?"
+
+"Thanks, yes.  Do you dislike my telling you that?"
+
+She rang the bell, and then stood Lacing him.
+
+"I don't mind, no.  But I am trying very hard to forget that ride,
+and I don't want to talk about it."
+
+"When a beautiful thing comes into a man's life he likes to
+remember it."
+
+"How can you call it beautiful?"
+
+"Isn't it rather fine when two people, a man and a woman, suddenly
+find a tremendous attraction that draws them together, in spite of
+the fact that everything else is conspiring to keep them apart?"
+
+"I don't know," she said uncertainly.  "It just seemed all wrong,
+somehow."
+
+"An honest impulse is never wrong."
+
+"I don't want to discuss it, Mr. Akers.  It is over."
+
+While he was away from her, her attraction for him loomed less than
+the things she promised, of power and gratified ambition.  But he
+found her, with her gentle aloofness, exceedingly appealing, and
+with the tact of the man who understands women he adapted himself
+to her humor.
+
+"You are making me very unhappy; Miss Lily," he said.  "If you'll
+only promise to let me see you now and then, I'll promise to be as
+mild as dish-water.  Will you promise?"
+
+She was still struggling, still remembering Willy Cameron, still
+trying to remember all the things that Louis Akers was not.
+
+"I think I ought not to see you at all."
+
+"Then," he said slowly, "you are going to cut me off from the one
+decent influence in my life."
+
+She was still revolving that in her mind when tea came.  Akers,
+having shot his bolt, watched with interest the preparation for the
+little ceremony, the old Georgian teaspoons, the Crown Derby cups,
+the bell-shaped Queen Anne teapot, beautifully chased, the old
+pierced sugar basin.  Almost his gaze was proprietary.  And he
+watched Lily, her casual handling of those priceless treasures, her
+taking for granted of service and beauty, her acceptance of quality
+because she had never known anything else, watched her with
+possessive eyes.
+
+When the servant had gone, he said:
+
+"You are being very nice to me, in view of the fact that you did not
+ask me to come.  And also remembering that your family does not
+happen to care about me."
+
+"They are not at home."
+
+"I knew that, or I should not have come.  I don't want to make
+trouble for you, child."  His voice was infinitely caressing.  "As
+it happens, I know your grandfather's Sunday habits, and I met your
+father and mother on the road going out of town at noon.  I knew
+they had not come back."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+He smiled down at her.  "I have ways of knowing quite a lot of
+things.  Especially when they are as vital to me as this few
+minutes alone with you."
+
+He bent toward her, as he sat behind the tea table.
+
+"You know how vital this is to me, don't you?" he said.  "You're
+not going to cut me off, are you?"
+
+He stood over her, big, compelling, dominant, and put his hand
+under her chin.
+
+"I am insane about you," he whispered, and waited.
+
+Slowly, irresistibly, she lifted her face to his kiss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+On the first day of May, William Wallace Cameron moved his trunk,
+the framed photograph of his mother, eleven books, an alarm clock
+and Jinx to the Boyd house.  He went for two reasons.  First, after
+his initial call at the dreary little house, he began to realize
+that something had to be done in the Boyd family.  The second
+reason was his dog.
+
+He began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family
+as soon as he had met Mrs. Boyd.
+
+"I don't know what's come over the children," Mrs. Boyd said,
+fretfully.  She sat rocking persistently in the dreary little parlor.
+Her chair inched steadily along the dull carpet, and once or twice
+she brought up just as she was about to make a gradual exit from the
+room.  "They act so queer lately."
+
+She hitched the chair into place again.  Edith had gone out.  It was
+her idea of an evening call to serve cakes and coffee, and a strong
+and acrid odor was seeping through the doorway.  "There's Dan come
+home from the war, and when he gets back from the mill he just sits
+and stares ahead of him.  He won't even talk about the war, although
+he's got a lot to tell."
+
+"It takes some time for the men who were over to get settled down
+again, you know."
+
+"Well, there's Edith," continued the querulous voice.  "You'd think
+the cat had got her tongue, too.  I tell you, Mr. Cameron, there are
+meals here when if I didn't talk there wouldn't be a word spoken."
+
+Mr. Cameron looked up.  It had occurred to him lately, not precisely
+that a cat had got away with Edith's tongue, but that something
+undeniably had got away with her cheerfulness.  There were entire
+days in the store when she neglected to manicure her nails, and
+stood looking out past the fading primrose in the window to the
+street.  But there were no longer any shrewd comments on the
+passers-by.
+
+"Of course, the house isn't very cheerful," sighed Mrs. Boyd.  "I'm
+a sick woman, Mr. Cameron.  My back hurts most of the time.  It just
+aches and aches."
+
+"I know," said Mr. Cameron.  "My mother has that, sometimes.  If you
+like I'll mix you up some liniment, and Miss Edith can bring it to
+you."
+
+"Thanks.  I've tried most everything.  Edith wants to rent a room,
+so we can keep a hired girl, but it's hard to get a girl.  They want
+all the money on earth, and they eat something awful.  That's a nice
+friendly dog of yours, Mr. Cameron."
+
+It was perhaps Jinx who decided Willy Cameron.  Jinx was at that
+moment occupying the only upholstered chair, but he had developed a
+strong liking for the frail little lady with the querulous voice and
+the shabby black dress.  He had, indeed, insisted shortly after his
+entrance on leaping into her lap, and had thus sat for some time,
+completely eclipsing his hostess.
+
+"Just let him sit," Mrs. Boyd said placidly.  "I like a dog.  And he
+can't hurt this skirt I've got on.  It's on its last legs."
+
+With which bit of unconscious humor Willy Cameron had sat down.
+Something warm and kindly glowed in his heart.  He felt that dogs
+have a curious instinct for knowing what lies concealed in the human
+heart, and that Jinx had discovered something worth while in Edith's
+mother.
+
+It was later in the evening, however, that he said, over Edith's
+bakery cakes and her atrocious coffee:
+
+"If you really mean that about a roomer, I know of one."  He glanced
+at Edith.  "Very neat.  Careful with matches.  Hard to get up in the
+morning, but interesting, highly intelligent, and a clever talker.
+That's his one fault.  When he is interested in a thing he spouts all
+over the place."
+
+"Really?" said Mrs. Boyd.  "Well, talk would be a change here.  He
+sounds kind of pleasant.  Who is he?"
+
+"This paragon of beauty and intellect sits before you," said Willy
+Cameron.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me.  I didn't recognize you by the description,"
+said Mrs. Boyd, unconsciously.  "Well, I don't know.  I'd like to have
+this dog around."
+
+Even Edith laughed at that.  She had been very silent all evening,
+sitting most of the time with her hands in her lap, and her eyes on
+Willy Cameron.  Rather like Jinx's eyes they were, steady, unblinking,
+loyal, and with something else in common with Jinx which Willy Cameron
+never suspected.
+
+"I wouldn't come, if I were you," she said, unexpectedly.
+
+"Why, Edie, you've been thinking of asking him right along."
+
+"We don't know how to keep a house," she persisted, to him.  "We
+can't even cook--you know that's rotten coffee.  I'll show you the
+room, if you like, but I won't feel hurt if you don't take it, I'll
+be worried if you do."
+
+Mrs. Boyd watched them perplexedly as they went out, the tall young
+man with his uneven step, and Edith, who had changed so greatly in
+the last few weeks, and blew hot one minute and cold the next.  Now
+that she had seen Willy Cameron, Mrs. Boyd wanted him to come.  He
+would bring new life into the little house.  He was cheerful.  He
+was not glum like Dan or discontented like Edie.  And the dog--She
+got up slowly and walked over to the chair where Jinx sat, eyes
+watchfully on the door.
+
+"Nice Jinx," she said, and stroked his head with a thin and stringy
+hand.  "Nice doggie."
+
+She took a cake from the plate and fed it to him, bit by bit.  She
+felt happier than she had for a long time, since her children were
+babies and needed her.
+
+"I meant it," said Edith, on the stairs.  "You stay away.  We're a
+poor lot, and we're unlucky, too.  Don't get mixed up with us."
+
+"Maybe I'm going to bring you luck."
+
+"The best luck for me would be to fall down these stairs and break
+my neck."
+
+He looked at her anxiously, and any doubts he might have had, born
+of the dreariness, the odors of stale food and of the musty cellar
+below, of the shabby room she proceeded to show him, died in an
+impulse to somehow, some way, lift this small group of people out
+of the slough of despondency which seemed to be engulfing them all.
+
+"Why, what's the matter with the room?" he said.  "Just wait until
+I've got busy in it!  I'm a paper hanger and a painter, and--"
+
+"You're a dear, too," said Edith.
+
+So on the first of May he moved in, and for some evenings Political
+Economy and History and Travel and the rest gave way to anxious
+cuttings and fittings of wall paper, and a pungent odor of paint.
+The old house took on new life and activity, the latter sometimes
+pernicious, as when Willy Cameron fell down the cellar stairs with
+a pail of paint in his hand, or Dan, digging up some bricks in the
+back yard for a border the seeds of which were already sprouting
+in a flat box in the kitchen, ran a pickaxe into his foot.
+
+Some changes were immediate, such as the white-washing of the cellar
+and the unpainted fence in the yard, where Willy Cameron visualized,
+later on, great draperies of morning glories.  He papered the parlor,
+and coaxed Mrs. Boyd to wash the curtains, although she protested
+that, with the mill smoke, it was useless labor.
+
+But there were some changes that he knew only time would effect.
+Sometimes he went to his bed worn out both physically and spiritually,
+as though the burden of lifting three life-sodden souls was too much.
+Not that he thought of that, however.  What he did know was that the
+food was poor.  No servant had been found, and years of lack of system
+had left Mrs. Boyd's mind confused and erratic.  She would spend hours
+concocting expensive desserts, while the vegetables boiled dry and
+scorched and meat turned to leather, only to bring pridefully to the
+table some flavorless mixture garnished according to a picture in the
+cook book, and totally unedible.
+
+She would have ambitious cleaning days, too, starting late and leaving
+off with beds unmade to prepare the evening meal.  Dan, home from the
+mill and newly adopting Willy Cameron's system of cleaning up for
+supper, would turn sullen then, and leave the moment the meal was over.
+
+"Hell of a way to live," he said once.  "I'd get married, but how can
+a fellow know whether a girl will make a home for him or give him this?
+And then there would be babies, too."
+
+The relations between Dan and Edith were not particularly cordial.
+Willy Cameron found their bickering understandable enough, but he
+was puzzled, sometimes, to find that Dan was surreptitiously watching
+his sister.  Edith was conscious of it, too, and one evening she
+broke into irritated speech.
+
+"I wish you'd quit staring at me, Dan Boyd."
+
+"I was wondering what has come over you," said Dan, ungraciously.
+"You used to be a nice kid.  Now you're an angel one minute and a
+devil the next."
+
+Willy spoke to him that night when they were setting out rows of
+seedlings, under the supervision of Jinx.
+
+"I wouldn't worry her, Dan," he said; "it is the spring, probably.
+It gets into people, you know.  I'm that way myself.  I'd give a
+lot to be in the country just now."
+
+Dan glanced at him quickly, but whatever he may have had in his mind,
+he said nothing just then.  However, later on he volunteered:
+
+"She's got something on her mind.  I know her.  But I won't have her
+talking back to mother."
+
+A week or so after Willy Cameron had moved, Mr. Hendricks rang the
+bell of the Boyd house, and then, after his amiable custom, walked in.
+
+"Oh, Cameron!" he bawled.
+
+"Upstairs," came Willy Cameron's voice, somewhat thickened with
+carpet tacks.  So Mr. Hendricks climbed part of the way, when he
+found his head on a level with that of the young gentleman he sought,
+who was nailing a rent in the carpet.
+
+"Don't stop," said Mr. Hendricks.  "Merely friendly call.  And for
+heaven's sake don't swallow a tack, son.  I'm going to need you."
+
+"Whaffor?" inquired Willy Cameron, through his nose.
+
+"Don't know yet.  Make speeches, probably.  If Howard Cardew, or
+any Cardew, thinks he's going to be mayor of this town, he's got to
+think again."
+
+"I don't give a tinker's dam who's mayor of this town, so long as
+he gives it honest government."
+
+"That's right," said Mr. Hendricks approvingly.  "Old Cardew's been
+running it for years, and you could put all the honest government
+he's given us in a hollow tooth.  If you'll stop that hammering,
+I'd like to make a proposition to you."
+
+Willy Cameron took an admiring squint at his handiwork.
+
+"Sorry to refuse you, Mr. Hendricks, but I don't want to be mayor."
+
+Mr. Hendricks chuckled, as Willy Cameron led the way to his room.
+He wandered around the room while Cameron opened a window and slid
+the dog off his second chair.
+
+"Great snakes!" he said.  "Spargo's Bolshevism!  Political Economy,
+History of--.  What are you planning to be? President?"
+
+"I haven't decided yet.  It's a hard job, and mighty thankless.  But
+I won't be your mayor, even for you."
+
+Mr. Hendricks sat down.
+
+"All right," he said.  "Of course if you'd wanted it!"  He took two
+large cigars from the row in his breast pocket and held one out, but
+Willy Cameron refused it and got his pipe.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+Mr. Hendrick's face became serious and very thoughtful.  "I don't
+know that I have ever made it clear to you, Cameron," he said, "but
+I've got a peculiar feeling for this city.  I like it, the way some
+people like their families.  It's--well, it's home to me, for one
+thing.  I like to go out in the evenings and walk around, and I say
+to myself: 'This is my town.'  And we, it and me, are sending stuff
+all over the world.  I like to think that somewhere, maybe in China,
+they are riding on our rails and fighting with guns made from our
+steel.  Maybe you don't understand that."
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Well, that's the way I feel about it, anyhow.  And this Bolshevist
+stuff gets under my skin.  I've got a home and a family here.  I
+started in to work when I was thirteen, and all I've got I've made
+and saved right here.  It isn't much, but it's mine."
+
+Willy Cameron was lighting his pipe.  He nodded.  Mr. Hendricks bent
+forward and pointed a finger at him.
+
+"And to govern this city, who do you think the labor element is going
+to put up and probably elect?  We're an industrial city, son, with a
+big labor vote, and if it stands together--they're being swindled
+into putting up as an honest candidate one of the dirtiest radicals
+in the country.  That man Akers."
+
+He got up and closed the door.
+
+"I don't want Edith to hear me," he said.  "He's a friend of hers.
+But he's a bad actor, son.  He's wrong with women, for one thing,
+and when I think that all he's got to oppose him is Howard Cardew--"
+Mr. Hendricks got up, and took a nervous turn about the room.
+
+"Maybe you know that Cardew has a daughter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I hear a good many things, one way and another, and my wife
+likes a bit of gossip.  She knows them both by sight, and she ran
+into them one day in the tea room of the Saint Elmo, sitting in a
+corner, and the girl had her back to the room.  I don't like the
+look of that, Cameron."
+
+Willy Cameron got up and closed the window.  He stood there, with
+his back to the light, for a full minute.  Then:
+
+"I think there must be some mistake about that, Mr. Hendricks.  I
+have met her.  She isn't the sort of girl who would do clandestine
+things."
+
+Mr. Hendricks looked up quickly.  He had made it his business to
+study men, and there was something in Willy Cameron's voice that
+caught his attention, and turned his shrewd mind to speculation.
+
+"Maybe," he conceded.  "Of course, anything a Cardew does is likely
+to be magnified in this town.  If she's as keen as the men in her
+family, she'll get wise to him pretty soon."  Willy Cameron came back
+then, but Mr. Hendricks kept his eyes on the tip of his cigar.
+
+"We've got to lick Cardew," he said, "but I'm cursed if I want to
+do it with Akers."
+
+When there was no comment, he looked up.  Yes, the boy had had a
+blow.  Mr. Hendricks was sorry.  If that was the way the wind blew
+it was hopeless.  It was more than that; it was tragic.
+
+"Sorry I said anything, Cameron.  Didn't know you knew her."
+
+"That's all right.  Of course I don't like to think she is being
+talked about."
+
+"The Cardews are always being talked about.  You couldn't drop her
+a hint, I suppose?"
+
+"She knows what I think about Louis Akers."
+
+He made a violent effort and pulled himself together.  "So it is
+Akers and Howard Cardew, and one's a knave and one's a poor bet."
+
+"Right," said Mr. Hendricks.  "And one's Bolshevist, if I know
+anything, and the other is capital, and has about as much chance
+as a rich man to get through the eye of a needle."
+
+Which was slightly mixed, owing to a repressed excitement now
+making itself evident in Mr. Hendricks's voice.
+
+"Why not run an independent candidate?" Willy Cameron asked quietly.
+"I've been shouting about the plain people.  Why shouldn't they
+elect a mayor?  There is a lot of them."
+
+"That's the talk," said Mr. Hendricks, letting his excitement have
+full sway.  "They could.  They could run this town and run it right,
+if they'd take the trouble.  Now look here, son, I don't usually
+talk about myself, but--I'm honest.  I don't say I wouldn't get
+off a street-car without paying my fare if the conductor didn't lift
+it!  But I'm honest.  I don't lie.  I keep my word.  And I live
+clean--which you can't say for Lou Akers.  Why shouldn't I run on
+an independent ticket?  I mightn't be elected, but I'd make a
+damned good try."
+
+He stood up, and Willy Cameron rose also and held out his hand.
+
+"I don't know that my opinion is of any value, Mr. Hendricks.  But
+I hope you get it, and I think you have a good chance.  If I can do
+anything--"
+
+"Do anything!  What do you suppose I came here for?  You're going
+to elect me.  You're going to make speeches and kiss babies, and
+tell the ordinary folks they're worth something after all.  You got
+me started on this thing, and now you've got to help me out."
+
+The future maker of mayors here stepped back in his amazement, and
+Jinx emitted a piercing howl.  When peace was restored the F.M. of M.
+had got his breath, and he said:
+
+"I couldn't remember my own name before an audience, Mr. Hendricks."
+
+"You're fluent enough in that back room of yours."
+
+"That's different."
+
+"The people we're going after don't want oratory.  They want good,
+straight talk, and a fellow behind it who doesn't believe the
+country's headed straight for perdition.  We've had enough calamity
+bowlers.  You've got the way out.  The plain people.  The hope of
+the nation.  And, by God, you love your country, and not for what
+you can get out of it.  That's a thing a fellow's got to have inside
+him.  He can't pretend it and get it over."
+
+In the end the F.M. of M. capitulated.
+
+It was late when Mr. Hendricks left.  He went away with all the
+old envelopes in his pockets covered with memoranda.
+
+"Just wait a minute, son," he would say.  "I've got to make some
+speeches myself.  Repeat that, now.  'Sins of omission are as great,
+even greater than sins of commission.  The lethargic citizen
+throws open the gates to revolution.'  How do you spell 'lethargic'?"
+
+But it was not Hendricks and his campaign that kept the F.M. of M.
+awake until dawn.  He sat in front of his soft coal fire, and when
+it died to gray-white ash he still sat there, unconscious of the
+chill of the spring night.  Mostly he thought of Lily, and of Louis
+Akers, big and handsome, of his insolent eyes and his self-indulgent
+mouth.  Into that curious whirlpool that is the mind came now and
+then other visions: His mother asleep in her chair; the men in the
+War Department who had turned him down; a girl at home who had
+loved him, and made him feel desperately unhappy because he could
+not love her in return.  Was love always like that?  If it was what
+He intended, why was it so often without reciprocation?
+
+He took to walking about the room, according to his old habit, and
+obediently Jinx followed him.
+
+It was four by his alarm clock when Edith knocked at his door.  She
+was in a wrapper flung over her nightgown, and with her hair flying
+loose she looked childish and very small.
+
+"I wish you would go to bed," she said, rather petulantly.  "Are you
+sick, or anything?"
+
+"I was thinking, Edith.  I'm sorry.  I'll go at once.  Why aren't
+you asleep?"
+
+"I don't sleep much lately."  Their voices were cautious.  "I never
+go to sleep until you're settled down, anyhow."
+
+"Why not?  Am I noisy?"
+
+"It's not that."
+
+She went away, a drooping, listless figure that climbed the stairs
+slowly and left him in the doorway, puzzled and uncomfortable.
+
+At six that morning Dan, tip-toeing downstairs to warm his left-over
+coffee and get his own breakfast, heard a voice from Willy Cameron's
+room, and opened the door.  Willy Cameron was sitting up in bed with
+his eyes closed and his arms extended, and was concluding a speech
+to a dream audience in deep and oratorical tones.
+
+"By God, it is time the plain people know their power."
+
+Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather primitive, he
+edged his way into the room and filled the orator's sponge with
+icy water from the pitcher.
+
+"All right, old top," he said, "but it is also time the plain
+people got up."
+
+Then he flung the sponge and departed with extreme expedition.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers' visit to the
+house that Lily's family learned of it.
+
+Lily's state of mind during that week had been an unhappy one.  She
+magnified the incident until her nerves were on edge, and Grace,
+finding her alternating between almost demonstrative affection and
+strange aloofness, was bewildered and hurt.  Mademoiselle watched
+her secretly, shook her head, and set herself to work to find out
+what was wrong.  It was, in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated
+the crisis.
+
+Lily had not intended to make a secret of the visit, but as time
+went on she found it increasingly difficult to tell about it.  She
+should, she knew, have spoken at once, and it would be hard to
+explain why she had delayed.
+
+She meant to go to her father with it.  It was he who had forbidden
+her to see Akers, for one thing.  And she felt nearer to her father
+than to her mother, always.  Since her return she had developed an
+almost passionate admiration for Howard, founded perhaps on her
+grandfather's attitude toward him.  She was strongly partizan, and
+she watched her father, day after day, fighting his eternal battles
+with Anthony, sometimes winning, often losing, but standing for a
+principle like a rock while the seas of old Anthony's wrath washed
+over and often engulfed him.
+
+She was rather wistful those days, struggling with her own
+perplexities, and blindly reaching out for a hand to help her.  But
+she could not bring herself to confession.  She would wander into
+her father's dressing-room before she went to bed, and, sitting on
+the arm of his deep chair, would try indirectly to get him to solve
+the problems that were troubling her.  But he was inarticulate and
+rather shy with her.  He had difficulty, sometimes, after her long
+absence at school and camp, in realizing her as the little girl who
+had once begged for his neckties to make into doll frocks.
+
+Once she said:
+
+"Could you love a person you didn't entirely respect, father?"
+
+"Love is founded on respect, Lily."
+
+She pondered that.  She felt that he was wrong.
+
+"But it does happen, doesn't it?" she had persisted.
+
+He had been accustomed to her searchings for interesting abstractions
+for years.  She used to talk about religion in the same way.  So he
+smiled and said:
+
+"There is a sort of infatuation that is based on something quite
+different."
+
+"On what?"
+
+But he had rather floundered there.  He could not discuss physical
+attraction with her.
+
+"We're getting rather deep for eleven o'clock at night, aren't we?"
+
+After a short silence:
+
+"Do you mind speaking about Aunt Elinor, father?"
+
+"No, dear.  Although it is rather a painful subject."
+
+"But if she is happy, why is it painful?"
+
+"Well, because Doyle is the sort of man he is."
+
+"You mean--because he is unfaithful to her?  Or was?"
+
+He was very uncomfortable.
+
+"That is one reason for it, of course.  There are others."
+
+"But if he is faithful to her now, father?  Don't you think, whatever
+a man has been, if he really cares for a woman it makes him over?"
+
+"Sometimes, not always."  The subject was painful to him.  He did
+not want his daughter to know the sordid things of life.  But he
+added, gallantly: "Of course a good woman can do almost anything she
+wants with a man, if he cares for her."
+
+She lay awake almost all night, thinking that over.
+
+On the Sunday following Louis Akers' call Mademoiselle learned of
+it, by the devious route of the servants' hall, and she went to Lily
+at once, yearning and anxious, and in her best lace collar.  She
+needed courage, and to be dressed in her best gave her moral strength.
+
+"It is not," she said, "that they wish to curtail your liberty, Lily.
+But to have that man come here, when he knows he is not wanted, to
+force himself on you--"
+
+"I need not have seen him.  I wanted to see him."
+
+Mademoiselle waved her hands despairingly.
+
+"If they find it out!" she wailed.
+
+"They will.  I intend to tell them."
+
+But Mademoiselle made her error there.  She was fearful of Grace's
+attitude unless she forewarned her, and Grace, frightened,
+immediately made it a matter of a family conclave.  She had not
+intended to include Anthony, but he came in on an excited speech
+from Howard, and heard it all.
+
+The result was that instead of Lily going to them with her
+confession, she was summoned, to find her family a unit for once
+and combined against her.  She was not to see Louis Akers again, or
+the Doyles.
+
+They demanded a promise, but she refused.  Yet even then, standing
+before them, forced to a defiance she did not feel, she was puzzled
+as well as angry.  They were wrong, and yet in some strange way
+they were right, too.  She was Cardew enough to get their point of
+view.  But she was Cardew enough, too, to defy them.
+
+She did it rather gently.
+
+"You must understand," she said, her hands folded in front of her,
+"that it is not so much that I care to see the people you are talking
+about.  It is that I feel I have the right to choose my own friends."
+
+"Friends!" sneered old Anthony.  "A third-rate lawyer, a--"
+
+"That is not the point, grandfather.  I went away to school when I
+was a little girl.  I have been away for five years.  You cannot
+seem to realize that I am a woman now, not a child.  You bring me
+in here like a bad child."
+
+In the end old Anthony had slammed out of the room.  There were
+arguments after that, tears on Grace's part, persuasion on Howard's;
+but Lily had frozen against what she considered their tyranny, and
+Howard found in her a sort of passive resistance, that drove him
+frantic.
+
+"Very well," he said finally.  "You have the arrogance of youth,
+and its cruelty, Lily.  And you are making us all suffer without
+reason."
+
+"Don't you think I might say that too, father?"
+
+"Are you in love with this man?"
+
+"I have only seen him four times.  If you would give me some reasons
+for all this fuss--"
+
+"There are things I cannot explain to you.  You wouldn't understand."
+
+"About his moral character?"
+
+Howard was rather shocked.  He hesitated:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you tell me what they are?"
+
+"Good heavens, no!" he exploded.  "The man's a radical, too.  That
+in itself ought to be enough."
+
+"You can't condemn a man for his political opinions."
+
+"Political opinions!"
+
+"Besides," she said, looking at him with her direct gaze, "isn't
+there some reason in what the radicals believe, father?  Maybe it
+is a dream that can't come true, but it is rather a fine dream,
+isn't it?"
+
+It was then that Howard followed his father's example, and flung
+out of the room.
+
+After that Lily went, very deliberately and without secrecy, to the
+house on Cardew Way.  She found a welcome there, not so marked on
+her Aunt Elinor's part as on Doyle's, but a welcome.  She found
+approval, too, where at home she had only suspicion and a solicitude
+based on anxiety.  She found a clever little circle there, and
+sometimes a cultured one; underpaid, disgruntled, but brilliant
+professors from the college, a journalist or two, a city councilman,
+even prosperous merchants, and now and then strange bearded
+foreigners who were passing through the city and who talked
+brilliantly of the vision of Lenine and the future of Russia.
+
+She learned that the true League of Nations was not a political
+alliance, but a union of all the leveled peoples of the world.
+She had no curiosity as to how this leveling was to be brought
+about.  All she knew was that these brilliant dreamers made her
+welcome, and that instead of the dinner chat at home, small
+personalities, old Anthony's comments on his food, her father's
+heavy silence, here was world talk, vast in its scope, idealistic,
+intoxicating.
+
+Almost always Louis Akers was there; it pleased her to see how the
+other men listened to him, deferred to his views, laughed at his wit.
+She did not know the care exercised in selecting the groups she was
+to meet, the restraints imposed on them.  And she could not know
+that from her visits the Doyle establishment was gaining a prestige
+totally new to it, an almost respectability.
+
+Because of those small open forums, sometimes noted in the papers,
+those innocuous gatherings, it was possible to hold in that very
+room other meetings, not open and not innocuous, where practical
+plans took the place of discontented yearnings, and where the talk
+was more often of fighting than of brotherhood.
+
+She was, by the first of May, frankly infatuated with Louis Akers,
+yet with a curious knowledge that what she felt was infatuation only.
+She would lie wide-eyed at night and rehearse painfully the
+weaknesses she saw so clearly in him.  But the next time she saw him
+she would yield to his arms, passively but without protest.  She did
+not like his caresses, but the memory of them thrilled her.
+
+She was following the first uncurbed impulse of her life.  Guarded
+and more or less isolated from other youth, she had always lived a
+strong inner life, purely mental, largely interrogative.  She had
+had strong childish impulses, sometimes of pure affection,
+occasionally of sheer contrariness, but always her impulses had
+been curbed.
+
+"Do be a little lady," Mademoiselle would say.
+
+She had got, somehow, to feel that impulse was wrong.  It ranked
+with disobedience.  It partook of the nature of sin.  People who
+did wicked things did them on impulse, and were sorry ever after;
+but then it was too late.
+
+As she grew older, she added something to that.  Impulses of the
+mind led to impulses of the body, and impulse was wrong.  Passion
+was an impulse of the body.  Therefore it was sin.  It was the one
+sin one could not talk about, so one was never quite clear about
+it.  However, one thing seemed beyond dispute; it was predominatingly
+a masculine wickedness.  Good women were beyond and above it, its
+victims sometimes, like those girls at the camp, or its toys, like
+the sodden creatures in the segregated district who hung, smiling
+their tragic smiles, around their doorways in the late afternoons.
+
+But good women were not like that.  If they were, then they were
+not good.  They did not lie awake remembering the savage clasp of a
+man's arms, knowing all the time that this was not love, but
+something quite different.  Or if it was love, that it was painful
+and certainly not beautiful.
+
+Sometimes she thought about Willy Cameron.  He had had very exalted
+ideas about love.  He used to be rather oratorical about it.
+
+"It's the fundamental principle of the universe," he would say,
+waving his pipe wildly.  "But it means suffering, dear child.  It
+feeds on martyrdom and fattens on sacrifice.  And as the h.c. of l.
+doesn't affect either commodity, it lives forever."
+
+"What does it do, Willy, if it hasn't any martyrdom and sacrifice
+to feed on?  Do you mean to say that when it is returned and
+everybody is happy, it dies?"
+
+"Practically," he had said.  "It then becomes domestic contentment,
+and expresses itself in the shape of butcher's bills and roast
+chicken on Sundays."
+
+But that had been in the old care-free days, before Willy had
+thought he loved her, and before she had met Louis.
+
+She made a desperate effort one day to talk to her mother.  She
+wanted, somehow, to be set right in her own eyes.  But Grace could
+not meet her even half way; she did not know anything about
+different sorts of love, but she did know that love was beautiful,
+if you met the right man and married him.  But it had to be some
+one who was your sort, because in the end marriage was only a sort
+of glorified companionship.
+
+The moral in that, so obviously pointed at Louis Akers, invalidated
+the rest of it for Lily.
+
+She was in a state of constant emotional excitement by that time,
+and it was only a night or two after that she quarreled with her
+grandfather.  There had been a dinner party, a heavy, pompous affair,
+largely attended, for although spring was well advanced, the usual
+May hegira to the country or the coast had not yet commenced.
+Industrial conditions in and around the city were too disturbed for
+the large employers to get away, and following Lent there had been
+a sort of sporadic gayety, covering a vast uneasiness.  There was
+to be no polo after all.
+
+Lily, doing her best to make the dinner a success, found herself
+contrasting it with the gatherings at the Doyle house, and found it
+very dull.  These men, with their rigidity of mind, invited because
+they held her grandfather's opinions, or because they kept their
+own convictions to themselves, seemed to her of a bygone time.  She
+did not see in them a safe counterpoise to a people which in its
+reaction from the old order, was ready to swing to anything that
+was new.  She saw only a dozen or so elderly gentlemen, immaculate
+and prosperous, peering through their glasses after a world which
+had passed them by.
+
+They were very grave that night.  The situation was serious.  The
+talk turned inevitably to the approaching strike, and from that to
+a possible attempt on the part of the radical element toward
+violence.  The older men pooh-poohed that, but the younger ones were
+uncertain.  Isolated riotings, yes.  But a coordinated attempt
+against the city, no.  Labour was greedy, but it was law-abiding.
+Ah, but it was being fired by incendiary literature.  Then what were
+the police doing?  They were doing everything.  They were doing
+nothing.  The governor was secretly a radical.  Nonsense.  The
+governor was saying little, but was waiting and watching.  A general
+strike was only another word for revolution.  No.  It would be
+attempted, perhaps, but only to demonstrate the solidarity of labor.
+
+After a time Lily made a discovery.  She found that even into that
+carefully selected gathering had crept a surprising spirit, based
+on the necessity for concession; a few men who shared her father's
+convictions, and went even further.  One or two, even, who,
+cautiously for fear of old Anthony's ears, voiced a belief that
+before long invested money would be given a fixed return, all
+surplus profits to be divided among the workers, the owners and
+the government.
+
+"What about the lean years?" some one asked.
+
+The government's share of all business was to form a contingent fund
+for such emergencies, it seemed.
+
+Lily listened attentively.  Was it because they feared that if they
+did not voluntarily divide their profits they would be taken from
+them?  Enough for all, and to none too much.  Was that what they
+feared?  Or was it a sense of justice, belated but real?
+
+She remembered something Jim Doyle had said:
+
+"Labor has learned its weakness alone, its strength united.  But
+capital has not learned that lesson.  It will not take a loss for a
+principle.  It will not unite.  It is suspicious and jealous, so it
+fights its individual battles alone, and loses in the end."
+
+But then to offset that there was something Willy Cameron had said
+one day, frying doughnuts for her with one hand, and waving the fork
+about with the other.
+
+"Don't forget this, oh representative of the plutocracy," he had
+said.  "Capital has its side, and a darned good one, too.  It's got
+a sense of responsibility to the country, which labor may have
+individually but hasn't got collectively."
+
+These men at the table were grave, burdened with responsibility.
+Her father.  Even her grandfather.  It was no longer a question of
+profit.  It was a question of keeping the country going.  They
+were like men forced to travel, and breasting a strong head wind.
+There were some there who would turn, in time, and travel with
+the gale.  But there were others like her grandfather, obstinate
+and secretly frightened, who would refuse.  Who would, to change
+the figure, sit like misers over their treasure, an eye on the
+window of life for thieves.
+
+She went upstairs, perplexed and thoughtful.  Some time
+later she heard the family ascending, the click of her mother's
+high heels on the polished wood of the staircase, her father's
+sturdy tread, and a moment or two later her grandfather's slow,
+rather weary step.  Suddenly she felt sorry for him, for his age,
+for his false gods of power and pride, for the disappointment
+she was to him.  She flung open her door impulsively and
+confronted him.
+
+"I just wanted to say good-night, grandfather," she said
+breathlessly.  "And that I am sorry."
+
+"Sorry for what?"
+
+"Sorry--" she hesitated.  "Because we see things so differently."
+
+Lily was almost certain that she caught a flash of tenderness in his
+eyes, and certainly his voice had softened.
+
+"You looked very pretty to-night," he said.  But he passed on, and
+she had again the sense of rebuff with which he met all her small
+overtures at that time.  However, he turned at the foot of the
+upper flight.
+
+"I would like to talk to you, Lily.  Will you come upstairs?"
+
+She had been summoned before to those mysterious upper rooms of his,
+where entrance was always by request, and generally such requests
+presaged trouble.  But she followed him light-heartedly enough then.
+His rare compliment had pleased and touched her.
+
+The lamp beside his high-backed, almost throne-like chair was
+lighted, and in the dressing-room beyond his valet was moving about,
+preparing for the night.  Anthony dismissed the man, and sat down
+under the lamp.
+
+"You heard the discussion downstairs, to-night, Lily.  Personally
+I anticipate no trouble, but if there is any it may be directed at
+this house."  He smiled grimly.  "I cannot rely on my personal
+popularity to protect me, I fear.  Your mother obstinately refuses
+to leave your father, but I have decided to send you to your
+grand-aunt Caroline."
+
+"Aunt Caroline!  She doesn't care for me, grandfather.  She never
+has."
+
+"That is hardly pertinent, is it?  The situation is this: She intends
+to open the Newport house early in June, and at my request she will
+bring you out there.  Next fall we will do something here; I haven't
+decided just what."
+
+There was a sudden wild surge of revolt in Lily.  She hated Newport.
+Grand-aunt Caroline was a terrible person.  She was like Anthony,
+domineering and cruel, and with even less control over her tongue.
+
+"I need not point out the advantages of the plan," said Anthony
+suavely.  "There may be trouble here, although I doubt it.  But in
+any event you will have to come out, and this seems an excellent way."
+
+"Is it a good thing to spend a lot of money now, grandfather, when
+there is so much discontent?"
+
+Old Anthony had a small jagged vein down the center of his forehead,
+and in anger or his rare excitements it stood out like a scar.  Lily
+saw it now, but his voice was quiet enough.
+
+"I consider it vitally important to the country to continue its
+social life as before the war."
+
+"You mean, to show we are not frightened?"
+
+"Frightened!  Good God, nobody's frightened.  It will take more
+than a handful of demagogues to upset this government.  Which brings
+me to a subject you insist on reopening, by your conduct.  I have
+reason to believe that you are still going to that man's house."
+
+He never called Doyle by name if he could avoid it.
+
+"I have been there several times."
+
+"After you were forbidden?"
+
+His tone roused every particle of antagonism in her.  She flushed.
+
+"Perhaps because I was forbidden," she said, slowly.  "Hasn't it
+occurred to you that I may consider your attitude very unjust?"
+
+If she looked for an outburst from him it did not come.  He stood
+for a moment, deep in thought.
+
+"You understand that this Doyle once tried to assassinate me?"
+
+"I know that he tried to beat you, grandfather.  I am sorry, but
+that was long ago.  And there was a reason for it, wasn't there?"
+
+"I see," he said, slowly.  "What you are conveying to me, not too
+delicately, is that you have definitely allied yourself with my
+enemies.  That, here in my own house, you intend to defy me.  That,
+regardless of my wishes or commands, while eating my food, you
+purpose to traffic with a man who has sworn to get me, sooner or
+later.  Am I correct?"
+
+"I have only said that I see no reason why I should not visit
+Aunt Elinor."
+
+"And that you intend to.  Do I understand also that you refuse to
+go to Newport?"
+
+"I daresay I shall have to go, if you send me.  I don't want to go."
+
+"Very well.  I am glad we have had this little talk.  It makes my
+own course quite plain.  Good-night."
+
+He opened the door for her and she went out and down the stairs.
+She felt very calm, and as though something irrevocable had happened.
+With her anger at her grandfather there was mixed a sort of pity for
+him, because she knew that nothing he could do would change the
+fundamental situation.  Even if he locked her up, and that was
+possible, he would know that he had not really changed things, or
+her.  She felt surprisingly strong.  All these years that she had
+feared him, and yet when it came to a direct issue, he was helpless!
+What had he but his wicked tongue, and what did that matter to deaf
+ears?
+
+She found her maid gone, and Mademoiselle waiting to help her
+undress.  Mademoiselle often did that.  It made her feel still
+essential in Lily's life.
+
+"A long seance!" she said.  "Your mother told me to-night.  It is
+Newport?"
+
+"He wants me to go.  Unhook me, Mademoiselle, and then run off and
+go to bed.  You ought not to wait up like this."
+
+"Newport!" said Mademoiselle, deftly slipping off the white and
+silver that was Lily's gown.  "It will be wonderful, dear.  And you
+will be a great success.  You are very beautiful."
+
+"I am not going to Newport, Mademoiselle."
+
+Mademoiselle broke into rapid expostulation, in French.  Every girl
+wanted to make her debut at Newport.  Here it was all industry,
+money, dirt.  Men who slaved in offices daily.  At Newport was
+gathered the real leisure class of America, those who knew how to
+play, who lived.  But Lily, taking off her birthday pearls before
+the mirror of her dressing table, only shook her head.
+
+"I'm not going," she said.  "I might as well tell you, for you'll
+hear about it later.  I have quarreled with him, very badly.  I
+think he intends to lock me up."
+
+"C'est impossible!" cried Mademoiselle.
+
+But a glance at Lily's set face in the mirror told her it was true.
+
+She went away very soon, sadly troubled.  There were bad times
+coming.  The old peaceful quiet days were gone, for age and
+obstinacy had met youth and the arrogance of youth, and it was to
+be battle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+But there was a truce for a time.  Lily came and went without
+interference, and without comment.  Nothing more was said about
+Newport.  She motored on bright days to the country club, lunched
+and played golf or tennis, rode along the country lanes with Pink
+Denslow, accepted such invitations as came her way cheerfully
+enough but without enthusiasm, and was very gentle to her mother.
+But Mademoiselle found her tense and restless, as though she were
+waiting.
+
+And there were times when she disappeared for an hour or two in
+the afternoons, proffering no excuses, and came back flushed, and
+perhaps a little frightened.  On the evenings that followed those
+small excursions she was particularly gentle to her mother.
+Mademoiselle watched and waited for the blow she feared was about
+to fall.  She felt sure that the girl was seeing Louis Akers, and
+that she would ultimately marry him.  In her despair she fell back
+on Willy Cameron and persuaded Grace to invite him to dinner.  It
+was meant to be a surprise for Lily, but she had telephoned at
+seven o'clock that she was dining at the Doyles'.
+
+It was that evening that Willy Cameron learned that Mr. Hendricks
+had been right about Lily.  He and Grace dined alone, for Howard
+was away at a political conference, and Anthony had dined at his
+club.  And in the morning room after dinner Grace found herself
+giving him her confidence.
+
+"I have no right to burden you with our troubles, Mr. Cameron,"
+Grace said, "but she is so fond of you, and she has great respect
+for your judgment.  If you could only talk to her about the anxiety
+she is causing.  These Doyles, or rather Mr. Doyle--the wife is
+Mr. Cardew's sister--are putting all sorts of ideas into her head.
+And she has met a man there, a Mr. Akers, and--I'm afraid she
+thinks she is in love with him, Mr. Cameron."
+
+He met her eyes gravely.
+
+"Have you tried not forbidding her to go to the Doyles?"
+
+"I have forbidden her nothing.  It is her grandfather."
+
+"Then it seems to be Mr. Cardew who needs to be talked to, doesn't
+it?" he said.  "I wouldn't worry too much, Mrs. Cardew.  And don't
+hold too tight a rein."
+
+He was very down-hearted when he left.  Grace's last words placed
+a heavy burden on him.
+
+"I simply feel," she said, "that you can do more with her than we
+can, and that if something isn't done she will ruin her life.  She
+is too fine and wonderful to have her do that."
+
+To picture Lily as willfully going her own gait at that period
+would be most unfair.  She was suffering cruelly; the impulse that
+led her to meet Louis Akers against her family's wishes was
+irresistible, but there was a new angle to her visits to the Doyle
+house.  She was going there now, not so much because she wished to
+go, as because she began to feel that her Aunt Elinor needed her.
+
+There was something mysterious about her Aunt Elinor, mysterious
+and very sad.  Even her smile had pathos in it, and she was smiling
+less and less.  She sat in those bright little gatherings, in them
+but not of them, unbrilliant and very quiet.  Sometimes she gave
+Lily the sense that like Lily herself she was waiting.  Waiting for
+what?
+
+Lily had a queer feeling too, once or twice, that Elinor was afraid.
+But again, afraid of what?  Sometimes she wondered if Elinor Doyle
+was afraid of her husband; certainly there were times, when they were
+alone, when he dropped his unctuous mask and held Elinor up to
+smiling contempt.
+
+"You can see what a clever wife I have," he said once.  "Sometimes I
+wonder, Elinor, how you have lived with me so long and absorbed so
+little of what really counts."
+
+"Perhaps the difficulty," Elinor had said quietly, "is because we
+differ as to what really counts."
+
+Lily brought Elinor something she needed, of youth and irresponsible
+chatter, and in the end the girl found the older woman depending on
+her.  To cut her off from that small solace was unthinkable.  And
+then too she formed Elinor's sole link with her former world, a
+world of dinners and receptions, of clothes and horses and men who
+habitually dressed for dinner, of the wealth and panoply of life.
+A world in which her interest strangely persisted.
+
+"What did you wear at the country club dance last night?" she would
+ask.
+
+"A rose-colored chiffon over yellow.  It gives the oddest effect,
+like an Ophelia rose."
+
+Or:
+
+"At the Mainwarings?  George or Albert?"
+
+"The Alberts."
+
+"Did they ever have any children?"
+
+One day she told her about not going to Newport, and was surprised
+to see Elinor troubled.
+
+"Why won't you go?  It is a wonderful house."
+
+"I don't care to go away, Aunt Nellie." She called her that sometimes.
+
+Elinor had knitted silently for a little.  Then:
+
+"Do you mind if I say something to you?"
+
+"Say anything you like, of course."
+
+"I just--Lily, don't see too much of Louis Akers.  Don't let him
+carry you off your feet.  He is good-looking, but if you marry him,
+you will be terribly unhappy."
+
+"That isn't enough to say, Aunt Nellie," she said gravely.  "You
+must have a reason."
+
+Elinor hesitated.
+
+"I don't like him.  He is a man of very impure life."
+
+"That's because he has never known any good women."   Lily rose
+valiantly to his defense, but the words hurt her.  "Suppose a good
+woman came into his life?  Couldn't she change him?"
+
+
+ "I don't know," Elinor said helplessly.  "But there is something
+else.  It will cut you off from your family."
+
+"You did that.  You couldn't stand it, either.  You know what it's
+like."
+
+
+
+"There must be some other way.  That is no reason for marriage."
+
+"But--suppose I care for him?" Lily said, shyly.
+
+"You wouldn't live with him a year.  There are different ways of
+caring, Lily.  There is such a thing as being carried away by a man's
+violent devotion, but it isn't the violent love that lasts."
+
+Lily considered that carefully, and she felt that there was some
+truth in it.  When Louis Akers came to take her home that night he
+found her unresponsive and thoughtful.
+
+"Mrs. Doyle's been talking to you," he said at last.  "She hates me,
+you know."
+
+"Why should she hate you?"
+
+"Because, with all her vicissitudes, she's still a snob," he said
+roughly.  "My family was nothing, so I'm nothing."
+
+"She wants me to be happy, Louis."
+
+"And she thinks you won't be with me."
+
+"I am not at all sure that I would be."  She made an effort then to
+throw off the strange bond that held her to him.  "I should like to
+have three months, Louis, to get a--well, a sort of perspective.
+I can't think clearly when you're around, and--"
+
+"And I'm always around?  Thanks."  But she had alarmed him.  "You're
+hurting me awfully, little girl," he said, in a different tone.  "I
+can't live without seeing you, and you know it.  You're all I have
+in life.  You have everything, wealth, friends, position.  You could
+play for three months and never miss me.  But you are all I have."
+
+In the end she capitulated
+
+Jim Doyle was very content those days.  There had been a time when
+Jim Doyle was the honest advocate of labor, a flaming partizan of
+those who worked with their hands.  But he had traveled a long road
+since then, from dreamer to conspirator.  Once he had planned to
+build up; now he plotted to tear down.
+
+His weekly paper had enormous power.  To the workers he had begun to
+preach class consciousness, and the doctrine of being true to their
+class.  From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.
+Ostensibly he stood for a vast equality, world wide and beneficent;
+actually he preached an inflammable doctrine of an earth where the
+last shall be first.  He advocated the overthrow of all centralized
+government, and considered the wages system robbery.  Under it
+workers were slaves, and employers of workers slave-masters.  It was
+with such phrases that he had for months been consistently inflaming
+the inflammable foreign element in and around the city, and not the
+foreign element only.  A certain percentage of American-born workmen
+fell before the hammer-like blows of his words, repeated and driven
+home each week.
+
+He had no scruples, and preached none.  He preached only revolt, and
+in that revolt defiance of all existing laws.  He had no religion;
+Christ to him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same
+system that still crucified those who fought the established order.
+In his new world there would be no churches and no laws.  He
+advocated bloodshed, arson, sabotage of all sorts, as a means to an
+end.
+
+Fanatic he was, but practical fanatic, and the more dangerous for
+that.  He had viewed the failure of the plan to capture a city in
+the northwest in February with irritation, but without discouragement.
+They had acted prematurely there and without sufficient secrecy.
+That was all.  The plan in itself was right.  And he had watched the
+scant reports of the uprising in the newspapers with amusement and
+scorn.  The very steps taken to suppress the facts showed the
+uneasiness of the authorities and left the nation with a feeling
+of false security.
+
+The people were always like that.  Twice in a hundred years France
+had experienced the commune.  Each time she had been warned, and
+each time she had waited too long.  Ever so often in the life of
+every nation came these periodic outbursts of discontent, economic
+in their origin, and ran their course like diseases, contagious,
+violent and deadly.
+
+The commune always followed long and costly wars.  The people would
+dance, but they revolted at paying the piper.
+
+The plan in Seattle had been well enough conceived; the city light
+plant was to have been taken over during the early evening of
+February 6, and at ten o'clock that night the city was to have gone
+dark.  But the reign of terrorization that was to follow had
+revolted Jim Osborne, one of their leaders, and from his hotel
+bedroom he had notified the authorities.  Word had gone out to "get"
+Osborne.
+
+If it had not been for Osborne, and the conservative element behind
+him, a flame would have been kindled at Seattle that would have
+burnt across the nation.
+
+Doyle watched Gompers cynically..  He considered his advocacy of
+patriotic cooperation between labor and the Government during the
+war the skillful attitude of an opportunist.  Gompers could do
+better with public opinion behind him than without it.  He was an
+opportunist, riding the wave which would carry him farthest.
+Playing both ends against the middle, and the middle, himself.  He
+saw Gompers, watching the release of tension that followed the
+armistice and seeing the great child he had fathered, grown now
+and conscious of its power,--watching it, fully aware that it had
+become stronger than he.
+
+Gompers, according to Doyle, had ceased to be a leader and become
+a follower, into strange and difficult paths.
+
+The war had made labor's day.  No public move was made without
+consulting organized labor, and a certain element in it had grown
+drunk with power.  To this element Doyle appealed.  It was Doyle
+who wrote the carefully prepared incendiary speeches, which were
+learned verbatim by his agents for delivery.  For Doyle knew one
+thing, and knew it well.  Labor, thinking along new lines, must
+think along the same lines.  Be taught the same doctrines.  Be
+pushed in one direction.
+
+There were, then, two Doyles, one the poseur, flaunting his
+outrageous doctrines with a sardonic grin, gathering about him a
+small circle of the intelligentsia, and too openly heterodox to be
+dangerous.  And the other, secretly plotting against the city, wary,
+cautious, practical and deadly, waiting to overthrow the established
+order and substitute for it chaos.  It was only incidental to him
+that old Anthony should go with the rest.
+
+But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis.
+He meant to be that.  He steadily widened the breach between Lily
+and her family, and he watched the progress of her affair with
+Louis Akers with relish.  He had not sought this particular form
+of revenge, but Fate had thrust it into his hands, and he meant to
+be worthy of the opportunity.
+
+He was in no hurry.  He had extraordinary patience, and he rather
+liked sitting back and watching the slow development of his plans.
+It was like chess; it was deliberate and inevitable.  One made a
+move, and then sat back waiting and watching while the other side
+countered it, or fell, with slow agonizing, into the trap.
+
+A few days after Lily had had her talk with Elinor, Doyle found a
+way to widen the gulf between Lily and her grandfather.  Elinor
+seldom left the house, and Lily had done some shopping for her.
+The two women were in Elinor's bedroom, opening small parcels,
+when he knocked and came in.
+
+"I don't like to disturb the serenity of this happy family group,"
+he said, "but I am inclined to think that a certain gentleman,
+standing not far from a certain young lady's taxicab, belongs to a
+certain department of our great city government.  And from his
+unflattering lack of interest in me, that he--"
+
+Elinor half rose, terrified.
+
+"Not the police, Jim?"
+
+"Sit down," he said, in a tone Lily had never heard him use before.
+And to Lily, more gently: "I am not altogether surprised.  As a
+matter of fact, I have known it for some time.  Your esteemed
+grandfather seems to take a deep interest in your movements these
+days."
+
+"Do you mean that I am being followed?"
+
+"I'm afraid so.  You see, you are a very important person, and if
+you will venture in the slums which surround the Cardew Mills, you
+should be protected.  At any time, for instance, Aunt Elinor and
+I may despoil you of those pearls you wear so casually, and--"
+
+"Don't talk like that, Jim," Elinor protested.  She was very pale.
+"Are you sure he is watching Lily?"
+
+He gave her an ugly look.
+
+"Who else?" he inquired suavely.
+
+Lily sat still, frozen with anger.  So this was her grandfather's
+method of dealing with her.  He could not lock her up, but he would
+know, day by day, and hour by hour, what she was doing.  She could
+see him reading carefully his wicked little notes on her day.
+Perhaps he was watching her mail, too.  Then when he had secured a
+hateful total he would go to her father, and together they would
+send her away somewhere.  Away from Louis Akers.  If he was
+watching her mail too he would know that Louis was in love with her.
+They would rake up all the things that belonged in the past he was
+done with, and recite them to her.  As though they mattered now!
+
+She went to the window and looked out.  Yes, she had seen the
+detective before.  He must have been hanging around for days, his
+face unconsciously impressing itself upon her.  When she turned:
+
+"Louis is coming to dinner, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If you don't mind, Aunt Nellie, I think I'll dine out with him
+somewhere.  I want to talk to him alone."
+
+"But the detective--"
+
+"If my grandfather uses low and detestable means to spy on me, Aunt
+Nellie, he deserves what he gets, doesn't he?"
+
+When Louis Akers came at half-past six, he found that she had been
+crying, but she greeted him calmly enough, with her head held high.
+Elinor, watching her, thought she was very like old Anthony himself
+just then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Willy Cameron came home from a night class in metallurgy the evening
+after the day Lily had made her declaration of independence, and let
+himself in with his night key.  There was a light in the little
+parlor, and Mrs. Boyd's fragile silhouette against the window shade.
+
+He was not surprised at that.  She had developed a maternal affection
+for him stronger than any she showed for either Edith or Dan.  She
+revealed it in rather touching ways, too, keeping accounts when he
+accused her of gross extravagance, for she spent Dan's swollen wages
+wastefully; making him coffee late at night, and forcing him to
+drink it, although it kept him awake for hours; and never going to
+bed until he was safely closeted in his room at the top of the
+stairs.
+
+He came in as early as possible, therefore, for he had had Doctor
+Smalley in to see her, and the result had been unsatisfactory.
+
+"Heart's bad," said the doctor, when they had retired to Willy's
+room.  "Leaks like a sieve.  And there may be an aneurism.  Looks
+like it, anyhow."
+
+"What is there to do?" Willy asked, feeling helpless and extremely
+shocked.  "We might send her somewhere."
+
+"Nothing to do.  Don't send her away; she'd die of loneliness.  Keep
+her quiet and keep her happy.  Don't let her worry.  She only has a
+short time, I should say, and you can't lengthen it.  It could be
+shortened, of course, if she had a shock, or anything like that."
+
+"Shall I tell the family?"
+
+"What's the use?" asked Doctor Smalley, philosophically.  "If they
+fuss over her she'll suspect something."
+
+As he went down the stairs he looked about him.  The hall was fresh
+with new paper and white paint, and in the yard at the rear, visible
+through an open door, the border of annuals was putting out its
+first blossoms.
+
+"Nice little place you've got here," he observed.  "I think I see
+the fine hand of Miss Edith, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Willy Cameron, gravely.
+
+He had made renewed efforts to get a servant after that, but the
+invalid herself balked him.  When he found an applicant Mrs. Boyd
+would sit, very much the grande dame, and question her, although
+she always ended by sending her away.
+
+"She looked like the sort that would be running out at nights," she
+would say.  Or: "She wouldn't take telling, and I know the way you
+like your things, Willy.  I could see by looking at her that she
+couldn't cook at all."
+
+She cherished the delusion that he was improving and gaining flesh
+under her ministrations, and there was a sort of jealousy in her
+care for him.  She wanted to yield to no one the right to sit
+proudly behind one of her heavy, tasteless pies, and say:
+
+"Now I made this for you, Willy, because I know country boys like
+pies.  Just see if that crust isn't nice."
+
+"You don't mean to say you made it!"
+
+"I certainly did."  And to please her he would clear his plate.
+He rather ran to digestive tablets those days, and Edith, surprising
+him with one at the kitchen sink one evening, accused him roundly
+of hypocrisy.
+
+"I don't know why you stay anyhow," she said, staring into the yard
+where Jinx was burying a bone in the heliotrope bed.  "The food's
+awful.  I'm used to it, but you're not."
+
+"You don't eat anything, Edith."
+
+"I'm not hungry.  Willy, I wish you'd go away.  What right we got
+to tie you up with us, anyhow?  We're a poor lot.  You're not
+comfortable and you know it.  D'you know where she is now?"
+
+"She" in the vernacular of the house, was always Mrs. Boyd.
+
+"She forgot to make your bed, and she's doing it now."
+
+He ran up the stairs, and forcibly putting Mrs. Boyd in a chair,
+made up his own bed, awkwardly and with an eye on her chest, which
+rose and fell alarmingly.  It was after that that he warned Edith.
+
+"She's not strong," he said.  "She needs care and--well, to be
+happy.  That's up to the three of us.  For one thing, she must not
+have a shock.  I'm going to warn Dan against exploding paper bags;
+she goes white every time."
+
+Dan was at a meeting, and Willy dried the supper dishes for Edith.
+She was silent and morose.  Finally she said:
+
+"She's not very strong for me, Willy.  You needn't look so shocked.
+She loves Dan and you, but not me.  I don't mind, you know.  She
+doesn't know it, but I do."
+
+"She is very proud of you."
+
+"That's different.  You're right, though.  Pride's her middle name.
+It nearly killed her at first to take a roomer, because she is
+always thinking of what the neighbors will say.  That's why she
+hates me sometimes."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk that way."
+
+"But it's true.  That fool Hodge woman at the corner came here one
+day last winter and filled her up with a lot of talk about me, and
+she's been queer to me ever since."
+
+"You are a very good daughter."
+
+She eyed him furtively.  If only he wouldn't always believe in her!
+It was almost worse than to have him know the truth.  But he went
+along with his head in the clouds; all women were good and all men
+meant well.  Sometimes it worked out; Dan, for instance.  Dan was
+trying to live up to him.  But it was too late for her.  Forever
+too late.
+
+It was Willy Cameron's night off, and they went, the three of them,
+to the movies that evening.  To Mrs. Boyd the movies was the acme
+of dissipation.  She would, if warned in advance, spend the entire
+day with her hair in curlers, and once there she feasted her starved
+romantic soul to repletion.  But that night the building was
+stifling, and without any warning Edith suddenly got up and walked
+toward the door.  There was something odd about her walk and Willy
+followed her, but she turned on him almost fiercely outside.
+
+"I wish you'd let me alone," she said, and then swayed a little.
+But she did not faint.
+
+"I'm going home," she said.  "You stay with her.  And for heaven's
+sake don't stare at me like that.  I'm all right."
+
+Nevertheless he had taken her home, Edith obstinately silent and
+sullen, and Willy anxious and perplexed.  At the door she said:
+
+"Now go back to her, and tell her I just got sick of the picture.
+It was the smells in that rotten place.  They'd turn a pig's stomach."
+
+"I wish you'd see a doctor."
+
+She looked at him with suspicious eyes.  "If you run Smalley in on
+me I'll leave home."
+
+"Will you go to bed?"
+
+"I'll go to bed, all right."
+
+He had found things rather more difficult after that.  Two women,
+both ill and refusing to acknowledge it, and the prospect of Dan's
+being called out by the union.  Try as he would, he could not
+introduce any habit of thrift into the family.  Dan's money came
+and went, and on Saturday nights there was not only nothing left,
+but often a deficit.  Dan, skillfully worked upon outside, began
+to develop a grievance, also, and on his rare evenings at home or
+at the table he would voice his wrongs.
+
+"It's just hand to mouth all the time," he would grumble.  "A fellow
+working for the Cardews never gets ahead.  What chance has he got,
+anyhow?  It takes all he can get to live."
+
+Willy Cameron began to see that the trouble was not with Dan, but
+with his women folks.  And Dan was one of thousands.  His wages went
+for food, too much food, food spoiled in cooking.  There were men,
+with able women behind them, making less than Dan and saving money.
+
+"Keep some of it out and bank it," he suggested, but Dan sneered.
+
+"And have a store bill a mile long!  You know mother as well as I
+do.  She means well, but she's a fool with money."
+
+He counted his hours from the time he entered the mill until he left
+it, but he revealed once that there were long idle periods when the
+heating was going on, when he and the other men of the furnace crew
+sat and waited, doing nothing.
+
+"But I'm there, all right," he said.  "I'm not playing golf or
+riding in my automobile.  I'm on the job."
+
+"Well," said Willy Cameron, "I'm on the job about eleven hours a
+day, and I wear out more shoe leather than trouser seats at that.
+But it doesn't seem to hurt me."
+
+"It's a question of principle," said Dan doggedly.  "I've got no
+personal kick, y'understand.  Only I'm not getting anywhere, and
+something's got to be done about it."
+
+So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration
+of independence, Willy Cameron made his way rather heavily toward
+the Boyd house.  He was very tired.  He had made one or two
+speeches for Hendricks already, before local ward organizations,
+and he was working hard at his night class in metallurgy.  He had
+had a letter from his mother, too, and he thought he read
+homesickness between the lines.  He was not at all sure where his
+duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the Boyds
+flat, seemed impossible.
+
+He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed.  She had been very gentle
+over the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of
+her voice, he had thought there was unhappiness in it.  Almost
+despair.  But she had pleaded a week of engagements.
+
+"I'm sorry," she had said.  "I'll call you up next week some time
+I have a lot of things I want to talk over with you."
+
+But he knew she was avoiding him.
+
+And he knew that he ought to see her.  Through Mr. Hendricks he
+had learned something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not
+the poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the
+accusations against him.  Lily mixed up with a band of traitors,
+Lily of the white flame of patriotism, was unthinkable.  She must
+not go to the house on Cardew Way.  A man's loyalty was like a
+woman's virtue; it could not be questionable.  There was no middle
+ground.
+
+He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found
+Ellen in the parlor.  She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her
+chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suit-case and brown paper
+bundle at her feet.
+
+Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.
+
+"I make it a point to hold my head high," she was saying.  "I guess
+there was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but--Is that you,
+Willy?"
+
+"Why, Miss Ellen!" he said.  "And looking as though headed for a
+journey!"
+
+Ellen's face did not relax.  She had been sitting there for an hour,
+letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking
+meanwhile her own bitter thoughts.
+
+"I am, Willy.  Only I didn't wait for my money and the bank's closed,
+and I came to borrow ten dollars, if you have it."
+
+That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable
+and reveling in a fresh audience, showed no sign of departing.
+
+"She says she's been living at the Cardews," she put in, rocking
+valiantly.  "I guess most any place would seem tame after that.  I
+do hear, Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes
+once and then gives them away."
+
+She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every
+indication of going up the chimney.
+
+"I call that downright wasteful," she offered.
+
+Willy glanced at his watch, which had been his father's, and bore
+the inscription: "James Duncan Cameron, 1876" inside the case.
+
+"Eleven o'clock," he said sternly.  "And me promising the doctor
+I'd have you in bed at ten sharp every night!  Now off with you."
+
+"But, Willy--"
+
+"--or I shall have to carry you," he threatened.  It was an old
+joke between them, and she rose, smiling, her thin face illuminated
+with the sense of being looked after.
+
+"He's that domineering," she said to Ellen, "that I can't call my
+soul my own."
+
+"Good-night," Ellen said briefly.
+
+Willy stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up.  He
+knew she liked him to do that, that she would expect to find him
+there when she reached the top and looked down, panting slightly.
+
+"Good-night," he called.  "Both windows open.  I shall go outside
+to see."
+
+Then he went back to Ellen, still standing primly over her Lares and
+Penates.
+
+"Now tell me about it," he said.
+
+"I've left them.  There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily
+left to-night, I did too."
+
+"She left her home?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It's awful, Willy.  I don't know all of it, but they've been having
+her followed, or her grandfather did.  I think there's a man in it.
+Followed!  And her a good girl!  Her grandfather's been treating her
+like a dog for weeks.  We all noticed it.  And to-night there was
+a quarrel, with all of them at her like a pack of dogs, and her
+governess crying in the hall.  I just went up and packed my things."
+
+"Where did she go?"
+
+"I don't know.  I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag.  I
+went right off to the housekeeper and told her I wouldn't stay, and
+they could send my money after me."
+
+"Did you notice the number of the taxicab?"
+
+"I never thought of it."
+
+He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of
+course.  Then, if she had left her home rather than give him up,
+she was really in love with him.  He had too much common sense to
+believe for a moment that she had fled to Louis Akers' protection,
+however.  That was the last thing she would do.  She would have
+gone to a hotel, or to the Doyle house.
+
+"She shouldn't have left home, Ellen."
+
+"They drove her out, I tell you," Ellen cried, irritably.  "At least
+that's what it amounted to.  There are things no high-minded girl
+will stand.  Can you lend me some money, Willy?"
+
+He felt in his pocket, producing a handful of loose money.
+
+"Of course you can have all I've got," he said.  "But you must not
+go to-night, Miss Ellen.  It's too late.  I'll give you my room and
+go in with Dan Boyd."
+
+And he prevailed over her protests, in the end.  It was not until
+he saw her settled there, hiding her sense of strangeness under an
+impassive mask, that he went downstairs again and took his hat
+from its hook.
+
+Lily must go back home, he knew.  It was unthinkable that she should
+break with her family, and go to the Doyles.  He had too little
+self-consciousness to question the propriety of his own interference,
+too much love for her to care whether she resented that interference.
+And he was filled with a vast anger at Jim Doyle.  He saw in all
+this, somehow, Doyle's work; how it would play into Doyle's plans to
+have Anthony Cardew's granddaughter a member of his household.  He
+would take her away from there if he had to carry her.
+
+He was a long time in getting to the mill district, and a longer
+time still in finding Cardew Way.  At an all-night pharmacy he
+learned which was the house, and his determined movements took on
+a sort of uncertainty.  It was very late.  Ellen had waited for
+him for some time.  If Lily were in that sinister darkened house
+across the street, the family had probably retired.  And for the
+first time, too, he began to doubt if Doyle would let him see her.
+Lily herself might even refuse to see him.
+
+Nevertheless, the urgency to get her away from there, if she were
+there, prevailed at last, and a strip of light in an upper window,
+as from an imperfectly fitting blind, assured him that some one
+was still awake in the house.
+
+He went across the street and opening the gate, strode up the walk.
+Almost immediately he was confronted by the figure of a man who had
+been concealed by the trunk of one of the trees.  He lounged
+forward, huge, menacing, yet not entirely hostile.
+
+"Who is it?" demanded the figure blocking his way.
+
+"I want to see Mr. Doyle."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"I'll tell him that," said Willy Cameron.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"That's my business, too," said Mr. Cameron, with disarming
+pleasantness.
+
+"Damn private about your business, aren't you?" jeered the sentry,
+still in cautious tones.  "Well, you can write it down on a piece
+of paper and mail it to him.  He's busy now."
+
+"All I want to do," persisted Mr. William Wallace Cameron, growing
+slightly giddy with repressed fury, "is to ring that doorbell and
+ask him a question.  I'm going to do it, too."
+
+There was rather an interesting moment then, because the figure
+lunged at Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron, stooping low and swiftly,
+as well as to one side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting
+Scot, which means a cool-eyed madman, got in one or two rather neat
+effects with his fists.  The first took the shadow just below his
+breast-bone, and the left caught him at that angle of the jaw where
+a small cause sometimes produces a large effect.  The figure sat
+down on the brick walk and grunted, and Mr. Cameron, judging that
+he had about ten seconds' leeway, felt in the dazed person's right
+hand pocket for the revolver he knew would be there, and secured it.
+The sitting figure made puffing, feeble attempts to prevent him, but
+there was no real struggle.
+
+Mr. Cameron himself was feeling extremely triumphant and as strong
+as a lion.  He was rather sorry no one had seen the affair, but
+that of course was sub-conscious.  And he was more cheerful than he
+had been for some days.  He had been up against so many purely
+intangible obstacles lately that it was a relief to find one he
+could use his fists on.
+
+"Now I'll have a few words with you, my desperate friend," he said.
+"I've got your gun, and I am hell with a revolver, because I've
+never fired one, and there's a sort of homicidal beginner's luck
+about the thing.  If you move or speak, I'll shoot it into you
+first and when it's empty I'll choke it down your throat and
+strangle you to death."
+
+After which ferocious speech he strolled up the path, revolver in
+hand, and rang the doorbell.  He put the weapon in his pocket then,
+but he kept his hand upon it.  He had read somewhere that a revolver
+was quite useable from a pocket.  There was no immediate answer to
+the bell, and he turned and surveyed the man under the tree, faintly
+distinguishable in the blackness.  It had occurred to him that the
+number of guns a man may carry is only limited to his pockets, which
+are about fifteen.
+
+There were heavy, deliberate footsteps inside, and the door was
+flung open.  No glare of light followed it, however.  There was a
+man there, alarmingly tall, who seemed to stare at him, and then
+beyond him into the yard.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Are you Mr. Doyle?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"My name is Cameron, Mr. Doyle.  I have had a small difference with
+your watch-dog, but he finally let me by."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand.  I have no dog."
+
+"The sentry you keep posted, then."  Mr. Cameron disliked fencing.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Doyle, urbanely.  "You have happened on one of my
+good friends, I see.  I have many enemies, Mr. Cameron--was that
+the name?  And my friends sometimes like to keep an eye on me.  It
+is rather touching."
+
+He was smiling, Mr. Cameron knew, and his anger rose afresh.
+
+"Very touching," said Mr. Cameron, "but if he bothers me going out
+you may be short one friend.  Mr. Doyle, Miss Lily Cardew left her
+home to-night.  I want to know if she is here."
+
+"Are you sent by her family?"
+
+"I have asked you if she is here."
+
+Jim Doyle apparently deliberated.
+
+"My niece is here, although just why you should interest yourself--"
+
+"May I see her?"
+
+"I regret to say she has retired."
+
+"I think she would see me."
+
+A door opened into the hall, throwing a shaft of light on the wall
+across and letting out the sounds of voices.
+
+"Shut that door," said Doyle, wheeling sharply.  It was closed at
+once.  "Now," he said, turning to his visitor, "I'll tell you this.
+My niece is here."  He emphasized the "my."  "She has come to me for
+refuge, and I intend to give it to her.  You won't see her to-night,
+and if you come from her people you can tell them she came here of
+her own free will, and that if she stays it will be because she wants
+to.  Joe!" he called into the darkness.
+
+"Yes," came a sullen voice, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"Show this gentleman out."
+
+All at once Willy Cameron was staring at a closed door, on the inner
+side of which a bolt was being slipped.  He felt absurd and futile,
+and not at all like a lion.  With the revolver in his hand, he went
+down the steps.
+
+"Don't bother about the gate, Joe," he said.  "I like to open my
+own gates.  And--don't try any tricks, Joe.  Get back to your
+kennel."
+
+Fearful mutterings followed that, but the shadow retired, and he
+made an undisturbed exit to the street.  Once on the street-car,
+the entire episode became unreal and theatrical, with only the drag
+of Joe's revolver in his coat pocket to prove its reality.
+
+It was after midnight when, shoes in hand, he crept up the stairs
+to Dan's room, and careful not to disturb him, slipped into his
+side of the double bed.  He did not sleep at all.  He lay there,
+facing the fact that Lily had delivered herself voluntarily into
+the hands of the enemy of her house, and not only of her house, an
+enemy of the country.  That conference that night was a sinister one.
+Brought to book about it, Doyle might claim it as a labor meeting.
+Organizers planning a strike might--did indeed--hold secret
+conferences, but they did not post armed guards.  They opened
+business offices, and brought in the press men, and shouted their
+grievances for the world to hear.
+
+This was different.  This was anarchy.  And in every city it was
+going on, this rallying of the malcontents, the idlers, the
+envious and the dangerous, to the red flag.  Organized labor
+gathered together the workmen, but men like Doyle were organizing
+the riff-raff of the country.  They secured a small percentage of
+idealists and pseudo-intellectuals, and taught them a so-called
+internationalism which under the name of brotherhood was nothing
+but a raid on private property, a scheme of pillage and arson.
+They allied with themselves imported laborers from Europe, men
+with everything to gain and nothing to lose, and by magnifying
+real grievances and inflaming them with imaginary ones, were
+building out of this material the rank and file of an anarchist
+army.
+
+And against it, what?
+
+On toward morning he remembered something, and sat bolt upright in
+bed.  Edith had once said something about knowing of a secret
+telephone.  She had known Louis Akers very well.  He might have
+told her what she knew, or have shown her, in some braggart moment.
+A certain type of man was unable to keep a secret from a woman.
+But that would imply--For the first time he wondered what Edith's
+relations with Louis Akers might have been.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the even tenor of her
+days there, the feeling she had of sanctuary did not offset Lily's
+clear knowledge that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing.
+Even her grandfather, whose anger had driven her away, she remembered
+now as a feeble old man, fighting his losing battle in a changing
+world, and yet with a sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors
+to the end.
+
+She had determined, that first night in Elinor's immaculate guest
+room, to go back the next day.  They had been right at home, by all
+the tenets to which they adhered so religiously.  She had broken
+the unwritten law not to break bread with an enemy of her house.
+She had done what they had expressly forbidden, done it over and over.
+
+"On top of all this," old Anthony had said, after reading the tale
+of her delinquencies from some notes in his hand, "you dined last
+night openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a
+man openly my enemy, and openly of impure life."
+
+"I do not believe he is your enemy."
+
+"He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened
+to kill me."
+
+"Oh, Lily, Lily!" said her mother.
+
+But it was to her father, standing grave and still, that Lily replied.
+
+"I don't believe that, father.  He is not a murderer.  If you would
+let him come here--"
+
+"Never in this house," said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in
+his hand.  "He will come here over my dead body."
+
+"You have no right to condemn a man unheard."
+
+"Unheard!  I tell you I know all about him.  The man is an
+anarchist, a rake, a--dog."
+
+"Just a moment, father," Howard had put in, quietly.  "Lily, do you
+care for this man?  I mean by that, do you want to marry him?"
+
+"He has asked me.  I have not given him any answer yet.  I don't
+want to marry a man my family will not receive.  It wouldn't be
+fair to him."
+
+Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and led him to a
+bitterness of language that turned Lily cold and obstinate.  She
+heard him through, with her father vainly trying to break in and
+save the situation; then she said, coldly:
+
+"I am sorry you feel that way about it," and turned and left the
+room.
+
+She had made no plan, of course.  She hated doing theatrical things.
+But shut in her bedroom with the doors locked, Anthony's furious
+words came back, his threats, his bitter sneers.  She felt strangely
+alone, too.  In all the great house she had no one to support her.
+Mademoiselle, her father and mother, even the servants, were tacitly
+aligned with the opposition.  Except Ellen.  She had felt lately
+that Ellen, in her humble way, had espoused her cause.
+
+She had sent for Ellen.
+
+In spite of the warmth of her greeting, Lily had felt a reserve in
+Aunt Elinor's welcome.  It was as though she was determinedly making
+the best of a bad situation.
+
+"I had to do it, Aunt Elinor," she said, when they had gone upstairs.
+There was a labor conference, Doyle had explained, being held below.
+
+"I know," said Elinor.  "I understand.  I'll pin back the curtains
+so you can open your windows.  The night air is so smoky here."
+
+"I am afraid mother will grieve terribly."
+
+"I think she will," said Elinor, with her quiet gravity.  "You are
+all she has."
+
+"She has father.  She cares more for him than for anything in the
+world."
+
+"Would you like some ice-water, dear?"
+
+Some time later Lily roused from the light sleep of emotional
+exhaustion.  She had thought she heard Willy Cameron's voice.  But
+that was absurd, of course, and she lay back to toss uneasily for
+hours.  Out of all her thinking there emerged at last her real self,
+so long overlaid with her infatuation.  She would go home again,
+and make what amends she could.  They were wrong about Louis Akers,
+but they were right, too.
+
+Lying there, as the dawn slowly turned her windows to gray, she saw
+him with a new clarity.  She had a swift vision of what life with
+him would mean.  Intervals of passionate loving, of boyish dependence
+on her, and then--a new face.  Never again was she to see him with
+such clearness.  He was incapable of loyalty to a woman, even though
+he loved her.  He was born to be a wanderer in love, an experimenter
+in passion.  She even recognized in him an incurable sensuous
+curiosity about women, that would be quite remote from his love for
+her.  He would see nothing wrong in his infidelities, so long as
+she did not know and did not suffer.  And he would come back to her
+from them, watchful for suspicion, relieved when he did not find it,
+and bringing her small gifts which would be actually burnt offerings
+to his own soul.
+
+She made up her mind to give him up.  She would go home in the
+morning, make her peace with them all, and never see Louis Akers
+again.
+
+She slept after that, and at ten o'clock Elinor wakened her with
+the word that her father was downstairs.  Elinor was very pale.  It
+had been a shock to her to see her brother in her home after all
+the years, and a still greater one when he had put his arm around
+her and kissed her.
+
+"I am so sorry, Howard," she had said.  The sight of him had set
+her lips trembling.  He patted her shoulder.
+
+"Poor Elinor," he said.  "Poor old girl!  We're a queer lot, aren't
+we?"
+
+"All but you."
+
+"An obstinate, do-and-be-damned lot," he said slowly.  "I'd like to
+see my little girl, Nellie.  We can't have another break in the
+family."
+
+He held Lily in much the same way when she came down, an arm around
+her, his big shoulders thrown back as though he would guard her
+against the world.  But he was very uneasy and depressed, at that.
+He had come on a difficult errand, and because he had no finesse he
+blundered badly.  It was some time before she gathered the full
+meaning of what he was saying.
+
+"Aunt Cornelia's!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Or, if you and your mother want to go to Europe," he put in hastily,
+seeing her puzzled face, "I think I can arrange about passports."
+
+"Does that mean he won't have me back, father?"
+
+"Lily, dear," he said, hoarse with anxiety, "we simply have to
+remember that he is a very old man, and that his mind is not elastic.
+He is feeling very bitter now, but he will get over it."
+
+"And I am to travel around waiting to be forgiven!  I was ready to
+go back, but--he won't have me.  Is that it?"
+
+"Only just for the present."  He threw out his hands.  "I have tried
+everything.  I suppose, in a way, I could insist, make a point of it,
+but there are other things to be considered.  His age, for one thing,
+and then--the strike.  If he takes an arbitrary stand against me, no
+concession, no argument with the men, it makes it very difficult, in
+many ways."
+
+"I see.  It is wicked that any one man should have such power.  The
+city, the mills, his family--it's wicked."  But she was conscious of
+no deep anger against Anthony now.  She merely saw that between them,
+they, she and her grandfather, had dug a gulf that could not be
+passed.  And in Howard's efforts she saw the temporizing that her
+impatient youth resented.
+
+"I am afraid it is a final break, father," she said.  "And if he
+shuts me out I must live my own life.  But I am not going to run
+away to Aunt Cornelia or Europe.  I shall stay here."
+
+He had to be content with that.  After all, his own sister--but
+he wished it were not Jim Doyle's house.  Not that he regarded
+Lily's shift toward what he termed Bolshevism very seriously; all
+youth had a slant toward socialism, and outgrew it.  But he went
+away sorely troubled, after a few words with Elinor Doyle alone.
+
+"You don't look unhappy, Nellie."
+
+"Things have been much better the last few years."
+
+"Is he kind to you?"
+
+"Not always, Howard.  He doesn't drink now, so that is over.  And
+I think there are no other women.  But when things go wrong I suffer,
+of course."  She stared past him toward the open window.
+
+"Why don't you leave him?"
+
+"I couldn't go home, Howard.  You know what it would be.  Worse
+than Lily.  And I'm too old to start out by myself.  My habits are
+formed, and besides, I--"   She checked herself.
+
+"I could take a house somewhere for both of you, Lily and yourself,"
+he said eagerly; "that would be a wonderful way out for everybody."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We'll manage all right," she said.  "I'll make Lily comfortable
+and as happy as I can."
+
+He felt that he had to make his own case clear, or he might have
+noticed with what care she was choosing her words.  His father's
+age, his unconscious dependence on Grace, his certainty to retire
+soon from the arbitrary stand he had taken.  Elinor hardly heard
+him.  Months afterwards he was to remember the distant look in
+her eyes, a sort of half-frightened determination, but he was
+self-engrossed just then.
+
+"I can't persuade you?" he finished.
+
+"No.  But it is good of you to think of it."
+
+"You know what the actual trouble was last night?  It was not her
+coming here."
+
+"I know, Howard."
+
+"Don't let her marry him, Nellie!  Better than any one, you ought
+to know what that would mean."
+
+"I knew too, Howard, but I did it."
+
+In the end he went away not greatly comforted, to fight his own
+battles, to meet committees from the union, and having met them, to
+find himself facing the fact that, driven by some strange urge he
+could not understand, the leaders wished a strike.  There were times
+when he wondered what would happen if he should suddenly yield
+every point, make every concession.  They would only make further
+demands, he felt.  They seemed determined to put him out of business.
+If only he could have dealt with the men directly, instead of with
+their paid representatives, he felt that he would get somewhere.
+But always, interposed between himself and his workmen, was this
+barrier of their own erecting.
+
+It was like representative government.  It did not always represent.
+It, too, was founded on representation in good faith; but there was
+not always good faith.  The union system was wrong.  It was like
+politics.  The few handled the many.  The union, with its
+all-powerful leaders, was only another form of autocracy.  It was
+Prussian.  Yet the ideal behind the union was sound enough.
+
+He had no quarrel with the union.  He puzzled it out, traveling
+unaccustomed mental paths.  The country was founded on liberty.  All
+men were created free and equal.  Free, yes, but equal?  Was not
+equality a long way ahead along a thorny road?  Men were not equal
+in the effort they made, nor did equal efforts bring equal result.
+If there was class antagonism behind all this unrest, would there
+not always be those who rose by dint of ceaseless effort?  Equality
+of opportunity, yes.  Equality of effort and result, no.
+
+To destroy the chance of gain was to put a premium on inertia; to
+kill ambition; to reduce the high without raising the low.
+
+At noon on the same day Willy Cameron went back to the house on
+Cardew Way, to find Lily composed and resigned, instead of the
+militant figure he had expected.  He asked her to go home, and she
+told him then that she had no longer a home to go to.
+
+"I meant to go, Willy," she finished.  "I meant to go this morning.
+But you see how things are."
+
+He had stood for a long time, looking at nothing very hard.  "I
+see," he said finally.  "Of course your grandfather will be sorry
+in a day or two, but he may not swallow his pride very soon."
+
+That rather hurt her.
+
+"What about my pride?" she asked.
+
+"You can afford to be magnanimous with all your life before you."
+Then he faced her.  "Besides, Lily, you're wrong.  Dead wrong.
+You've hurt three people, and all you've got out of it has been
+your own way."
+
+"There is such a thing as liberty."
+
+"I don't know about that.  And a good many crimes have been committed
+in its name."  Even in his unhappiness he was controversial.  "We are
+never really free, so long as we love people, and they love us.
+Well--"  He picked up his old felt hat and absently turned down the
+brim; it was raining.  "I'll have to get back.  I've overstayed my
+lunch hour as it is."
+
+"You haven't had any luncheon?"
+
+"I wasn't hungry," he had said, and had gone away, his coat collar
+turned up against the shower.  Lily had had a presentiment that he
+was taking himself out of her life, that he had given her up as a
+bad job.  She felt depressed and lonely, and not quite so sure of
+herself as she had been; rather, although she did not put it that
+way, as though something fine had passed her way, like Pippa singing,
+and had then gone on.
+
+She settled down as well as she could to her new life, making no
+plans, however, and always with the stricken feeling that she had
+gained her own point at the cost of much suffering.  She telephoned
+to her mother daily, broken little conversations with long pauses
+while Grace steadied her voice.  Once her mother hung up the
+receiver hastily, and Lily guessed that her grandfather had come in.
+She felt very bitter toward him.
+
+But she found the small oneage interesting, in a quiet way; to make
+her own bed and mend her stockings--Grace had sent her a trunkful
+of clothing; and on the elderly maid's afternoon out, to help
+Elinor with the supper.  She seldom went out, but Louis Akers came
+daily, and on the sixth day of her stay she promised to marry him.
+
+She had not meant to do it, but it was difficult to refuse him.
+She had let him think she would do it ultimately, for one thing.
+And, however clearly she might analyze him in his absences, his
+strange attraction reasserted itself when he was near.  But her
+acceptance of him was almost stoical.
+
+"But not soon, Louis," she said, holding him off.  "And--I ought
+to tell you--I don't think we will be happy together."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because--" she found it hard to put into words--"because love
+with you is a sort of selfish thing, I think."
+
+"I'll lie down now and let you tramp on me," he said exultantly, and
+held out his arms.  But even as she moved toward him she voiced her
+inner perplexity.
+
+"I never seem to be able to see myself married to you."
+
+"Then the sooner the better, so you can."
+
+"You won't like being married, you know."
+
+"That's all you know about it, Lily.  I'm mad about you.  I'm mad
+for you."
+
+There was a new air of maturity about Lily those days, and sometimes
+a sort of aloofness that both maddened him and increased his desire
+to possess her.  She went into his arms, but when he held her closest
+she sometimes seemed farthest away.
+
+"I want you now."
+
+"I want to be engaged a long time, Louis.  We have so much to learn
+about each other."
+
+He thought that rather childish.  But whatever had been his motive
+in the beginning, he was desperately in love with her by that time,
+and because of that he frightened her sometimes.  He was less sure
+of himself, too, even after she had accepted him, and to prove his
+continued dominance over her he would bully her.
+
+"Come here," he would say, from the hearth rug, or by the window.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Come here."
+
+Sometimes she went, to be smothered in his hot embrace; sometimes
+she did not.
+
+But her infatuation persisted, although there were times when his
+inordinate vitality and his caresses gave her a sense of physical
+weariness, times when sheer contact revolted her.  He seemed always
+to want to touch her.  Fastidiously reared, taught a sort of
+aloofness from childhood, Lily found herself wondering if all men
+in love were like that, always having to be held off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Ellen was staying at the Boyd house.  She went downstairs the morning
+after her arrival, and found the bread--bakery bread--toasted and
+growing cold on the table, while a slice of ham, ready to be cooked,
+was not yet on the fire, and Mrs. Boyd had run out to buy some milk.
+
+Dan had already gone, and his half-empty cup of black coffee was on
+the kitchen table.  Ellen sniffed it and raised her eyebrows.
+
+She rolled up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in
+the frying pan, with much the same grimness with which she had sat
+the night before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue.  If this was
+the way they looked after Willy Cameron, no wonder he was thin and
+pale.  She threw out the coffee, which she suspected had been made
+by the time-saving method of pouring water on last night's grounds,
+and made a fresh pot of it.  After that she inspected the tea towels,
+and getting a tin dishpan, set them to boil in it on the top of the
+range.
+
+"Enough to give him typhoid," she reflected.
+
+Ellen disapproved of her surroundings; she disapproved of any woman
+who did not boil her tea towels.  And when Edith came down carefully
+dressed and undeniably rouged she formed a disapproving opinion of
+that young lady, which was that she was trying to land Willy Cameron,
+and that he would be better dead than landed.
+
+She met Edith's stare of surprise with one of thinly veiled hostility.
+
+"Hello!" said Edith.  "When did you blow in, and where from?"
+
+"I came to see Mr. Cameron last night, and he made me stay."
+
+"A friend of Willy's!  Well, I guess you needn't pay for your
+breakfast by cooking it.  Mother's probably run out for something
+--she never has anything in the house--and is talking somewhere.
+I'll take that fork."
+
+But Ellen proceeded to turn the ham.
+
+"I'll do it," she said.  "You might spoil your hands."
+
+But Edith showed no offense.
+
+"All right," she acceded indifferently.  "If you're going to eat it
+you'd better cook it.  We're rotten housekeepers here."
+
+"I should think, if you're going to keep boarders, somebody would
+learn to cook.  Mr. Cameron's mother is the best housekeeper in town,
+and he was raised on good food and plenty of it."
+
+Her tone was truculent.  Ellen's world, the world of short hours and
+easy service, of the decorum of the Cardew servants' hall, of luxury
+and dignity and good pay, had suddenly gone to pieces about her.
+She was feeling very bitter, especially toward a certain chauffeur
+who had prophesied the end of all service.  He had made the statement
+that before long all people would be equal.  There would be no above
+and below-stairs, no servants' hall.
+
+"They'll drive their own cars, then, damn them," he had said once,
+"if they can get any to drive.  And answer their own bells, if
+they've got any to ring.  And get up and cook their own breakfasts."
+
+"Which you won't have any to cook," Grayson had said irritably, from
+the head of the long table.  "Just a word, my man.  That sort of
+talk is forbidden here.  One word more and I go to Mr. Cardew."
+
+The chauffeur had not sulked, however.  "All right, Mr. Grayson," he
+said affably.  "But I can go on thinking, I daresay.  And some of
+these days you'll be wishing you'd climbed on the band wagon before
+it's too late."
+
+Ellen, turning the ham carefully, was conscious that her revolt had
+been only partially on Lily's account.  It was not so much Lily's
+plight as the abuse of power, although she did not put it that way,
+that had driven her out.  Ellen then had carried out her own small
+revolution, and where had it put her?  She had lost a good home, and
+what could she do?  All she knew was service.
+
+Edith poured herself a cup of coffee, and taking a piece of toast
+from the oven, stood nibbling it.  The crumbs fell on the not
+over-clean floor.
+
+"Why don't you go into the dining-room to eat?" Ellen demanded.
+
+"Got out of the wrong side of the bed, didn't you?" Edith asked.
+"Willy's bed, I suppose.  I'm not hungry, and I always eat breakfast
+like this.  I wish he would hurry.  We'll be late."
+
+Ellen stared.  It was her first knowledge that this girl, this
+painted hussy, worked in Willy's pharmacy, and her suspicions
+increased.  She had a quick vision, as she had once had of Lily,
+of Edith in the Cameron house; Edith reading or embroidering on the
+front porch while Willy's mother slaved for her; Edith on the same
+porch in the evening, with all the boys in town around her.  She
+knew the type, the sort that set an entire village by the ears and
+in the end left home and husband and ran away with a traveling
+salesman.
+
+Ellen had already got Willy married and divorced when Mrs. Boyd
+came in.  She carried the milk pail, but her lips were blue and she
+sat down in a chair and held her hand to her heart.
+
+"I'm that short of breath!" she gasped.  "I declare I could hardly
+get back."
+
+"I'll give you some coffee, right off."
+
+When Willy Cameron had finished his breakfast she followed him into
+the parlor.  His pallor was not lost on her, or his sunken eyes.
+He looked badly fed, shabby, and harassed, and he bore the marks of
+his sleepless night on his face.  "Are you going to stay here?" she
+demanded.
+
+"Why, yes, Miss Ellen."
+
+"Your mother would break her heart if she knew the way you're living."
+
+"I'm very comfortable.  We've tried to get a ser--"  He changed
+color at that.  In the simple life of the village at home a woman
+whose only training was the town standard of good housekeeping might
+go into service in the city and not lose caste.  But she was never
+thought of as a servant.  "--help," he substituted.  "But we can't
+get any one, and Mrs. Boyd is delicate.  It is heart trouble."
+
+"Does that girl work where you do?"
+
+"Yes.  Why?"
+
+"Is she engaged to you?  She calls you Willy."  He smiled into her
+eyes.
+
+"Not a bit of it, or thinking of it."
+
+"How do you know what she's thinking?  It's all over her.  It's
+Willy this and Willy that--and men are such fools."
+
+There flashed into his mind certain things that he had tried to
+forget; Edith at his doorway, with that odd look in her eyes; Edith
+never going to sleep until he had gone to bed; and recently, certain
+things she had said, that he had passed over lightly and somewhat
+uncomfortably.
+
+"That's ridiculous, Miss Ellen.  But even if it were true, which it
+isn't, don't you think it would be rather nice of her?"  He smiled.
+
+"I do not.  I heard you going out last night, Willy.  Did you find
+her?"
+
+"She is at the Doyles'.  I didn't see her."
+
+"That'll finish it," Ellen prophesied, somberly.  She glanced around
+the parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard,
+at the unwound clock on the mantel shelf.
+
+"If you're going to stay here I will," she announced abruptly.  "I
+owe that much to your mother.  I've got some money.  I'll take what
+they'd pay some foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another
+family."  Then, seeing hesitation in his eyes: "That woman's sick,
+and you've got to be looked after.  I could do all the work, if
+that--if the girl would help in the evenings."
+
+He demurred at first.  She would find it hard.  They had no luxuries,
+and she was accustomed to luxury.  There was no room for her.  But
+in the end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to
+find Edith offering to share her upper bedroom.
+
+"It's a hole," she said, "cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer.
+But there's room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone."
+
+"I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith," he said for perhaps the
+twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, "and you would
+take my room."
+
+"No chance," she said cheerfully.  "Mother would raise the devil if
+you tried it."  She glanced at Ellen's face.  "If that word shocks
+you, you're due for a few shocks, you know."
+
+"The way you talk is your business, not mine," said Ellen austerely.
+
+When they finally departed on a half-run Ellen was established as a
+fixture in the Boyd house, and was already piling all the cooking
+utensils into a wash boiler and with grim efficiency was searching
+for lye with which to clean them.
+
+Two weeks later, the end of June, the strike occurred.  It was not,
+in spite of predictions, a general walk-out.  Some of the mills,
+particularly the smaller plants, did not go down at all, and with
+reduced forces kept on, but the chain of Cardew Mills was closed.
+There was occasional rioting by the foreign element in outlying
+districts, but the state constabulary handled it easily.
+
+Dan was out of work, and the loss of his pay was a serious matter
+in the little house.  He had managed to lay by a hundred dollars,
+and Willy Cameron had banked it for him, but there was a real
+problem to be faced.  On the night of the day the Cardew Mills went
+down Willy called a meeting of the household after supper, around
+the dining room table.  He had been in to see Mr. Hendricks, who
+had been laid up with bronchitis, and Mr. Hendricks had predicted
+a long strike.
+
+"The irresistible force and the immovable body, son," he said.
+"They'll stay set this time.  And unless I miss my guess that is
+playing Doyle's hand for him, all right.  His chance will come when
+the men have used up their savings and are growing bitter.  Every
+strike plays into the hands of the enemy, son, and they know it.
+The moment production ceases prices go up, and soon all the money
+in the world won't pay them wages enough to live on."
+
+He had a store of homely common sense, and a gift of putting things
+into few words.  Willy Cameron, going back to the little house that
+evening, remembered the last thing he had said.
+
+"The only way to solve this problem of living," he said, "is to see
+how much we can work, and not how little.  Germany's working ten
+hours a day, and producing.  We're talking about six, and loafing
+and fighting while we talk."
+
+So Willy went home and called his meeting, and knowing Mrs. Boyd's
+regard for figures, set down and added or subtracted, he placed a
+pad and pencil on the table before him.  It was an odd group: Dan
+sullen, resenting the strike and the causes that had led to it;
+Ellen, austere and competent; Mrs. Boyd with a lace fichu pinned
+around her neck, now that she had achieved the dignity of hired
+help, and Edith.  Edith silent, morose and fixing now and then
+rather haggard eyes on Willy Cameron's unruly hair.  She seldom met
+his eyes.
+
+"First of all," said Willy, "we'll take our weekly assets.  Of
+course Dan will get something temporarily, but we'll leave that out
+for the present."
+
+The weekly assets turned out to be his salary and Edith's.
+
+"Why, Willy," said Mrs. Boyd, "you can't turn all your money over
+to us."
+
+"You are all the family I have just now.  Why not?  Anyhow, I'll
+have to keep out lunch money and carfare, and so will Edith.  Now
+as to expenses."
+
+Ellen had made a great reduction in expenses, but food was high.
+And there was gas and coal, and Dan's small insurance, and the rent.
+There was absolutely no margin, and a sort of silence fell.
+
+"What about your tuition at night school?" Edith asked suddenly.
+
+"Spring term ended this week."
+
+"But you said there was a summer one."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you about that," Willy said, feeling for words.
+"I'm going to be busy helping Mr. Hendricks in his campaign.  Then
+next fall--well, I'll either go back or Hendricks will make me
+chief of police, or something."  He smiled around the table.  "I
+ought to get some sort of graft out of it."
+
+"Mother!" Edith protested.  "He mustn't sacrifice himself for us.
+What are we to him anyhow?  A lot of stones hung around his neck.
+That's all."
+
+It was after Willy had declared that this was his home now, and he
+had a right to help keep it going, and after Ellen had observed that
+she had some money laid by and would not take any wages during the
+strike, that the meeting threatened to become emotional.  Mrs. Boyd
+shed a few tears, and as she never by any chance carried a
+handkerchief, let them flow over her fichu.  And Dan shook Willy's
+hand and Ellen's, and said that if he'd had his way he'd be working,
+and not sitting round like a stiff letting other people work for him.
+But Edith got up and went out into the little back garden, and did
+not come back until the meeting was both actually and morally broken
+up.  When she heard Dan go out, and Ellen and Mrs. Boyd go upstairs,
+chatting in a new amiability brought about by trouble and sacrifice,
+she put on her hat and left the house.
+
+Ellen, rousing on her cot in Edith's upper room, heard her come in
+some time later, and undress and get into bed.  Her old suspicion of
+the girl revived, and she sat upright.
+
+"Where I come from girls don't stay out alone until all hours," she
+said.
+
+"Oh, let me alone."
+
+Ellen fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed that Mrs. Boyd had
+taken sick and was moaning.  The moaning was terrible; it filled
+the little house.  Ellen wakened suddenly.  It was not moaning; it
+was strange, heavy breathing, strangling; and it came from Edith's
+bed.
+
+"Are you sick?" she called, and getting up, her knees hardly holding
+her, she lighted the gas at its unshaded bracket on the wall and ran
+to the other bed.
+
+Edith was lying there, her mouth open, her lips bleached and twisted.
+Her stertorous breathing filled the room, and over all was the odor
+of carbolic acid.
+
+"Edith, for God's sake!"
+
+The girl was only partially conscious.  Ellen ran down the stairs
+and into Willy's room.
+
+"Get up," she cried, shaking him.  "That girl's killed herself."
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"No, Edith.  Carbolic acid."
+
+Even then he remembered her mother.
+
+"Don't let her hear anything, It will kill her," he said, and ran
+up the stairs.  Almost immediately he was down again, searching for
+alcohol; he found a small quantity and poured that down the swollen
+throat.  He roused Dan then, and sent him running madly for Doctor
+Smalley, with a warning to bring him past Mrs. Boyd's door quietly,
+and to bring an intubation set with him in case her throat should
+close.  Then, on one of his innumerable journeys up and down the
+stairs he encountered Mrs. Boyd herself, in her nightgown, and
+terrified.
+
+"What's the matter, Willy?" she asked.  "Is it a fire?"
+
+"Edith is sick.  I don't want you to go up.  It may be contagious.
+It's her throat."
+
+And from that Mrs. Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairs
+in her nightgown, a shaken helpless figure, asking countless
+questions of those that hurried past.  But they reassured her, and
+after a time she went downstairs and made a pot of coffee.  Ensconced
+with it in the lower hall, and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid them
+with it as they hurried up and down.
+
+Upstairs the battle went on.  There were times when the paralyzed
+muscles almost stopped lifting the chest walls, when each breath was
+a new miracle.  Her throat was closing fast, too, and at eight
+o'clock came a brisk young surgeon, and with Willy Cameron's
+assistance, an operation was performed.  After that, and for days,
+Edith breathed through a tube in her neck.
+
+The fiction of diphtheria was kept up, and Mrs. Boyd, having a
+childlike faith in medical men, betrayed no anxiety after the first
+hour or two.  She saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going down
+through the house while she herself was kept out of that upper
+room where Edith lay, conscious now but sullen, disfigured, silent.
+She was happy, too, to have her old domain hers again, while Ellen
+nursed; to make again her flavorless desserts, her mounds of
+rubberlike gelatine, her pies.  She brewed broths daily, and when
+Edith could swallow she sent up the results of hours of cooking
+which Ellen cooled, skimmed the crust of grease from the top, and
+heated again over the gas flame.
+
+She never guessed the conspiracy against her.
+
+Between Ellen and Edith there was no real liking.  Ellen did her
+duty, and more; got up at night; was gentle with rather heavy
+hands; bathed the girl and brushed and braided her long hair.  But
+there were hours during that simulated quarantine when a brooding
+silence held in the sick-room, and when Ellen, turning suddenly,
+would find Edith's eyes on her, full of angry distrust.  At those
+times Ellen was glad that Edith could not speak.
+
+For at the end of a few days Ellen knew, and Edith knew she knew.
+
+Edith could not speak.  She wrote her wants with a stub of pencil,
+or made signs.  One day she motioned toward a mirror and Ellen
+took it to her.
+
+"You needn't be frightened," she said.  "When those scabs come off
+the doctor says you'll hardly be marked at all."
+
+But Edith only glanced at herself, and threw the mirror aside.
+
+Another time she wrote: "Willy?"
+
+"He's all right.  They've got a girl at the store to take your
+place, but I guess you can go back if you want to."  Then, seeing
+the hunger in the girl's eyes: "He's out a good bit these nights.
+He's making speeches for that Mr. Hendricks.  As if he could be
+elected against Mr. Cardew!"
+
+The confinement told on Ellen.  She would sit for hours, wondering
+what had become of Lily.  Had she gone back home?  Was she seeing
+that other man?  Perhaps her valiant loyalty to Lily faded somewhat
+during those days, because she began to guess Willy Cameron's secret.
+If a girl had no eyes in her head, and couldn't see that Willy
+Cameron was the finest gentleman who ever stepped in shoe leather,
+that girl had something wrong about her.
+
+Then, sometimes, she wondered how Edith's condition was going to be
+kept from her mother.  She had measured Mrs. Boyd's pride by that
+time, her almost terrible respectability.  She rather hoped that the
+sick woman would die some night, easily and painlessly in her sleep,
+because death was easier than some things.  She liked Mrs. Boyd; she
+felt a slightly contemptuous but real affection for her.
+
+Then one night Edith heard Willy's voice below, and indicated that
+she wanted to see him.  He came in, stooping under the sheet which
+Mrs. Boyd had heard belonged in the doorway of diphtheria, and stood
+looking down at her.  His heart ached.  He sat down on the bed
+beside her and stroked her hand.
+
+"Poor little girl," he said.  "We've got to make things very happy
+for her, to make up for all this!"
+
+But Edith freed her hand, and reaching out for paper and pencil stub,
+wrote something and gave it to Ellen.
+
+Ellen read it.
+
+"Tell him."
+
+"I don't want to, Edith.  You wait and do it yourself."
+
+But Edith made an insistent gesture, and Ellen, flushed and wretched,
+had to tell.  He made no sign, but sat stroking Edith's hand, only
+he stared rather fixedly at the wall, conscious that the girl's
+eyes were watching him for a single gesture of surprise or anger.  He
+felt no anger, only a great perplexity and sadness, an older-brother
+grief.
+
+"I'm sorry, little sister," he said, and did the kindest thing he
+could think of, bent over and kissed her on the forehead.  "Of course
+I know how you feel, but it is a big thing to bear a child, isn't it?
+It is the only miracle we have these days."
+
+"A child with no father," said Ellen, stonily.
+
+"Even then," he persisted, "it's a big thing.  We would have this one
+come under happier circumstances if we could, but we will welcome and
+take care of it, anyhow.  A child's a child, and mighty valuable.
+And," he added--"I appreciate your wanting me to know, Edith."
+
+He stayed a little while after that, but he read aloud, choosing a
+humorous story and laughing very hard at all the proper places.  In
+the end he brought a faint smile to Edith's blistered lips, and a
+small lift to the cloud that hung over her now, day and night.
+
+He made a speech that night, and into it he put all of his aching,
+anxious soul; Edith and Dan and Lily were behind it.  Akers and
+Doyle.  It was at a meeting in the hall over the city market, and
+the audience a new men's non-partisan association.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, "I am asked what it is that we want, we men
+who are standing behind Hendricks as an independent candidate."  He
+was supposed to bring Mr. Hendricks' name in as often as possible.
+"I answer that we want honest government, law and order, an end to
+this conviction that the country is owned by the unions and the
+capitalists, a fair deal for the plain people, which is you and I,
+my friends.  But I answer still further, we want one thing more, a
+greater thing, and that thing we shall have.  All through this great
+country to-night are groups of men hoping and planning for an
+incredible thing.  They are not great in numbers; they are, however,
+organized, competent, intelligent and deadly.  They plow the land
+with discord to sow the seeds of sedition.  And the thing they want
+is civil war.
+
+"And against them, what?  The people like you and me; the men with
+homes they love; the men with little businesses they have fought
+and labored to secure; the clerks; the preachers; the doctors, the
+honest laborers, the God-fearing rich.  I tell you, we are the
+people, and it is time we knew our power.
+
+"And this is the thing we want, we the people; the greater thing,
+the thing we shall have; that this government, this country which
+we love, which has three times been saved at such cost of blood,
+shall survive."
+
+It was after that speech that he met Pink Denslow for the first time.
+A square, solidly built young man edged his way through the crowd,
+and shook hands with him.
+
+"Name's Denslow," said Pink.  "Liked what you said.  Have you time
+to run over to my club with me and have a high-ball and a talk?"
+
+"I've got all the rest of the night."
+
+"Right-o!" said Pink, who had brought back a phrase or two from the
+British.
+
+It was not until they were in the car that Pink said:
+
+"I think you're a friend of Miss Cardew's, aren't you?"
+
+"I know Miss Cardew," said Willy Cameron, guardedly.  And they were
+both rather silent for a time.
+
+That night proved to be a significant one for them both, as it
+happened.  They struck up a curious sort of friendship, based on a
+humble admiration on Pink's part, and with Willy Cameron on sheer
+hunger for the society of his kind.  He had been suffering a real
+mental starvation.  He had been constantly giving out and getting
+nothing in return.
+
+Pink developed a habit of dropping into the pharmacy when he happened
+to be nearby.  He was rather wistfully envious of that year in the
+camp, when Lily Cardew and Cameron had been together, and at first
+it was the bond of Lily that sent him to the shop.  In the beginning
+the shop irritated him, because it seemed an incongruous background
+for the fiery young orator.  But later on he joined the small open
+forum in the back room, and perhaps for the first time in his idle
+years he began to think.  He had made the sacrifice of his luxurious
+young life to go to war, had slept in mud and risked his body and
+been hungry and cold and often frightfully homesick.  And now it
+appeared that a lot of madmen were going to try to undo all that he
+had helped to do.  He was surprised and highly indignant.  Even a
+handful of agitators, it seemed, could do incredible harm.
+
+One night he and Willy Cameron slipped into a meeting of a Russian
+Society, wearing old clothes, which with Willy was not difficult,
+and shuffling up dirty stairs without molestation.  They came away
+thoughtful.
+
+"Looks like it's more than talk," Pink said, after a time.
+
+"They're not dangerous," Willy Cameron said.  "That's talk.  But it
+shows a state of mind.  The real incendiaries don't show their hand
+like that."
+
+"You think it's real, then?"
+
+"Some boils don't come to a head.  But most do."
+
+It was after a mob of foreigners had tried to capture the town of
+Donesson, near Pittsburgh, and had been turned back by a hastily
+armed body of its citizens, doctors, lawyers and shop-keepers, that
+a nebulous plan began to form in Willy Cameron's active mind.
+
+If one could unite the plain people politically, or against a foreign
+war, why could they not be united against an enemy at home?  The
+South had had a similar problem, and the result was the Ku Klux Klan.
+
+The Chief of Police was convinced that a plan was being formulated
+to repeat the Seattle experiment against the city.  The Mayor was
+dubious.  He was not a strong man; he had a conviction that because
+a thing never had happened it never could happen.
+
+"The mob has done it before," urged the Chief of Police one day.
+"They took Paris, and it was damned disagreeable."
+
+The Mayor was a trifle weak in history.
+
+"Maybe they did," he agreed.  "But this is different.  This is
+America."
+
+He was rather uneasy after that.  It had occurred to him that the
+Chief might have referred to Paris, Illinois.
+
+Now and then Pink coaxed Willy Cameron to his club, and for those
+rare occasions he provided always a little group of men like
+themselves, young, eager, loyal, and struggling with the new
+problems of the day.  In this environment Willy Cameron received
+as well as gave.
+
+Most of the men had been in the army, and he found in them an eager
+anxiety to face the coming situation and combat it.  In the end the
+nucleus of the new Vigilance Committee was formed there.
+
+Not immediately.  The idea was of slow growth even with its
+originator, and it only reached the point of speech when Mr.
+Hendricks stopped in one day at the pharmacy and brought a bundle
+which he slapped down on the prescription desk.
+
+"Read that dynamite," he said, his face flushed and lowering.  "A
+man I know got it translated for me.  Read it and then tell me
+whether I'm an alarmist and a plain fool, or if it means trouble
+around here."
+
+There was no question in Willy Cameron's mind as to which it meant.
+
+Louis Akers had by that time announced his candidacy for Mayor, and
+organized labor was behind him to an alarming extent.  When Willy
+Cameron went with Pink to the club that afternoon, he found Akers
+under discussion, and he heard some facts about that gentleman's
+private life which left him silent and morose.  Pink knew nothing
+of Lily's friendship with Akers.  Indeed, Pink did not know that
+Lily was in the city, and Willy Cameron had not undeceived him.  It
+had pleased Anthony Cardew to announce in the press that Lily was
+making a round of visits, and the secret was not his to divulge.
+But the question which was always in his mind rose again.  What did
+she see in the man?  How could she have thrown away her home and her
+family for a fellow who was so obviously what Pink would have called
+"a wrong one"?
+
+He roused, however, at a question.
+
+"He may," he said; "with three candidates we're splitting the vote
+three ways, and it's hard to predict.  Mr. Cardew can't be elected,
+but he weakens Hendricks.  One thing's sure.  Where's my pipe?"
+Silence while Mr. Cameron searched for his pipe, and took his own
+time to divulge the sure thing.  "If Hendricks is elected he'll
+clear out the entire bunch of anarchists.  The present man's afraid.
+But if Akers can hypnotize labor into voting for him, and he gets
+it, it will be up to the city to protect itself, for he won't.
+He'll let them hold their infamous meetings and spread their damnable
+doctrine, and--you know what they've tried to do in other places."
+He explained what he had in mind then, finding them expectant and
+eager.  There ought to be some sort of citizen organization, to
+supplement the state and city forces.  Nothing spectacular; indeed,
+the least said about it the better.  He harked back then to his idea
+of the plain people, with homes to protect.
+
+"That needn't keep you fellows out," he said, with his whimsical
+smile.  "But the rank and file will have to constitute the big end.
+We don't want a lot of busybodies, pussy-footing around with guns
+and looking for trouble.  We had enough of that during the war.  We
+would want some men who would answer a riot call if they were needed.
+That's all."
+
+He had some of the translations Hendricks had brought him in his
+pocket, and they circulated around the group.
+
+"Do you think they mean to attack the city?"
+
+"That looks like it, doesn't it?  And they are getting that sort of
+stuff all the time.  There are a hundred thousand of them in this
+end of the state."
+
+"Would you make it a secret organization?"
+
+"Yes.  I like doing things in the open myself, but you've got to
+fight a rat in his hole, if he won't come out."
+
+"Would you hold office?" Pink asked.
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+"I'm a good bit like the boy who dug post holes in the daytime and
+took in washing at night to support the family.  But I'll work, if
+that's what you mean."
+
+"We'd better have a constitution and all that, don't you think?"
+Pink asked.  "We can draw up a tentative one, and then fix it up at
+the first meeting.  This is going to be a big thing.  It'll go
+like a fire."
+
+But Willy Cameron overruled that.
+
+"We don't need that sort of stuff," he said, "and if we begin that
+we might as well put it in the newspapers.  We want men who can
+keep their mouths shut, and who will sign some sort of a card
+agreeing to stand by the government and to preserve law and order.
+Then an office and a filing case, and their addresses, so we can
+get at them in a hurry if we need them.  Get me a piece of paper,
+somebody."
+
+Then and there, in twenty words, Willy Cameron wrote the now
+historic oath of the new Vigilance Committee, on the back of an old
+envelope.  It was a promise, an agreement rather than an oath.
+There was a little hush as the paper passed from hand to hand.  Not
+a man there but felt a certain solemnity in the occasion.  To
+preserve the Union and the flag, to fight all sedition, to love
+their country and support it; the very simplicity of the words was
+impressive.  And the mere putting of it into visible form
+crystallized their hitherto vague anxieties, pointed to a real
+enemy and a real danger.  Yet, as Willy Cameron pointed out, they
+might never be needed.
+
+"Our job," he said, "is only as a last resort.  Only for real
+trouble.  Until the state troops can get here, for instance, and
+if the constabulary is greatly outnumbered.  It's their work up
+to a certain point.  We'll fight if they need us.  That's all."
+
+It was very surprising to him to find the enterprise financed
+immediately.  Pink offered an office in the bank building.  Some
+one agreed to pay a clerk who should belong to the committee.  It
+was practical, businesslike, and--done.  And, although he had
+protested, he found himself made the head of the organization.
+
+"--without title and without pay," he stipulated.  "If you wish
+a title on me, I'll resign."
+
+He went home that night very exalted and very humble.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+For a time Lily remained hidden in the house on Cardew Way, walking
+out after nightfall with Louis occasionally, but shrinkingly keeping
+to quiet back streets.  She had a horror of meeting some one she
+knew, of explanations and of gossip.  But after a time the desire
+to see her mother became overwhelming.  She took to making little
+flying visits home at an hour when her grandfather was certain to
+be away, going in a taxicab, and reaching the house somewhat
+breathless and excited.  She was driven by an impulse toward the
+old familiar things; she was homesick for them all, for her mother,
+for Mademoiselle, for her own rooms, for her little toilet table,
+for her bed and her reading lamp.  For the old house itself.
+
+She was still an alien where she was.  Elinor Doyle was a perpetual
+enigma to her; now and then she thought she had penetrated behind
+the gentle mask that was Elinor's face, only to find beyond it
+something inscrutable.  There was a dead line in Elinor's life
+across which Lily never stepped.  Whatever Elinor's battles were,
+she fought them alone, and Lily had begun to realize that there
+were battles.
+
+The atmosphere of the little house had changed.  Sometimes, after
+she had gone to bed, she heard Doyle's voice from the room across
+the hall, raised angrily.  He was nervous and impatient; at times
+he dropped the unctuousness of his manner toward her, and she found
+herself looking into a pair of cold blue eyes which terrified her.
+
+The brilliant little dinners had entirely ceased, with her coming.
+A sort of early summer lethargy had apparently settled on the house.
+Doyle wrote for hours, shut in the room with the desk; the group of
+intellectuals, as he had dubbed them, had dispersed on summer
+vacations.  But she discovered that there were other conferences
+being held in the house, generally late at night.
+
+She learned to know the nights when those meetings were to occur.
+On those evenings Elinor always made an early move toward bed, and
+Lily would repair to her hot low-ceiled room, to sit in the
+darkness by the window and think long, painful thoughts.
+
+That was how she learned of the conferences.  She had no curiosity
+about them at first.  They had something to do with the strike, she
+considered, and with that her interest died.  Strikes were a symptom,
+and ultimately, through great thinkers like Mr. Doyle, they would
+discover the cure for the disease that caused them.  She was quite
+content to wait for that time.
+
+Then, one night, she went downstairs for a glass of ice water, and
+found the lower floor dark, and subdued voices coming from the study.
+The kitchen door was standing open, and she closed and locked it,
+placing the key, as was Elinor's custom, in a table drawer.  The
+door was partly glass, and Elinor had a fear of the glass being
+broken and thus the key turned in the lock by some intruder.
+
+On toward morning there came a violent hammering at her bedroom
+door, and Doyle's voice outside, a savage voice that she scarcely
+recognized.  When she had thrown on her dressing gown and opened
+the door he had instantly caught her by the shoulder, and she bore
+the imprints of his fingers for days.
+
+"Did you lock the kitchen door?" he demanded, his tones thick with
+fury.
+
+"Yes.  Why not?"  She tried to shake off his hand, but failed.
+
+"None of your business why not," he said, and gave her an angry
+shake.  "Hereafter, when you find that door open, you leave it that
+way.  That's all."
+
+"Take your hands off me!"  She was rather like her grandfather at
+that moment, and his lost caution came back.  He freed her at once
+ and laughed a little.
+
+"Sorry!" he said.  "I get a bit emphatic at times.  But there are
+times when a locked door becomes a mighty serious matter."
+
+The next day he removed the key from the door, and substituted a
+bolt.  Elinor made no protest.
+
+Another night Elinor was taken ill, and Lilly had been forced to
+knock at the study door and call Doyle.  She had an instant's
+impression of the room crowded with strange figures.  The heavy
+odors of sweating bodies, of tobacco, and of stale beer came through
+the half-open door and revolted her.  And Doyle had refused to go
+upstairs.
+
+She began to feel that she could not remain there very long.  The
+atmosphere was variable.  It was either cynical or sinister, and
+she hated them both.  She had a curious feeling, too, that Doyle
+both wanted her there and did not want her, and that he was changing
+his attitude toward her Aunt Elinor.  Sometimes she saw him watching
+Elinor from under half-closed eyelids.
+
+But she could not fill her days with anxieties and suspicions, and
+she turned to Louis Akers as a flower to the open day.  He at least
+was what he appeared to be.  There was nothing mysterious about him.
+
+He came in daily, big, dominant and demonstrative, filling the house
+with his presence, and demanding her in a loud, urgent voice.  Hardly
+had the door slammed before he would call:
+
+"Lily!  Where are you?"
+
+Sometimes he lifted her off her feet and held her to him.
+
+"You little whiffet!" he would say.  "I could crush you to death in
+my arms."
+
+Had his wooing all been violent she might have tired sooner, because
+those phases of his passion for her tired her.  But there were times
+when he put her into a chair and sat on the floor at her feet, his
+handsome face uplifted to hers in a sort of humble adoration, his
+arms across her knees.  It was not altogether studied.  He was a
+born wooer, but he had his hours of humility, of vague aspirations.
+His insistent body was always greater than his soul, but now and
+then, when he was physically weary, he had a spiritual moment.
+
+"I love you, little girl," he would say.
+
+It was in one of those moments that she extracted a promise from
+him.  He had been, from his position on the floor, telling her
+about the campaign.
+
+"I don't like your running against my father, Louis."
+
+"He couldn't have got it, anyhow.  And he doesn't want it.  I do,
+honey.  I need it in my business.  When the election's over you're
+going to marry me."
+
+She ignored that.
+
+"I don't like the men who come here, Louis.  I wish they were not
+friends of yours."
+
+"Friends of mine!  That bunch?"
+
+"You are always with them."
+
+"I draw a salary for being with them, honey."
+
+"But what do you draw a salary for?"  He was immediately on the
+alert, but her eyes were candid and unsuspicious.  "They are
+strikers, aren't they?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is it legal business?"
+
+"Partly that."
+
+"Louis, is there going to be a general strike?"
+
+"There may be some bad times coming, honey."  He bent his head and
+kissed her hands, lying motionless in her lap.  "I wish you would
+marry me soon.  I want you.  I want to keep you safe."
+
+She drew her hands away.
+
+"Safe from what, Louis?"
+
+He sat back and looked up into her face.
+
+"You must remember, dear, that for all your theories, which are
+very sweet, this is a man's world, and men have rather brutal
+methods of settling their differences."
+
+"And you advocate brutality?"
+
+"Well, the war was brutal, wasn't it?  And you were in a white heat
+supporting it, weren't you?  How about another war,"--he chose his
+words carefully--"just as reasonable and just?  You've heard Doyle.
+You know what I mean."
+
+"Not now!"
+
+He was amazed at her horror, a horror that made her recoil from him
+and push his hands away when he tried to touch her.  He got up
+angrily and stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets.
+
+"What the devil did you think all this talk meant?" he demanded.
+"You've heard enough of it."
+
+"Does Aunt Elinor know?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And she approves?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care."  Suddenly, with one of the quick
+changes she knew so well, he caught her hands and drawing her to her
+feet, put his arms around her.  "All I know is that I love you, and
+if you say the word I'll cut the whole business."
+
+"You would?"
+
+He amended his offer somewhat.
+
+"Marry me, honey," he begged.  "Marry me now.  Do you think I'll
+let anything in God's world come between us?  Marry me, and I'll do
+more than leave them."  He was whispering to her, stroking her hair.
+"I'll cut the whole outfit.  And on the day I go into your house as
+your husband I'll tell your people some things they want to know.
+That's a promise."
+
+"What will they do to you?"
+
+"Your people?"
+
+"The others."
+
+He drew himself to his full height, and laughed.
+
+"They'll try to do plenty, old girl," he said, "but I'm not afraid of
+them, and they know it.  Marry me, Lily," he urged.  "Marry me now.
+And we'll beat them out, you and I."
+
+He gave her a sense of power, over him and over evil.  She felt
+suddenly an enormous responsibility, that of a human soul waiting to
+be uplifted and led aright.
+
+"You can save me, honey," he whispered, and kneeling suddenly, he
+kissed the toe of her small shoe.
+
+He was strong.  But he was weak too.  He needed her.  "I'll do it,
+Louis," she said.  "You--you will be good to me, won't you?"
+
+"I'm crazy about you."
+
+The mood of exaltation upheld her through the night, and into the
+next day.  Elinor eyed her curiously, and with some anxiety.  It
+was a long time since she had been a girl, going about star-eyed
+with power over a man, but she remembered that lost time well.
+
+At noon Louis came in for a hasty luncheon, and before he left he
+drew Lily into the little study and slipped a solitaire diamond on
+her engagement finger.  To Lily the moment was almost a holy one,
+but he seemed more interested in the quality of the stone and its
+appearance on her hand than in its symbolism.
+
+"Got you cinched now, honey.  Do you like it?"
+
+"It makes me feel that I don't belong to myself any longer."
+
+"Well, you've passed into good hands," he said, and laughed his
+great, vibrant laugh.  "Costing me money already, you mite!"
+
+A little of her exaltation died then.  But perhaps men were like
+that, shyly covering the things they felt deepest.
+
+She was rather surprised when he suggested keeping the engagement
+a secret.
+
+"Except the Doyles, of course," he said.  "I am not taking any
+chances on losing you, child."
+
+"Not mother?"
+
+"Not unless you want to be kidnaped and taken home.  It's only a
+matter of a day or two, anyhow."
+
+"I want more time than that.  A month, anyhow."
+
+And he found her curiously obstinate and determined.  She did not
+quite know herself why she demanded delay, except that she shrank
+from delivering herself into hands that were so tender and might
+be so cruel.  It was instinctive, purely.
+
+"A month," she said, and stuck to it.
+
+He was rather sulky when he went away, and he had told her the exact
+amount he had paid for her ring.
+
+Having forced him to agree to the delay, she found her mood of
+exaltation returning.  As always, it was when he was not with he
+ that she saw him most clearly, and she saw his real need for her.
+She had a sense of peace, too, now that at last something was
+decided.  Her future, for better or worse, would no longer be that
+helpless waiting which had been hers for so long.  And out of her
+happiness came a desire to do kind things, to pat children on the
+head, to give alms to beggars, and--to see Willy Cameron.
+
+She came downstairs that afternoon, dressed for the street.
+
+"I am going out for a little while, Aunt Nellie," she said, "and
+when I come back I want to tell you something."
+
+"Perhaps.  I can guess."
+
+"Perhaps you can."
+
+She was singing to herself as she went out the door.
+
+Elinor went back heavy-hearted to her knitting.  It was very
+difficult always to sit by and wait.  Never to raise a hand.  Just
+to wait and watch.  And pray.
+
+Lily was rather surprised, when she reached the Eagle Pharmacy, to
+find Pink Denslow coming out.  It gave her a little pang, too; he
+looked so clean and sane and normal, so much a part of her old life.
+And it hurt her, too, to see him flush with pleasure at the meeting.
+
+"Why, Lily!" he said, and stood there, gazing at her, hat in hand,
+the sun on his gleaming, carefully brushed hair.  He was quite
+inarticulate with happiness.  "I--when did you get back?"
+
+"I have not been away, Pink.  I left home--it's a long story.  I
+am staying with my aunt, Mrs. Doyle."
+
+"Mrs. Doyle?  You are staying there?"
+
+"Why not?  My father's sister."
+
+His young face took on a certain sternness.
+
+"If you knew what I suspect about Doyle, Lily, you wouldn't let the
+same roof cover you."  But he added, rather wistfully, "I wish I
+might see you sometimes."
+
+Lily's head had gone up a trifle.  Why did her old world always try
+to put her in the wrong?  She had had to seek sanctuary, and the
+Doyle house had been the only sanctuary she knew.
+
+"Since you feel as you do, I'm afraid that's impossible.  Mr.
+Doyle's roof is the only roof I have."
+
+"You have a home," he said, sturdily.
+
+"Not now.  I left, and my grandfather won't have me back.  You
+mustn't blame him, Pink.  We quarreled and I left.  I was as much
+responsible as he was."
+
+For a moment after she turned and disappeared inside the pharmacy
+door he stood there, then he put on his hat and strode down the
+street, unhappy and perplexed.  If only she had needed him, if she
+had not looked so self-possessed and so ever so faintly defiant,
+as though she dared him to pity her, he would have known what to
+do.  All he needed was to be needed.  His open face was full of
+trouble.  It was unthinkable that Lily should be in that center of
+anarchy; more unthinkable that Doyle might have filled her up with
+all sorts of wild ideas.  Women were queer; they liked theories.  A
+man could have a theory of life and play with it and boast about
+it, but never dream of living up to it.  But give one to a woman,
+and she chewed on it like a dog on a bone.  If those Bolshevists
+had got hold of Lily--!
+
+The encounter had hurt Lily, too.  The fine edge of her exaltation
+was gone, and it did not return during her brief talk with Willy
+Cameron.  He looked much older and very thin; there were lines
+around his eyes she had never seen before, and she hated seeing
+him in his present surroundings.  But she liked him for his very
+unconsciousness of those surroundings.  One always had to take
+Willy Cameron as he was.
+
+"Do you like it, Willy?" she asked.  It had dawned on her, with a
+sort of panic, that there was really very little to talk about.  All
+that they had had in common lay far in the past.
+
+"Well, it's my daily bread, and with bread costing what it does, I
+cling to it like a limpet to a rock."
+
+"But I thought you were studying, so you could do something else."
+
+"I had to give up the night school.  But I'll get back to it
+sometime."
+
+She was lost again.  She glanced around the little shop, where once
+Edith Boyd had manicured her nails behind the counter, and where
+now a middle-aged woman stood with listless eyes looking out over
+the street.
+
+"You still have Jinx, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes.  I--"
+
+Lily glanced up as he stopped.  She had drawn off her gloves, and
+his eyes had fallen on her engagement ring.  To Lily there had
+always been a feeling of unreality about his declaration of love
+for her.  He had been so restrained, so careful to ask nothing in
+exchange, so without expectation of return, that she had put it out
+of her mind as an impulse.  She had not dreamed that he could still
+care, after these months of silence.  But he had gone quite white.
+
+"I am going to be married, Willy," she said, in a low tone.  It is
+doubtful if he could have spoken, just then.  And as if to add a
+finishing touch of burlesque to the meeting, a small boy with a
+swollen jaw came in just then and demanded something to "make it
+stop hurting."
+
+He welcomed the interruption, she saw.  He was very professional
+instantly, and so absorbed for a moment in relieving the child's
+pain that he could ignore his own.
+
+"Let's see it," he said in a businesslike, slightly strained voice.
+"Better have it out, old chap.  But I'll give you something just
+to ease it up a bit."
+
+Which he proceeded to do.  When he came back to Lily he was quite
+calm and self-possessed.  As he had never thought of dramatizing
+himself, nor thought of himself at all, it did not occur to him
+that drama requires setting, that tragedy required black velvet
+rather than tooth-brushes, and that a small boy with an aching
+tooth was a comedy relief badly introduced.
+
+All he knew was that he had somehow achieved a moment in which to
+steady himself, and to find that a man can suffer horribly and
+still smile.  He did that, very gravely, when he came back to Lily.
+
+"Can you tell me about it?"
+
+"There is not very much to tell.  It is Louis Akers."
+
+The middle-aged clerk had disappeared.
+
+"Of course you have thought over what that means, Lily."
+
+"He wants me to marry him.  He wants it very much, Willy.  And--I
+know you don't like him, but he has changed.  Women always think
+they have changed men, I know.  But he is very different."
+
+"I am sure of that," he said, steadily.
+
+There was something childish about her, he thought.  Childish and
+infinitely touching.  He remembered a night at the camp, when some
+of the troops had departed for over-seas, and he had found her alone
+and crying in her hut.  "I just can't let them go," she had sobbed.
+"I just can't.  Some of them will never come back."
+
+Wasn't there something of that spirit in her now, the feeling that
+she could not let Akers go, lest worse befall him?  He did not know.
+All he knew was that she was more like the Lily Cardew he had known
+then than she had been since her return.  And that he worshiped her.
+
+But there was anger in him, too.  Anger at Anthony Cardew.  Anger at
+the Doyles.  And a smoldering, bitter anger at Louis Akers, that he
+should take the dregs of his life and offer them to her as new wine.
+That he should dare to link his scheming, plotting days to this girl,
+so wise and yet so ignorant, so clear-eyed and yet so blind.
+
+"Do they know at home?"
+
+"I am going to tell mother to-day."
+
+"Lily," he said, slowly, "there is one thing you ought to do.  Go
+home, make your peace there, and get all this on the right footing.
+Then have him there.  You have never seen him in that environment,
+yet that is the world he will have to live in, if you marry him.
+See how he fits there."
+
+"What has that got to do with it?"
+
+"Think a minute.  Am I quite the same to you here, as I was in the
+camp?"
+
+He saw her honest answer in her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The new movement was growing rapidly, and with a surprising
+catholicity of range.  Already it included lawyers and doctors,
+chauffeurs, butchers, clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truck
+gardeners from the surrounding county, railroad employees, and
+some of the strikers from the mills, men who had obeyed their
+union order to quit work, but had obeyed it unwillingly; men who
+resented bitterly the invasion of the ranks of labor by the lawless
+element which was fomenting trouble.
+
+Dan had joined.
+
+On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers,
+one of the cards of the new Vigilance Committee was being inspected
+with cynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices
+in the Searing Building.  They studied it with interest, while the
+man who had brought it stood by.
+
+"Where'd you pick it up, Cusick?"
+
+"One of our men brought it into the store.  Said you might want to
+see it."
+
+The three men bent over it.
+
+The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms.  During
+the day two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made a
+pretense of business at such times as the door opened, or when an
+occasional client, seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates.
+At such times the clerks were politely regretful.  The firm's
+contracts were all they could handle for months ahead.
+
+There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably
+professional cleaners.  They came and went, or sat along the walls,
+waiting.  A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved
+to be accomplished linguists.  They talked, with more or less
+fluency, with Croats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.
+
+There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pails
+and brushes, soap and ladders.  But there was a great safe also,
+and its compartments were filled with pamphlets in many tongues,
+a supply constantly depleted and yet never diminishing.  Workmen,
+carrying out the pails of honest labor, carried them loaded down
+with the literature it was their only business to circulate.
+
+Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrine
+of no God; of no government, and of no church; of the confiscation
+of private property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape,
+arson and pillage.
+
+And around this social cancer the city worked and played.  Its
+theatres were crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels.  Two classes
+of people were spending money prodigally; women with shawls over
+their heads, women who in all their peasant lives had never owned a
+hat, drove in automobiles to order their winter supply of coal, and
+vast amounts of liquors were being bought by the foreign element
+against the approaching prohibition law, and stored in untidy
+cellars.
+
+On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reaction
+from war.  The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of the
+wealthy, and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall.
+Among the list of debutantes Lily's name always appeared.
+
+And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were being
+ground the professional and salaried men with families, the women
+clerks, the vast army who asked nothing but the right to work and
+live.  They went through their days doggedly, with little anxious
+lines around their eyes, suffering a thousand small deprivations,
+bewildered, tortured with apprehension of to-morrow, and yet
+patiently believing that, as things could not be worse, they must
+soon commence to improve.
+
+"It's bound to clear up soon," said Joe Wilkinson over the back
+fence one night late in June, to Willy Cameron.  Joe supported a
+large family of younger brothers and sisters in the house next
+door, and was employed in a department store.  "I figure it this
+way--both sides need each other, don't they?  Something like
+marriage, you know.  It'll all be over in six months.  Only I'm
+thanking heaven just now it's summer, because our kids are hell
+on shoes."
+
+"I hope so," said Willy Cameron.  "What are you doing over there,
+anyhow?"
+
+"Wait and see," said Joe, cryptically.  "If you think you're going
+to be the only Central Park in this vicinity you've got to think
+again."  He hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons
+were searching for worms in the overturned garden mold.  "How's
+Edith?" he asked.
+
+"She's all right, Joe."
+
+"Seeing anybody yet?"
+
+"Not yet.  In a day or so she'll be downstairs."
+
+"You might tell her I've been asking about her."
+
+There was something in Joel's voice that caught Willy Cameron's
+attention.  He thought about Joe a great deal that night.  Joe was
+another one who must never know about Edith's trouble.  The boy
+had little enough, and if he had built a dream about Edith Boyd he
+must keep his dream.  He was rather discouraged that night, was
+Willy Cameron, and he began to think that dreams were the best
+things in life.  They were a sort of sanctuary to which one fled
+to escape realities.  Perhaps no reality was ever as beautiful as
+one's dream of it.
+
+Lily had passed very definitely out of his life.  Sometimes during
+his rare leisure he walked to Cardew Way through the warm night,
+and past the Doyle house, but he never saw her, and because it did
+not occur to him that she might want to see him he never made an
+attempt to call.  Always after those futile excursions he was
+inclined to long silences, and only Jinx could have told how many
+hours he sat in his room at night, in the second-hand easy chair he
+had bought, pipe in hand and eyes on nothing in particular, lost in
+a dream world where the fields bore a strong resemblance to the
+parade ground of an army camp, and through which field he and Lily
+wandered like children, hand in hand.
+
+But he had many things to think of.  So grave were the immediate
+problems, of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd and Edith, that a little
+of his fine frenzy as to the lurking danger of revolution departed
+from him.  The meetings in the back room at the pharmacy took on
+a political bearing, and Hendricks was generally the central figure.
+The ward felt that Mr. Hendricks was already elected, and called
+him "Mr. Mayor."  At the same time the steel strike pursued a course
+of comparative calm.  At Friendship and at Baxter there had been
+rioting, and a fatality or two, but the state constabulary had the
+situation well in hand.  On a Sunday morning Willy Cameron went out
+to Baxter on the trolley, and came home greatly comforted.  The
+cool-eyed efficiency of the state police reassured him.  He compared
+them, disciplined, steady, calm with the calmness of their dangerous
+calling, with the rabble of foreigners who shuffled along the
+sidewalks, and he felt that his anxiety had been rather absurd.
+
+He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentioned
+in the newspapers.  Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spent
+much time in searching for these notices, and then in painfully
+cutting them out and pasting them in a book.  On those days when
+there was nothing about him she felt thwarted, and was liable to
+sharp remarks on newspapers in general, and on those of the city in
+particular.
+
+Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off like
+other strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd, having plowed the field
+for sedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a
+talk with Edith.
+
+She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early
+in July, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches, and
+he placed her, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor.  Dan
+had brought her down and had made a real effort to be kind, but his
+suspicion of the situation made it difficult for him to dissemble,
+and soon he went out.  Ellen was on the doorstep, and through the
+open window came the shrieks of numerous little Wilkinsons wearing
+out expensive shoe-leather on the brick pavement.
+
+They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Cameron
+talking with a sort of determined optimism.  After a time he
+realized that she was not even listening.
+
+"I wish you'd close the window," she said at last.  "Those crazy
+Wilkinson kids make such a racket.  I want to tell you something."
+
+"All right."  He closed the window and stood looking down at her.
+"Are you sure you want me to hear it?" he asked gravely.
+
+"Yes.  It is not about myself.  I've been reading the newspapers
+while I've been shut away up there, Willy.  It kept me from
+thinking.  And if things are as bad as they say I'd better tell
+you, even if I get into trouble doing it.  I will, probably.
+Murder's nothing to them."
+
+"Who are 'them'?"
+
+"You get the police to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, in
+the Searing Building."
+
+"Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that?  The police
+will want something definite to go on."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"I don't know very much.  I met somebody there, once or twice, at
+night.  And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer of
+the desk in the back room.  I swore not to tell, but that doesn't
+matter now.  Tell them to examine the safe, too.  I don't know
+what's in it.  Dynamite, maybe."
+
+"What makes you think the company is wrong?  A hidden telephone
+isn't much to go on."
+
+"When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk," she said
+briefly, and before that sordid picture Willy Cameron was silent.
+After a time he said:
+
+"You won't tell me the name of the man you met there?"
+
+"No.  Don't ask me, Willy.  That's between him and me."  He got up
+and took a restless turn or two about the little rooms.  Edith's
+problem had begun to obsess him.  Not for long would it be possible
+to keep her condition from Mrs. Boyd.  He was desperately at a loss
+for some course to pursue.
+
+"Have you ever thought," he said at last, "that this man, whoever
+he is, ought to marry you?"
+
+Edith's face set like a flint.
+
+"I don't want to marry him," she said.  "I wouldn't marry him if he
+was the last man on earth."
+
+He knew very little of Edith's past.  In his own mind he had fixed
+on Louis Akers, but he could not be sure.
+
+"I won't tell you his name, either," Edith added, shrewishly.  Then
+her voice softened.  "I will tell you this, Willy," she said
+wistfully.  "I was a good girl until I knew him.  I'm not saying
+that to let myself out.  It's the truth."
+
+"You're a good girl now," he said gravely.
+
+Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he was
+going out.
+
+"I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks," he said.  "And
+we may go on and have a talk with the Chief of Police.  If you are
+right it may be important."
+
+After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen now
+and then looked in to see if she was comfortable.
+
+Edith's mind was chaotic.  She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse
+at that.  But suppose they trapped Louis Akers in the Searing
+Building?
+
+Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back with
+her the news of the family.  At first she had sternly refused to
+talk about the Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room had
+been long and monotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken
+the form, when she could talk, of incessant questions.
+
+So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leaving
+home, and called her a poor thing in her heart.  Quite lately she
+had heard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably would
+be, soon.  Now her motives were mixed, and her emotions confused.
+She had wanted to tell Willy Cameron what she knew, but she wanted
+Lily to marry Louis Akers.  She wanted that terribly.  Then Lily
+would be out of the way, and--Willy was not like Dan; he did not
+seem to think her forever lost.  He had always been thoughtful, but
+lately he had been very tender with her.  Men did strange things
+sometimes.  He might be willing to forget, after a long time.  She
+could board the child out somewhere, if it lived.  Sometimes they
+didn't live.
+
+But if they arrested Louis, Lily Cardew would fling him aside like
+an old shoe.
+
+She closed her eyes.  That opened a vista of possibilities she
+would not face.
+
+She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs,
+moved to sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its close.
+If that were life she did not want it, with its drab days and
+futile effort, its incessant deprivations, its hands, gnarled with
+work that got nowhere, its greatest blessing sleep and forgetfulness.
+
+She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away.
+
+"I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother," she said from
+the doorway.  "How's the pain down your arm?"
+
+"Bring me the mucilage, Edie," requested Mrs. Boyd.  She was propped
+up in bed and surrounded by newspapers.  "I've found Willy's name
+again.  I've got fourteen now.  Where's the scissors?"
+
+Eternity was such a long time.  Did she know?  Could she know, and
+still sit among her pillows, snipping?
+
+"I wonder," said Mrs. Boyd, "did anybody feed Jinx?  That Ellen is
+so saving that she grudges him a bone."
+
+"He looks all right," said Edith, and went on up to bed.  Maybe the
+Lord did that for people, when they reached a certain point.  Maybe
+He took away the fear of death, by showing after years of it that
+life was not so valuable after all.  She remembered her own facing
+of eternity, and her dread of what lay beyond.  She had prayed first,
+because she wanted to have some place on the other side.  She had
+prayed to be received young and whole and without child.  And her
+mother--
+
+Then she had a flash of intuition.  There was something greater
+than life, and that was love.  Her mother was upheld by love.  That
+was what the eternal cutting and pasting meant.  She was lavishing
+all the love of her starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing
+death, because his hand was close by to hold to.
+
+For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw
+what love might be, and might do.  She held out both hands in the
+darkness, but no strong and friendly clasp caught them close.  If
+she could only have him to cling to, to steady her wavering feet
+along the gray path that stretched ahead, years and years of it.
+Youth.  Middle age.  Old age.
+
+"I'd only drag him down," she muttered bitterly.
+
+Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's
+story, and together late that evening they saw the Chief of Police
+at his house.  Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated
+putting a watch on the offices of the Myers Housecleaning Company
+and thus ultimately getting the heads of the organization.  But
+the Chief was unwilling to delay.
+
+"Every day means more of their infernal propaganda," he said, "and
+if this girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to get
+the outfit now.  Those clerks, for instance--we'll get some
+information out of them.  That sort always squeals.  They're a
+cheap lot."
+
+"Going to ball it up, of course," Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly,
+on the way home.  "Won't wait, because if Akers gets in he's out,
+and he wants to make a big strike first.  I'll drop in to-morrow
+evening and tell you what's happened."
+
+He came into the pharmacy the next evening, with a bundle of
+red-bound pamphlets under his arm, and a look of disgust on his
+face.
+
+"What did I tell you, Cameron?" he demanded, breathing heavily.
+"Yes, they got them all right.  Got a safe full of stuff so
+inflammable that, since I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow up
+myself.  It's worse than that first lot I showed you.  They got
+the two clerks, and a half-dozen foreigners, too.  And that's all
+they got."
+
+"They won't talk?"
+
+"Talk?  Sure they'll talk.  They say they're employed by the Myers
+Housecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault,
+and they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false
+arrest.  They'll have to let them go, son.  Here.  You can do most
+everything.  Can you read Croatian?  No?  Well, here's something
+in English to cut your wisdom teeth on.  Overthrowing the government
+is where these fellows start."
+
+It was intelligent, that propaganda.  Willy Cameron thought he saw
+behind it Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew the
+discontents of the world, and would fatten by them; men who,
+secretly envious of the upper classes and unable to attain to them,
+would pull all men to their own level, or lower.  Men who cloaked
+their own jealousies with the garb of idealism.  Intelligent it was,
+dangerous, and imminent.
+
+The pamphlets spoke of "the day."  It was a Prussian phrase.  The
+revolution was Prussian.  And like the Germans, they offered loot
+as a reward.  They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world,
+to lust and greed and idleness.
+
+At a signal the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and rule
+itself.
+
+Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out
+at the city he loved.
+
+"Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?" he asked.
+"Will our people take it up?  Is the American nation going crazy?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Willy Cameron stoutly. "They're about as
+able to overthrow the government as you are to shove over the Saint
+Elmo Hotel."
+
+"I could do that, with a bomb."
+
+"No, you couldn't.  But you could make a fairly sizeable hole in
+it.  It's the hole we don't want."
+
+Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+To old Anthony the early summer had been full of humiliations, which
+he carried with an increased arrogance of bearing that alienated
+even his own special group at his club.
+
+"Confound the man," said Judge Peterson, holding forth on the golf
+links one Sunday morning while Anthony Cardew, hectic with rage,
+searched for a lost ball and refused to drop another.  "He'll hold
+us up all morning, for that ball, just as he tries to hold up all
+progress."  He lowered his voice.  "What's happened to the
+granddaughter, anyhow?"
+
+Senator Lovell lighted a cigarette.
+
+"Turned Bolshevist," he said, briefly.
+
+The Judge gazed at him.
+
+"That's a pretty serious indictment, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, that's what I hear.  She's living in Jim Doyle's house.  I
+guess that's the answer.  Hey, Cardew!  D'you want these young cubs
+behind us to play through, or are you going to show some sense and
+come on?"
+
+Howard, fighting his father tooth and nail, was compelled to a
+reluctant admiration of his courage.  But there was no cordiality
+between them.  They were in accord again, as to the strike,
+although from different angles.  Both of them knew that they were
+fighting for very life; both of them felt that the strikers'
+demands meant the end of industry, meant that the man who risked
+money in a business would eventually cease to control that business,
+although if losses came it would be he, and not the workmen, who
+bore them.  Howard had gone as far as he could in concessions, and
+the result was only the demand for more.  The Cardews, father and
+son, stood now together, their backs against a wall, and fought
+doggedly.
+
+But only anxiety held them together.
+
+His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty,
+but he was rather late with his support, and in private he retained
+his cynical attitude.  He had not come over at all until he learned
+that Louis Akers was an opposition candidate.  At that his wrath
+knew no bounds and the next day he presented a large check to the
+campaign committee.
+
+Mr. Hendricks, hearing of it, was moved to a dry chuckle.
+
+"Can't you hear him?" he demanded.  "He'd stalk into headquarters
+as important as an office boy who's been sent to the bank for money,
+and he'd slam down his check and say just two words."
+
+"Which would be?" inquired Willy Cameron.
+
+"'Buy 'em'," quoted Mr. Hendricks.  "The old boy doesn't know that
+things have changed since the 80's.  This city has changed, my lad.
+It's voting now the way it thinks, right or wrong.  That's why these
+foreign language papers can play the devil with us.  The only
+knowledge the poor wretches have got of us is what they're given to
+read.  And most of it stinks of sedition.  Queer thing, this
+thinking.  A fellow can think himself into murder."
+
+The strike was going along quietly enough.  There had been rioting
+through the country, but not of any great significance.  It was in
+reality a sort of trench warfare, with each side dug in and waiting
+for the other to show himself in the open.  The representatives of
+the press, gathered in the various steel cities, with automobiles
+arranged for to take them quickly to any disturbance that might
+develop, found themselves with little news for the telegraph, and
+time hung heavy on their hands.
+
+On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner, and
+realized with a shock that she was looking thin and much older.  He
+kissed her and then held her off and looked at her.
+
+"You've got to keep your courage up, dear," he said.  "I don't think
+it will be long now."
+
+"Have you seen her?"
+
+"No.  But something has happened.  Don't look like that, Grace.  It's
+not--"
+
+"She hasn't married that man?"
+
+"No.  Not that.  It only touches her indirectly.  But she can't stay
+there.  Even Elinor--" he checked himself.  "I'll tell you after
+dinner."
+
+Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one
+speech rather at length.
+
+"So far as I can make out, Howard," he said, "this man Hendricks is
+getting pretty strong.  He has a young fellow talking for him who
+gets over pretty well.  It's my judgment that Hendricks had better
+be bought off.  He goes around shouting that he's a plain man,
+after the support of the plain people.  Although I'm damned if I
+know what he means by that."
+
+Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house.  He
+placed the blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings away
+from home as possible.  He considered that life was using him rather
+badly.  Tied to the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter
+openly gone over to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool and
+his creature, merely staying in his house to handle him, an income
+tax law that sent him to his lawyers with new protests almost daily!
+A man was no longer master even in his own home.  His employees
+would not work for him, his family disobeyed him, his government
+held him up and shook him.  In the good old days--
+
+"I'm going out," he said, as he rose from the table.  "Grace, that
+chef is worse than the last.  You'd better send him off."
+
+"I can't get any one else.  I have tried for weeks.  There are no
+servants anywhere."
+
+"Try New York."
+
+"I have tried--it is useless."
+
+No cooks, either.  No servants.  Even Anthony recognized that, with
+the exception of Grayson, the servants in his house were vaguely
+hostile to the family.  They gave grudging service, worked short
+hours, and, the only class of labor to which the high cost of food
+was a negligible matter, demanded wages he considered immoral.
+
+"I don't know what the world's coming to," he snarled.  "Well, I'm
+off.  Thank God, there are still clubs for a man to go to."
+
+"I want to have a talk with you, father."
+
+"I don't want to talk."
+
+"You needn't.  I want you to listen, and I want Grace to hear, too."
+
+In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Grayson
+had brought liqueurs and coffee and had gone, Howard drew the card
+from his pocket.
+
+"I met young Denslow to-day," he said.  "He came in to see me.  As
+a matter of fact, I signed a card he had brought along, and I brought
+one for you, sir.  Shall I read it?"
+
+"You evidently intend to."
+
+Howard read the card slowly.  Its very simplicity was impressive, as
+impressive as it had been when Willy Cameron scrawled the words on
+the back of an old envelope.  Anthony listened.
+
+"Just what does that mean?"
+
+"That the men behind this movement believe that there is going to
+be a general strike, with an endeavor to turn it into a revolution.
+Perhaps only local, but these things have a tendency to spread.
+Denslow had some literature which referred to an attempt to take
+over the city.  They have other information, too, all pointing the
+same way."
+
+"Strikers?"
+
+"Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born.  Their plans
+are fairly comprehensive; they mean to dynamite the water works,
+shut down the gas and electric plants, and cut off all food supplies.
+Then when they have starved and terrorized us into submission, we'll
+accept their terms."
+
+"What terms?"
+
+"Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose.  They intend to take over
+the banks, for one thing."
+
+"I don't believe it.  It's incredible."
+
+"They meant to do it in Seattle."
+
+"And didn't.  Don't forget that."
+
+"They may have learned some things from Seattle," Howard said
+quietly.
+
+"We have the state troops."
+
+"What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the same
+time?  Or rioting in other places, carefully planned to draw the
+troops and constabulary away?"
+
+In the end old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced.
+But he had no faith in the plain people, and said so.  "They'll see
+property destroyed and never lift a hand," he said.  "Didn't I
+stand by in Pittsburgh during the railroad riots, and watch them
+smile while the yards burned?  Because the railroads meant capital
+to them, and they hate capital."
+
+"Precisely," said Howard, "but after twenty-four hours they were
+fighting like demons to restore law and order.  It is"--he fingered
+the card--"to save that twenty-four hours that this organization is
+being formed.  It is secret.  Did I tell you that?  And the idea
+originated with the young man you spoke about as supporting Hendricks
+--you met him here once, a friend of Lily's.  His name is Cameron
+--William Wallace Cameron."
+
+Old Anthony remained silent, but the small jagged vein on his
+forehead swelled with anger.  After a time:
+
+"I suppose Doyle is behind this?" he asked.  "It sounds like him."
+
+"That is the supposition.  But they have nothing on him yet; he is
+too shrewd for that.  And that leads to something else.  Lily cannot
+continue to stay there."
+
+"I didn't send her there."
+
+"Actually, no.  In effect--but we needn't go into that now.  The
+situation is very serious.  I can imagine that nothing could fit
+better into his plans than to have her there.  She gives him a
+cachet of respectability.  Do you want that?"
+
+"She is probably one of them now.  God knows how much of his rotten
+doctrine she has absorbed."
+
+Howard flushed, but he kept his temper.
+
+"His theories, possibly.  His practice, no.  She certainly has no
+idea ... it has come to this, father.  She must have a home
+somewhere, and if it cannot be here, Grace and I must make one
+for her elsewhere."
+
+Probably Anthony Cardew had never respected Howard more than at that
+moment, or liked him less.
+
+"Both you and Grace are free to make a home where you please."
+
+"We prefer it here, but you must see yourself that things cannot go
+on as they are.  We have waited for you to see that, all three of
+us, and now this new situation makes it imperative to take some
+action."
+
+"I won't have that fellow Akers coming here."
+
+"He would hardly come, under the circumstances.  Besides, her
+friendship with him is only a part of her revolt.  If she comes
+home it will be with the understanding that she does not see him
+again."
+
+"Revolt?" said old Anthony, raising his eyebrows.
+
+"That is what it actually was.  She found her liberty interfered with,
+and she staged her own small rebellion.  It was very human, I think."
+
+"It was very Cardew," said old Anthony, and smiled faintly.  He had,
+to tell the truth, developed a grudging admiration for his
+granddaughter in the past two months.  He saw in her many of his own
+qualities, good and bad.  And, more than he cared to own, he had
+missed her and the young life she had brought into the quiet house.
+Most important of all, she was the last of the Cardews.  Although
+his capitulation when it came was curt, he was happier than he had
+been for weeks.
+
+"Bring her home," he said, "but tell her about Akers.  If she says
+that is off, I'll forget the rest."
+
+On her way to her room that night Grace Cardew encountered
+Mademoiselle, a pale, unhappy Mademoiselle, who seemed to spend her
+time mostly in Lily's empty rooms or wandering about corridors.
+Whenever the three members of the family were together she would
+retire to her own quarters, and there feverishly with her rosary
+would pray for a softening of hearts.  She did not comprehend these
+Americans, who were so kind to those beneath them and so hard to
+each other.
+
+"I wanted to see you, Mademoiselle," Grace said, not very steadily.
+"I have good news for you."
+
+Mademoiselle began to tremble.  "She is coming?  Lily is coming?"
+
+"Yes.  Will you have some fresh flowers put in her rooms in the
+morning?"
+
+Suddenly Mademoiselle forgot her years of repression, and flinging
+her arms around Grace's neck she kissed her.  Grace held her for a
+moment, patting her shoulder gently.
+
+"We must try to make her very happy, Mademoiselle.  I think things
+will be different now."
+
+Mademoiselle stood back and wiped her eyes.
+
+"But she must be different, too," she said.  "She is sweet and good,
+but she is strong of will, too.  The will to do, to achieve, that
+is one thing, and very good.  But the will to go one's own way,
+that is another."
+
+"The young are always headstrong, Mademoiselle."
+
+But, alone later on, her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered.
+If youth were the indictment against Lily, was she not still young?
+It took years, or suffering, or sometimes both, to break the will
+of youth and chasten its spirit.  God grant Lily might not have
+suffering.
+
+It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself,
+and thus save her the humiliation of coming back alone.  All morning
+housemaids were busy in Lily's rooms.  Rugs were shaken, floors waxed
+and rubbed, the silver frames and vases in her sitting room polished
+to refulgence.  And all morning Mademoiselle scolded and ran
+suspicious fingers into corners, and arranged and re-arranged great
+boxes of flowers.
+
+Long before the time she had ordered the car Grace was downstairs,
+dressed for the street, and clad in cool shining silk, was pacing
+the shaded hall.  There was a vague air of expectation about the
+old house.  In a room off the pantry the second man was polishing
+the buttons of his livery, using a pasteboard card with a hole in
+it to save the fabric beneath.  Grayson pottered about in the
+drawing room, alert for the parlor maid's sins of omission.
+
+The telephone in the library rang, and Grayson answered it, while
+Grace stood in the doorway.
+
+"A message from Miss Lily," he said.  "Mrs. Doyle has telephoned
+that Miss Lily is on her way here."
+
+Grace was vaguely disappointed.  She had wanted to go to Lily with
+her good news, to bring her home bag and baggage, to lead her into
+the house and to say, in effect, that this was home, her home.  She
+had felt that they, and not Lily, should take the first step.
+
+She went upstairs, and taking off her hat, smoothed her
+soft dark hair.  She did not want Lily to see how she had
+worried; she eyed herself carefully for lines.  Then she went
+down, to more waiting, and for the first time, to a little doubt.
+
+Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been.  There was no
+doubt about her close embrace of her mother, her happiness at
+seeing her.  She did not remove her gloves, however, and after
+she had put Grace in a chair and perched herself on the arm of it,
+there was a little pause.  Each was preparing to tell something,
+each hesitated.  Because Grace's task was the easier it was she
+who spoke first.
+
+"I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear," she said.
+"I--we want you to come home to us again."
+
+There was a queer, strained silence.
+
+"Who wants me?" Lily asked, unsteadily.
+
+"All of us.  Your grandfather, too.  He expects to find you here
+to-night.  I can explain to your Aunt Elinor over the telephone,
+and we can send for your clothes."
+
+Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room.  When she
+came back her eyes were filled with tears, and her left hand was
+bare.
+
+"It nearly kills me to hurt you," she said, "but--what about this?"
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+Grace seemed frozen in her chair.  At the sight of her mother's
+face Lily flung herself on her knees beside the chair.
+
+"Mother, mother," she said, "you must know how I love you.  Love
+you both.  Don't look like that.  I can't bear it."
+
+Grace turned away her face.
+
+"You don't love us.  You can't.  Not if you are going to marry that
+man."
+
+"Mother," Lily begged, desperately, "let me come home.  Let me bring
+him here.  I'll wait, if you'll only do that.  He is different; I
+know all that you want to say about his past.  He has never had a
+real chance in all his life.  He won't belong at first, but--he's
+a man, mother, a strong man.  And it's awfully important.  He can
+do so much, if he only will.  And he says he will, if I marry him."
+
+"I don't understand you," Grace said coldly.  "What can a man like
+that do, but wreck all our lives?"
+
+Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down.  "I'll
+tell you about that later," she said, and slowly got to her feet.
+"Is that all, mother?  You won't see him?  I can't bring him here?
+Isn't there any compromise?  Won't you meet me half-way?"
+
+"When you say half-way, you mean all the way, Lily."
+
+"I wanted you so," Lily said, drearily, "I need you so just now.  I
+am going to be married, and I have no one to go to.  Aunt Elinor
+doesn't understand, either.  Every way I look I find--I suppose I
+can't come back at all, then."
+
+"Your grandfather's condition was that you never see this Louis
+Akers again."
+
+Lily's resentment left her.  Anger was a thing for small matters,
+trivial affairs.  This that was happening, an irrevocable break with
+her family, was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears.  She
+wondered dully if any man were worth all this.  Perhaps she knew,
+sub-consciously, that Louis Akers was not.  All her exaltation was
+gone, and in its stead was a sort of dogged determination to see
+the thing through now, at any cost; to re-make Louis into the man
+he could be, to build her own house of life, and having built it,
+to live in it as best she could.
+
+"That is a condition I cannot fulfill, mother.  I am engaged to him."
+
+"Then you love him more than you do any of us, or all of us."
+
+"I don't know.  It is different," she said vaguely.
+
+She kissed her mother very tenderly when she went away, but there
+was a feeling of finality in them both.  Mademoiselle, waiting at
+the top of the stairs, heard the door close and could not believe
+her ears.  Grace went upstairs, her face a blank before the servants,
+and shut herself in her room.  And in Lily's boudoir the roses
+spread a heavy, funereal sweetness over the empty room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder.
+In some cities there had been rioting, but half-hearted and easily
+controlled.  Almost without exception it was the foreign and
+unassimilated element that broke the peace.  Alien women spat on
+the state police, and flung stones at them.  Here and there property
+was destroyed.  A few bomb outrages filled the newspapers with great
+scare-heads, and sent troops and a small army of secret service men
+here and there.
+
+In the American Federation of Labor a stocky little man grimly fought
+to oppose the Radical element, which was slowly gaining ground, and
+at the same time to retain his leadership.  The great steel companies,
+united at last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded,
+stood doggedly and courageously together, waiting for a return of
+sanity to the world.  The world seemed to have gone mad.  Everywhere
+in the country production was reduced by the cessation of labor,
+and as a result the cost of living was mounting.
+
+And every strike lost in the end.  Labor had yet to learn that to
+cease to labor may express a grievance, but that in itself it
+righted no wrongs.  Rather, it turned that great weapon, public
+opinion, without which no movement may succeed, against it.  And
+that to stand behind the country in war was not enough.  It must
+stand behind the country in peace.
+
+It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest
+link.  The weak link in the labor chain was its Radical element.
+Rioters were arrested with union cards in their pockets.  In vain
+the unions protested their lack of sympathy with the unruly element.
+The vast respectable family of union labor found itself accused of
+the sins of the minority, and lost standing thereby.
+
+At Friendship the unruly element was very strong.  For a time it
+held its meetings in a hall.  When that was closed it resorted to
+the open air.
+
+On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the
+unused polo field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers,
+and to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being
+built around the field, with the state police on guard over the
+carpenters.  In a few days the fence was finished, only to be partly
+demolished the next night, secretly and noiselessly.  But no further
+attempts were made to hold meetings there.  It was rumored that
+meetings were being secretly held in the woods near the town, but
+the rendezvous was not located.
+
+On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found
+one morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate
+was shot through the heart, from ambush.
+
+Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic
+riotings began to occur.  They seemed to originate without cause,
+and to end as suddenly as they began.  Usually they were in the
+outlying districts, but one or two took place in the city itself.
+The rioters were not all foreign strikers from the mills.  They
+were garment workers, hotel waiters, a rabble of the discontented
+from all trades.  The riots were to no end, apparently.  They began
+with a chance word, fought their furious way for an hour or so,
+and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and torn clothing
+behind them.
+
+On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable
+size.  The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majority
+of the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons,
+lengths of pipe and short, wicked iron bars.  Things were rather
+desperate until the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriously
+reenforced by a cool-headed number of citizens, led by a tall thin
+man who limped slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous support
+with a few words and considerable skill.
+
+The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to
+investigate an arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard a
+conversation between two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the
+battle, for comfort and a little conversation.
+
+"Can you beat that, Henry?" said one.  "Where the hell'd they come
+from?"
+
+"Search me," said Henry.  "D'you see the skinny fellow?  Limped,
+too.  D'you notice that?  Probably hurt in France.  But he hasn't
+forgotten how to fight, I'll tell the world."
+
+The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee.
+Willy Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or
+intention, purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contrary
+to the plans of their leaders.  And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black
+eye at home after the recent outburst, sized up the situation
+shrewdly.
+
+"You can boil a kettle too hard," he said, "and then the lid pops
+off.  Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire a
+little high, that's all.  They'll quit now, because they want to
+get us off guard later.  You and your committee can take a vacation,
+unless you can set them to electioneering for me.  They've had
+enough for a while, the devils.  They'll wait now for Akers to get
+in and make things easy for them.  Mind my words, boy.  That's the
+game."
+
+And the game it seemed to be.  Small violations of order still
+occurred, but no big ones.  To the headquarters in the Denslow
+Bank came an increasing volume of information, to be duly docketed
+and filed.  Some of it was valueless.  Now and then there came in
+something worth following up.  Thus one night Pink and a picked
+band, following a vague clew, went in automobiles to the state
+borderline, and held up and captured two trucks loaded with whiskey
+and destined for Friendship and Baxter.  He reported to Willy
+Cameron late that night.
+
+"Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road," he said.  "Hurt
+like sin to do it, though.  Felt like the fellow who shot the last
+passenger pigeon."
+
+But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, in
+the Boyd house things were rapidly approaching a climax, and that
+through Dan.  He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched.
+The strike was on his nerves; he felt his position keenly, resented
+Willy Cameron supporting the family, and had developed a curious
+jealousy of his mother's affection for him.
+
+Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an open
+break came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go to
+work again.  They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to and
+from the kitchen, carrying in the meal.  Her utmost thrift could
+not make it other than scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plate
+away.
+
+"Going back to work, are you?" he sneered.  "And how long do you
+think you'll be able to work?"
+
+"You keep quiet," Edith flared at him.  "I'm going to work.  That's
+all you need to know.  I can't sit here and let a man who doesn't
+belong to us provide every bite we eat, if you can."  Willy Cameron
+got up and closed the door, for Mrs. Boyd an uncanny ability to
+hear much that went on below.
+
+"Now," he said when he came back, "we might as well have this out.
+Dan has a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plan
+something."  He turned to Dan.  "It must be kept from your mother,
+Dan."
+
+"Plan something!" Dan snarled.  "I know what to plan, all right.
+I'll find the--" he broke into foul, furious language, but suddenly
+Willy Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.
+
+"I know who it is," Dan said, more quietly, "and he's got to marry
+her, or I'll kill him."
+
+"You know, do you?  Well, you don't," Edith said, "and I won't
+marry him anyhow."
+
+"You will marry him.  Do you think I'm going to see mother disgraced,
+sick as she is, and let you get away with it?  Where does Akers
+live?  You know, don't you?  You've been there, haven't you?"
+
+All Edith's caution was forgotten in her shame and anger.
+
+"Yes, I know," she said, hysterically, "but I won't tell you.  And
+I won't marry him.  I hate him.  If you go to him he'll beat you to
+death."  Suddenly the horrible picture of Dan in Akers' brutal hands
+overwhelmed her.  "Dan, you won't go?" she begged.  "He'll kill you."
+
+"A lot you'd care," he said, coldly.  "As if we didn't have enough
+already!  As if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson, next door,
+and been a decent woman.  And instead, you're a--"
+
+"Be quiet, Dan," Willy Cameron interrupted him.  "That sort of talk
+doesn't help any.  Edith is right.  If you go to Akers there will be
+a fight.  And that's no way to protect her."
+
+"God!" Dan muttered.  "With all the men in the world, to choose that
+rotten anarchist!"
+
+It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there in
+the badly lighted little room around the disordered table, with
+Ellen grimly listening in the doorway, and the odors of cooking
+still heavy in the air.  Edith sat there, her hands on the table,
+staring ahead, and recounted her wrongs.  She had never had a chance.
+Home had always been a place to get away from.  Nobody had cared
+what became of her.  And hadn't she tried to get out of the way?
+Only they all did their best to make her live.  She wished she had
+died.
+
+Dan, huddled low in his chair, his legs sprawling, stared at
+nothing with hopeless eyes.
+
+Afterwards Willy Cameron could remember nothing of the scene in
+detail.  He remembered its setting, but of all the argument and
+quarreling only one thing stood out distinctly, and that was
+Edith's acceptance of Dan's accusation.  It was Akers, then.
+And Lily Cardew was going to marry him.  Was in love with him.
+
+"Does he know how things are?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.  "Yes."
+
+"Does he offer to do anything?"
+
+"Him?  He does not.  And don't you go to him and try to get him to
+marry me.  I tell you I'd die first."
+
+He left them there, sitting in the half light, and going out into
+the hall picked up his hat.  Mrs. Boyd heard him and called to him,
+and before he went out he ran upstairs to her room.  It seemed to
+him, as he bent over her, that her lips were bluer than ever, her
+breath a little shallower and more difficult.  Her untouched supper
+tray was beside her.
+
+"I wasn't hungry," she explained.  "Seems to me, Willy, if you'd
+let me go downstairs so I could get some of my own cooking I'd eat
+better.  Ellen's all right, but I kind o' crave sweet stuff, and
+she don't like making desserts."
+
+"You'll be down before long," he assured her.  "And making me pies.
+Remember those pies you used to bake?"
+
+"You always were a great one for my pies," she said, complacently.
+
+He kissed her when he left.  He had always marveled at the strange
+lack of demonstrativeness in the household, and he knew that she
+valued his small tendernesses.
+
+"Now remember," he said, "light out at ten o'clock, and no going
+downstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke.
+When you do, it's my pipe."
+
+"I don't think you hardly ever go to bed, Willy."
+
+"Me?  Get too much sleep.  I'm getting fat with it."
+
+The stale little joke was never stale with her.  He left her smiling,
+and went down the stairs and out into the street.
+
+He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to find
+out from him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd's
+accusation.  He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty
+before he did anything.  Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men.
+If he could get the facts from Louis Akers--but he had no idea of
+what he would do then.  He couldn't very well tell Lily, but her
+people might do something.  Or Mrs. Doyle.
+
+He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than
+marry Akers, under the circumstances.  That her failure to marry
+Louis Akers would mean anything as to his own relationship with her
+he never even considered.  All that had been settled long ago, when
+she said she did not love him.
+
+At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for an
+hour or two he walked the streets.  The city seemed less majestic
+to him than usual; its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, it
+is true, but those very streets hid also vice and degradation, and
+ugly passions.  They sheltered, but also they concealed.
+
+At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told that
+Mr. Akers had come in.
+
+It was Akers himself who opened the door.  Because the night was
+hot he had shed coat and shirt, and his fine torso, bare to the
+shoulders and at the neck, gleamed in the electric light.  Willy
+Cameron had not seen him since those spring days when he had made
+his casual, bold-eyed visits to Edith at the pharmacy, and he had
+a swift insight into the power this man must have over women.  He
+himself was tall; but Akers was taller, fully muscled, his head
+strongly set on a neck like a column.  But he surmised that the
+man was soft, out of condition.  And he had lost the first
+elasticity of youth.
+
+Akers' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness
+when he opened the door.
+
+"Well!" he said.  "Making a late call, aren't you?"
+
+"What I had to say wouldn't wait."
+
+Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in.
+The room was very hot, for a small fire, littered as to its edges
+with papers, burned in the grate.  Although he knew that Akers had
+guessed the meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, there
+was a moment or two when each sparred for an opening.
+
+"Sit down.  Have a cigarette?"
+
+"No, thanks." He remained standing.
+
+"Or a high-ball?  I still have some fairly good whiskey."
+
+"No.  I came to ask you a question, Mr. Akers."
+
+"Well, answering questions is one of the best little things I do."
+
+"You know about Edith Boyd's condition.  She says you are responsible.
+Is that true?"
+
+Louis Akers was not unprepared.  Sooner or later he had known that
+Edith would tell.  But what he had not counted on was that she would
+tell any one who knew Lily.  He had felt that her leaving the
+pharmacy had eliminated that chance.  "What do you mean, her
+condition?"
+
+"You know.  She says she has told you."
+
+"You're pretty thick with her yourself, aren't you?"
+
+"I happen to live at the Boyd house."
+
+He was keeping himself well under control, but Akers saw his hand
+clench, and resorted to other tactics.  He was not angry himself,
+but he was wary now; he considered that life was unnecessarily
+complicated, and that he had a distinct grievance.
+
+"I have asked you a question, Mr. Akers."
+
+"You don't expect me to answer it, do you?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"If you have come here to talk to me about marrying her--"
+
+"She won't marry you," Willy Cameron said steadily.  "That's not
+the point I want your own acknowledgment of responsibility, that's
+all."
+
+Akers was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved.  He lighted a
+cigarette and over the match stared at the other man's quiet face.
+
+"No!" he said suddenly.  "I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility.
+She knew her way around long before I ever saw her.  Ask her.  She
+can't lie about it.  I can produce other men to prove what I say.
+I played around with her, but I don't know whose child that is, and
+I don't believe she does."
+
+"I think you are lying."
+
+"All right.  But I can produce the goods."
+
+Willy Cameron went very pale.  His hands were clenched again, and
+Akers eyed him warily.
+
+"None of that," he cautioned.  "I don't know what interest you've
+got in this, and I don't give a God-damn.  But you'd better not
+try any funny business with me."
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.  Much the sort of smile he had worn during
+the rioting.
+
+"I don't like to soil my hands on you," he said, "but I don't mind
+telling you that any man who ruins a girl's life and then tries to
+get out of it by defaming her, is a skunk."
+
+Akers lunged at him.
+
+Some time later Mr. William Wallace Cameron descended to the street.
+He wore his coat collar turned up to conceal the absence of certain
+articles of wearing apparel which he had mysteriously lost.  And
+he wore, too, a somewhat distorted, grim and entirely complacent
+smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+The city had taken the rioting with a weary philosophy.  It was
+tired of fighting.  For two years it had labored at high tension for
+the European war.  It had paid taxes and bought bonds, for the war.
+It had saved and skimped and denied itself, for the war.  And for
+the war it had made steel, steel for cannon and for tanks, for ships
+and for railroads.  It had labored hard and well, and now all it
+wanted was to be allowed to get back to normal things.  It wanted
+peace.
+
+It said, in effect: "I have both fought and labored, sacrificed and
+endured.  Give me now my rest of nights, after a day's work.  Give
+me marriage and children.  Give me contentment.  Give me the things
+I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
+
+And because the city craved peace, it was hard to rouse it to its
+danger.  It was war-weary, and its weariness was not of apathy, but
+of exhaustion.  It was not yet ready for new activity.
+
+Then, the same night that had seen Willy Cameron's encounter with
+Akers, it was roused from its lethargy.  A series of bomb outrages
+shook the downtown district.  The Denslow Bank was the first to go.
+Willy Cameron, inspecting a cut lip in his mirror, heard a dull
+explosion, and ran down to the street.  There he was joined by Joe
+Wilkinson, in trousers over his night shirt, and as they looked, a
+dull red glare showed against the sky.  Joe went back for more
+clothing, but Willy Cameron ran down the street.  At the first
+corner he heard a second explosion, further away and to the east,
+but apparently no fire followed it.  That, he learned later, was
+the City Club, founded by Anthony Cardew years before.
+
+The Denslow Bank was burning.  The facade had been shattered and
+from the interior already poured a steady flow of flame and smoke.
+He stood among the crowd, while the engines throbbed and the great
+fire hose lay along the streets, and watched the little upper
+room where the precious records of the Committee were burning
+brightly.  The front wall gone, the small office stood open to the
+world, a bright and shameless thing, flaunting its nakedness to
+the crowd below.
+
+He wondered why Providence should so play into the hands of the
+enemy.
+
+After a time he happened on Pink Denslow, wandering alone on the
+outskirts of the crowd.
+
+"Just about kill the governor, this," said Pink, heavily.  "Don't
+suppose the watchmen got out, either.  Not that they'd care," he
+added, savagely.
+
+"How about the vaults?  I suppose they are fireproof?"
+
+"Yes.  Do you realize that every record we've got has gone?  D'you
+suppose those fellows knew about them?"
+
+Willy Cameron had been asking himself the same question.
+
+"Trouble is," Pink went on, "you don't know who to trust.  They're
+not all foreigners.  Let's get away from here; it makes me sick."
+
+They wandered through the night together, almost unconsciously in
+the direction of the City Club, but within a block of it they
+realized that something was wrong.  A hospital ambulance dashed by,
+its gong ringing wildly, and a fire engine, not pumping, stood at
+the curb.
+
+"Come on," Pink said suddenly.  "There were two explosions.  It's
+just possible--"
+
+The club was more sinister than the burning bank; it was a mass of
+grim wreckage, black and gaping, with now and then the sound of
+settling masonry, and already dotted with the moving flash-lights
+of men who searched.
+
+To Pink this catastrophe was infinitely greater than that of the
+bank.  Men he knew had lived there.  There were old club servants
+who were like family retainers; one or two employees were
+ex-service men for whom he had found employment.  He stood there,
+with Willy Cameron's hand on his arm, with a new maturity and a
+vast suffering in his face.
+
+"Before God," he said solemnly, "I swear never to rest until the
+fellows behind this are tried, condemned and hanged.  You've heard
+it, Cameron."
+
+The death list for that night numbered thirteen, the two watchmen
+at the bank and eleven men at the club, two of them members.  Willy
+Cameron, going home at dawn, exhausted and covered with plaster dust,
+bought an extra and learned that a third bomb, less powerful, had
+wrecked the mayor's house.  It had been placed under the sleeping
+porch, and but for the accident of a sick baby the entire family
+would have been wiped out.
+
+Even his high courage began to waver.  His records were gone; that
+was all to do over again.  But what seemed to him the impasse was
+this fighting in the dark.  An unseen enemy, always.  And an enemy
+which combined with skill a total lack of any rules of warfare,
+which killed here, there and everywhere, as though for the sheer
+joy of killing.  It struck at the high but killed the low.  And
+it had only begun.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Dominant family traits have a way of skipping one generation and
+appearing in the next.  Lily Cardew at that stage of her life had
+a considerable amount of old Anthony's obstinacy and determination,
+although it was softened by a long line of Cardew women behind her,
+women who had loved, and suffered dominance because they loved.
+Her very infatuation for Louis Akers, like Elinor's for Doyle, was
+possibly an inheritance from her fore-mothers, who had been wont
+to overlook the evil in a man for the strength in him.  Only Lily
+mistook physical strength for moral fibre, insolence and effrontery
+for courage.
+
+In both her virtues and her faults, however, irrespective of
+heredity, Lily represented very fully the girl of her position and
+period.  With no traditions to follow, setting her course by no
+compass, taught to think but not how to think, resentful of tyranny
+but unused to freedom, she moved ahead along the path she had
+elected to follow, blindly and obstinately, yet unhappy and
+suffering.
+
+Her infatuation for Louis Akers had come to a new phase of its
+rapid development.  She had reached that point where a woman
+realizes that the man she loves is, not a god of strength and
+wisdom, but a great child who needs her.  It is at that point that
+one of two things happens: the weak woman abandons him, and follows
+her dream elsewhere.  The woman of character, her maternal instinct
+roused, marries him, bears him children, is both wife and mother
+to him, and finds in their united weaknesses such strength as she
+can.
+
+In her youth and self-sufficiency Lily stood ready to give, rather
+than to receive.  She felt now that he needed her more than she
+needed him.  There was something unconsciously patronizing those
+days in her attitude toward him, and if he recognized it he did not
+resent it.  Women had always been "easy" for him.  Her very
+aloofness, her faint condescension, her air of a young grande dame,
+were a part of her attraction for him.
+
+Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on.  But infatuation is blind;
+when it gains sight, it dies.  Already Lily was seeing him with the
+critical eyes of youth, his loud voice, his over-fastidious dress,
+his occasional grossnesses.  To offset these she placed vast
+importance on his promise to leave his old associates when she
+married him.
+
+The time was very close now.  She could not hold him off much longer,
+and she began to feel, too, that she must soon leave the house on
+Cardew Way.  Doyle's attitude to her was increasingly suspicious
+and ungracious.  She knew that he had no knowledge of Louis's
+promise, but he began to feel that she was working against him, and
+showed it.
+
+And in Louis Akers too she began to discern an inclination not to
+pull out until after the election.  He was ambitious, and again and
+again he urged that he would be more useful for the purpose in her
+mind if he were elected first.
+
+That issue came to a climax the day she had seen her mother and
+learned the terms on which she might return home.  She was alarmed
+by his noisy anger at the situation.
+
+"Do sit down, Louis, and be quiet," she said.  "You have known their
+attitude all along, haven't you?"
+
+"I'll show them," he said, thickly.  "Damned snobs!"  He glanced at
+her then uneasily, and her expression put him on his guard.  "I
+didn't mean that, little girl.  Honestly I didn't.  I don't care for
+myself.  It's you."
+
+"You must understand that they think they are acting for my good.
+And I am not sure," she added, her clear eyes on him, "that they are
+not right.  You frighten me sometimes, Louis."
+
+But a little later he broke out again.  If he wasn't good enough to
+enter their house, he'd show them something.  The election would
+show them something.  They couldn't refuse to receive the mayor of
+the city.  She saw then that he was bent on remaining with Doyle
+until after the election.
+
+Lily sat back, listening and thinking.  Sometimes she thought that
+he did not love her at all.  He always said he wanted her, but that
+was different.
+
+"I think you love yourself more than you love me, Louis," she said,
+when he had exhausted himself.  "I don't believe you know what love
+is."
+
+That brought him to his knees, his arms around her, kissing her
+hands, begging her not to give him up, and once again her curious
+sense of responsibility for him triumphed.
+
+"You will marry me soon, dear, won't you?" he implored her.  But she
+thought of Willy Cameron, oddly enough, even while his arms were
+around her; of the difference in the two men.  Louis, big, crouching,
+suppliant and insistent; Willy Cameron, grave, reserved and steady,
+taking what she now knew was the blow of her engagement like a
+gentleman and a soldier.
+
+They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions
+of men in love, the men who offer much and give little, the others
+who, out of a deep humility, offer little and give everything they
+have.
+
+In the end, nothing was settled.  After he had gone Lily, went up
+to Elinor's room.  She had found in Elinor lately a sort of nervous
+tension that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily
+told her of her visit home, and of her determination to marry Louis
+within the next few days.  Elinor had dropped her sewing and
+clenched her hands in her lap.
+
+"Not soon, Lily!" she said.  "Oh, not soon.  Wait a little--wait
+two months."
+
+"Two months?" Lily said wonderingly.  "Why two months?"
+
+"Because, at the end of two months, nothing would make you marry
+him," Elinor said, almost violently.  "I have sat by and waited,
+because I thought you would surely see your mistake.  But now--Lily,
+do you envy me my life?"
+
+"No," Lily said truthfully; "but you love him."
+
+Elinor sat, her eyes downcast and brooding.
+
+"You are different," she said finally.  "You will break, where I
+have only bent."
+
+But she said no more about a delay.  She had been passive too long
+to be able to take any strong initiative now.  And all her moral and
+physical courage she was saving for a great emergency.
+
+Cardew Way was far from the center of town, and Lily knew nothing of
+the bomb outrages of that night.
+
+When she went down to breakfast the next morning she found Jim Doyle
+pacing the floor of the dining room in a frenzy of rage, a newspaper
+clenched in his hand.  By the window stood Elinor, very pale and
+with slightly reddened eyes.  They had not heard her, and Doyle
+continued a furious harangue.
+
+"The fools!" he said.  "Damn such material as I have to work with!
+This isn't the time, and they know it.  I've warned them over and
+over.  The fools!"
+
+Elinor saw her then, and made a gesture of warning.  But it was too
+late.  Lily had a certain quality of directness, and it did not
+occur to her to dissemble.
+
+"Is anything wrong?" she asked, and went at once to Elinor.  She
+had once or twice before this stood between them for Elinor's
+protection.
+
+"Everything is as happy as a May morning," Doyle sneered.  "Your
+Aunt Elinor has an unpleasant habit of weeping for joy."
+
+Lily stiffened, but Elinor touched her arm.
+
+"Sit down and eat your breakfast, Lily," she said, and left the room.
+
+Doyle stood staring at Lily angrily.  He did not know how much she
+had heard, how much she knew.  At the moment he did not care.  He
+had a reckless impulse to tell her the truth, but his habitual
+caution prevailed.  He forced a cold smile.
+
+"Don't bother your pretty head about politics," he said.
+
+Lily was equally cold.  Her dislike of him had been growing for
+weeks, coupled to a new and strange distrust.
+
+"Politics?  You seem to take your politics very hard."
+
+"I do," he said urbanely.  "Particularly when I am fighting my wife's
+family.  May I pour you some coffee?"
+
+And pour it he did, eyeing her furtively the while, and brought it
+to her.
+
+"May I give you a word of advice, Lily?" he said.  "Don't treat your
+husband to tears at breakfast--unless you want to see him romping
+off to some other woman."
+
+"If he cared to do that I shouldn't want him anyhow."
+
+"You're a self-sufficient child, aren't you?  Well, the best of us
+do it, sometimes."
+
+He had successfully changed the trend of her thoughts, and he went
+out, carrying the newspaper with him.
+
+Nevertheless, he began to feel that her presence in the house was a
+menace.  With all her theories he knew that a word of the truth
+would send her flying, breathless with outrage, out of his door.
+He could quite plainly visualize that home-coming of hers.  The
+instant steps that would be taken against him, old Anthony on the
+wire appealing to the governor, Howard closeted with the Chief of
+Police, an instant closing of the net.  And he was not ready for
+the clash.
+
+No.  She must stay.  If only Elinor would play the game, instead of
+puling and mouthing!  In the room across the hall where his desk
+stood he paced the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his
+head bent.  He saw, and not far away now, himself seated in the
+city hall, holding the city in the hollow of his hand.  From that
+his dreams ranged far.  He saw himself the head, not of the nation
+--there would be no nation, as such--but of the country.  The very
+incidents of the night before, blundering as they were, showed him
+the ease with which the new force could be applied.
+
+He was drunk with power.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon, in the person of
+Pink Denslow.  She had assumed some of Elinor's cares for the day,
+for Elinor herself had not been visible since breakfast.  It
+soothed the girl to attend to small duties, and she was washing
+and wiping Elinor's small stock of fine china when the bell rang.
+
+"Mr. Denslow is calling," said Jennie.  "I didn't know if you'd
+see him, so I said I didn't know if you were in."
+
+Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him.  He
+was covered with plaster dust, even to the brim of his hat, and
+his hands were scratched and rough.
+
+"Pink!" she said.  "Why, what is the matter?"
+
+For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the
+first time in his life perhaps, entirely indifferent to it.
+
+"I've been digging in the ruins," he said.  "Is that man Doyle in
+the house?"
+
+Her color faded.  Suddenly she noticed a certain wildness about
+Pink's eyes, and the hard strained look of his mouth.
+
+"What ruins, Pink?" she managed to ask.
+
+"All the ruins," he said.  "You know, don't you?  The bank, our
+bank, and the club?"
+
+It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw
+it all, a dreadful picture which had somehow superimposed upon it
+a vision of Jim Doyle with the morning paper, and the thing that
+this was not the time for.
+
+"That's all," he finished.  "Eleven at the club, two of them my
+own fellows.  In France, you know.  I found one of them myself,
+this morning."  He stared past her, over her head.  "Killed for
+nothing, the way the Germans terrorized Belgium.  Haven't you seen
+the papers?"
+
+"No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course.  Lily, I want you
+to leave here.  If you don't, if you stay now, you're one of them,
+whether you believe what they preach or not.  Don't you see that?"
+
+She was not listening.  Her faith was dying hard, and the mental
+shock had brought her dizziness and a faint nausea.  He stood
+watching her, and when she glanced up at him it seemed to her that
+Pink was hard.  Hard and suspicious, and the suspicion was for her.
+It was incredible.
+
+"Do you believe what they preach?" he demanded.  "I've got to know,
+Lily.  I've suffered the tortures of the damned all night."
+
+"I didn't know it meant this."
+
+"Do you?" he repeated.
+
+"No.  You ought to know me better than that.  But I don't believe
+that it started here, Pink.  He was very angry this morning, and
+he wouldn't let me see the paper."
+
+"He's behind it all right," Pink said grimly.  "Maybe he didn't
+plant the bombs, but his infernal influence did it, just the same.
+Do you mean to say you've lived here all this time and don't know
+he is plotting a revolution?  What if he didn't authorize these
+things last night?  He is only waiting, to place a hundred bombs
+instead of three.  A thousand, perhaps."
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"We've got their own statements.  Department of Justice found them.
+The fools, to think they can overthrow the government!  Can you
+imagine men planning to capture this city and hold it?"
+
+"It wouldn't be possible, Pink?"
+
+"It isn't possible now, but they'll make a try at it."
+
+There was a short pause, with Lily struggling to understand.  Pink's
+set face relaxed somewhat.  All that night he had been fighting for
+his belief in her.
+
+"I never dreamed of it, Pink.  I suppose all the talk I've heard
+meant that, but I never--are you sure?  About Jim Doyle, I mean."
+
+"We know he is behind it.  We haven't got the goods on him yet, but
+we know.  Cameron knows.  You ask him and he'll tell you."
+
+"Willy Cameron?"
+
+"Yes.  He's had some vision, while the rest of us--!  He's got a
+lot of us working now, Lily.  We are on the right trail, too, although
+we lost some records last night that put us back a couple of months.
+We'll get them, all right.  We'll smash their little revolution into
+a cocked hat."  It occurred to him, then, that this house was a poor
+place for such a confidence.  "I'll tell you about it later.  Get
+your things now, and let me take you home."
+
+But Lily's problem was too complex for Pink's simple remedy.  She
+was stricken with sudden conviction; the very mention of Willy
+Cameron gave Pink's statements authority.  But to go like that, to
+leave Elinor in that house, with all that it implied, was impossible.
+And there was her own private problem to dispose of.
+
+"I'll go this afternoon, Pink.  I'll promise you that.  But I can't
+go with you now.  I can't.  You'll have to take my word, that's all.
+And you must believe I didn't know."
+
+"Of course you didn't know," he said, sturdily.  "But I hate like
+thunder to go and leave you here."  He picked up his hat, reluctantly.
+"If I can do anything--"
+
+Lily's mind was working more clearly now.  This was the thing Louis
+Akers had been concerned with, then, a revolution against his
+country.  But it was the thing, too, that he had promised to abandon.
+He was not a killer.  She knew him well, and he was not a killer.
+He had got to a certain point, and then the thing had sickened him.
+Even without her he would never have gone through with it.  But it
+would be necessary now to get his information quickly.  Very quickly.
+
+"Suppose," she said, hesitatingly, "suppose I tell you that I think
+I am going to be able to help you before long?"
+
+"Help?  I want you safe.  This is not work for women."
+
+"But suppose I can bring you a very valuable ally?" she persisted.
+"Some one who knows all about certain plans, and has changed his
+views about them?"
+
+"One of them?"
+
+"He has been."
+
+"Is he selling his information?"
+
+"In a way, yes," said Lily, slowly.
+
+"Ware the fellow who sells information," Pink said.  "But we'll be
+glad to have it.  We need it, God knows.  And--you'll leave?"
+
+"I couldn't stay, could I?"
+
+He kissed her hand when he went away, doing it awkwardly and
+self-consciously, but withal reverently.  She wondered, rather
+dully, why she could not love Pink.  A woman would be so safe with
+him, so sure.
+
+She had not even then gathered the full force of what he had told
+her.  But little by little things came back to her; the man on guard
+in the garden; the incident of the locked kitchen door; Jim Doyle
+once talking angrily over a telephone in his study, although no
+telephone, so far as she knew, was installed in the room; his
+recent mysterious absences, and the increasing visits of the hateful
+Woslosky.
+
+She went back to Louis.  This was what he had meant.  He had known
+all along, and plotted with them; even if his stomach had turned
+now, he had been a party to this infamy.  Even then she did not hate
+him; she saw him, misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding
+phrases, lured on by one of those wild dreams of empire to which
+men were sometimes given.  She did not love him any more; she was
+sorry for him.
+
+She saw her position with the utmost clearness.  To go home was to
+abandon him, to lose him for those who needed what he could give,
+to send him back to the enemy.  She had told Pink she could secure
+an ally for a price, and she was the price.  There was not an ounce
+of melodrama in her, as she stood facing the situation.  She
+considered, quite simply, that she had assumed an obligation which
+she must carry out.  Perhaps her pride was dictating to her also.
+To go crawling home, bowed to the dust, to admit that life had
+beaten her, to face old Anthony's sneers and her mother's pity
+--that was hard for any Cardew.
+
+She remembered Elinor's home-comings of years ago, the strained
+air of the household, the whispering servants, and Elinor herself
+shut away, or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs
+when her father was out of the house.
+
+No, she could not face that.
+
+Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass; she faced that
+uncompromisingly.  She would marry Louis, and hold him to his
+promise, and so perhaps out of all this misery some good would
+come.  But at the thought of marriage she found herself trembling
+violently.  With no love and no real respect to build on, with an
+intuitive knowledge of the man's primitive violences, the
+reluctance toward marriage with him which she had always felt
+crystallized into something very close to dread.
+
+But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and
+fully determined.  At Elinor's door she tapped lightly, and she
+heard movements within.  Then Elinor opened the door wide.  She
+had been lying on her bed, and automatically after closing the
+door she began to smooth it.  Lily felt a wave of intense pity
+for her.
+
+"I wish you would go away from here, Aunt Elinor," she said.
+
+Elinor glanced up, without surprise.
+
+"Where could I go?"
+
+"If you left him definitely, you could go home."
+
+Elinor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly
+to desperation.
+
+"You know what is going on," she said, her voice strained.  "You
+don't believe it is right; you know it is wicked.  Clothe it in all
+the fine language in the world, Aunt Elinor, and it is still wicked.
+If you stay here you condone it.  I won't.  I am going away."
+
+"I wish you had never come, Lily."
+
+"It's too late for that," Lily said, stonily.  "But it is not too
+late for you to get away."
+
+"I shall stay," Elinor said, with an air of finality.  But Lily
+made one more effort.
+
+"He is killing you."
+
+"No, he is killing himself."  Suddenly Elinor flared into a
+passionate outburst.  "Don't you think I know where all this is
+leading?  Do you believe for a moment that I think all this can
+lead to anything but death?  It is a madness, Lily; they are all
+mad, these men.  Don't you know that I have talked and argued
+and prayed, against it?"
+
+"Then come away.  You have done all you could, and you have failed,
+haven't you?"
+
+"It is not time for me to go," Elinor said.  And Lily, puzzled and
+baffled, found herself again looking into Elinor's quiet, inscrutable
+eyes.
+
+Elinor had taken it for granted that the girl was going home, and
+together they packed almost in silence.  Once Elinor looked up
+from folding a garment, and said:
+
+"You said you had not understood before, but that now you do.  What
+did you mean?"
+
+"Pink Denslow was here."
+
+"What does he know?"
+
+"Do you think I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor?  It isn't that I
+don't trust you.  You must believe that, but don't you see that so
+long as you stay here--he said that to me--you are one of them."
+
+Elinor resumed her folding.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I am one of them," she said quietly.  "And you are
+right.  You must not tell me anything.  Pink is Henry Denslow's son,
+I suppose."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do they--still live in the old house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Elinor continued her methodical work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Willy Cameron was free that evening.  Although he had not slept at
+all the night before, he felt singularly awake and active.  The
+Committee had made temporary quarters of his small back room at the
+pharmacy, and there had sat in rather depressed conclave during a
+part of the afternoon.  Pink Denslow had come in late, and had
+remained, silent and haggard, through the debate.
+
+There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get
+files and card indexes.  Greater secrecy was to be preserved and
+enjoined, the location of the office to be known only to a small
+inner circle, and careful policing of it and of the building which
+housed it to be established.  As a further safeguard, two duplicate
+files would be kept in other places.  The Committee groaned over
+its own underestimate of the knowledge of the radicals.
+
+The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the
+bank building where their file was kept, and the club, where
+nine-tenths of the officers of the Committee were members.  The
+significance of the double outrage was unquestionable.
+
+When the meeting broke up Pink remained behind.  He found it rather
+difficult to broach the matter in his mind.  It was always hard for
+him to talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had had a growing
+conviction that Willy Cameron found it equally difficult.  He
+wondered if Cameron, too, was in love with Lily.  There had been
+a queer look in his face on those rare occasions when Pink had
+mentioned her, a sort of exaltation, and an odd difficulty
+afterwards in getting back to the subject in hand.
+
+Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for Willy
+Cameron, a strange, loyal, half wistful, totally unselfish devotion.
+It had steadied him, when the loss of Lily might have made him
+reckless, and had taken the form in recent weeks of finding
+innumerable business opportunities, which Willy Cameron cheerfully
+refused to take.
+
+"I'll stay here until this other thing is settled," was Willy's
+invariable answer.  "I have a certain amount of time here, and the
+fellows can drop in to see me without causing suspicion.  In an
+office it would be different.  And besides, I can't throw Mr.
+Davis down.  His wife is in bad shape."
+
+So, that afternoon, Pink waited until the Committee had dispersed,
+and then said, with some difficulty:
+
+"I saw her, Cameron.  She has promised to leave."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"This afternoon.  I wanted to take her away, but she had some things
+to do."
+
+"Then she hadn't known before?"
+
+"No.  She thought it was just talk.  And they'd kept the papers from
+her.  She hadn't heard about last night.  Well, that's all.  I
+thought you'd want to know."
+
+Pink started out, but Willy Cameron called him back.
+
+"Have any of your people any influence with the Cardews?"
+
+"No one has any influence with the Cardews, if you mean the Cardew
+men.  Why?"
+
+"Because Cardew has got to get out of the mayoralty campaign.
+That's all."
+
+"That's a-plenty," said Pink, grinning.  "Why don't you go and tell
+him so?"
+
+"I'm thinking of it.  He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll
+defeat Hendricks by splitting the vote, and let the other side in.
+And you know what that means."
+
+"I know it," Pink observed, "but Mr. Cardew doesn't, and he won't
+after you've told him.  They've put a lot of money in, and once a
+Cardew has invested in a thing he holds on like death.  Especially
+the old man.  Wouldn't wonder he was the fellow who pounded the
+daylights out of Akers last night," he added.
+
+Willy Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door
+into the shop, and opened a window.
+
+"Akers?" he inquired.
+
+"Noon edition has it," Pink said.  "Claims to have been attacked in
+his rooms by two masked men.  Probably wouldn't have told it, but
+the doctor talked.  Looks as though he could wallop six masked men,
+doesn't he?"
+
+"Yes," said Willy Cameron, reflectively.  "Yes; he does, rather."
+
+He felt more hopeful than he had for days.  Lily on her way home,
+clear once more of the poisonous atmosphere of Doyle and his
+associates; Akers temporarily out of the way, perhaps for long
+enough to let the normal influences of her home life show him to
+her in a real perspective; and a rather unholy but very human joy
+that he had given Akers a part of what was coming to him--all
+united to cheer him.  He saw Lily going home, and a great wave
+of tenderness flooded him.  If only they would be tactful and
+careful, if only they would be understanding and kind.  If they
+would only be normal and every-day, and accept her as though she
+had never been away.  These people were so hedged about with
+conventions and restrictions, they put so much emphasis on the
+letter and so little on the spirit.  If only--God, if only
+they wouldn't patronize her!
+
+His mother would have known how to receive her.  He felt, that
+afternoon, a real homesickness for his mother.  He saw her, ample
+and comfortable and sane, so busy with the comforts of the body
+that she seemed to ignore the soul, and yet bringing healing
+with her every matter-of-fact movement.
+
+If only Lily could have gone back to her, instead of to that great
+house, full of curious eyes and whispering voices.
+
+He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper.  Mr.
+Hendricks had lost flesh and some of his buoyancy, but he was
+persistently optimistic.
+
+"Up to last night I'd have said we were done, son," he observed.
+"But this bomb business has settled them.  The labor vote'll split
+on it, sure as whooping cough."
+
+"They've bought a half-page in all the morning papers, disclaiming
+all responsibility and calling on all citizens to help them in
+protecting private property."
+
+"Have they, now," said Hendricks, with grudging admiration.  "Can
+you beat that?  Where do they get the money, anyhow?  If I lost my
+watch these days I'd have to do some high-finance before I'd be
+able to advertise for it."
+
+"All right, see Cardew," were his parting words.  "But he doesn't
+want this election any more than I want my right leg.  He'll stick.
+You can talk, Cameron, I'll say it.  But you can't pry him off
+with kind words, any more than you can a porous plaster."
+
+Behind Mr. Hendricks' colloquialisms there was something sturdy
+and fine.  His very vernacular made him popular; his honesty was
+beyond suspicion.  If he belonged to the old school in politics,
+he had most of its virtues and few of its vices.  He would take
+care of his friends, undoubtedly, but he was careful in his choice
+of friends.  He would make the city a good place to live in.
+Like Willy Cameron, he saw it, not a center of trade so much as
+a vast settlement of homes.  Business supported the city in his
+mind, not the city business.
+
+Nevertheless the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of
+a desperate remedy for a desperate disease that Willy Cameron, after
+a careful toilet, rang the bell of the Cardew house that night.  He
+had no hope of seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were
+under one roof gave him a sense of nearness and of comfort in her
+safety.
+
+Dinner was recently over, and he found both the Cardews, father and
+son, in the library smoking.  He had arrived at a bad moment, for
+the bomb outrage, coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home
+under the given conditions, had roused Anthony to a cold rage, and
+left Howard with a feeling of helplessness.
+
+Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and
+offered him a chair.
+
+"I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron," he said.  "You made
+me wish I could have had your support."
+
+"I came to talk about that.  I am sorry to have to come in the
+evening, but I am not free at any other time."
+
+"When we go into politics," said old Anthony in his jibing voice,
+"the ordinary amenities have to go.  When you are elected, Howard,
+I shall live somewhere else."
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+"I don't think you will be put to that inconvenience, Mr. Cardew."
+
+"What's that?" Old Anthony's voice was incredulous.  Here, in his
+own house, this whipper-snapper--
+
+"I am sure Mr. Howard Cardew realizes he cannot be elected."
+
+The small ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal
+for the family.  Howard glanced at him, and said urbanely:
+
+"Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron?  Or a liqueur?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you.  If I can have a few minutes' talk with you--"
+
+"If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you
+that I am heavily interested in this matter myself," said old Anthony.
+"I have put in a great deal of money.  If you people are going to
+drop out, I want to hear it.  You've played the devil with us already,
+with your independent candidate who can't talk English."
+
+Willy Cameron kept his temper.
+
+"No," he said, slowly.  "It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks
+withdrawing.  It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out."
+
+Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.
+
+"It's like this," Willy Cameron said.  "Your son knows it.  Even if
+we drop out he won't get it.  Justly or unjustly--and I mean that
+--nobody with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office
+in this city.  There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that.
+I am telling you a fact."
+
+Howard had listened attentively and without anger.  "For a long
+time, Mr. Cameron," he said, "I have been urging men of--of
+position in the city, to go into politics.  We have needed to get
+away from the professional politician.  I went in, without much
+hope of election, to--well, you can say to blaze a trail.  It is
+not being elected that counts with me, so much as to show my
+willingness to serve."
+
+Old Anthony recovered his voice.
+
+"The Cardews made this town, sir," he barked.  "Willingness to
+serve, piffle!  We need a business man to run the city, and by
+God, we'll get it!"
+
+"You'll get an anarchist," said Willy Cameron, slightly flushed.
+
+"If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political
+trick.  And how do we know that your Vigilance Committee isn't a
+trick, too?  You try to tell us that there is an organized movement
+here to do heaven knows what, and by sheer terror you build up a
+machine which appeals to the public imagination.  You don't say
+anything about votes, but you see that they vote for your man.
+Isn't that true?"
+
+"Yes.  If they can keep an anarchist out of office.  Akers is an
+anarchist.  He calls himself something else, but that's what it
+amounts to.  And those bombs last night were not imaginary."
+
+The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on
+Anthony Cardew.  After all, more than anything else, he wanted
+Akers defeated.  The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and
+ended, oddly enough, in Willy Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually
+uniting against Howard.  What Willy Cameron told about Jim Doyle
+fed the old man's hatred of his daughter's husband, and there was
+something very convincing about Cameron himself.  Something of
+fearlessness and honesty that began, slowly, to dispose Anthony in
+his favor.
+
+It was Howard who held out.
+
+"If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a
+licking," he said, quietly obstinate.  "Grant your point, that I'm
+defeated.  All right, I'll be defeated--but I won't quit."
+
+And Anthony Cardew, confronted by that very quality of obstinacy
+which had been his own weapon for so many years, retired in high
+dudgeon to his upper rooms.  He was living in a strange new world,
+a reasonable soul on an unreasonable earth, an earth where a man's
+last sanctuary, his club, was blown up about him, and a man's
+family apparently lived only to thwart him.
+
+With Anthony gone, Howard dropped the discussion with the air of
+a man who has made a final stand.
+
+"What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly," he
+observed, "because--you probably do not know this--my sister
+married him some years ago.  It was a most unhappy affair."
+
+"I do know it.  For that reason I am glad that Miss Lily has come
+home."
+
+"Has come home?  She has not come home, Mr. Cameron.  There was a
+condition we felt forced to make, and she refused to agree to it.
+Perhaps we were wrong.  I--"
+
+Willy Cameron got up.
+
+"Was that to-day?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"But she was coming home to-day.  She was to leave there this
+afternoon."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Denslow saw her there this afternoon.  She agreed to leave at
+once.  He had told her of the bombs, and of other things.  She
+hadn't understood before, and she was horrified.  It is just
+possible Doyle wouldn't let her go."
+
+"But--that's ridiculous.  She can't be a prisoner in my sister's
+house."
+
+"Will you telephone and find out if she is there?"  Howard went
+to the telephone at once.  It seemed to Willy Cameron that he stood
+there for uncounted years, and as though, through all that eternity
+of waiting, he knew what the answer would be.  And that he knew,
+too, what that answer meant, where she had gone, what she had done.
+If only she had come to him.  If only she had come to him.  He would
+have saved her from herself.  He--
+
+"She is not there," Howard Cardew said, in a voice from which all
+life had gone.  "She left this afternoon, at four o'clock.  Of
+course she has friends.  Or she may have gone to a hotel.  We had
+managed to make it practically impossible for her to come home."
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at his watch.  He had discounted the worst
+before it came, and unlike the older man, was ready for action.  It
+was he who took hold of the situation.
+
+"Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels," he said.  "And if
+you will drop me downtown--I'll tell you where--I'll follow up
+something that has just occurred to me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+In one way Howard had been correct in his surmise.  It had been Lily's
+idea to go to a hotel until she had made some definite plan.  She
+would telephone Louis then, and the rest--she did not think beyond
+that.  She called a taxi and took a small bag with her, but in the
+taxicab she suddenly realized that she could not go to any of the
+hotels she knew.  She would be recognized at once.
+
+She wanted a little time to herself, time to think.  And before it
+was discovered that she had left Cardew Way she must see Louis, and
+judge again if he intended to act in good faith.  While he was with
+her, reiterating his promises, she believed him, but when he was
+gone, she always felt, a curious doubt.
+
+She thought then of finding a quiet room somewhere, and stopping the
+cab, bought a newspaper.  It was when she was searching for the
+"rooms for rent" column that she saw he had been attacked and
+slightly injured.
+
+They had got him.  He had said that if they ever suspected him of
+playing them false they would get him, and now they had done so.
+That removed the last doubt of his good faith from her mind.  She
+felt indignation and dismay, and a sort of aching consciousness that
+always she brought only trouble to the people who cared for her;
+she felt that she was going through her life, leaving only
+unhappiness behind her.
+
+He had suffered, and for her.
+
+She told the chauffeur to go to the Benedict Apartments, and sitting
+back read the notice again.  He had been attacked by two masked men
+and badly bruised, after putting up a terrific resistance.  They
+would wear masks, of course.  They loved the theatrical.  Their
+very flag was theatrical.  And he had made a hard fight That was
+like him, too; he was a fighter.
+
+She was a Cardew, and she loved strength.  There were other men,
+men like Willy Cameron, for instance, who were lovable in many ways,
+but they were not fighters.  They sat back, and let life beat them,
+and they took the hurt bravely and stoically.  But they never got
+life by the throat and shook it until it gave up what they wanted.
+
+She had never been in a bachelors' apartment house before, and she
+was both frightened and self-conscious.  The girl at the desk eyed
+her curiously while she telephoned her message, and watched her as
+she moved toward the elevator.  "Ever seen her before?" she said
+to the hall boy.
+
+"No.  She's a new one."
+
+"Face's kind of familiar to me," said the telephone girl,
+reflectively.  "Looks worried, doesn't she?  Two masked men!  Huh!
+All Sam took up there last night was a thin fellow with a limp."
+
+The hall boy grinned.
+
+"Then his limp didn't bother him any.  Sam says y'ought to seen
+that place."
+
+In the meantime, outside the door of Akers' apartment, Lily's fine
+courage almost left her.  Had it not been for the eyes of the
+elevator man, fixed on her while he lounged in his gateway, she
+might have gone away, even then.  But she stood there, committed
+to a course of action, and rang.
+
+Louis himself admitted her, an oddly battered Louis, in a dressing
+gown and slippers; an oddly watchful Louis, too, waiting, after the
+manner of men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat
+would jump.  He had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge.
+All day he had sat there, unable to go out, and had wondered just
+when Cameron would see her and tell her about Edith Boyd.  For,
+just as Willy Cameron rushed him for the first time, there had
+been something from between clenched teeth about marrying another
+girl, under the given circumstances.  Only that had not been the
+sort of language in which it was delivered.
+
+"I just saw about it in the newspaper," Lily said.  "How dreadful,
+Louis."
+
+He straightened himself and drew a deep breath.  The game was
+still his, if he played it right.
+
+"Bad enough, dear," he said, "but I gave them some trouble,
+too." He pushed a chair toward her.  "It was like you to come.
+But I don't like your seeing me all mussed up, little girl."
+
+He made a move then to kiss her, but she drew back.
+
+"Please!" she said.  "Not here.  And I can't sit down.  I can't
+stay.  I only came because I wanted to tell you something and I
+didn't want to telephone it.  Louis, Jim Doyle knew about those
+bombs last night.  He didn't want it to happen before the election,
+but--that doesn't alter the fact, does it?"
+
+"How do you know he knew?"
+
+"I do know.  That's all.  And I have left Aunt Elinor's."
+
+"No!"
+
+"I couldn't stay, could I?"  She looked up at him, the little
+wistful glance that Willy always found so infinitely touching, like
+the appeal of a willful but lovable child, that has somehow got
+into trouble.  "And I can't go home, Louis, unless I--"
+
+"Unless you give me up," he finished for her.  "Well?"
+
+She hesitated.  She hated making terms with him, and yet somehow
+she must make terms.
+
+"Well?" he repeated.  "Are you going to throw me over?"
+
+Apparently merely putting the thought into words crystallized all
+his fears of the past hours; seeing her there, too, had intensified
+his want of her.  She stood there, where he had so often dreamed
+of seeing her, but still holding him off with the aloofness that
+both chilled and inflamed him, and with a question in her eyes.
+He held out his arms, but she drew back.
+
+"Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them, if I
+marry you, and doing all you can to stop them?"
+
+"You know I mean it."
+
+"Then--I'll not go home."
+
+"You are going to marry me?  Now?"
+
+"Whenever you say."
+
+Suddenly she was trembling violently, and her lips felt dry and
+stiff.  He pushed her into a chair, and knelt down beside her.
+
+"You poor little kid," he said, softly.
+
+Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts; Lily his, in his
+arms, in spite of that white-faced drug clerk with the cold eyes;
+himself in the Cardew house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardew
+at his own cynical game; and persistently held back and often rising
+again to the surface, Woslosky and Doyle and the others, killers that
+they were, pursuing him with their vengeance over the world.  They
+would have to be counted in; they were his price, as he, had he
+known it, was Lily's.
+
+"My wife!" he said.  "My wife."
+
+She stiffened in his arms.
+
+"I must go, Louis," she said.  "I can't stay here.  I felt very
+queer downstairs.  They all stared so."
+
+There was a clock on the mantel shelf, and he looked at it.  It was
+a quarter before five.
+
+"One thing is sure, Lily," he said.  "You can't wander about alone,
+and you are right--you can't stay here.  They probably recognized
+you downstairs.  You are pretty well known."
+
+For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised
+herself, and that the net, of her own making, was closing fast about
+her.
+
+"I wish I hadn't come."
+
+"Why?  We can fix that all right in a jiffy."
+
+But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final
+struggle.  In a few days, even to-morrow, but not just then.  He
+listened, impatiently, his eyes on the clock.  Beside it in the
+mirror he saw his own marred face, and it added to his anger.  In
+the end he took control of the situation; went into his bedroom,
+changed into a coat, and came out again, ready for the street.  He
+telephoned down for a taxicab, and then confronted her, his face
+grim.
+
+"I've let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily," he
+said.  "Now I'm in charge.  It won't be to-morrow or next week or
+next month.  It will be now.  You're here.  You've given them a
+chance to talk downstairs.  You've nowhere to go, and you're
+going to marry me at once."
+
+In the cab he explained more fully.  They would get a license, and
+then go to one of the hotels.  There they could be married, in
+their own suite.
+
+"All regularly and in order, honey," he said, and kissed her hand.
+She had hardly heard.  She was staring ahead, not thinking, not
+listening, not seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man
+before her, of his sheer physical proximity, of his increasing
+exuberance.
+
+"I'm mad about you, girl," he said.  "Mad.  And now you are going
+to be mine, until death do us part."
+
+She shivered and drew away, and he laughed a little.  Girls were
+like that, at such times.  They always took a step back for every
+two steps forward.  He let her hand go, and took a careful survey
+of his face in the mirror of the cab.  The swelling had gone down,
+but that bruise below his eye would last for days.  He cursed
+under his breath.
+
+
+It was after nine o'clock when one of the Cardew cars stopped not
+far from the Benedict Apartments, and Willy Cameron got out.
+
+He was quite certain that Louis Akers would know where Lily was,
+and he anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor.  There
+might be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at
+him for the night before.  But he set his jaw.  He would learn
+where Lily was if he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering
+devil's thick white throat.  His arrival in the foyer of the
+Benedict Apartments caused more than a ripple of excitement.
+
+"Well, look who's here!" muttered the telephone girl, and watched
+his approach, with its faint limp, over the top of her desk.
+Behind, from his cage, the elevator man was staring with avid
+interest.
+
+"I suppose Mr. Akers is in?" said Willy Cameron, politely.  The girl
+smiled up at him.
+
+"I'll say he ought to be, after last night!  What're you going to
+do now?  Kill him?"
+
+In spite of his anxiety there was a faint twinkle in Willy Cameron's
+eyes.
+
+"No," he said slowly.  "No.  I think not.  I want to talk to him."
+
+"Sam," called the telephone girl, "take this gentleman up to
+forty-three."
+
+"Forty-three's out."  Sam partly shut the elevator door; he had seen
+Forty-three's rooms the night before, and he had the discretion of
+his race.  "Went out with a lady at quarter to five."
+
+Willy Cameron took a step or two toward the cage.
+
+"You don't happen to be lying, I suppose?"
+
+"No, sir!" said Sam.  "I'll take you up to look, if you like.  And
+about an hour ago he sent a boy here with a note, to get some of
+his clothes.  The young lady at the desk was out at the movies at
+the time."
+
+"I was getting my supper, Sam."
+
+Willy Cameron had gone very white.
+
+"Did the boy say where he was taking the things?"
+
+"To the Saint Elmo Hotel, sir."
+
+On the street again Willy Cameron took himself fiercely in hand.
+There were a half-dozen reasons why Akers might go to the Saint
+Elmo.  He might, for one thing, have thought that he, Cameron,
+would go back to the Benedict.  He might be hiding from Dan, or
+from reporters.  But there had been, apparently, no attempt to
+keep his new quarters secret.  If Lily was at the Saint Elmo--
+
+He found a taxicab, and as it drew up at the curb before the
+hotel he saw the Cardew car moving away.  It gave him his first
+real breath for twenty minutes.  Lily was not there.
+
+But Louis Akers was.  He got his room number from a clerk and
+went up, still determinedly holding on to himself.  Afterwards he
+had no clear recollection of any interval between the Benedict
+and the moment he found himself standing outside a door on an
+upper floor of the Saint Elmo.  From that time on it was as clear
+as crystal, his own sudden calm, the overturning of a chair inside,
+a man's voice, slightly raised, which he recognized, and then the
+thin crash of a wineglass dropped or thrown to the floor.
+
+He opened the door and went in.
+
+In the center of the sitting room a table was set, and on it the
+remains of a dinner for two.  Akers was standing by the table,
+his chair overturned behind him, a splintered glass at his feet,
+staring angrily at the window.  Even then Willy Cameron saw that
+he had had too much to drink, and that he was in an ugly mood.
+He was in dinner clothes, but with his bruised face and scowling
+brows he looked a sinister imitation of a gentleman.
+
+By the window, her back to the room, was Lily.
+
+Neither of them glanced at the door.  Evidently the waiter had been
+moving in and out, and Akers considered him as little as he would a
+dog.
+
+"Come and sit down," he said angrily.  "I've quit drinking, I tell
+you.  Good God, just because I've had a little wine--and I had the
+hell of a time getting it--you won't eat and won't talk.  Come here."
+
+"I'm not hungry."
+
+"Come here."
+
+"Stay where you are, Lily," said Willy Cameron, from inside the
+closed door.  "Or perhaps you'd better get your wraps.  I came to
+take you home."
+
+Akers had wheeled at the voice, and now stood staring incredulously.
+First anger, and then a grin of triumph, showed in his face.  Drink
+had made him not so much drunk as reckless.  He had lost last night,
+but to-day he had won.
+
+"Hello, Cameron," he said.
+
+Willy Cameron ignored him.
+
+"Will you come?" he said to Lily.
+
+"I can't, Willy."
+
+"Listen, Lily dear," he said gravely.  "Your father is searching the
+city for you.  Do you know what that means?  Don't you see that you
+must go home at once?  You can't dine here in a private suite, like
+this, and not expose yourself to all sorts of talk."
+
+"Go on," said Akers, leering.  "I like to hear you."
+
+"Especially," continued Willy Cameron, "with a man like this."
+
+Akers took a step toward him, but he was not too sure of himself,
+and he knew now that the other man had a swing to his right arm
+like the driving rod of a locomotive.  He retreated again to the
+table, and his hand closed over a knife there.
+
+"Louis!" Lily said sharply.
+
+He picked up the knife and smiled at her, his eyes cunning.  "Not
+going to kill him, my dear," he said.  "Merely to give him a hint
+that I'm not as easy as I was last night."
+
+That was a slip, and he knew it.  Lily had left the window and come
+forward, a stricken slip of a girl, and he turned to her angrily.
+
+"Go into the other room and close the door," he ordered.  "When I've
+thrown this fellow out, you can come back."
+
+But Lily's eyes were fixed on Willy Cameron's face.
+
+"It was you last night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because," Willy Cameron said steadily, "he had got a girl into
+trouble, and then insulted her.  I wouldn't tell you, but you've got
+to know the truth before it's too late."
+
+Lily threw out both hands dizzily, as though catching for support.
+But she steadied herself.  Neither man moved.
+
+"It is too late, Willy," she said.  "I have just married him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+At midnight Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired and broken
+man.  Grace had been lying awake in her bedroom, puzzled by his
+unexplained absence, and brooding, as she now did continually,
+over Lily's absence.
+
+At half past eleven she heard Anthony Cardew come in and go upstairs,
+and for some time after that she heard him steadily pacing back and
+forth overhead.  Sometimes Grace felt sorry for Anthony.  He had
+made himself at such cost, and now when he was old, he had everything
+and yet nothing.
+
+They had never understood women, these Cardews.  Howard was gentle
+with them where Anthony was hard, but he did not understand, either.
+She herself, of other blood, got along by making few demands, but
+the Cardew women were as insistent in their demands as the men.
+Elinor, Lily--She formed a sudden resolution, and getting up,
+dressed feverishly.  She had no plan in her mind, nothing but a
+desperate resolution to put Lily's case before her grandfather,
+and to beg that she be brought home without conditions.
+
+She was frightened as she went up the stairs.  Never before had she
+permitted things to come to an issue between herself and Anthony.
+But now it must be done.  She knocked at the door.
+
+Anthony Cardew opened it.  The room was dark, save for one lamp
+burning dimly on a great mahogany table, and Anthony's erect figure
+was little more than a blur of black and white.
+
+"I heard you walking about," she said breathlessly.  "May I come in
+and talk to you?"
+
+"Come in," he said, with a sort of grave heaviness.  "Shall I light
+the other lamps?"
+
+"Please don't."
+
+"Will you sit down?  No?  Do you mind if I do?  I am very tired.
+I suppose it is about Lily?"
+
+"Yes.  I can't stand it any longer.  I can't."
+
+Sitting under the lamp she saw that he looked very old and very
+weary.  A tired little old man, almost a broken one.
+
+"She won't come back?"
+
+"Not under the conditions.  But she must come back, father.  To let
+her stay on there, in that house, after last night--"
+
+She had never called him "father" before.  It seemed to touch him.
+
+"You're a good woman, Grace," he said, still heavily.  "We Cardews
+all marry good women, but we don't know how to treat them.  Even
+Howard--"  His voice trailed off.  "No, she can't stay there," he
+said, after a pause.
+
+"But--I must tell you--she refuses to give up that man."
+
+"You are a woman, Grace.  You ought to know something about girls.
+Does she actually care for him, or is it because he offers the
+liberty she thinks we fail to give her?  Or"--he smiled faintly--
+"is it Cardew pig-headedness?"
+
+Grace made a little gesture of despair.
+
+"I don't know.  She wanted to come home.  She begged--it was
+dreadful."  Grace hesitated.  "Even that couldn't be as bad as this,
+father," she said.  "We have all lived our own lives, you and Howard
+and myself, and now we won't let her do it."
+
+"And a pretty mess we have made of them!"  His tone was grim.  "No,
+I can't say that we offer her any felicitous examples.  But the
+fellow's plan is transparent enough.  He is ambitious.  He sees
+himself installed here, one of us.  Mark my words, Grace, he may
+love the child, but his real actuating motive is that.  He's a
+Radical, because since he can't climb up, he'll pull down.  But once
+let him get his foot on the Cardew ladder, and he'll climb, over
+her, over all of us."
+
+He sat after that, his head dropped on his chest, his hands resting
+on the arms of his chair, in a brooding reverie.  Grace waited.
+
+"Better bring her home," he said finally.  "Tell her I surrender.
+I want her here.  Let her bring that fellow here, too, if she has
+to see him.  But for God's sake, Grace," he added, with a flash of
+his old fire, "show her some real men, too."
+
+Suddenly Grace bent over and kissed him.  He put up his hand, and
+patted her on the shoulder.
+
+"A good woman, Grace," he said, "and a good daughter to me.  I'm
+sorry.  I'll try to do better."
+
+As Grace straightened she heard the door close below, and Howard's
+voice.  Almost immediately she heard him coming up the staircase,
+and going out into the hall she called softly to him.
+
+"Where are you?" he asked, looking up.  "Is father there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I want you both to come down to the library, Grace."
+
+She heard him turn and go slowly down the stairs.  His voice had
+been strained and unnatural.  As she turned she found Anthony behind
+her.
+
+"Something has happened!"
+
+"I rather think so," said old Anthony, slowly.
+
+They went together down the stairs.
+
+In the library Lily was standing, facing the door, a quiet figure,
+listening and waiting.  Howard had dropped into a chair and was
+staring ahead.  And beyond the circle of lights was a shadowy figure,
+vaguely familiar, tall, thin, and watchful.  Willy Cameron.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+The discovery that Lily had left his house threw Jim Doyle into a
+frenzy.  The very manner of her going filled him with dark
+suspicion.  Either she had heard more that morning than he had
+thought, or--In his cunning mind for weeks there had been growing
+a smoldering suspicion of his wife.  She was too quiet, too
+acquiescent.  In the beginning, when Woslosky had brought the
+scheme to him, and had promised it financial support from Europe,
+he had taken a cruel and savage delight in outlining it to her,
+in seeing her cringe and go pale.
+
+He had not feared her then.  She had borne with so much, endured,
+tolerated, accepted, that he had not realized that she might have
+a breaking point.
+
+The plan had appealed to his cynical soul from the first.  It was
+the apotheosis of cynicism, this reducing of a world to its lowest
+level.  And it had amused him to see his wife, a gentlewoman born,
+bewildered before the chaos he depicted.
+
+"But--it is German!" she had said.
+
+"I bow before intelligence.  It is German.  Also it is Russian.
+Also it is of all nations.  All this talk now, of a League of
+Nations, a few dull diplomats acting as God over the peoples of
+the earth!"  His eyes blazed.  "While the true league, of the
+workers of the world, is already in effect!"
+
+But he watched her after that, not that he was afraid of her, but
+because her re-action as a woman was important.  He feared women
+in the movement.  It had its disciples, fervent and eloquent, paid
+and unpaid women agitators, but he did not trust them.  They were
+invariably women without home ties, women with nothing to protect,
+women with everything to gain and nothing to lose.  The woman in
+the home was a natural anti-radical.  Not the police, not even the
+army, but the woman in the home was the deadly enemy of the great
+plan.
+
+He began to hate Elinor, not so much for herself, as for the women
+she represented.  She became the embodiment of possible failure.
+She stood in his path, passively resistant, stubbornly brave.
+
+She was not a clever woman, and she was slow in gathering the full
+significance of a nation-wide general strike, that with an end of
+all production the non-producing world would be beaten to its knees.
+And then she waited for a world movement, forgetting that a flame
+must start somewhere and then spread.  But she listened and learned.
+There was a great deal of talk about class and mass.  She learned
+that the mass, for instance, was hungry for a change.  It would
+welcome any change.  Woslosky had been in Russia when the Kerensky
+regime was overthrown, and had seen that strange three days when
+the submerged part of the city filled the streets, singing, smiling,
+endlessly walking, exalted and without guile.
+
+No problems troubled them.  They had ceased to labor, and that was
+enough.
+
+Had it not been for its leaders, the mass would have risen like a
+tide, and ebbed again.
+
+Elinor had struggled to understand.  This was not Socialism.  Jim
+had been a Socialist for years.  He had believed that the gradual
+elevation of the few, the gradual subjection of the many, would go
+on until the majority would drag the few down to their own level.
+But this new dream was something immediate.  At her table she began
+to hear talk of substituting for that slow process a militant
+minority.  She was a long time, months, in discovering that Jim
+Doyle was one of the leaders of that militant minority, and that
+the methods of it were unspeakably criminal.
+
+Then had begun Elinor Doyle's long battle, at first to hold him back,
+and that failing, the fight between her duty to her husband and that
+to her country.  He had been her one occupation and obsession too
+long to be easily abandoned, but she was sturdily national, too.  In
+the end she made her decision.  She lived in his house, mended his
+clothing, served his food, met his accomplices, and--watched.
+
+She hated herself for it.  Every fine fiber of her revolted.  But
+as time went on, and she learned the full wickedness of the thing,
+her days became one long waiting.  She saw one move after another
+succeed, strike after strike slowing production, and thus increasing
+the cost of living.  She saw the growing discontent and muttering,
+the vicious circle of labor striking for more money, and by its own
+ceasing of activity making the very increases they asked inadequate.
+And behind it all she saw the ceaseless working, the endless sowing,
+of a grim-faced band of conspirators.
+
+She was obliged to wait.  A few men talking in secret meetings, a
+hidden propaganda of crime and disorder--there was nothing to
+strike at.  And Elinor, while not clever, had the Cardew shrewdness.
+She saw that, like the crisis in a fever, the thing would have to
+come, be met, and defeated.
+
+She had no hope that the government would take hold.  Government
+was aloof, haughty, and secure in its own strength.  Just now, too,
+it was objective, not subjective.  It was like a horse set to win
+a race, and unconscious of the fly on its withers.  But the fly
+was a gadfly.
+
+Elinor knew Doyle was beginning to suspect her.  Sometimes she
+thought he would kill her, if he discovered what she meant to do.
+She did not greatly care.  She waited for some inkling of the day
+set for the uprising in the city, and saved out of her small
+house allowance by innumerable economies and subterfuges.  When
+she found out the time she would go to the Governor of the State.
+He seemed to be a strong man, and she would present him facts.
+Facts and names.  Then he must act--and quickly.
+
+Cut off from her own world, and with no roots thrown out in the
+new, she had no friends, no one to confide in or of whom to ask
+assistance.  And she was afraid to go to Howard.  He would
+precipitate things.  The leaders would escape, and a new group
+would take their places.  Such a group, she knew, stood ready
+for that very emergency.
+
+On the afternoon of Lily's departure she heard Doyle come in.
+He had not recovered from his morning's anger, and she heard his
+voice, raised in some violent reproof to Jennie.  He came up the
+stairs, his head sagged forward, his every step deliberate, heavy,
+ominous.  He had an evening paper in his hand, and he gave it to
+her with his finger pointing to a paragraph.
+
+"You might show that to the last of the Cardews," he sneered.
+
+It was the paragraph about Louis Akers.  Elinor read it.  "Who were
+the masked men?" she asked.  "Do you know?"
+
+"I wish to God I did.  I'd--Makes him a laughing stock, of course.
+And just now, when--Where's Lily?"
+
+Elinor put down the paper.
+
+"She is not here.  She went home this afternoon."
+
+He stared at her, angrily incredulous.
+
+"Home?"
+
+"This afternoon."
+
+She passed him and went out into the hall.  But he followed her and
+caught her by the arm as she reached the top of the staircase.
+
+"What made her go home?"
+
+"I don't know, Jim."
+
+"She didn't say?"
+
+"Don't hold me like that.  No."
+
+She tried to free her arm, but he held her, his face angry and
+suspicious.
+
+"You are lying to me," he snarled.  "She gave you a reason.  What
+was it?"
+
+Elinor was frightened, but she had not lost her head.  She was
+thinking rapidly.
+
+"She had a visitor this afternoon, a young man.  He must have told
+her something about last night.  She came up and told me she was
+going."
+
+"You know he told her something, don't you?"
+
+"Yes." Elinor had cowered against the wall.  "Jim, don't look like
+that.  You frighten me.  I couldn't keep her here.  I--"
+
+"What did he tell her?"
+
+"He accused you."
+
+He was eyeing her coldly, calculatingly.  All his suspicions of the
+past weeks suddenly crystallized.  "And you let her go, after that,"
+he said slowly.  "You were glad to have her go.  You didn't deny what
+she said.  You let her run back home, with what she had guessed and
+what you told her to-day.  You--"
+
+He struck her then.  The blow was as remorseless as his voice, as
+deliberate.  She fell down the staircase headlong, and lay there,
+not moving.
+
+The elderly maid came running from the kitchen, and found him
+half-way down the stairs, his eyes still calculating, but his body
+shaking.
+
+"She fell," he said, still staring down.  But the servant faced him,
+her eyes full of hate.
+
+"You devil!" she said.  "If she's dead, I'll see you hang for it."
+
+But Elinor was not dead.  Doctor Smalley, making rounds in a nearby
+hospital and answering the emergency call, found her lying on her
+bed, fully conscious and in great pain, while her husband bent over
+her in seeming agony of mind.  She had broken her leg.  He sent
+Doyle out during the setting.  It was a principle of his to keep
+agonized husbands out of the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Life had beaten Lily Cardew.  She went about the house, pathetically
+reminiscent of Elinor Doyle in those days when she had sought
+sanctuary there; but where Elinor had seen those days only as
+interludes in her stormy life, Lily was finding a strange new peace.
+She was very tender, very thoughtful, insistently cheerful, as though
+determined that her own ill-fortune should not affect the rest of the
+household.
+
+But to Lily this peace was not an interlude, but an end.  Life for
+her was over.  Her bright dreams were gone, her future settled.
+Without so putting it, even to herself, she dedicated herself to
+service, to small kindnesses, and little thoughtful acts.  She was,
+daily and hourly, making reparation to them all for what she had
+cost them, in hope.
+
+That was the thing that had gone out of life.  Hope.  Her loathing
+of Louis Akers was gone.  She did not hate him.  Rather she felt
+toward him a sort of numbed indifference.  She wished never to see
+him again, but the revolt that had followed her knowledge of the
+conditions under which he had married her was gone.  She tried to
+understand his viewpoint, to make allowances for his lack of some
+fundamental creed to live by.  But as the days went on, with that
+healthy tendency of the mind to bury pain, she found him, from a
+figure that bulked so large as to shut out all the horizon of her
+life, receding more and more.
+
+But always he would shut off certain things.  Love, and marriage,
+and of course the hope of happiness.  Happiness was a thing one
+earned, and she had not earned it.
+
+After the scene at the Saint Elmo, when he had refused to let her
+go, and when Willy Cameron had at last locked him in the bedroom
+of the suite and had taken her away, there had followed a complete
+silence.  She had waited for some move or his part, perhaps an
+announcement of the marriage in the newspapers, but nothing had
+appeared.  He had commenced a whirlwind campaign for the mayoralty
+and was receiving a substantial support from labor.
+
+The months at the house on Cardew Way seemed more and more
+dream-like, and that quality of remoteness was accentuated by the
+fact that she had not been able to talk to Elinor.  She had
+telephoned more than once during the week, but a new maid had
+answered.  Mrs. Doyle was out.  Mrs. Doyle was unable to come to
+the telephone.  The girl was a foreigner, with something of
+Woslosky's burr in her voice.
+
+Lily had not left the house since her return.  During that family
+conclave which had followed her arrival, a stricken thing of few
+words and long anxious pauses, her grandfather had suggested that.
+He had been curiously mild with her, her grandfather.  He had
+made no friendly overtures, but he had neither jibed nor sneered.
+
+"It's done," he had said briefly.  "The thing now is to keep her
+out of his clutches."  He had turned to her.  "I wouldn't leave
+the house for few days, Lily."
+
+It was then that Willy Cameron had gone.  Afterwards she thought
+that he must have been waiting, patiently protective, to see how
+the old man received her.
+
+Her inability to reach Elinor began to dismay her, at last.  There
+was something sinister about it, and finally Howard himself went
+to the Doyle house.  Lily had come back on Thursday, and on the
+following Tuesday he made his call, timing it so that Doyle would
+probably be away from home.  But he came back baffled.
+
+"She was not at home," he said.  "I had to take the servant's word
+for it, but I think the girl was lying."
+
+"She may be ill.  She almost never goes out."
+
+"What possible object could they have in concealing her illness?"
+Howard said impatiently.
+
+But he was very uneasy, and what Lily had told him since her return
+only increased his anxiety.  The house was a hotbed of conspiracy,
+and for her own reasons Elinor was remaining there.  It was no
+place for a sister of his.  But Elinor for years had only touched
+the outer fringes of his life, and his days were crowded with other
+things; the increasing arrogance of the strikers, the utter
+uselessness of trying to make terms with them, his own determination
+to continue to fight his futile political campaign.  He put her out
+of his mind.
+
+Then, at the end of another week, a curious thing happened.  Anthony
+and Lily were in the library.  Old Anthony without a club was Old
+Anthony lost, and he had developed a habit, at first rather
+embarrassing to the others, of spending much of his time downstairs.
+He was no sinner turned saint.  He still let the lash of his tongue
+play over the household, but his old zest in it seemed gone.  He made,
+too, small tentative overtures to Lily, intended to be friendly, but
+actually absurdly self-conscious.  Grace, watching him, often felt
+him rather touching.  It was obvious to her that he blamed himself,
+rather than Lily, for what had happened.
+
+On this occasion he had asked Lily to read to him.
+
+"And leave out the politics," he had said, "I get enough of that
+wherever I go."
+
+As she read she felt him watching her, and in the middle of a
+paragraph he suddenly said:
+
+"What's become of Cameron?"
+
+"He must be very busy.  He is supporting Mr. Hendricks, you know."
+
+"Supporting him!  He's carrying him on his back," grunted Anthony.
+"What is it, Grayson?"
+
+"A lady--a woman--calling on Miss Cardew."
+
+Lily rose, but Anthony motioned her back.
+
+"Did she give any name?"
+
+"She said to say it was Jennie, sir."
+
+"Jennie!  It must be Aunt Elinor's Jennie!"
+
+"Send her in," said Anthony, and stood waiting Lily noticed his face
+twitching; it occurred to her then that this strange old man might
+still love his daughter, after all the years, and all his cruelty.
+
+It was the elderly servant from the Doyle house who came in, a tall
+gaunt woman, looking oddly unfamiliar to Lily in a hat.
+
+"Why, Jennie!" she said.  And then: "Is anything wrong?"
+
+"There is and there isn't," Jennie said, somberly.  "I just wanted
+to tell you, and I don't care if he kills me for it.  It was him
+that threw her downstairs.  I heard him hit her."
+
+Old Anthony stiffened.
+
+"He threw Aunt Elinor downstairs?"
+
+"That's how she broke her leg."
+
+Sheer amazement made Lily inarticulate.
+
+"But they said--we didn't know--do you mean that she has been
+there all this time, hurt?"
+
+"I mean just that," said Jennie, stolidly.  "I helped set it, with
+him pretending to be all worked up, for the doctor to see.  He got
+rid of me all right.  He's got one of his spies there now, a
+Bolshevik like himself.  You can ask the neighbors."
+
+Howard was out, and when the woman had gone Anthony ordered his
+car.  Lily, frightened by the look on his face, made only one
+protest.
+
+"You mustn't go alone," she said.  "Let me go, too.  Or take
+Grayson--anybody."
+
+But he went alone; in the hall he picked up his hat and stick, and
+drew on his gloves.
+
+"What is the house number?"
+
+Lily told him and he went out, moving deliberately, like a man who
+has made up his mind to follow a certain course, but to keep himself
+well in hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Acting on Willy Cameron's suggestion, Dan Boyd retained his
+membership in the union and frequented the meetings.  He learned
+various things, that the strike vote had been padded, for instance,
+and that the Radicals had taken advantage of the absence of some
+of the conservative leaders to secure such support as they had
+received.  He found the better class of workmen dissatisfied and
+unhappy.  Some of them, men who loved their tools, had resented
+the order to put them down where they were and walk out, and this
+resentment, childish as it seemed, was an expression of their
+general dissatisfaction with the autocracy they had themselves
+built up.
+
+Finally Dan's persistent attendance and meek acquiescence, added to
+his war record, brought him reward.  He was elected member of a
+conference to take to the Central Labor Council the suggestion for
+a general strike.  It was arranged that the delegates take the
+floor one after the other, and hold it for as long as possible.
+Then they were to ask the President of the Council to put the
+question.
+
+The arguments were carefully prepared.  The general strike was to
+be urged as the one salvation of the labor movement.  It would prove
+the solidarity of labor.  And, at the Council meeting a few days
+later, the rank and file were impressed by the arguments.  Dan,
+gnawing his nails and listening, watched anxiously.  The idea was
+favorably received, and the delegates went back to their local unions,
+to urge, coerce and threaten.
+
+Not once, during the meeting, had there been any suggestion of
+violence, but violence was in the air, nevertheless.  The quantity
+of revolutionary literature increased greatly during the following
+ten days, and now it was no longer furtively distributed.  It was
+sold or given away at all meetings; it flooded the various
+headquarters with its skillful compound of lies and truth.  The
+leaders notified of the situation, pretended that it was harmless
+raving, a natural and safe outlet for suppressed discontents.
+
+Dan gathered up an armful of it and took it home.  On a Sunday
+following, there was a mass meeting at the Colosseum, and a business
+agent of one of the unions made an impassioned speech.  He recited
+old and new grievances, said that the government had failed to live
+up to its promises, that the government boards were always unjust
+to the workers, and ended with a statement of the steel makers'
+profits.  Dan turned impatiently to a man beside him.
+
+"Why doesn't he say how much of that profit the government gets?"
+he demanded.
+
+But the man only eyed him suspiciously.
+
+Dan fell silent.  He knew it was wrong, but he had no gift of
+tongue.  It was at that meeting that for the first time he heard
+used the word "revolution."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Old Anthony's excursion to his daughter's house had not prospered.
+During the drive to Cardew Way he sat forward on the edge of the
+seat of his limousine, his mouth twitching with impatience and
+anger, his stick tightly clutched in his hand.  Almost before the
+machine stopped he was out on the pavement, scanning the house
+with hostile eyes.
+
+The building was dark.  Paul, the chauffeur, watching curiously,
+for the household knew that Anthony Cardew had sworn never to
+darken his daughter's door, saw his erect, militant figure enter
+the gate and lose itself in the shadow of the house.  There
+followed a short interval of nothing in particular, and then a
+tall man appeared in the rectangle of light which was the open
+door.
+
+Jim Doyle was astounded when he saw his visitor.  Astounded and
+alarmed.  But he recovered himself quickly, and smiled.
+
+"This is something I never expected to see," he said, "Mr. Anthony
+Cardew on my doorstep."
+
+"I don't give a damn what you expected to see," said Mr. Anthony
+Cardew.  "I want to see my daughter."
+
+"Your daughter?  You have said for a good many years that you have
+no daughter."
+
+"Stand aside, sir.  I didn't come here to quibble."
+
+"But I love to quibble," sneered Doyle.  "However, if you insist--
+I might as well tell you, I haven't the remotest intention of
+letting you in."
+
+"I'll ask you a question," said old Anthony.  "Is it true that my
+daughter has been hurt?"
+
+"My wife is indisposed.  I presume we are speaking of the same
+person."
+
+"You infernal scoundrel," shouted Anthony, and raising his cane,
+brought it down with a crack on Doyle's head.  The chauffeur was
+half-way up the walk by that time, and broke into a run.  He saw
+Doyle, against the light, reel, recover and raise his fist, but
+he did not bring it down.
+
+"Stop that!" yelled the chauffeur, and came on like a charging steer.
+When he reached the steps old Anthony was hanging his stick over his
+left forearm, and Doyle was inside the door, trying to close it.
+This was difficult, however, because Anthony had quietly put his
+foot over the sill.
+
+"I am going to see my daughter, Paul," said Anthony Cardew.  "Can
+you open the door?"
+
+"Open it!" Paul observed truculently.  "Watch me!"
+
+He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent
+him sprawling inside at Doyle's feet.  He was up in an instant,
+squared to fight, but he only met Jim Doyle's mocking smile.  Doyle
+stood, arms folded, and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house.
+Whatever he feared he covered with the cynical mask that was his
+face.
+
+He made no move, offered no speech.
+
+"Is she upstairs?"
+
+"She is asleep.  Do you intend to disturb her?"
+
+"I do," said old Anthony grimly.  "I'll go first, Paul.  You follow
+me, but I'd advise you to come up backwards."
+
+Suddenly Doyle laughed.
+
+"What!" he said, "Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my
+humble home, and anticipating violence!  You underestimate the
+honor you are doing me."
+
+He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until
+the two men had reached the top.  Then he followed them.  The mask
+had dropped from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it.
+If she talked, he would kill her.  But she knew that.  She was not
+a fool.
+
+Elinor lay in the bed, listening.  She had recognized her father's
+voice, and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief.
+They had found her.  They had come to take her away.  For she knew
+now that she was a prisoner; even without the broken leg she would
+have been a prisoner.  The girl downstairs was one of them, and her
+jailer.  A jailer who fed her, and gave her grudgingly the attention
+she required, but that was all.
+
+Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on
+the night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his
+suspicions.  He had found first her little store of money, and that
+had angered him.  In the end he had broken open a locked trinket
+box and found a notebook in which for months she had kept her
+careful records.  Here and there, scattered among house accounts,
+were the names of the radical members of The Central Labor Council,
+and other names, spoken before her and carefully remembered.  He
+had read them out to her as he came to them, suffering as she was,
+and she had expected death then.  But he had not killed her.  He
+had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a mad-eyed
+fanatic named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once daily.
+In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning of
+all punishments; he told her of the movement's progress, of its
+ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of its inevitable
+success.  What buildings and homes were to be bombed, the Cardew
+house first among them; what leading citizens were to be held as
+hostages, with all that that implied; and again the Cardews headed
+the list.
+
+When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present,
+solicitous and attentive.  She got out of her bed one day, and
+dragging her splinted leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing
+a note and finding some opportunity of giving it to the doctor.
+Only to discover that they had taken away her pen, pencils and
+paper.
+
+She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment.
+Olga had helped her back into bed without a word, but from that
+time on had spent most of her day on the upper floor.  Not until
+Doyle came in would she go downstairs to prepare his food.
+
+Elinor lay in her bed and listened to her father coming up the
+stairs.  She knew, before he reached the top, that Doyle would never
+let her be taken away.  He would kill her first.  He might kill
+Anthony Cardew.  She had a sickening sense of tragedy coming up the
+staircase, tragedy which took the form of her father's familiar
+deliberate step.  Perhaps had she known of the chauffeur's presence
+she might have chanced it, for every fiber of her tired body was
+crying for release.  But she saw only her father, alone in that house
+with Doyle and the smoldering Russian.
+
+The key turned in the lock.
+
+Anthony Cardew stood in the doorway, looking at her.  With her
+long hair in braids, she seemed young, almost girlish.  She looked
+like the little girl who had gone to dancing school in short white
+frocks and long black silk stockings, so many years ago.
+
+"I've just learned about it, Elinor," he said.  He moved to the
+bed and stood beside it, looking down, but he did not touch her.
+"Are you able to be taken away from here?"
+
+She knew that Doyle was outside, listening, and she hardened her
+heart for the part she had to play.  It was difficult; she was so
+infinitely moved by her father's coming, and in the dim light he,
+too, looked like himself of years ago.
+
+"Taken away?  Where?" she asked.
+
+"You don't want to stay here, do you?" he demanded bluntly.
+
+"This is my home, father."
+
+"Good God, home!  Do you mean to tell me that, with all you must
+know about this man, you still want to stay with him?"
+
+"I have no other home."
+
+"I am offering you one."
+
+Old Anthony was bewildered and angry.  Elinor put out a hand to
+touch him, but he drew back.
+
+"After he has thrown you downstairs and injured you--"
+
+"How did you hear that?"
+
+"The servant you had here came to see me to-night, Elinor.  She said
+that that blackguard outside there had struck you and you fell down
+the stairs.  If you tell me that's the truth I'll break every bone
+in his body."
+
+Sheer terror for Anthony made her breathless.
+
+"But it isn't true," she said wildly.  "You mustn't think that.  I
+fell.  I slipped and fell."
+
+"Then," said Anthony, speaking slowly, "you are not a prisoner here?"
+
+"A prisoner?  I'd be a prisoner anywhere, father.  I can't walk."
+
+"That door was locked."
+
+She was fighting valiantly for him.
+
+"I can't walk, father.  I don't require a locked door to keep me in."
+
+He was too confused and puzzled to notice the evasion.
+
+"Do you mean to say that you won't let me have you taken home?  You
+are still going to stay with this man?  You know what he is, don't
+you?"
+
+"I know what you think he is."  She tried to smile, and he looked
+away from her quickly and stared around the room, seeing nothing,
+however.  Suddenly he turned and walked to the door; but he stopped
+there, his hand on the knob, and us face twitching.
+
+"Once more, Elinor," he said, "I ask you if you will let me take
+you back with me.  This is the last time.  I have come, after a good
+many years of bad feeling, to make my peace with you and to offer
+you a home.  Will you come?"
+
+"No."
+
+Her courage almost failed her.  She lay back, her eyes closed and
+her face colorless.  The word itself was little more than a whisper.
+
+Her father opened the door and went out.  She heard him going down
+the stairs, heard other footsteps that followed him, and listened
+in an agony of fear that Doyle would drop him in the hall below.
+But nothing happened.  The outside door closed, and after a moment
+she opened her eyes.  Doyle was standing by the bed.
+
+"So," he said, "you intend to give me the pleasure of your society
+for some time, do you?"
+
+She said nothing.  She was past any physical fear for herself.
+
+"You liar!" he said softly.  "Do you think I don't understand why
+you want to remain here?  You are cleverer than I thought you were,
+but you are not as clever as I am.  You'd have done better to have
+let him take you away."
+
+"You would have killed him first."
+
+"Perhaps I would." He lighted a cigarette.  "But it is a pleasant
+thought to play with, and I shall miss it when the thing is fait
+accompli.  I see Olga has left you without ice water.  Shall I
+bring you some?"
+
+He was still smiling faintly when he brought up the pitcher,
+some time later, and placed it on the stand beside the bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+In the Boyd house things went on much as before, but with a new
+heaviness.  Ellen, watching keenly, knew why the little house was
+so cheerless and somber.  It had been Willy Cameron who had brought
+to it its gayer moments, Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming
+doors and whistling; Willy racing up the stairs with something hot
+for Mrs. Boyd's tray; Willy at the table, making them forget the
+frugality of the meals with campaign anecdotes; Willy, lamenting
+the lack of a chance to fish, and subsequently eliciting a rare
+smile from Edith by being discovered angling in the kitchen sink
+with a piece of twine on the end of his umbrella.
+
+Rather forced, some of it, but eminently good for all of them.  And
+then suddenly it ceased.  He made an effort, but there was no
+spontaneity in him.  He came in quietly, never whistled, and ate very
+little.  He began to look almost gaunt, too, and Edith, watching
+him with jealous, loving eyes, gave voice at last to the thought
+that was in her mind.
+
+"I wish you'd go away," she said, "and let us fight this thing out
+ourselves.  Dan would have to get something to do, then, for one
+thing."
+
+"But I don't want to go away, Edith."
+
+"Then you're a fool," she observed, bitterly.  "You can't help me
+any, and there's no use hanging mother around your neck."
+
+"She won't be around any one's neck very long, Edith dear."
+
+"After that, will you go away?"
+
+"Not if you still want me."
+
+"Want you!"
+
+Dan was out, and Ellen had gone up for the invalid's tray.  They were
+alone together, standing in the kitchen doorway.
+
+Suddenly Edith, beside him, ran her hand through his arm.
+
+"If I had been a different sort of girl, Willy, do you think--could
+you ever have cared for me?"
+
+"I never thought about you that way," he said, simply.  "I do care
+for you.  You know that."
+
+She dropped her hand.
+
+"You are in love with Lily Cardew.  That's why you don't--I've
+known it all along, Willy.  I used to think you'd get over it, never
+seeing her and all that.  But you don't, do you?"  She looked up at
+him.  "The real thing lasts, I suppose.  It will with me.  I wish to
+heaven it wouldn't."
+
+He was most uncomfortable, but he drew her hand within his arm again
+and held it there.
+
+"Don't get to thinking that you care anything about me," he said.
+"There's not as much love in the world as there ought to be, and
+we all need to hold hands, but--don't fancy anything like that."
+
+"I wanted to tell you.  If I hadn't known about her I wouldn't have
+told you, but--you said it when you said there's not as much love
+as there ought to be.  I'm gone, but I guess my caring for you
+hasn't hurt me any.  It's the only reason I'm alive to-day."
+
+She freed her hand, and stood staring out over the little autumn
+garden.  There was such brooding trouble in her face that he watched
+her anxiously.
+
+"I think mother suspects," she said at last.
+
+"I hope not, Edith."
+
+"I think she does.  She watches me all the time, and she asked to
+see Dan to-night.  Only he didn't come home."
+
+"You must deny it, Edith," he said, almost fiercely.  "She must not
+know, ever.  That is one thing we can save her, and must save her."
+
+But, going upstairs as usual before he went out, he realized that
+Edith was right, and that matters had reached a crisis.  The sick
+woman had eaten nothing, and her eyes were sunken and anxious.
+There was an unspoken question in them, too, as she turned them on
+him.  Most significant of all, the little album was not beside her,
+nor the usual litter of newspapers on the bed.
+
+"I wish you weren't going out, Willy," she said querulously.  "I want
+to talk to you about something."
+
+"Can't we discuss it in the morning?"
+
+"I won't sleep till I get it off my mind, Willy."  But he could not
+face that situation then.  He needed time, for one thing.  Surely
+there must be some way out, some way to send this frail little
+woman dreamless to her last sleep, life could not be so cruel that
+death would seem kind.
+
+He spoke at three different meetings that night, for the election
+was close at hand.  Pink Denslow took him about in his car, and
+stood waiting for him at the back of the crowd.  In the intervals
+between hall and hall Pink found Willy Cameron very silent and very
+grave, but he could not know that the young man beside him was
+trying to solve a difficult question.  Which was: did two wrongs
+ever make a right?
+
+At the end of the last meeting Willy Cameron decided to walk home.
+
+"I have some things to think over.  Pink," he said.  "Thanks for
+the car.  It saves a lot of time."
+
+Pink sat at the wheel, carefully scrutinizing Willy.  It struck
+him then that Cameron looked fagged and unhappy.
+
+"Nothing I can do, I suppose?"
+
+"Thanks, no."
+
+Pink knew nothing of Lily's marriage, nor of the events that had
+followed it.  To his uninquiring mind all was as it should be with
+her; she was at home again, although strangely quiet and very sweet,
+and her small world was at peace with her.  It was all right with
+her, he considered, although all wrong with him.  Except that she
+was strangely subdued, which rather worried him.  It was not
+possible, for instance, to rouse her to one of their old red-hot
+discussions on religion, or marriage, or love.
+
+"I saw Lily Cardew this afternoon, Cameron."
+
+"Is she all right?" asked Willy Cameron, in a carefully casual tone.
+
+"I don't know."  Pink's honest voice showed perplexity.  "She looks
+all right, and the family's eating out of her hand..  But she's
+changed somehow.  She asked for you."
+
+"Thanks.  Well, good-night, old man."
+
+Willy Cameron was facing the decision of his life that night, as he
+walked home.  Lily was gone, out of his reach and out of his life.
+But then she had never been within either.  She was only something
+wonderful and far away, like a star to which men looked and sometimes
+prayed.  Some day she would be free again, and then in time she would
+marry.  Some one like Pink, her own sort, and find happiness.
+
+But he knew that he would always love her, to the end of his days,
+and even beyond, in that heaven in which he so simply believed.
+All the things that puzzled him would be straightened out there,
+and perhaps a man who had loved a woman and lost her here would
+find her there, and walk hand in hand with her, through the bright
+days of Paradise.
+
+Not that that satisfied him.  He was a very earthly lover, with the
+hungry arms of youth.  He yearned unspeakably for her.  He would
+have died for her as easily as he would have lived for her, but he
+could do neither.
+
+That was one side of him.  The other, having put her away in that
+warm corner of his heart which was hers always, was busy with the
+practical problem of the Boyds.  He saw only one way out, and that
+way he had been seeing with increasing clearness for several days.
+Edith's candor that night, and Mrs. Boyd's suspicions, clearly
+pointed to it.  There was one way by which to save Edith and her
+child, and to save the dying woman the agony of full knowledge.
+
+Edith was sitting on the doorstep, alone.  He sat down on the step
+below her, rather silent, still busy with his problem.  Although
+the night was warm, the girl shivered.
+
+"She's not asleep.  She's waiting for me to go up, Willy.  She means
+to call me in and ask me."
+
+"Then I'd better say what I have to say quickly.  Edith, will you
+marry me?"
+
+She drew off and looked at him.
+
+"I'd better explain what I mean," he said, speaking with some
+difficulty.  "I mean--go through the ceremony with me.  I don't
+mean actual marriage.  That wouldn't be fair to either of us,
+because you know that I care for some one else."
+
+"But you mean a real marriage?"
+
+"Of course.  Your child has the right to a name, dear.  And, if
+you don't mind telling a lie to save our souls, and for her peace
+of mind, we can say that it took place some time ago."
+
+She gazed at him dazedly.  Then something like suspicion came into
+her face.
+
+"Is it because of what I told you to-night?"
+
+"I had thought of it before.  That helped, of course."
+
+It seemed so surprisingly simple, put into words, and the light on
+the girl's face was his answer.  A few words, so easily spoken, and
+two lives were saved.  No, three, for Edith's child must be considered.
+
+"You are like God," said Edith, in a low voice.  "Like God."  And
+fell to soft weeping.  She was unutterably happy and relieved.  She
+sat there, not daring to touch him, and looked out into the quiet
+street.  Before her she saw all the things that she had thought
+were gone; honor, a place in the world again, the right to look
+into her mother's eyes; she saw marriage and happy, golden days.
+He did not love her, but he would be hers, and perhaps in His own
+good time the Manager of all destinies would make him love her.
+She would try so hard to deserve that.
+
+Mrs. Boyd was asleep when at last Edith went up the staircase, and
+Ellen, lying sleepless on her cot in the hot attic room, heard the
+girl softly humming to herself as she undressed, and marveled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+When Lily had been at home for some time, and Louis Akers had made
+no attempt to see her, or to announce the marriage, the vigilance
+of the household began to relax.  Howard Cardew had already
+consulted the family lawyer about an annulment, and that gentleman
+had sent a letter to Akers, which had received no reply.
+
+Then one afternoon Grayson, whose instructions had been absolute
+as to admitting Akers to the house, opened the door to Mrs. Denslow,
+who was calling, and found behind that lady Louis Akers himself.
+He made an effort to close the door behind the lady, but Akers was
+too quick for him, and a scene at the moment was impossible.
+
+He ushered Mrs. Denslow into the drawing room, and coming out,
+closed the doors.
+
+"My instructions, sir, are to say to you that the ladies are not at
+home."
+
+But Akers held out his hat and gloves with so ugly a look that
+Grayson took them.
+
+"I have come to see my wife," he said.  "Tell her that, and that if
+she doesn't see me here I'll go upstairs and find her."
+
+When Grayson still hesitated he made a move toward the staircase,
+and the elderly servant, astounded at the speech and the movement,
+put down the hat and faced him.
+
+"I do not recognize any one in the household by that name, sir."
+
+"You don't, don't you?  Very well.  Tell Miss Cardew I am here, and
+that either she will come down or I'll go up.  I'll wait in the
+library."
+
+He watched Grayson start up the stairs, and then went into the
+library.  He was very carefully dressed, and momentarily exultant
+over the success of his ruse, but he was uneasy, too, and wary,
+and inclined to regard the house as a possible trap.  He had made
+a gambler's venture, risking everything on the cards he held, and
+without much confidence in them.  His vanity declined to believe
+that his old power over Lily was gone, but he had held a purely
+physical dominance over so many women that he knew both his
+strength and his limitations.
+
+What he could not understand, what had kept him awake so many nights
+since he had seen her, was her recoil from him on Willy Cameron's
+announcement.  She had known he had led the life of his sort; he
+had never played the plaster saint to her.  And she had accepted
+her knowledge of his connection with the Red movement, on his mere
+promise to reform.  But this other, this accident, and she had
+turned from him with a horror that made him furious to remember.
+These silly star-eyed virgins, who accepted careful abstractions
+and then turned sick at life itself, a man was a fool to put himself
+in their hands.
+
+Mademoiselle was with Lily in her boudoir when Grayson came up, a
+thin, tired-faced, suddenly old Mademoiselle, much given those days
+to early masses, during which she prayed for eternal life for the
+man who had ruined Lily's life, and that soon.  To Mademoiselle
+marriage was a final thing and divorce a wickedness against God
+and His establishment on earth.
+
+Lily, rather like Willy Cameron, was finding on her spirit at that
+time a burden similar to his, of keeping up the morale of the
+household.
+
+Grayson came in and closed the door behind him.  Anger and anxiety
+were in his worn old face, and Lily got up quickly.  "What is it,
+Grayson?"
+
+"I'm sorry, Miss Lily.  He was in the vestibule behind Mrs. Denslow,
+and I couldn't keep him out.  I think he had waited for some one to
+call, knowing I couldn't make a scene."
+
+Mademoiselle turned to Lily.
+
+"You must not see him," she said in rapid French.  "Remain here, and
+I shall telephone for your father.  Lock your door.  He may come up.
+He will do anything, that man."
+
+"I am going down," Lily said quietly.  "I owe him that.  You need not
+be frightened.  And don't tell mother; it will only worry her and do
+no good."
+
+Her heart was beating fast as she went down the stairs.  From the
+drawing room came the voices of Grace and Mrs. Denslow, chatting
+amiably.  The second man was carrying in tea, the old silver service
+gleaming.  Over all the lower floor was an air of peace and comfort,
+the passionless atmosphere of daily life running in old and easy
+grooves.
+
+When Lily entered the library she closed the door behind her.  She
+had, on turning, a swift picture of Grayson, taking up his stand
+in the hall, and it gave her a sense of comfort.  She knew he would
+remain there, impassively waiting, so long as Akers was in the house.
+
+Then she faced the man standing by the center table.  He made no
+move toward her, did not even speak at once.  It left on her the
+burden of the opening, of setting the key of what was to come.
+She was steady enough now.
+
+"Perhaps it is as well that you came, Louis," she said.  "I suppose
+we must talk it over some time."
+
+"Yes," he agreed, his eyes on her.  "We must.  I have married a
+wife, and I want her, Lily."
+
+"You know that is impossible."
+
+"Because of something that happened before I knew you?  I never made
+any pretensions about my life before we met.  But I did promise to
+go straight if you'd have me, and I have.  I've lived up to my
+bargain.  What about you?"
+
+"It was not a part of my bargain to marry you while you--I have
+thought and thought, Louis.  There is only one thing to be done.
+You will have to divorce me, and marry her."
+
+"Marry her?  A girl of the streets, who chooses to say that I am
+the father of her child!  It's the oldest trick in the word.
+Besides--"  He played his best card--"she won't marry me.  Ask
+Cameron, who chose to make himself so damned busy about my affairs.
+He's in love with her.  Ask him."
+
+In spite of herself Lily winced.  Out of the wreckage of the past
+few weeks one thing had seemed to remain, something to hold to,
+solid and dependable and fine, and that had been Willy Cameron.
+She had found, in these last days, something infinitely comforting
+in the thought that he cared for her.  It was because he had cared
+that he had saved her from herself.  But, if this were true--
+
+"I am not going back to you, Louis.  I think you know that.  No
+amount of talking about things can change that."
+
+"Why don't you face life and try to understand it?" he demanded,
+brutally.  "Men are like that.  Women are like that--sometimes.
+You can't measure human passions with a tape line.  That's what
+you good women try to do, and you make life a merry little hell."
+He made an effort, and softened his voice.  "I'll be true to you,
+Lily, if you'll come back."
+
+"No," she said, "you would mean to be, but you would not.  You
+have no foundation to build on."
+
+"Meaning that I am not a gentleman."
+
+"Not that.  I know you, that's all.  I understand so much that I
+didn't before.  What you call love is only something different.
+When that was gone there would be the same thing again.  You would
+be sorry, but I would be lost."
+
+Her coolness disconcerted him.  Two small triangular bits of color
+showed in his face.  He had been prepared for tears, even for a
+refusal to return, but this clear-eyed appraisal of himself, and
+the accuracy of it, confused him.  He took refuge in the only method
+he knew; he threw himself on her pity; he made violent, passionate
+love to her, but her only expression was one of distaste.  When at
+last he caught her to him she perforce submitted, a frozen thing
+that told him, more than any words, how completely he had lost her.
+He threw her away from him, then, baffled and angry.
+
+"You little devil!" he said.  "You cold little devil!"
+
+"I don't love you.  That's all.  I think now that I never did."
+
+"You pretended damned well."
+
+"Don't you think you'd better go?"  Lily said wearily.  "I don't
+like to hurt you.  I am to blame for a great deal.  But there is no
+use going on, is there?  I'll give you your freedom as soon as I
+can.  You will want that, of course."
+
+"My freedom!  Do you think I am going to let you go like that?  I'll
+fight you and your family in every court in the country before I give
+you up.  You can't bring Edith Boyd up against me, either.   If she
+does that I'll bring up other witnesses, other men, and she knows it."
+
+Lily was very pale, but still calm.  She made a movement toward the
+bell, but he caught her hand before she could ring it.
+
+"I'll get your Willy Cameron, too," he said, his face distorted
+with anger.  "I'll get him good.  You've done a bad thing for your
+friends and your family to-day, Lily.  I'll go the limit on getting
+back at them.  I've got the power, and by God, I'll use it."
+
+He flung out into the hall, and toward the door.  There he
+encountered Grayson, who reminded him of his hat and gloves, or he
+would have gone without them.
+
+Grayson, going into the library a moment later, found Lily standing
+there, staring ahead and trembling violently.  He brought her a cup
+of tea, and stood by, his old face working, while she drank it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+The strike had apparently settled down to the ordinary run of strikes.
+The newspaper men from New York were gradually recalled, as the mill
+towns became orderly, and no further acts of violence took place.
+Here and there mills that had gone down fired their furnaces again
+and went back to work, many with depleted shifts, however.
+
+But the strikers had lost, and knew it.  Howard Cardew, facing the
+situation with his customary honesty, saw in the gradual return of
+the men to work only the urgency of providing for their families,
+and realized that it was not peace that was coming, but an armed
+neutrality.  The Cardew Mills were still down, but by winter he was
+confident they would be open again.  To what purpose?  To more
+wrangling and bickering, more strikes?  Where was the middle ground?
+He was willing to give the men a percentage of the profits they made.
+He did not want great wealth, only an honest return for his invested
+capital.  But he wanted to manage his own business.  It was his risk.
+
+The coal miners were going out.  The Cardews owned coal mines.  The
+miners wanted to work a minimum day for a maximum wage, but the
+country must have coal.  Shorter hours meant more men for the mines,
+and they would have to be imported.  But labor resented the
+importation of foreign workers.
+
+Again, what was the answer?
+
+Still, he was grateful for peace.  The strike dragged on, with only
+occasional acts of violence.  From the hill above Baxter a sniper
+daily fired with a long range rifle at the toluol tank in the center
+of one of the mills, and had so far escaped capture, as the tank had
+escaped damage.  But he knew well enough that a long strike was
+playing into the hands of the Reds.  It was impossible to sow the
+seeds of revolution so long as a man's dinner-pail was full, his rent
+paid, and his family contented.  But a long strike, with bank
+accounts becoming exhausted and credit curtailed, would pave the way
+for revolution.
+
+Old Anthony had had a drastic remedy for strikes.
+
+"Let all the storekeepers, the country over, refuse credit to the
+strikers, and we'd have an end to this mess," he said.
+
+"We'd have an end to the storekeepers, too," Howard had replied,
+grimly.
+
+One good thing had come out of the bomb outrages.  They had had a
+salutary effect on the honest labor element.  These had no sympathy
+with such methods and said so.  But a certain element, both native
+and foreign born, secretly gloated and waited.
+
+One thing surprised and irritated Howard.  Public sentiment was not
+so much with the strikers, as against the mill owners.  The strike
+worked a hardship to the stores and small businesses dependent on
+the great mills; they forgot the years when the Cardews had brought
+them prosperity, had indeed made them possible, and they felt now
+only bitter resentment at the loss of trade.  In his anger Howard
+saw them as parasites, fattening on the conceptions and strength of
+those who had made the city.  They were men who built nothing,
+originated nothing.  Men who hated the ladder by which they had
+climbed, who cared little how shaky its foundation, so long as it
+stood.
+
+In September, lured by a false security, the governor ordered the
+demobilization of the state troops, save for two companies.  The
+men at the Baxter and Friendship plants, owned by the Cardews, had
+voted to remain out, but their leaders appeared to have them well
+in hand, and no trouble was anticipated.  The agents of the
+Department of Justice, however, were still suspicious.  The
+foreigners had plenty of money.  Given as they were to hoarding
+their savings in their homes, the local banks were unable to say
+if they were drawing on their reserves or were being financed
+from the outside.
+
+Shortly before the mayoralty election trouble broke out in the
+western end of the state, and in the north, in the steel towns.
+There were ugly riotings, bombs were sent through the mails, the
+old tactics of night shootings and destruction of property began.
+In the threatening chaos Baxter and Friendship, and the city
+nearby, stood out by contrast for their very orderliness.  The
+state constabulary remained in diminished numbers, a still
+magnificent body of men but far too few for any real emergency,
+and the Federal agents, suspicious but puzzled, were removed to
+more turbulent fields.
+
+The men constituting the Vigilance Committee began to feel a sense
+of futility, almost of absurdity.  They had armed and enrolled
+themselves--against what?  The growth of the organization slowed
+down, but it already numbered thousands of members.  Only its
+leaders retained their faith in its ultimate necessity, and they
+owed perhaps more than they realized to Willy Cameron's own
+conviction.
+
+It was owing to him that the city was divided into a series of
+zones, so that notification of an emergency could be made rapidly
+by telephone and messenger.  Owing to him, too, was a new central
+office, with some one on duty day and night.  Rather ironically,
+the new quarters were the dismantled rooms of the Myers
+Housecleaning Company.
+
+On the day after his proposal to Edith, Willy Cameron received an
+unexpected holiday.  Mrs. Davis, the invalid wife of the owner of
+the Eagle Pharmacy, died and the store was closed.  He had seen
+Edith for only a few moments that morning, but it was understood
+then that the marriage would take place either that day or the next.
+
+He had been physically so weary the night before that he had slept,
+but the morning found him with a heaviness of spirit that he could
+not throw off.  The exaltation of the night before was gone, and
+all that remained was a dogged sense of a duty to be done.
+Although he smiled at Edith, his face remained with her all through
+the morning.
+
+"I'll make it up to him," she thought, humbly.  "I'll make it up to
+him somehow."
+
+Then, with Ellen out doing her morning marketing, she heard the
+feeble thump of a cane overhead which was her mother's signal.  She
+was determined not to see her mother again until she could say that
+she was married, but the thumping continued, and was followed by
+the crash of a broken glass.
+
+"She's trying to get up!" Edith thought, panicky.  "If she gets up
+it will kill her."
+
+She stood at the foot of the stairs, scarcely breathing, and listened.
+There was a dreadful silence above.  She stole up, finally, to where
+she could see her mother.  Mrs. Boyd was still in her bed, but lying
+with open eyes, unmoving.
+
+"Mother," she called, and ran in.  "Mother."
+
+Mrs. Boyd glanced at her.
+
+"I thought that glass would bring you," she said sharply, but with
+difficulty.  "I want you to stand over there and let me look at you."
+
+Edith dropped on her knees beside the bed, and caught her mother's
+hand.
+
+"Don't!  Don't talk like that, mother," she begged.  "I know what
+you mean.  It's all right, mother.  Honestly it is.  I--I'm married,
+mother."
+
+"You wouldn't lie to me, Edith?"
+
+"No.  I'm telling you.  I've been married a long time.  You--don't
+you worry, mother.  You just lie there and quit worrying.  It's all
+right."
+
+There was a sudden light in the sick woman's eyes, an eager light
+that flared up and died away again.
+
+"Who to?" she asked.  "If it's some corner loafer, Edie--"  Edith
+had gained new courage and new facility.  Anything was right that
+drove the tortured look from her mother's eyes.
+
+"You can ask him when he comes home this evening."
+
+"Edie!  Not Willy?"
+
+"You've guessed it," said Edith, and burying her face in the bed
+clothing, said a little prayer, to be forgiven for the lie and for
+all that she had done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end
+to earn the love of the man who was like God to her.
+
+There are lies and lies.  Now and then the Great Recorder must put
+one on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable
+suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul.
+
+Mrs. Boyd lay back and closed her eyes.
+
+"I haven't been so tickled since the day you were born," she said.
+
+She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head.  When
+Edith moved, a little later, her mother was asleep, with a new look
+of peace on her face.
+
+It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she
+had done.  She shrank from doing it.  It was one thing for Willy to
+have done it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly
+afraid of Ellen.  And Ellen's reception of the news justified her
+fears.
+
+"And you'd take him that way!" she said, scornfully.  "You'd hide
+behind him, besides spoiling his life for him!  It sounds like him
+to offer, and it's like you to accept."
+
+"It's to save mother," said Edith, meekly.
+
+"It's to save yourself.  You can't fool me.  And if you think I'm
+going to sit by and let him do it, you can think again."
+
+"It's as good as done," Edith flashed.  "I've told mother."
+
+"That you're going to be, or that you are?"
+
+"That we are married."
+
+"All right," Ellen said triumphantly.  "She's quiet and peaceful
+now, isn't she?  You don't have to get married now, do you?  You
+take my advice, and let it go at that."
+
+It was then that Edith realized what she had done.  He would still
+marry her, of course, but behind all his anxiety to save her had
+been the real actuating motive of his desire to relieve her mother's
+mind.  That was done now.  Then, could she let him sacrifice himself
+for her?
+
+She could.  She could and she would.  She set her small mouth firmly,
+and confronted the future; she saw herself, without his strength to
+support her, going down and down.  She remembered those drabs of the
+street on whom she had turned such cynical eyes in her virtuous youth,
+and she saw herself one of that lost sisterhood, sodden, hectic,
+hopeless.
+
+When Willy Cameron left the pharmacy that day it was almost noon.
+He went to the house of mourning first, and found Mr. Davis in a
+chair in a closed room, a tired little man in a new black necktie
+around a not over-clean collar, his occupation of years gone,
+confronting a new and terrible leisure that he did not know how to
+use.
+
+"You know how it is, Willy," he said, blinking his reddened eyelids.
+"You kind of wish sometimes that you had somebody to help you bear
+your burden, and then it's taken away, but you're kind of bent over
+and used to it.  And you'd give your neck and all to have it back."
+
+Willy Cameron pondered that on his way up the street.
+
+There was one great longing in him, to see Lily again.  In a few
+hours now he would have taken a wife, and whatever travesty of
+marriage resulted, he would have to keep away from Lily.  He meant
+to play square with Edith.
+
+He wondered if it would hurt Lily to see him, remind her of things
+she must be trying to forget.  He decided in the end that it would
+hurt her, so he did not go.  But he walked, on his way to see Pink
+Denslow at the temporary bank, through a corner of the park near
+the house, and took a sort of formal and heart-breaking farewell of
+her.
+
+Time had been when life had seemed only a long, long trail, with
+Lily at the end of it somewhere, like water to the thirsty traveler,
+or home to the wanderer; like a camp fire at night.  But now, life
+seemed to him a broad highway, infinitely crowded, down which he
+must move, surrounded yet alone.
+
+But at least he could walk in the middle of the road, in the
+sunlight.  It was the weaklings who were crowded to the side.  He
+threw up his head.
+
+It had never occurred to him that he was in any, danger, either
+from Louis Akers or from the unseen enemy he was fighting.  He had
+a curious lack of physical fear.  But once or twice that day, as he
+went about, he happened to notice a small man, foreign in appearance
+and shabbily dressed.  He saw him first when he came out of the
+marriage license office, and again when he entered the bank.
+
+He had decided to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask
+him to be present.  He meant to tell him the facts.  The intimacy
+between them was now very close, and he felt that Pink would
+understand.  He neither wanted nor expected approval, but he did
+want honesty between them.  He had based his life on honesty.
+
+Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to.  It would be hard
+to set before any outsider the conditions at the Boyd house, or his
+own sense of obligation to help.  Put into everyday English the
+whole scheme sounded visionary and mock-heroic.
+
+In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with
+excitement written large all over him.
+
+"I sent for you," he said, "because I think we've got something at
+last.  One of our fellows has just been in, that storekeeper I told
+you about from Friendship, Cusick.  He says he has found out where
+they're meeting, back in the hills.  He's made a map of it.  Look,
+here's the town, and here's the big hill.  Well, behind it, about
+a mile and a half, there's a German outfit, a family, with a farm.
+They're using the barn, according to this chap."
+
+"The barn wouldn't hold very many of them."
+
+"That's the point.  It's the leaders.  The family has an alibi.
+It goes in to the movies in the town on meeting nights.  The place
+has been searched twice, but he says they have a system of patrols
+that gives them warning.  The hills are heavily wooded there, and
+he thinks they have rigged up telephones in the trees."
+
+There was a short silence.  Willy Cameron studied the rug.
+
+"I had to swear to keep it to ourselves," Pink said at last.
+"Cusick won't let the Federal agents in on it.  They've raided him
+for liquor twice, and he's sick as a poisoned pup."
+
+"How about the county detectives?"
+
+"You know them.  They'll go in and fight like hell when the time
+comes, but they're likely to gum the game where there's any finesse
+required.  We'd better find out for ourselves first."
+
+Willy Cameron smiled.
+
+"What you mean is, that it's too good a thing to throw to the other
+fellow.  Well, I'm on, if you want me.  But I'm no detective."
+
+Pink had come armed for such surrender.  He produced a road map of
+the county and spread it on the desk.
+
+"Here's the main road to Friendship," he said, "and here's the road
+they use.  But there's another way, back of the hills.  Cusick said
+it was a dirt lane, but dry.  It's about forty miles by it to a point
+a mile or so behind the farm.  He says he doesn't think they use
+that road.  It's too far around."
+
+"All right," said Willy Cameron.  "We use that road, and get to the
+farm, and what then?  Surrender?"
+
+"Not on your life.  We hide in the barn.  That's all."
+
+"That's enough.  They'll search the place, automatically.  You're
+talking suicide, you know."
+
+But his mind was working rapidly.  He was a country boy, and he
+knew barns.  There would be other outbuildings, too, probably a
+number of them.  The Germans always had plenty of them.  And the
+information was too detailed to be put aside lightly.
+
+"When does he think they will meet again?"
+
+"That's the point," Pink said eagerly.  "The family has been all
+over the town this morning.  It is going on a picnic, and he says
+those picnics of theirs last half the night.  What he got from the
+noise they were making was that they were raising dust again, and
+something's on for to-night."
+
+"They'll leave somebody there.  Their stock has to be looked after."
+
+"This fellow says they drop everything and go.  The whole outfit.
+They're as busy raising an alibi as the other lot is raising the
+devil."
+
+But Willy Cameron was a Scot, and hard-headed.
+
+"It looks too simple, Pink," he said reflectively.  He sat for some
+time, filling and lighting his pipe, and considering as he did so.
+He was older than Pink; not much, but he felt extremely mature and
+very responsible.
+
+"What do we know about Cusick?" he asked, finally.
+
+"One of the best men we've got.  They've fired his place once, and
+he's keen to get them."
+
+"You're anxious to go?"
+
+"I'm going," said Pink, cheerfully.
+
+"Then I'd better go along and look after you.  But I tell you how I
+see it.  After I've done that I'll go as far as you like.  Either
+there is nothing to it and we're fools for our pains, or there's a
+lot to it, and in that case we are a pair of double-distilled
+lunatics to go there alone."
+
+Pink laughed joyously.
+
+Life had been very dull for him since his return from France.  He
+had done considerable suffering and more thinking than was usual
+with him, but he had had no action.  But behind his boyish zest
+there was something more, something he hid as he did the fact that
+he sometimes said his prayers; a deep and holy thing, that always
+gave him a lump in his throat at Retreat, when the flag came slowly
+down and the long lines of men stood at attention.  Something he
+was half ashamed and half proud of, love of his country.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room
+of a small printing shop in the heart of the city.  It went on to
+the accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while
+two printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the front
+and rear entrances.
+
+Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him,
+smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper from Friendship, Cusick.
+In a corner on the table, scowling, sat Louis Akers.
+
+"I don't know why you're so damned suspicious, Jim," he was saying.
+"Cusick says the stall about the Federal agents went all right."
+
+"Like a house a-fire," said Cusick, complacently.
+
+"I think, Akers," Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, "that you
+are letting your desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with
+your judgment.  If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready
+to take their places."
+
+"Cameron is the brains of the outfit," Akers said sulkily.
+
+"How do you know Cameron will go?"
+
+Akers rose lazily and stretched himself.
+
+"I've got a hunch.  That's all."
+
+A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her
+hand.  With one hand Akers took the sheets from her; with the other
+he settled his tie.  He smiled down at her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Ellen was greatly disturbed.  At three o'clock that afternoon she
+found Edith and announced her intention of going out.
+
+"I guess you can get the supper for once," she said ungraciously.
+
+Edith looked up at her with wistful eyes.
+
+"I wish you didn't hate me so, Ellen."
+
+"I don't hate you." Ellen was slightly mollified.  "But when I see
+you trying to put your burdens on other people--"
+
+Edith got up then and rather timidly put her arms around Ellen's
+neck.
+
+"I love him so, Ellen," she whispered, "and I'll try so hard to
+make him happy."
+
+Unexpected tears came into Ellen's eyes.  She stroked the girl's
+fair hair.
+
+"Never mind," she said.  "The Good Man's got a way of fixing things
+to suit Himself.  And I guess He knows best.  We do what it's
+foreordained we do, after all."
+
+Mrs. Boyd was sleeping.  Edith went back to her sewing.  She had
+depended all her life on her mother's needle, and now that that
+had failed her she was hastily putting some clothing into repair.
+In the kitchen near the stove the suit she meant to be married
+in was hung to dry, after pressing.  She was quietly happy.
+
+Willy Cameron found her there.  He told her of Mrs. Davis' death,
+and then placed the license on the table at her side.
+
+"I think it would be better to-morrow, Edith," he said.  He glanced
+down at the needle in her unaccustomed fingers; she seemed very
+appealing, with her new task and the new light in her eyes.  After
+all, it was worth while, even if it cost a lifetime, to take a
+soul out of purgatory.
+
+"I had to tell mother, Willy."
+
+"That's all right Did it cheer her any?"
+
+"Wonderfully.  She's asleep now."
+
+He went up to his room, and for some time she heard him moving about.
+Then she heard the scraping of his chair as he drew it to his desk,
+and vaguely wondered.  When he came down he had a sealed envelope
+in his hand.
+
+"I am going out, Edith," he said.  "I shall be late getting back,
+and--I am going to ask you to do something for me."
+
+She loved doing things for him.  She flushed slightly.
+
+"If I am not back here by two o'clock to-night," he said, "I want
+you to open that letter and read it.  Then go to the nearest
+telephone, and call up the number I've written down.  Ask for the
+man whose name is given, and read him the message."
+
+"Willy!" she gasped.  "You are doing something dangerous!"
+
+"What I really expect," he said, smiling down at her, "is to be
+back, feeling more or less of a fool, by eleven o'clock.  I'm
+providing against an emergency that will almost surely never
+happen, and I am depending on the most trustworthy person I know."
+
+Very soon after that he went away.  She sat for some time after
+he had gone, fingering the blank white envelope and wondering, a
+little frightened but very proud of his trust.
+
+Dan came in and went up the stairs.  That reminded her of the
+dinner, and she sat down in the kitchen with a pan of potatoes
+on her knee.  As she pared them she sang.  She was still singing
+when Ellen came back.
+
+Something had happened to Ellen.  She stood in the kitchen, her hat
+still on, drawing her cotton gloves through her fingers and staring
+at Edith without seeing her.
+
+"You're not sick, are you, Ellen?"
+
+Ellen put down her gloves and slowly took off her hat, still with
+the absorbed eyes of a sleep-walker.
+
+"I'm not sick," she said at last.  "I've had bad news."
+
+"Sit down and I'll make you a cup of tea.  Then maybe you'll feel
+like talking about it."
+
+"I don't want any tea.  Do you know that that man Akers has married
+Lily Cardew?"
+
+"Married her!"
+
+"The devil out of hell that he is."  Ellen's voice was terrible.
+"And all the time knowing that you-- She's at home, the poor child,
+and Mademoiselle just sat and cried when she told me.  It's a
+secret," she added, fiercely.  "You keep your mouth shut about it.
+She never lived with him.  She left him right off.  I wouldn't know
+it now but the servants were talking about the house being forbidden
+to him, and I went straight to Mademoiselle.  I said: 'You keep him
+away from Miss Lily, because I know something about him.'  It was
+when I told her that she said they were married."
+
+She went out and up the stairs, moving slowly and heavily.  Edith
+sat still, the pan on her knee, and thought.  Did Willy know?  Was
+that why he was willing to marry her?  She was swept with bitter
+jealousy, and added to that came suspicion.  Something very near
+the truth flashed into her mind and stayed there.  In her
+bitterness she saw Willy telling Lily of Akers and herself, and
+taking her away, or having her taken.  It must have been something
+like that, or why had she left him?
+
+But her anger slowly subsided; in the end she began to feel that
+the new situation rendered her own position more secure, even
+justified her own approaching marriage.  Since Lily was gone, why
+should she not marry Willy Cameron?  If what Ellen had said was
+true she knew him well enough to know that he would deliberately
+strangle his love for Lily.  If it were true, and if he knew it.
+
+She moved about the kitchen, making up the fire, working
+automatically in that methodless way that always set Ellen's teeth
+on edge, and thinking.  But subconsciously she was listening, too.
+She had heard Dan go into his mother's room and close the door.
+She was bracing herself against his coming down.
+
+Dan was difficult those days, irritable and exacting.  Moody, too,
+and much away from home.  He hated idleness at its best, and the
+strike was idleness at its worst.  Behind the movement toward the
+general strike, too, he felt there was some hidden and sinister
+influence at work, an influence that was determined to turn what
+had commenced as a labor movement into a class uprising.
+
+That very afternoon, for the first time, he had heard whispered the
+phrase: "when the town goes dark."  There was a diabolical
+suggestion in it that sent him home with his fists clenched.
+
+He did not go to his mother's room at once.  Instead, he drew a
+chair to his window and sat there staring out on the little street.
+When the town went dark, what about all the little streets like
+this one?
+
+After an hour or so of ominous quiet Edith heard him go into his
+mother's room.  Her hands trembled as she closed her door.
+
+She heard him coming down at last, and suddenly remembering the
+license, hid it in a drawer.  She knew that he would destroy it if
+he saw it.  And Dan's face justified the move.  He came in and
+stood glowering at her, his hands in his pockets.
+
+"What made you tell that lie to mother?" he demanded,
+
+"She was worried, Dan.  And it will be true to-morrow.  You--Dan,
+you didn't tell her it was a lie, did you?"
+
+"I should have, but I didn't.  What do you mean, it will be true
+to-morrow?"
+
+"We are going to be married to-morrow."
+
+"I'll lock you up first," he said, angrily.  "I've been expecting
+something like that.  I've watched you, and I've seen you watching
+him.  You'll not do it, do you hear?  D'you think I'd let you get
+away with that?  Isn't it enough that he's got to support us,
+without your coaxing him to marry you?"
+
+She made no reply, but went on with a perfunctory laying of the
+table.  Her mouth had gone very dry.
+
+"The poor fish," Dan snarled.  "I thought he had some sense.
+Letting himself in for a nice life, isn't he?  We're not his kind,
+and you know it.  He knows more in a minute than you'll know all
+your days.  In about three months he'll hate the very sight of you,
+and then where'll you be?"
+
+When she made no reply, he called to the dog and went out into the
+yard.  She saw him there, brooding and sullen, and she knew that
+he had not finished.  He would say no more to her, but he would
+wait and have it out with Willy himself.
+
+Supper was silent.  No one ate much, and Ellen, coming down with
+the tray, reported Mrs. Boyd as very tired, and wanting to settle
+down early.
+
+"She looks bad to me," she said to Edith.  "I think the doctor
+ought to see her."
+
+"I'll go and send him."
+
+Edith was glad to get out of the house.  She had avoided the
+streets lately, but as it was the supper hour the pavements were
+empty.  Only Joe Wilkinson, bare-headed, stood in the next doorway,
+and smiled and flushed slightly when he saw her.
+
+"How's your mother?" he asked.
+
+"She's not so well.  I'm going to get the doctor."
+
+"Do you mind if I get my hat and walk there with you?"
+
+"I'm going somewhere else from there, Joe."
+
+"Well, I'll walk a block or two, anyhow."
+
+She waited impatiently.  She liked Joe, but she did not want him
+then.  She wanted to think and plan alone and in the open air,
+away from the little house with its odors and its querulous
+thumping cane upstairs; away from Ellen's grim face and Dan's
+angry one.
+
+He came out almost immediately, followed by a string of little
+Wilkinsons, clamoring to go along.
+
+"Do you mind?" he asked her.  "They can trail along behind.  The
+poor kids don't get out much."
+
+"Bring them along, of course," she said, somewhat resignedly.  And
+with a flash of her old spirit: "I might have brought Jinx, too.
+Then we'd have had a real procession."
+
+They moved down the street, with five little Wilkinsons trailing
+along behind, and Edith was uncomfortably aware that Joe's eyes
+were upon her.
+
+"You don't look well," he said at last.  "You're wearing yourself
+out taking care of your mother, Edith."
+
+"I don't do much for her."
+
+"You'd say that, of course.  You're very unselfish."
+
+"Am I?"  She laughed a little, but the words touched her.  "Don't
+think I'm better than I am, Joe."
+
+"You're the most wonderful girl in the world.  I guess you know how
+I feel about that."
+
+"Don't Joe!"
+
+But at that moment a very little Wilkinson fell headlong and burst
+into loud, despairing wails.  Joe set her on her feet, brushed her
+down with a fatherly hand, and on her refusal to walk further picked
+her up and carried her.  The obvious impossibility of going on with
+what he had been saying made him smile sheepishly.
+
+"Can you beat it?" he said helplessly, "these darn kids--!"  But
+he held the child close.
+
+At the next corner he turned toward home.  Edith stopped and watched
+his valiant young back, his small train of followers.  He was going
+to be very sad when he knew, poor Joe, with his vicarious fatherhood,
+his cluttered, noisy, anxious life.
+
+Life was queer.  Queer and cruel.
+
+From the doctor's office, the waiting room lined with patient figures,
+she went on.  She had a very definite plan in mind, but it took all
+her courage to carry it through.  Outside the Benedict Apartments she
+hesitated, but she went in finally, upheld by sheer determination.
+
+The chair at the telephone desk was empty, but Sam remembered her.
+
+"He's out, miss," he said.  "He's out most all the time now, with
+the election coming on."
+
+"What time does he usually get in?"
+
+"Sometimes early, sometimes late," said Sam, watching her.
+Everything pertaining to Louis Akers was of supreme interest those
+days to the Benedict employees.  The beating he had received, the
+coming election, the mysterious young woman who had come but once,
+and the black days that had followed his return from the St. Elmo
+--out of such patchwork they were building a small drama of their
+own.  Sam was trying to fit in Edith's visit with the rest.
+
+The Benedict was neither more moral nor less than its kind.  An
+unwritten law kept respectable women away, but the management showed
+no inclination to interfere where there was no noise or disorder.
+Employees were supposed to see that no feminine visitors remained
+after midnight, that was all.
+
+"You might go up and wait for him," Sam suggested.  "That is, if
+it's important."
+
+"It's very important."
+
+He threw open the gate of the elevator hospitably.
+
+At half past ten that night Louis Akers went back to his rooms.  The
+telephone girl watched him sharply as he entered.
+
+"There's a lady waiting for you, Mr. Akers."
+
+He swung toward her eagerly.
+
+"A lady?  Did she give any name?"
+
+"No.  Sam let her in and took her up.  He said he thought you
+wouldn't mind.  She'd been here before."
+
+The thought of Edith never entered Akers' head.  It was Lily, Lily
+miraculously come back to him.  Lily, his wife.
+
+Going up in the elevator he hastily formulated a plan of action.
+He would not be too ready to forgive; she had cost him too much.
+But in the end he would take her in his arms and hold her close.
+Lily!  Lily!
+
+It was the bitterness of his disappointment that made him brutal.
+Wicked and unscrupulous as he was with men, with women he was as
+gentle as he was cruel.  He put them from him relentlessly and
+kissed them good-by.  It was his boast that any one of them would
+come back to him if he wanted her.
+
+Edith, listening for his step, was startled at the change in his
+face when he saw her.
+
+"You!" he said thickly.  "What are you doing here?"
+
+"I've been waiting all evening.  I want to ask you something."
+
+ He flung his hat into a chair and faced her.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Is it true that you are married to Lily Cardew?"
+
+"If I am, what are you going to do about it?"  His eyes were wary,
+but his color was coming back.  He was breathing more easily.
+
+"I only heard it to-day.  I must know, Lou.  It's awfully important."
+
+"What did you hear?" He was watching her closely.
+
+"I heard you were married, but that she had left you."
+
+It seemed to him incredible that she had come there to taunt him,
+she who was responsible for the shipwreck of his marriage.  That
+she could come there and face him, and not expect him to kill her
+where she stood.
+
+He pulled himself together.
+
+"It's true enough."  He swore under his breath.  "She didn't leave
+me.  She was taken away.  And I'll get her back if I-- You little
+fool, I ought to kill you.  If you wanted a cheap revenge, you've got it."
+
+"I don't want revenge, Lou."
+
+He caught her by the arm.
+
+"Then what brought you here?"
+
+"I wanted to be sure Lily Cardew was married."
+
+"Well, she is.  What about it?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+"That's not all.  What about it?"
+
+She looked up at him gravely.
+
+"Because, if she is, I am going to marry Mr. Cameron tomorrow."  At
+the sight of his astounded face she went on hastily: "He knows, Lou,
+and he offered anyhow."
+
+"And what," he said slowly, "has my wife to do with that?"
+
+"I wanted to be fair to him.  And I think he is--I think he used
+to be terribly in love with her."
+
+Quite apart from his increasing fear of Willy Cameron and his
+Committee, there had been in Akers for some time a latent jealousy
+of him.  In a flash he saw the room at the Saint Elmo, and a
+cold-eyed man inside the doorway.  The humiliation of that scene
+had never left him, of his own maudlin inadequacy, of hearing from
+beyond a closed and locked door, the closing of another door behind
+Lily and the man who had taken her away from him.  A mad anger and
+jealousy made him suddenly reckless.
+
+"So," he said, "he is terribly in love with my wife, and he intends
+to marry you.  That's--interesting.  Because, my sweet child, he's
+got a damn poor chance of marrying you, or anybody."
+
+"Lou!"
+
+"Listen," he said deliberately.  "Men who stick their heads into the
+lion's jaws are apt to lose them.  Our young friend Cameron has done
+that.  I'll change the figure.  When a man tries to stop a great
+machine by putting his impudent fingers into the cog wheels, the
+man's a fool.  He may lose his hand, or he may lose his life."
+
+Fortunately for Edith he moved on that speech to the side table, and
+mixed himself a highball.  It gave her a moment to summon her
+scattered wits, to decide on a plan of action.  Her early training
+on the streets, her recent months of deceit, helped her now.  If he
+had expected any outburst from her it did not come.
+
+"If you mean that he is in danger, I don't believe it."
+
+"All right, old girl.  I've told you."
+
+But the whiskey restored his equilibrium again.
+
+"That is," he added slowly, "I've warned you.  You'd better warn
+him.  He's doing his best to get into trouble."
+
+She knew him well, saw the craftiness come back into his eyes, and
+met it with equal strategy.
+
+"I'll tell him," she said, moving toward the door.  "You haven't
+scared me for a minute and you won't scare him.  You and your
+machine!"
+
+She dared not seem to hurry.
+
+"You're a boaster," she said, with the door open.  "You always
+were.  And you'll never lay a hand on him.  You're like all bullies;
+you're a coward!"
+
+She was through the doorway by that time, and in terror for fear,
+having told her so much, he would try to detain her.  She saw the
+idea come into his face, too, just as she slipped outside.  He made
+a move toward her.
+
+"I think--" he began.
+
+She slammed the door and ran down the hallway toward the stairs.
+She heard him open the door and come out into the hall, but she was
+well in advance and running like a deer.
+
+"Edith!" he called.
+
+She stumbled on the second flight of stairs and fell a half-dozen
+steps, but she picked herself up and ran on.  At the bottom of the
+lower flight she stopped and listened, but he had gone back.  She
+heard the slam of his door as he closed it.
+
+But the insistent need of haste drove her on, headlong.  She shot
+through the lobby, past the staring telephone girl, and into the
+street, and there settled down into steady running, her elbows
+close to her sides, trying to remember to breathe slowly and evenly.
+She must get home somehow, get the envelope and follow the
+directions inside.  Her thoughts raced with her.  It was almost
+eleven o'clock and Willy had been gone for hours.  She tried to
+pray, but the words did not come.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+At something after seven o'clock that night Willy Cameron and Pink
+Denslow reached that point on the Mayville Road which had been
+designated by the storekeeper, Cusick.  They left the car there,
+hidden in a grove, and struck off across country to the west.  Willy
+Cameron had been thoughtful for some time, and as they climbed a
+low hill, going with extreme caution, he said:
+
+"I'm still skeptical about Cusick, Pink.  Do you think he's
+straight?"
+
+"One of the best men we've got," Pink replied, confidently.  "He's
+put us on to several things."
+
+"He's foreign born, isn't he?"
+
+"That's his value.  They don't suspect him for a minute."
+
+"But--what does he get out of it?"
+
+"Good citizen," said Pink, with promptness.  "You've got to remember,
+Cameron, that a lot of these fellows are better Americans than we
+are.  They're like religious converts, stronger than the ones born
+in the fold.  They're Americans because they want to be.  Anyhow,
+you ought to be strong for him, Cameron.  He said to tell you, but
+no one else."
+
+"I'll tell you how strong I am for him later," Willy Cameron said,
+grimly.  "Just at this minute I'm waiting to be shown."
+
+They advanced with infinite caution, for the evening was still light.
+Going slowly, it was well after eight and fairly dark before they
+came within sight of the farm buildings in the valley below.  Long
+unpainted, they were barely discernable in the shadows of the hills.
+The land around had been carefully cleared, and both men were
+dismayed at the difficulty of access without being seen.
+
+"Doesn't look very good, does it?" Pink observed.  "I will say this,
+for seclusion and keeping away unwanted visitors, it has it all
+over any dug-out I ever saw in France."
+
+"Listen!" Willy Cameron said, tensely.
+
+They stood on the alert, but only the evening sounds of country
+and forest rewarded them.
+
+"What was it?" Pink inquired, after perhaps two minutes of waiting.
+
+"Plain scare on my part, probably.  I don't so much mind this little
+excursion, Pink, as I hate the idea that a certain gentleman named
+Cusick may have a chance to come to our funerals and laugh himself
+to death."
+
+When real darkness had fallen, they had reached the lower fringe
+of the woods.  Pink had the fault of the city dweller, however, of
+being unable to step lightly in the dark, and their progress had
+been less silent than it should have been.  In spite of his handicap,
+Willy Cameron made his way with the instinctive knowledge of the
+country bred boy, treading like a cat.
+
+"Pretty poor," Pink said in a discouraged whisper, after a twig had
+burst under his foot with a report like the shot of a pistol.  "You
+travel like a spook, while I--"
+
+"Listen, Pink.  I'm going in alone to look around.  Stop muttering
+and listen to me.  It's poor strategy not to have a reserve
+somewhere, isn't it?"
+
+"I'm a poor prune at the best," Pink said stubbornly, "but I am not
+going to let you go into that place alone.  You can rave all you
+want."
+
+"Very well.  Then we'll both stay here.  You are about as quiet as
+a horse going through a corn patch."
+
+After some moments Pink spoke again.
+
+"If you insist on stealing the whole show," he said, sulkily, "what
+am I to do?  Run to town for help, if you need it?"
+
+"I'm not going to round up the outfit, if there is one.  I haven't
+lost my mind.  I'll see what is going on, or about to go on.  Then
+I'll come back."
+
+"Here?"
+
+Cameron considered.
+
+"Better meet at the machine," he decided, after a glance at the sky.
+"In half an hour you won't be able to see your hand in front of you.
+Wait here for a half-hour or so, and then start back, and for
+heaven's sake don't shoot at anything you see moving.  As a matter
+of fact, I might as well have your revolver.  I won't need it, but
+it may avoid any accidental shooting by a youth I both love and
+admire!"
+
+"If I hear any shooting, I'll come in," Pink said, still sulky.
+
+"Come in and welcome," said Willy Cameron, and Pink knew he was
+smiling.
+
+He took the revolver and slipped away into the darkness, leaving
+Pink both melancholy and disturbed.  Unaccustomed to night in the
+woods, he found his nerves twitching at every sound.  In the war
+there had been a definite enemy, definitely placed.  Even when
+he had gone into that vile strip between the trenches, there had
+been a general direction for the inimical.  Here--
+
+He moved carefully, and stood with his back against a tree.
+
+Not a sound came from the farm buildings.  Willy Cameron's progress,
+too, was noiseless.  With no way to tell the lapse of time, and
+gauging it by his war experience, when an hour had apparently
+passed by, he knew that Cameron had been gone about ten minutes.
+
+Time dragged on.  A cow, unmilked, lowed plaintively once or twice.
+A September night breeze set the dying leaves on the trees to
+rustling, and stirred the dried ones about his feet.  Pink's mind,
+gradually reassured, turned to other things.  He thought of Lily
+Cardew, for one.  Like Willy Cameron, he knew he would always love
+her, but unlike Willy, the first pain of her loss was gone.  He
+was glad that time was over.  He was glad that she was at home
+again, safe from those-- Some one was moving near him, passing
+within twenty feet.  Whoever it was was stepping cautiously but
+blunderingly.  It was not Cameron, then.  He was a footfall only,
+not even an outline.  Before Pink could decide on a line of action,
+the sound was lost.
+
+Every sense acute, he waited.  He had decided that if the incident
+were repeated, he would make an effort to get the fellow from
+behind, but there was no return.  The wind had died again, and
+there was no longer even the rustling of the leaves to break the
+utter stillness.
+
+Suddenly he saw a red flash near the barn, and an instant later
+heard the report of a pistol.  Came immediately after that a brief
+fusillade of shots, a pause, then two or three scattering ones.
+
+With the first shot Pink started running.  He was vaguely conscious
+of other steps near him, running also, but he could see nothing.
+His whole mind was set on finding Willy Cameron.  Alone he had not
+a chance, but two of them together could put up a fight.  He pelted
+along, stumbling, recovering, stumbling again.
+
+Another shot was fired.  They hadn't got him yet, or they wouldn't
+be shooting.  He raised his voice in a great call.
+
+"Cameron!  Here!  Cameron!"
+
+He ran into a low fence then, and it threw him.  He had hardly got
+to his knees before the other running figure had hurled itself on
+him, and struck him with the butt of a revolver.  He dropped flat
+and lay still.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+For weeks Woslosky had known of the growing strength of the
+Vigilance Committee, and that it was arming steadily.
+
+It threatened absolutely the success of his plans.  Even the
+election of Akers and the changes he would make in the city police;
+even the ruse of other strikes and machine-made riotings to call
+away the state troops,--none of these, or all of them, would be
+effectual against an organized body of citizens, duly called to
+the emergency.
+
+And such an organization was already effected.  Within a week, when
+the first card reached his hands, it had grown to respectable
+proportions.  Woslosky went to Doyle, and they made their
+counter-moves quickly.  No more violence.  A seemingly real but
+deceptive orderliness.  They were dealing with inflammatory material,
+however, and now and then it got out of hand.  Unlike Doyle the
+calculating, who made each move slowly and watched its results with
+infinite zest, the Pole chafed under delay.
+
+"We can't hold them much longer," he complained, bitterly.  "This
+thing of holding them off until after the election--and until
+Akers takes office--it's got too many ifs in it."
+
+"It was haste lost Seattle," said Doyle, as unmoved as Woslosky
+was excited.
+
+Woslosky did not like Louis Akers.  What was more important, he
+distrusted him.  When he heard of his engagement to Lily Cardew
+he warned Doyle about him.
+
+"He's in this thing for what he can get out of it," he said.  "He'll
+go as far as he can, with safety, to be accepted by the Cardews."
+
+"Exactly," was Doyle's dry comment, "with safety, you said.  Well,
+he knows you and he knows me, and he'll he straight because he's
+afraid not to be."
+
+"When there's a woman in it!" said the Pole, skeptically.
+
+But Doyle only smiled.  He had known many women and loved none of
+them, and he was temperamentally unable to understand the type
+of man who saw the world through a woman's eyes and in them.
+
+So Woslosky was compelled to watch the growth of Willy Cameron's
+organization, and to hold in check the violent passions he had
+himself roused, and to wait, gnawing his nails with inaction and
+his heart with rage.  But these certain things he discovered:
+
+That the organization's growth was coincident with a new interest
+in local politics, as though some vital force had wakened the
+plain people to a sense of responsibility.
+
+That a drug clerk named Cameron was the founder and moving spirit
+of the league, and that he was, using Hendricks' candidacy as a
+means, rousing the city to a burning patriotic activity that Mr.
+Woslosky regarded as extremely pernicious.
+
+And that this same Willy Cameron had apparently a knowledge of
+certain plans, which was rather worse than pernicious.  Mr.
+Woslosky's name for it was damnable.
+
+For instance, there were the lists of the various city stores and
+their estimated contents, missing from Mr. Woslosky's own
+inconspicuous trunk in a storage house.  On that had been based
+the plan for feeding the revolution, by the simple expedient of
+exchanging by organized pillage the contents of the city stores
+for food stuffs from the farmers in outlying districts.
+
+Revolution, according to Mr. Woslosky, could only be starved out.
+He had no anxiety as to troops which would be sent against them,
+because he had a cynical belief that a man's country was less to
+him than various other things, including his stomach.  He believed
+that all armies were riddled with sedition and fundamentally
+opposed to law.
+
+Copies of other important matters, too, were missing.  Lists of
+officials for the revolutionary city government and of deputies to
+take the places of the disbanded police, plans for manning, by the
+radicals, the city light, water and power plants; a schedule of
+public eating houses to take the place of the restaurants.
+
+Woslosky began to find this drug clerk with the ridiculous given
+name getting on his nerves.  He considered him a dangerous enemy
+to progress, that particular form of progress which Mr. Woslosky
+advocated, and he suspected him of a lack of ethics regarding
+trunks in storage.  Mr. Woslosky had the old-world idea that the
+best government was a despotism tempered by assassination.  He
+thought considerably about Willy Cameron.
+
+But the plan concerning the farm house was, in the end, devised by
+Louis Akers.  Woslosky was skeptical.  It was true that Cameron
+might stick his head into the lion's jaws, but precautions had been
+known to be taken at such times to prevent their closing.  However,
+the Pole was desperate.
+
+He took six picked men with him that afternoon to the farm, and
+made a strategic survey of the situation.  The house was closed
+and locked, but he was not concerned with the house.  Cusick had
+told Denslow the meetings were held late at night in the barn,
+and to the barn Woslosky repaired, sawed-off shotgun under his
+coat and cigarette in mouth, and inspected it with his evil smile.
+Two men, young and reckless, might easily plan to conceal
+themselves under the hay in the loft, and--
+
+Woslosky put down his gun and went down into the cow barn below,
+whistling softly to himself.  He began to enjoy the prospect.  He
+gathered some eggs from the feed boxes, carrying them in his hat,
+and breaking the lock of the kitchen door he and his outfit looted
+the closet there and had an early supper, being careful to
+extinguish the fire afterwards.
+
+Not until dusk was falling did he post his men, three outside among
+the outbuildings, one as a sentry near the woods, and two in the
+barn itself.  He himself took up his station inside the barn door,
+sitting on the floor with his gun across his knees.  Looking out
+from there, he saw the sharp flash of a hastily extinguished match,
+and snarled with anger.  He had forbidden smoking.
+
+"I've got to go out," he said cautiously.  "Don't you fools shoot
+me when I come back."
+
+He slipped out into what was by that time complete blackness.
+
+Some five minutes later he came back, still noiselessly, and treading
+like a cat.  He could only locate the barn door by feeling for it,
+and above the light scraping of his fingers he could hear, inside,
+cautious footsteps over the board floor.  He scowled again.  Damn
+this country quiet, anyhow!  But he had found the doorway, and was
+feeling his way through when he found himself caught and violently
+thrown.  The fall and the surprise stunned him.  He lay still for
+an infuriated helpless second, with a knee on his chest and both
+arms tightly held, to hear one of his own men above him saying:
+
+"Got him, all right.  Woslosky, you've got the rope, haven't you?"
+
+"You fool!" snarled Woslosky from the floor, "let me up.  You've
+half killed me.  Didn't I tell you I was going out?"
+
+He scrambled to his feet, and to an astounded silence.
+
+"But you came in a couple of minutes ago.  Somebody came in.  You
+heard him, Cusick, didn't you?"
+
+Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost
+with the same movement drew a searchlight and flashed it over the
+place.  It was apparently empty.
+
+The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp
+questions.  Both men had heard the cautious entrance they had
+taken for his own, both men had remained silent and unsuspicious,
+and both were positive whoever had come in had not gone out again.
+
+He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search.
+The summer's hay filled one end, but it was closely packed below
+and offered no refuge.  Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash
+in his pocket, Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going
+softly.  He listened at the top, and then searched it with the
+light, holding it far to the left for a possible bullet.  The loft
+was empty.  He climbed into it and walked over it, gun in one hand
+and flash in the other, searching for some buried figure.  But there
+was nothing.  The loft was fragrant with the newly dried hay, sweet
+and empty.  Woslosky descended the ladder again, the flash
+extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering.
+Cusick was a man without imagination, and he had sworn that some
+one had come in.  Then--
+
+Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited
+flutterings first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who
+roosted on the roof.  Woslosky listened and slowly smiled.
+
+"We've got him, boys," he said, without excitement.  "Outside, and
+call the others.  He's on the roof."
+
+Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others
+coming pell-mell toward him.  He flung a guard of all five of them
+around the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and
+gazed upward.  The very outline of the ridge pole was
+indistinguishable, and he swore softly.  In the hope of drawing an
+answering flash he fired, but without result.  The explosion echoed
+and reechoed, died away.
+
+He called to Cusick, and had him try the same experiment, following
+the line of the gutter as nearly as possible in the darkness, on
+that side, and emptying his revolver.  Still silence.
+
+Woslosky began to doubt.  The pigeons might have seen his flashlight,
+might have heard his own stealthy movements.  He was intensely
+irritated.  The shooting, if the alarm had been false, had ruined
+everything.  He saw, as in a vision, Doyle's sneering face when he
+told him.  Beside him Cusick was reloading his revolver in the
+darkness.
+
+Then, out of the night, came a call from the direction of the woods,
+and unintelligible at that distance.
+
+"What's that?" Cusick said hoarsely.
+
+Woslosky made no reply.  He was listening.  Some one was approaching,
+now running, now stopping as though confused.  Woslosky held his gun
+ready, and waited.  Then, from a distance, he heard his name called.
+
+He stepped inside the door of the barn and showed the light for a
+moment.  Soon after the sentry floundered in, breathless and excited.
+
+"I got one of them," he gasped.  "Hit him with my gun.  He's lying
+back by the stone fence."
+
+"Did you call out, or did he?"
+
+"He did.  That's how I knew it wasn't one of our fellows.  He called
+Cameron, so he's the other one."
+
+Woslosky drew a deep breath.  Then it was Cameron on the roof.  It
+was Cameron they wanted.
+
+"He'll sleep for an hour or two, if he ever wakes up,"  Pink's
+assailant boasted.  But Woslosky was taking no chances that night.
+He sent two men after Pink, and began to pace the floor thoughtfully.
+If he could have waited for daylight it would have been simple
+enough, but he did not know how much time he had.  He did not
+underestimate young Cameron's intelligence, and it had occurred to
+him that that young Scot might cannily have provided against his
+failure to return.  Then, too, the state constabulary had an
+uncomfortable habit of riding lonely back roads at night, and shots
+could be heard a long distance off.
+
+He had never surveyed the barn roof closely, but he knew that it
+was steeply pitched.  Cameron, then, was probably braced somewhere
+in the gutter.  The departure of the two men had left him
+short-handed, and he waited impatiently for their return.  With a
+ladder, provided it could be quietly placed, a man could shoot from
+a corner along two sides of the roof.  With two ladders, at diagonal
+corners, they could get him.  But a careful search discovered no
+ladders on the place.
+
+He went out, and standing close against the wall for protection,
+called up.
+
+"We know you're there, Cameron," he said.  "If you come down we
+won't hurt you.  If you don't, we'll get you, and you know it."
+
+But he received no reply.
+
+Soon after that the two men carried in Pink Denslow, and laid him
+on the floor of the barn.  Then Woslosky tried again, more reckless
+this time with anger.  He stood out somewhat from the wall and
+called:
+
+"One more chance, Cameron, or we'll put a bullet through your friend
+here.  Come down, or we'll--"
+
+Something struck him heavily and he fell, with a bullet in the
+shoulder.  He struggled to his feet and gained the shelter of the
+wall, his face twisted with pain.
+
+"All right," he said, "if that's the way you feel about it!"
+
+He regained the barn and had his arm supported in an extemporized
+sling.  Then he ordered Pink to be tied, and fighting down his pain
+considered the situation.  Cameron was on the roof, and armed.  Even
+if he had no extra shells he still had five shots in reserve, and he
+would not waste any of them.  Whoever tried to scale the walls would
+be done in at once; whoever attempted to follow him to the roof by
+way of the loft would be shot instantly.  And his own condition
+demanded haste; the bullet, striking from above, had broken his arm.
+Every movement was torture.
+
+He thought of setting fire to the barn.  Then Cameron would have
+the choice of two things, to surrender or to be killed.  He might
+get some of them first, however.  Well, that was a part of the game.
+
+He delivered a final ultimatum from the shelter of the doorway.
+
+"I've just thought of something, Cameron," he called.  "We're going
+to fire the barn.  Your young friend is here, tied, and we'll leave
+him here.  Do you get that?  Either throw down that gun of yours,
+and come down, or I'm inclined to think you'll be up against it.
+I'll give you a minute or so to think it over."
+
+At half-past eleven o'clock that night the first of four automobiles
+drove into Friendship.  It was driven by a hatless young man in a
+raincoat over a suit of silk pajamas, and it contained four County
+detectives and the city Chief of Police.  Behind it, but well
+outdistanced, came the other cars, some of them driven by leading
+citizens in a state of considerable deshabille.
+
+At a cross street in Friendship the lead car drew up, and flashlights
+were turned on a road map in the rear of the car.  There was some
+argument over the proper road, and a member of the state constabulary,
+riding up to investigate, showed a strong inclination to place them
+under arrest.
+
+It took a moment to put him right.
+
+"Wish I could go along," he said, wistfully.  "The place you want is
+back there.  I can't leave the town, but I'll steer you out.  You'll
+probably run into some of our fellows back there."
+
+He rode on ahead, his big black horse restive in the light from the
+lamps behind him.  At the end of a lane he stopped.
+
+"Straight ahead up there," he said.  "You'll find--"
+
+He broke off and stared ahead to where a dull red glare, reflected
+on the low hanging clouds, had appeared over the crest of the hill.
+
+"Something doing up there," he called suddenly.  "Let's go."
+
+He jerked his revolver free, dug his heels into the flanks of his
+horse, and was off on a dead run.  Half way up the hill the car
+passed him, the black going hard, and its rider's face, under the
+rim of his uniform hat, a stern profile.  His reins lay loose on
+the animal's neck, and he was examining his gun.
+
+The road mounted to a summit, and dipped again.  They were in a
+long valley, and the burning barn was clearly outlined at the far
+end of it.  One side was already flaming, and tongues of fire
+leaped out through the roof.  The men in the car were standing now,
+doors open, ready to leap, while the car lurched and swayed over
+the uneven road.  Behind them they heard the clatter of the oncoming
+horse.
+
+As they drew nearer they could see three watching figures against
+the burning building, and as they turned into the lane which led to
+the barnyard a shot rang out and one of the figures dropped and lay
+still.  There was a cry of warning from somewhere, and before the
+detectives could leap from the car, the group had scattered, running
+wildly.  The state policeman threw his horse back on its hunches, and
+fired without apparently taking aim at one of the running shadows.
+The man threw up his arms and fell.  The state policeman galloped
+toward him, dismounted and bent over him.
+
+Firing as they ran, detectives leaped out of the car and gave chase,
+and so it was that the young gentleman in bedroom slippers and
+pajamas, standing in his car and shielding his eyes against the
+glare, saw a curious thing.
+
+First of all, the roof blazed up brightly, and he perceived a human
+figure, hanging by its hands from the eaves and preparing to drop.
+The young gentleman in pajamas was feeling rather out of things by
+that time, so he made a hasty exit from his car toward the barn,
+losing a slipper as he did so, and yelling in a slightly hysterical
+manner.  It thus happened that he and the dropping figure reached
+the same spot at almost the same moment, one result of which was that
+the young gentleman in pajamas found himself struck a violent blow
+with a doubled-up fist, and at the same moment his bare right foot
+was tramped on with extreme thoroughness.
+
+The young gentleman in pajamas reeled back dizzily and gave tongue,
+while standing on one foot.  The person he addressed was the state
+constable, and his instructions were to get the fugitive and kill
+him.  But the fugitive here did a very strange thing.  Through
+the handkerchief which it was now seen he wore tied over his mouth,
+he told the running policeman to go to perdition, and then with
+seeming suicidal intent rushed into the burning barn.  From it he
+emerged a moment later, dragging a figure bound hand and foot,
+blackened with smoke, and with its clothing smoldering in a dozen
+places; a figure which alternately coughed and swore in a strangled
+whisper, but which found breath for a loud whoop almost immediately
+after, on its being immersed, as it promptly was, in a nearby
+horse-trough.
+
+Very soon after that the other cars arrived.  They drew up and men
+emerged from them, variously clothed and even more variously armed,
+but all they saw was the ruined embers of the barn, and in the glow
+five figures.  Of the five one lay, face up to the sky, as though
+the prostrate body followed with its eyes the unkillable traitor
+soul of one Cusick, lately storekeeper at Friendship.  Woslosky,
+wounded for the second time, lay on an automobile rug on the ground,
+conscious but sullenly silent.  On the driving seat of an automobile
+sat a young gentleman with an overcoat over a pair of silk pajamas,
+carefully inspecting the toes of his right foot by the light of a
+match, while another young gentleman with a white handkerchief
+around his head was sitting on the running board of the same car,
+dripping water and rather dazedly staring at the ruins.
+
+And beside him stood a gaunt figure, blackened of face, minus
+eyebrows and charred of hair, and considerably torn as to clothing.
+A figure which seemed disinclined to talk, and which gave its
+explanations in short, staccato sentences.  Having done which, it
+relapsed into uncompromising silence again.
+
+Some time later the detectives returned.  They had made no further
+captures, for the refugees had known the country, and once outside
+the light from the burning barn search was useless.  The Chief of
+Police approached Willy Cameron and stood before him, eyeing him
+severely.
+
+"The next time you try to raid an anarchist meeting, Cameron," he
+said, "you'd better honor me with your confidence.  You've probably
+learned a lesson from all this."
+
+Willy Cameron glanced at him, and for the first time that night,
+smiled.
+
+"I have," he said; "I'll never trust a pigeon again."  The Chief
+thought him slightly unhinged by the night's experience.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Edith Boyd's child was prematurely born at the Memorial Hospital
+early the next morning.  It lived only a few moments, but Edith's
+mother never knew either of its birth or of its death.
+
+When Willy Cameron reached the house at two o'clock that night he
+found Dan in the lower hall, a new Dan, grave and composed but
+very pale.
+
+"Mother's gone, Willy," he said quietly.  "I don't think she knew
+anything about it.  Ellen heard her breathing hard and went in, but
+she wasn't conscious."  He sat down on the horse-hair covered chair
+by the stand.  "I don't know anything about these things," he
+observed, still with that strange new composure.  "What do you do
+now?"
+
+"Don't worry about that, Dan, just now.  There's nothing to do
+until morning."
+
+He looked about him.  The presence of death gave a new dignity to
+the little house.  Through the open door he could see in the
+parlor Mrs. Boyd's rocking chair, in which she had traveled so
+many conversational miles.  Even the chair had gained dignity; that
+which it had once enthroned had now penetrated the ultimate mystery.
+
+He was shaken and very weary.  His mind worked slowly and torpidly,
+so that even grief came with an effort.  He was grieved; he knew
+that.  Some one who had loved him and depended on him was gone;
+some one who loved life had lost it.  He ran his hand over his
+singed hair.
+
+"Where is Edith?"
+
+Dan's voice hardened.
+
+"She's out somewhere.  It's like her, isn't it?"
+
+Willy Cameron roused himself.
+
+"Out?" he said incredulously.  "Don't you know where she is?"
+
+"No.  And I don't care."
+
+Willy Cameron was fully alert now, and staring down at Dan.
+
+"I'll tell you something, Dan.  She probably saved my life to-night.
+I'll tell you how later.  And if she is still out there is
+something wrong."
+
+"She used to stay out to all hours.  She hasn't done it lately, but
+I thought--"
+
+Dan got up and reached for his hat.
+
+"Where'll I start to look for her?"
+
+But Willy Cameron had no suggestion to make.  He was trying to
+think straight, but it was not easy.  He knew that for some reason
+Edith had not waited until midnight to open the envelope.  She had
+telephoned her message clearly, he had learned, but with great
+excitement, saying that there was a plot against his life, and
+giving the farmhouse and the message he had left in full; and she
+had not rung off until she knew that a posse would start at once.
+And that had been before eleven o'clock.
+
+Three hours.  He looked at his watch.  Either she had been hurt or
+was a prisoner, or--he came close to the truth then.  He glanced
+at Dan, standing hat in hand.
+
+"We'll try the hospitals first, Dan," he said.  "And the best way
+to do that is by telephone.  I don't like Ellen being left alone
+here, so you'd better let me do that."
+
+Dan acquiesced unwillingly.  He resumed his seat in the hail, and
+Willy Cameron went upstairs.  Ellen was moving softly about, setting
+in order the little upper room.  The windows were opened, and
+through them came the soft night wind, giving a semblance of life
+and movement under it to the sheet that covered the quiet figure on
+the bed.
+
+Willy Cameron stood by it and looked down, with a great wave of
+thankfulness in his heart.  She had been saved much, and if from
+some new angle she was seeing them now it would be with the vision
+of eternity, and its understanding.  She would see how sometimes
+the soul must lose here to gain beyond.  She would see the world
+filled with its Ediths, and she would know that they too were a
+part of the great plan, and that the breaking of the body sometimes
+freed the soul.
+
+He was shy of the forms of religion, but he voiced a small
+inarticulate prayer, standing beside the bed while Ellen
+straightened the few toilet articles on the dresser, that she might
+have rest, and then a long and placid happiness.  And love, he
+added.  There would be no Heaven without love.
+
+Ellen was looking at him in the mirror.
+
+"Your hair looks queer, Willy," she said.  "And I declare your
+clothes are a sight."  She turned, sternly.  "Where have you been?"
+
+"It's a long story, Ellen.  Don't bother about it now.  I'm worried
+about Edith."
+
+Ellen's lips closed in a grim line.
+
+"The less said about her the better.  She came back in a terrible
+state about something or other, ran in and up to your room, and out
+again.  I tried to tell her her mother wasn't so well, but she
+looked as if she didn't hear me."
+
+It was four o'clock in the morning when Willy Cameron located Edith.
+He had gone to the pharmacy and let himself in, intending to
+telephone, but the card on the door, edged with black, gave him a
+curious sense of being surrounded that night by death, and he stood
+for a moment, unwilling to begin for fear of some further tragedy.
+In that moment, what with reaction from excitement and weariness, he
+had a feeling of futility, of struggling to no end.  One fought on,
+and in the last analysis it was useless.
+
+"So soon passeth it away, and we are gone."
+
+He saw Mr. Davis, sitting alone in his house; he saw Ellen moving
+about that quiet upper room; he saw Cusick lying on the ground
+beside the smoldering heap that had been the barn, and staring up
+with eyes that saw only the vast infinity that was the sky.  All
+the struggling and the fighting, and it came to that.
+
+He picked up the telephone book at last, and finding the hospital
+list in the directory began his monotonous calling of numbers, and
+still the revolt was in his mind.  Even life lay through the gates
+of death; daily and hourly women everywhere laid down their lives
+that some new soul be born.  But the revulsion came with that, a
+return to something nearer the normal.  Daily and hourly women
+lived, having brought to pass the miracle of life.
+
+At half-past four he located Edith at the Memorial, and learned
+that her child had been born dead, but that she was doing well.  He
+was suddenly exhausted; he sat down on a stool before the counter,
+and with his arms across it and his head on them, fell almost
+instantly asleep.  When he waked it was almost seven and the
+intermittent sounds of early morning came through the closed doors,
+as though the city stirred but had not wakened.
+
+He went to the door and opened it, looking out.  He had been wrong
+before.  Death was a beginning and not an end; it was the morning
+of the spirit.  Tired bodies lay down to sleep and their souls
+wakened to the morning, rested; the first fruits of them that slept.
+
+From the chimneys of the houses nearby small spirals of smoke began
+to ascend, definite promise of food and morning cheer behind the
+closed doors, where the milk bottles stood like small white sentinels
+and the morning paper was bent over the knob.  Morning in the city,
+with children searching for lost stockings and buttoning little
+battered shoes; with women hurrying about, from stove to closet, from
+table to stove; with all burdens a little lighter and all thoughts a
+little kinder.  Morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+In her bed in the maternity ward Edith at first lay through the
+days, watching the other women with their babies, and wondering over
+the strange instinct that made them hover, like queer mis-shaped
+ministering angels, over the tiny quivering bundles.  Some of them
+were like herself, or herself as she might have been, bearing their
+children out of wedlock.  Yet they faced their indefinite futures
+impassively, content in relief from pain, in the child in their
+arms, in present peace and security.  She could not understand.
+
+She herself felt no sense of loss.  Having never held her child in
+her arms she did not feel them empty.
+
+She had not been told of her mother's death; men were not admitted
+to the ward, but early on that first morning, when she lay there,
+hardly conscious but in an ecstasy of relief from pain, Ellen had
+come.  A tired Ellen with circles around her eyes, and a bag of
+oranges in her arms.
+
+"How do you feel?" she had asked, sitting down self-consciously
+beside the bed.  The ward had its eyes on her.
+
+"I'm weak, but I'm all right.  Last night was awful, Ellen."
+
+She had roused herself with an effort.  Ellen reminded her of
+something, something that had to do with Willy Cameron.  Then she
+remembered, and tried to raise herself in the bed.
+
+"Willy!" she gasped.  "Did he come home?  Is he all right?"
+
+"He's all right.  It was him that found you were here.  You lie
+back now; the nurse is looking."
+
+Edith lay down and closed her eyes, and the ecstasy of relief and
+peace gave to her pale face an almost spiritual look.  Ellen saw it,
+and patted her arm with a roughened hand.
+
+"You poor thing!" she said.  "I've been as mean to you as I knew
+how to be.  I'm going to be different, Edith.  I'm just a cross old
+maid, and I guess I didn't understand."
+
+"You've been all right," Edith said.
+
+Ellen kissed her when she went away.
+
+So for three days Edith lay and rested.  She felt that God had been
+very good to her, and she began to think of God as having given her
+another chance.  This time He had let her off, but He had given her
+a warning.  He had said, in effect, that if she lived straight and
+thought straight from now on He would forget this thing she had done.
+But if she did not--
+
+Then what about Willy Cameron?  Did He mean her to hold him to that
+now?  Willy did not love her.  Perhaps he would grow to love her,
+but she was seeing things more clearly than she had before, and one
+of the things she saw was that Willy Cameron was a one-woman man, and
+that she was not the woman.
+
+"But I love him so," she would cry to herself.
+
+The ward moved in its orderly routine around her.  The babies were
+carried out, bathed and brought back, their nuzzling mouths open for
+the waiting mother-breast.  The nurses moved about, efficient,
+kindly, whimsically maternal.  Women went out when their hour came,
+swollen of feature and figure, and were wheeled back later on,
+etherealized, purified as by fire, and later on were given their
+babies.  Their faces were queer then, frightened and proud at first,
+and later watchful and tenderly brooding.
+
+For three days Edith's struggle went on.  She had her strong hours
+and her weak ones.  There were moments when, exhausted and yet
+exalted, she determined to give him up altogether, to live the
+fiction of the marriage until her mother's death, and then to give
+up the house and never see him again.  If she gave him up she must
+never see him again.  At those times she prayed not to love him any
+longer, and sometimes, for a little while after that, she would
+have peace.  It was almost as though she did not love him.
+
+But there were the other times, when she lay there and pictured them
+married, and dreamed a dream of bringing him to her feet.  He had
+offered a marriage that was not a marriage, but he was a man, and
+human.  He did not want her now, but in the end he would want her;
+young as she was she knew already the strength of a woman's physical
+hold on a man.
+
+Late on the afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a
+swollen-eyed Ellen, dressed in black with black cotton gloves, and a
+black veil around her hat.  Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged
+sense of duty of her class, and would as soon have gone to the
+burying ground in her kitchen apron as without black.  She stood in
+the doorway of the ward, hesitating, and Edith saw her and knew.
+
+Her first thought was not of her mother at all.  She saw only that
+the God who had saved her had made her decision for her, and that
+now she would never marry Willy Cameron.  All this time He had let
+her dream and struggle.  She felt very bitter.
+
+Ellen came and sat down beside her.
+
+"She's gone.  Edith," she said; "we didn't tell you before, but you
+have to know sometime.  We buried her this afternoon."
+
+Suddenly Edith forgot Willy Cameron, and God, and Dan, and the years
+ahead.  She was a little girl again, and her mother was saying:
+
+"Brush your teeth and say your prayers, Edie.  And tomorrow's Saturday.
+So you don't need to get up until you're good and ready."
+
+She lay there.  She saw her mother growing older and more frail, the
+house more untidy, and her mother's bright spirit fading to the drab
+of her surroundings.  She saw herself, slipping in late at night,
+listening always for that uneasy  querulous voice.  And then she saw
+those recent months, when her mother had bloomed with happiness; she
+saw her struggling with her beloved desserts, cheerfully unconscious
+of any failure in them; she saw her, living like a lady, as she had
+said, with every anxiety kept from her.  There had been times when
+her thin face had been almost illuminated with her new content and
+satisfaction.
+
+Suddenly grief and remorse overwhelmed her.
+
+"Mother!" she said, huskily.  And lay there, crying quietly, with
+Ellen holding her hand.  All that was hard and rebellious in Edith
+Boyd was swept away in that rush of grief, and in its place there
+came a new courage and resolution.  She would meet the future
+alone, meet it and overcome it.  But not alone, either; there was
+always--
+
+It was a Sunday afternoon, and the nurse had picked up the worn
+ward Bible and was reading from it, aloud.  In their rocking chairs
+in a semi-circle around her were the women, some with sleeping
+babies in their arms, others with tense, expectant faces.
+
+"Let not your heart be troubled," read the nurse, in a grave young
+voice.  "Ye believe in God.  Believe also in Me.  In my Father's
+house--"
+
+There was always God.
+
+Edith Boyd saw her mother in the Father's house, pottering about
+some small celestial duty, and eagerly seeking and receiving
+approval.  She saw her, in some celestial rocking chair, her tired
+hands folded, slowly rocking and resting.  And perhaps, as she sat
+there, she held Edith's child on her knee, like the mothers in the
+group around the nurse.  Held it and understood at last.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+It was at this time that Doyle showed his hand, with his customary
+fearlessness.  He made a series of incendiary speeches, the general
+theme being that the hour was close at hand for putting the fear
+of God into the exploiting classes for all time to come.  His
+impassioned oratory, coming at the psychological moment, when the
+long strike had brought its train of debt and evictions, made a
+profound impression.  Had he asked for a general strike vote then,
+he would have secured it.
+
+As it was, it was some time before all the unions had voted for it.
+And the day was not set.  Doyle was holding off, and for a reason.
+Day by day he saw a growth of the theory of Bolshevism among the
+so-called intellectual groups of the country.  Almost every
+university had its radicals, men who saw emerging from Russia the
+beginning of a new earth.  Every class now had its Bolshevists.
+They found a ready market for their propaganda, intelligent and
+insidious as it was, among a certain liberal element of the nation,
+disgruntled with the autocracy imposed upon them by the war.
+
+The reaction from that autocracy was a swinging to the other
+extreme, and, as if to work into the hands of the revolutionary
+party, living costs remained at the maximum.  The cry of the
+revolutionists, to all enough and to none too much, found a response
+not only in the anxious minds of honest workmen, but among an
+underpaid intelligentsia.  Neither political party offered any
+relief; the old lines no longer held, and new lines of cleavage had
+come.  Progressive Republicans and Democrats had united against
+reactionary members of both parties.  There were no great leaders,
+no men of the hour.
+
+The old vicious cycle of empires threatened to repeat itself, the
+old story of the many led by the few.  Always it had come, autocracy,
+the too great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that
+power by the angry mob.  Out of that anarchy the gradual
+restoration of order by the people themselves, into democracy.  And
+then in time again, by that steady gravitation of the strong up and
+the weak down, some one man who emerged from the mass and crowned
+himself, or was crowned.  And there was autocracy again, and again
+the vicious circle.
+
+But such movements had always been, in the last analysis, the work
+of the few.  It had always been the militant minority which ruled.
+Always the great mass of the people had submitted.  They had fought,
+one way or the other when the time came, but without any deep
+conviction behind them.  They wanted peace, the right to labor.
+They warred, to find peace.  Small concern was it, to the peasant
+plowing his field, whether one man ruled over him or a dozen.  He
+wanted neither place nor power.
+
+It came to this, then, Willy Cameron argued to himself.  This new
+world conflict was a struggle between the contented and the
+discontented.  In Europe, discontent might conquer, but in America,
+never.  There were too many who owned a field or had the chance to
+labor.  There were too many ways legitimately to aspire.  Those who
+wanted something for nothing were but a handful to those who wanted
+to give that they might receive.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+Three days before the election, Willy Cameron received a note from
+Lily, sent by hand.
+
+"Father wants to see you to-night," she wrote, "and mother suggests
+that as you are busy, you try to come to dinner.  We are dining
+alone.  Do come, Willy.  I think it is most important."
+
+He took the letter home with him and placed it in a locked drawer
+of his desk, along with a hard and shrunken doughnut, tied with a
+bow of Christmas ribbon, which had once helped to adorn the
+Christmas tree they had trimmed together.  There were other things
+in the drawer; a postcard photograph, rather blurred, of Lily in
+the doorway of her little hut, smiling; and the cigar box which had
+been her cash register at the camp.
+
+He stood for some time looking down at the post card; it did not
+seem possible that in the few months since those wonderful days,
+life could have been so cruel to them both.  Lily married, and he
+himself--
+
+Ellen came up when he was tying his tie.  She stood behind him,
+watching him in the mirror.
+
+"I don't know what you've done to your hair, Willy," she said; "it
+certainly looks queer."
+
+"It usually looks queer, so why worry, heart of my heart?"  But he
+turned and put an arm around her shoulders.  "What would the world
+be without women like you, Ellen?" he said gravely.
+
+"I haven't done anything but my duty," Ellen said, in her prim voice.
+"Listen, Willy.  I saw Edith again to-day, and she told me to do
+something."
+
+"To go home and take a rest?  That's what you need."
+
+"No.  She wants me to tear up that marriage license."
+
+He said nothing for a moment.  "I'll have to see her first."
+
+"She said it wouldn't be any good, Willy.  She's made up her mind."
+She watched him anxiously.  "You're not going to be foolish, are
+you?  She says there's no need now, and she's right."
+
+"Somebody will have to look after her."
+
+"Dan can do that.  He's changed, since she went."  Ellen glanced
+toward Mrs. Boyd's empty room.  "You've done enough, Willy.  You've
+seen them through, all of them.  I--isn't it time you began to
+think about yourself?"
+
+He was putting on his coat, and she picked a bit of thread from it,
+with nervous fingers.
+
+"Where are you going to-night, Willy?"
+
+"To the Cardews.  Mr. Cardew has sent for me."
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"Willy, I want to tell you something.  The Cardews won't let that
+marriage stand, and you know it.  I think she cares for you.  Don't
+look at me like that.  I do."
+
+"That's because you are fond of me," he said, smiling down at her.
+"I'm not the sort of man girls care about, Ellen.  Let's face that.
+The General Manager said when he planned me, 'Here's going to be a
+fellow who is to have everything in the world, health, intelligence,
+wit and the beauty of an Adonis, but he has to lack something, so
+we'll make it that'."
+
+But Ellen, glancing up swiftly, saw that although his tone was
+light, there was pain in his eyes.
+
+He reflected on Edith's decision as he walked through the park
+toward the Cardew house.  It had not surprised him, and yet he knew
+it had cost her an effort.  How great an effort, man-like, he would
+never understand, but something of what she had gone through he
+realized.  He wondered vaguely whether, had there never been a
+Lily Cardew in his life, he could ever have cared for Edith.
+Perhaps.  Not the Edith of the early days, that was certain.  But
+this new Edith, with her gentleness and meekness, her clear,
+suffering eyes, her strange new humility.
+
+She had sent him a message of warning about Akers, and from it he
+had reconstructed much of the events of the night she had taken sick.
+
+"Tell him to watch Louis Akers," she had said.  "I don't know how
+near Willy was to trouble the other night, Ellen, but they're going
+to try to get him."
+
+Ellen had repeated the message, watching him narrowly, but he had
+only laughed.
+
+"Who are they?" she had persisted.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it some day," he had said.  But he had told
+Dan the whole story, and, although he did not know it, Dan had from
+that time on been his self-constituted bodyguard.  During his
+campaign speeches Dan was always near, his right hand on a revolver
+in his coat pocket, and for hours at a time he stood outside the
+pharmacy, favoring every seeker for drugs or soap or perfume with a
+scowling inspection.  When he could not do it, he enlisted Joe
+Wilkinson in the evenings, and sometimes the two of them, armed,
+policed the meeting halls.
+
+As a matter of fact, Joe Wilkinson was following him that night.
+On his way to the Cardews Willy Cameron, suddenly remembering the
+uncanny ability of Jinx to escape and trail him, remaining
+meanwhile at a safe distance in the rear, turned suddenly and saw
+Joe, walking sturdily along in rubber-soled shoes, and obsessed
+with his high calling of personal detective.
+
+Joe, discovered, grinned sheepishly.
+
+"Thought that looked like your back," he said.  "Nice evening for
+a walk, isn't it?"
+
+"Let me look at you, Joe," said Willy Cameron.  "You look strange
+to me.  Ah, now I have it.  You look like a comet without a tail.
+Where's the family?"
+
+"Making taffy.  How--is Edith?"
+
+"Doing nicely." He avoided the boy's eyes.
+
+"I guess I'd better tell you.  Dan's told me about her.  I--" Joe
+hesitated.  Then: "She never seemed like that sort of a girl," he
+finished, bitterly.
+
+"She isn't that sort of girl, Joe."
+
+"She did it.  How could a fellow know she wouldn't do it again?"
+
+"She has had a pretty sad sort of lesson."
+
+Joe, his real business forgotten, walked on with eyes down and
+shoulders drooping.
+
+"I might as well finish with it," he said, "now I've started.  I've
+always been crazy about her.  Of course now--I haven't slept for
+two nights."
+
+"I think it's rather like this, Joe," Willy Cameron said, after a
+pause.  "We are not one person, really.  We are all two or three
+people, and all different.  We are bad and good, depending on which
+of us is the strongest at the time, and now and then we pay so much
+for the bad we do that we bury that part.  That's what has happened
+to Edith.  Unless, of course," he added, "we go on convincing her
+that she is still the thing she doesn't want to be."
+
+"I'd like to kill the man," Joe said.  But after a little, as they
+neared the edge of the park, he looked up.
+
+"You mean, go on as if nothing had happened?"
+
+"Precisely," said Willy Cameron, "as though nothing had happened."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+The atmosphere of the Cardew house was subtly changed and very
+friendly.  Willy Cameron found himself received as an old friend,
+with no tendency to forget the service he had rendered, or that, in
+their darkest hour, he had been one of them.
+
+To his surprise Pink Denslow was there, and he saw at once that
+Pink had been telling them of the night at the farm house.  Pink
+was himself again, save for a small shaved place at the back of his
+head, covered with plaster.
+
+"I've told them, Cameron," he said.  "If I could only tell it
+generally I'd be the most popular man in the city, at dinners."
+
+"Pair of young fools," old Anthony muttered, with his sardonic smile.
+But in his hand-clasp, as in Howard's, there was warmth and a sort of
+envy, envy of youth and the adventurous spirit of youth.
+
+Lily was very quiet.  The story had meant more to her than to the
+others.  She had more nearly understood Pink's reference to the
+sealed envelope Willy Cameron had left, and the help sent by Edith
+Boyd.  She connected that with Louis Akers, and from that to Akers'
+threat against Cameron was only a step.  She was frightened and
+somewhat resentful, that this other girl should have saved him
+from a revenge that she knew was directed at herself.  That she,
+who had brought this thing about, had sat quietly at home while
+another woman, a woman who loved him, had saved him.
+
+She was puzzled at her own state of mind.
+
+Dinner was almost gay.  Perhaps the gayety was somewhat forced,
+with Pink keeping his eyes from Lily's face, and Howard Cardew
+relapsing now and then into abstracted silence.  Because of the
+men who served, the conversation was carefully general.  It was
+only in the library later, the men gathered together over their
+cigars, that the real reason for Willy Cameron's summons was
+disclosed.
+
+Howard Cardew was about to withdraw from the contest.  "I'm late
+in coming to this decision," he said.  "Perhaps too late.  But
+after a careful canvas of the situation, I find you are right,
+Cameron.  Unless I withdraw, Akers"--he found a difficulty in
+speaking the name--"will be elected.  At least it looks that way."
+
+"And if he is," old Anthony put in, "he'll turn all the devils of
+hell loose on us."
+
+It was late; very late.  The Cardews stood ready to flood the papers
+with announcements of Howard's withdrawal, and urging his supporters
+to vote for Hendricks, but the time was short.  Howard had asked his
+campaign managers to meet there that night, and also Hendricks and
+one or two of his men, but personally he felt doubtful.
+
+And, as it happened, the meeting developed more enthusiasm than
+optimism.  Cardew's withdrawal would be made the most of by the
+opposition.  They would play it up as the end of the old regime, the
+beginning of new and better things.
+
+Before midnight the conference broke up, to catch the morning
+editions.  Willy Cameron, detained behind the others, saw Lily in
+the drawing-room alone as he passed the door, and hesitated.
+
+"I have been waiting for you, Willy," she said.
+
+But when he went in she seemed to have nothing to say.  She sat in
+a low chair, in a soft dark dress which emphasized her paleness.  To
+Willy Cameron she had never seemed more beautiful, or more remote.
+
+"Do you remember how you used to whistle 'The Long, Long Trail,'
+Willy?" she said at last.  "All evening I have been sitting here
+thinking what a long trail we have both traveled since then."
+
+"A long, hard trail," he assented.
+
+"Only you have gone up, Willy.  And I have gone down, into the
+valley.  I wish"--she smiled faintly--"I wish you would look down
+from your peak now and then.  You never come to see me."
+
+"I didn't know you wanted me," he said bluntly.
+
+"Why shouldn't I want to see you?"
+
+"I couldn't help reminding you of things."
+
+"But I never forget them, anyhow.  Sometimes I almost go mad,
+remembering.  It isn't quite as selfish as it sounds.  I've hurt
+them all so.  Willy, do you mind telling me about the girl who
+opened that letter and sent you help?"
+
+"About Edith Boyd?  I'd like to tell you, Lily.  Her mother is
+dead, and she lost her child.  She is in the Memorial Hospital."
+
+"Then she has no one but you?"
+
+"She has a brother."
+
+"Tell me about her sending help that night.  She really saved your
+life, didn't she?"
+
+While he was telling her she sat staring straight ahead, her
+fingers interlaced in her lap.  She was telling herself that all
+this could not possibly matter to her, that she had cut herself off,
+finally and forever, from the man before her; that she did not even
+deserve his friendship.
+
+Quite suddenly she knew that she did not want his friendship.  She
+wanted to see again in his face the look that had been there the
+night he had told her, very simply, that he loved her.  And it would
+never be there; it was not there now.  She had killed his love.  All
+the light in his face was for some one else, another girl, a girl
+more unfortunate but less wicked than herself.
+
+When he stopped she was silent.  Then:
+
+"I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not
+intend to tell?"
+
+"That I didn't intend to tell?  I have made no reservations, Lily."
+
+"Are you sure?  Or don't you realize it yourself?"
+
+"Realize what?" He was greatly puzzled.
+
+"I think, Willy," she said, quietly, "that you care a great deal
+more for Edith Boyd than you think you do."
+
+He looked at her in stupefaction.  How could she say that?  How
+could she fail to know better than that?  And he did not see the
+hurt behind her careful smile.
+
+"You are wrong about that.  I--" He made a little gesture of
+despair.  He could not tell her now that he loved her.  That was
+all over.
+
+"She is in love with you."
+
+He felt absurd and helpless.  He could not deny that, yet how
+could she sit there, cool and faintly smiling, and not know that
+as she sat there so she sat enshrined in his heart.  She was his
+saint, to kneel and pray to; and she was his woman, the one woman
+of his life.  More woman than saint, he knew, and even for that he
+loved her.  But he did not know the barbarous cruelty of the loving
+woman.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you, Lily," he said, at last.  "She
+--it is possible that she thinks she cares, but under the
+circumstances--"
+
+"Ellen told Mademoiselle you were going to marry her.  That's true,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You always said that marriage without love was wicked, Willy."
+
+"Her child had a right to a name.  And there were other things.  I
+can't very well explain them to you.  Her mother was ill.  Can't you
+understand, Lily?  I don't want to throw any heroics."  In his
+excitement he had lapsed into boyish vernacular.  "Here was a plain
+problem, and a simple way to solve it.  But it is off now, anyhow;
+things cleared up without that."
+
+She got up and held out her hand.
+
+"It was like you to try to save her," she said.
+
+"Does this mean I am to go?"
+
+"I am very tired, Willy."
+
+He had a mad impulse to take her in his arms, and holding her close
+to rest her there.  She looked so tired.  For fear he might do it
+he held his arms rigidly at his sides.
+
+"You haven't asked me about him," she said unexpectedly.
+
+"I thought you would not care to talk about him.  That's over and
+done, Lily.  I want to forget about it, myself."
+
+She looked up at him, and had he had Louis Akers' intuitive
+knowledge of women he would have understood then.
+
+"I am never going back to him, Willy.  You know that, don't you?"
+
+"I hoped it, of course."
+
+"I know now that I never loved him."
+
+But the hurt of her marriage was still too fresh in him for speech.
+He could not discuss Louis Akers with her.
+
+"No," he said, after a moment, "I don't think you ever did.  I'll
+come in some evening, if I may, Lily.  I must not keep you up now."
+
+How old he looked, for him!  How far removed from those busy,
+cheerful days at the camp!  And there were new lines of repression
+in his face; from the nostrils to the corners of his mouth.  Above
+his ears his hair showed a faint cast of gray.
+
+"You have been having rather a hard time, Willy, haven't you'?"
+she said, suddenly.
+
+"I have been busy, of course."
+
+"And worried?"
+
+"Sometimes.  But things are clearing up now."
+
+She was studying him with the newly opened eyes of love.  What was
+it he showed that the other men she knew lacked?  Sensitiveness?
+Kindness?  But her father was both sensitive and kind.  So was Pink,
+in less degree.  In the end she answered her own question, and
+aloud.
+
+"I think it is patience," she said.  And to his unspoken question:
+"You are very patient, aren't you?"
+
+"I never thought about it.  For heaven's sake don't turn my mind
+in on myself, Lily.  I'll be running around in circles like a pup
+chasing his tail."
+
+He made a movement to leave, but she seemed oddly reluctant to let
+him go.
+
+"Do you know that father says you have more influence than any
+other man in the city?"
+
+"That's more kind than truthful."
+
+"And--I think he and grandfather are planning to try to get you,
+when the mills reopen.  Father suggested it, but grandfather says
+you'd have the presidency of the company in six months, and he'd be
+sharpening your lead pencils."
+
+Suddenly Willy Cameron laughed, and the tension was broken.
+
+"If he did it with his tongue they'd be pretty sharp," he said.
+
+For just a moment, before he left, they were back to where they
+had been months ago, enjoying together their small jokes and their
+small mishaps.  The present fell away, with its hovering tragedy,
+and they were boy and girl together.  Exaltation and sacrifice were
+a part of their love, as of all real and lasting passion, but there
+was always between them also that soundest bond of all, liking and
+comradeship.
+
+"I love her.  I like her.  I adore her," was the cry in Willy
+Cameron's heart when he started home that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+Elinor Doyle was up and about her room.  She walked slowly and with
+difficulty, using crutches, and she spent most of the time at her
+window, watching and waiting.  From Lily there came, at frequent
+intervals, notes, flowers and small delicacies.  The flowers and
+food Olga brought to her, but the notes she never saw.  She knew
+they came.  She could see the car stop at the curb, and the
+chauffeur, his shoulders squared and his face watchful, carrying a
+white envelope up the walk, but there it ended.
+
+She felt more helpless than ever.  The doctor came less often, but
+the vigilance was never relaxed, and she had, too, less and less
+hope of being able to give any warning.  Doyle was seldom at home,
+and when he was he had ceased to give her his taunting information.
+She was quite sure now of his relations with the Russian girl, and
+her uncertainty as to her course was gone.  She was no longer his
+wife.  He held another woman in his rare embraces, a traitor like
+himself.  It was sordid.  He was sordid.
+
+Woslosky had developed blood poisoning, and was at the point of
+death, with a stolid policeman on guard at his bedside.  She knew
+that from the newspapers she occasionally saw.  And she connected
+Doyle unerringly with the tragedy at the farm behind Friendship.
+She recognized, too, since that failure, a change in his manner to
+her.  She saw that he now both hated her and feared her, and that
+she had become only a burden and a menace to him.  He might decide
+to do away with her, to kill her.  He would not do it himself; he
+never did his own dirty work, but the Russian girl--Olga was in
+love with Jim Doyle.  Elinor knew that, as she knew many things,
+by a sort of intuition.  She watched them in the room together,
+and she knew that to Doyle the girl was an incident, the vehicle
+of his occasional passion, a strumpet and a tool.  He did not
+even like her; she saw him looking at her sometimes with a sort
+of amused contempt.  But Olga's somber eyes followed him as he
+moved, lit with passion and sometimes with anger, but always they
+followed him.
+
+She was afraid of Olga.  She did not care particularly about death,
+but it must not come before she had learned enough to be able to
+send out a warning.  She thought if it came it might be by poison
+in the food that was sent up, but she had to eat to live.  She took
+to eating only one thing on her tray, and she thought she detected
+in the girl an understanding and a veiled derision.
+
+By Doyle's increasing sullenness she knew things were not going
+well with him, and she found a certain courage in that, but she
+knew him too well to believe that he would give up easily.  And
+she drew certain deductions from the newspapers she studied so
+tirelessly.  She saw the announcement of the unusual number of
+hunting licenses issued, for one thing, and she knew the cover that
+such licenses furnished armed men patrolling the country.  The
+state permitted the sale of fire-arms without restriction.  Other
+states did the same, or demanded only the formality of a signature,
+never verified.
+
+Would they never wake to the situation?
+
+She watched the election closely.  She knew that if Akers were
+elected the general strike and the chaos to follow would be held
+back until he had taken office and made the necessary changes in
+the city administration, but that if he went down to defeat the
+Council would turn loose its impatient hordes at once.
+
+She waited for election day with burning anxiety.  When it came
+it so happened that she was left alone all day in the house.  Early
+in the morning Olga brought her a tray and told her she was going
+out.  She was changed, the Russian; she had dropped the mask of
+sodden servility and stood before her, erect, cunningly intelligent
+and oddly powerful.
+
+"I am going to be away all day, Mrs. Doyle," she said, in her
+excellent English.  "I have work to do."
+
+"Work?" said Elinor.  "Isn't there work to do here?"
+
+"I am not a house-worker.  I came to help Mr. Doyle.  To-day I
+shall make speeches."
+
+Elinor was playing the game carefully.  "But--can you make
+speeches?" she asked.
+
+"Me?  That is my work, here, in Russia, everywhere.  In Russia it
+is the women who speak, the men who do what the women tell them to
+do.  Here some day it will be the same."
+
+Always afterwards Elinor remembered the five minutes that followed,
+for Olga, standing before her, suddenly burst into impassioned
+oratory.  She cited the wrongs of the poor under the old regime.
+She painted in glowing colors the new.  She was excited, hectic,
+powerful.  Elinor in her chair, an aristocrat to the finger-tips,
+was frightened, interested, thrilled.
+
+Long after Olga had gone she sat there, wondering at the real
+conviction, the intensity of passion, of hate and of revenge that
+actuated this newest tool of Doyle's.  Doyle and his associates
+might be actuated by self-interest, but the real danger in the
+movement lay not with the Doyles of the world, but with these
+fanatic liberators.  They preached to the poor a new religion, not
+of creed or of Church, but of freedom.  Freedom without laws of
+God or of man, freedom of love, of lust, of time, of all
+responsibility.  And the poor, weighted with laws and cares,
+longed to throw off their burdens.
+
+Perhaps it was not the doctrine itself that was wrong.  It was its
+imposition by force on a world not yet ready for it that was
+wrong; its imposition by violence.  It might come, but not this
+way.  Not, God preventing, this way.
+
+There was a polling place across the street, in the basement of a
+school house.  The vote was heavy and all day men lounged on the
+pavements, smoking and talking.  Once she saw Olga in the crowd,
+and later on Louis Akers drove up in an open automobile, handsome,
+apparently confident, and greeted with cheers.  But Elinor,
+knowing him well, gained nothing from his face.
+
+Late that night she heard Doyle come in and move about the lower
+floor.  She knew every emphasis of his walk, and when in the room
+underneath she heard him settle down to steady, deliberate pacing,
+she knew that he was facing some new situation, and, after his
+custom, thinking it out alone.
+
+At midnight he came up the stairs and unlocked her door.  He
+entered, closing the door behind him, and stood looking at her.
+His face was so strange that she wondered if he had decided to do
+away with her.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, in an inflectionless voice, "you will be
+moved by automobile to a farm I have selected in the country.  You
+will take only such small luggage as the car can carry."
+
+"Is Olga going with me?"
+
+"No.  Olga is needed here."
+
+"I suppose I am to understand from this that Louis has been defeated
+and there is no longer any reason for delay in your plans."
+
+"You can understand what you like."
+
+"Am I to know where I am going?"
+
+"You will find that out when you get there.  I will tell you this:
+It is a lonely place, without a telephone.  You'll be cut off from
+your family, I am afraid."
+
+She gazed at him.  It seemed unbelievable to her that she had once
+lain in this man's arms.
+
+"Why don't you kill me, Jim?  I know you've thought about it."
+
+"Yes, I've thought of it.  But killing is a confession of fear, my
+dear.  I am not afraid of you."
+
+"I think you are.  You are afraid now to tell me when you are going
+to try to put this wild plan into execution."
+
+He smiled at her with mocking eyes.
+
+"Yes," he agreed again.  "I am afraid.  You have a sort of
+diabolical ingenuity, not intelligence so much as cunning.  But
+because I always do the thing I'm afraid to do, I'll tell you.
+Of course, if you succeed in passing it on--"  He shrugged his
+shoulders.  "Very well, then.  With your usual logic of deduction,
+you have guessed correctly.  Louis Akers has been defeated.  Your
+family--and how strangely you are a Cardew!--lost its courage at
+the last moment, and a gentleman named Hendricks is now setting
+up imitation beer and cheap cigars to his friends."
+
+Behind his mocking voice she knew the real fury of the man, kept
+carefully in control by his iron will.
+
+"As you have also correctly surmised," he went on, "there is now
+nothing to be gained by any delay.  A very few days, three or four,
+and--"  His voice grew hard and terrible--"the first stone in the
+foundation of this capitalistic government will go.  Inevitable law,
+inevitable retribution--"  His voice trailed off.  He turned like
+a man asleep and went toward the door.  There he stopped and faced
+her.
+
+"I've told you," he said darkly.  "I am not afraid of you.  You can
+no more stop this thing than you can stop living by ceasing to
+breathe.  It has come."
+
+She heard him in his room for some time after that, and she surmised
+from the way he moved, from closet to bed and back again, that he
+was packing a bag.  At two o'clock she heard Olga coming in; the
+girl was singing in Russian, and Elinor had a sickening conviction
+that she had been drinking.  She heard Doyle send her off to bed,
+his voice angry and disgusted, and resume his packing, and ten
+minutes later she heard a car draw up on the street, and knew that
+he was off, to begin the mobilization of his heterogeneous forces.
+
+Ever since she had been able to leave her bed Elinor had been
+formulating a plan of escape.  Once the door had been left unlocked,
+but her clothing had been removed from the room, and then, too, she
+had not learned the thing she was waiting for.  Now she had clothing,
+a dark dressing gown and slippers, and she had the information.  But
+the door was securely locked.
+
+She had often thought of the window, In the day time it frightened
+her to look down, although it fascinated her, too.  But at night it
+seemed much simpler.  The void below was concealed in the darkness,
+a soft darkness that hid the hard, inhospitable earth.  A darkness
+one could fall into and onto.
+
+She was not a brave woman.  She had moral rather than physical
+courage.  It was easier for her to face Doyle in a black mood than
+the gulf below the window-sill, but she knew now that she must get
+away, if she were to go at all.  She got out of bed, and using her
+crutches carefully moved to the sill, trying to accustom herself
+to the thought of going over the edge.  The plaster cast on her
+leg was a real handicap.  She must get it over first.  How heavy
+it was, and unwieldy!
+
+She found her scissors, and, stripping the bed, sat down to cut
+and tear the bedding into strips.  Prisoners escaped that way; she
+had read about such things.  But the knots took up an amazing
+amount of length.  It was four o'clock in the morning when she had
+a serviceable rope, and she knew it was too short.  In the end she
+tore down the window curtains and added them, working desperately
+against time.
+
+She began to suspect, too, that Olga was not sleeping.  She smelled
+faintly the odor of the long Russian cigarettes the girl smoked.
+She put out her light and worked in the darkness, a strange figure
+of adventure, this middle-aged woman with her smooth hair and
+lined face, sitting in her cambric nightgown with her crutches on
+the floor beside her.
+
+She secured the end of the rope to the foot of her metal bed,
+pushing the bed painfully and cautiously, inch by inch, to the
+window.  And in so doing she knocked over the call-bell on the
+stand, and almost immediately she heard Olga moving about.
+
+The girl was coming unsteadily toward the door.  If she opened
+it--
+
+"I don't want anything, Olga," she called, "I knocked the bell
+over accidentally."
+
+Olga hesitated, muttered, moved away again.  Elinor was covered
+with a cold sweat.
+
+She began to think of the window as a refuge.  Surely nothing
+outside could be so terrible as this house itself.  The black
+aperture seemed friendly; it beckoned to her with friendly hands.
+
+She dropped her crutches.  They fell with two soft thuds on the
+earth below and it seemed to her that they were a long time in
+falling.  She listened after that, but Olga made no sign.  Then
+slowly and painfully she worked her injured leg over the sill,
+and sat there looking down and breathing with difficulty.  Then
+she freed her dressing gown around her, and slid over the edge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+Election night found various groups in various places.  In the back
+room of the Eagle Pharmacy was gathered once again the neighborhood
+forum, a wildly excited forum, which ever and anon pounded Mr.
+Hendricks on the back, and drank round after round of soda water
+and pop.  Doctor Smalley, coming in rather late found them all there,
+calling Mr. Hendricks "Mr. Mayor" or "Your Honor," reciting election
+anecdotes, and prophesying the end of the Reds.  Only Willy Cameron,
+sitting on a table near the window, was silent.
+
+Mr. Hendricks, called upon for a speech, rose with his soda water
+glass in his hand.
+
+"I've got a toast for you, boys," he said.  "You've been talking
+all evening about my winning this election.  Well, I've been elected,
+but I didn't win it.  It was the plain people of this town who
+elected me, and they did it because my young friend on the table
+yonder told them to."  He raised his glass.  "Cameron!" he said.
+
+"Cameron!  Cameron!" shouted the crowd.  "Speech!  Cameron!"
+
+But Willy shook his head.
+
+"I haven't any voice left," he said, "and you've heard me say all
+I know a dozen times.  The plain truth is that Mr. Hendricks got
+the election because he was the best man, and enough people knew
+it.  That's all."
+
+To Mr. Hendricks the night was one of splendid solemnity.  He felt
+at once very strong and very weak, very proud and very humble.  He
+would do his best, and if honesty meant anything, the people would
+have it, but he knew that honesty was not enough.  The city needed
+a strong man; he hoped that the Good Man who made cities as He
+made men, both evil and good, would lend him a hand with things.
+As prayer in his mind was indissolubly connected with church, he
+made up his mind to go to church the next Sunday and get matters
+straightened out.
+
+At the same time another group was meeting at the Benedict.
+
+Louis Akers had gone home early.  By five o'clock he knew that the
+chances were against him, but he felt a real lethargy as to the
+outcome.  He had fought, and fought hard, but it was only the
+surface mind of him that struggled.  Only the surface mind of him
+hated, and had ambitions, dreamed revenge.  Underneath that surface
+mind was a sore that ate like a cancer, and that sore was his
+desertion by Lily Cardew.  For once in his life he suffered, who
+had always inflicted pain.
+
+At six o'clock Doyle had called him on the telephone and told him
+that Woslosky was dead, but the death of the Pole had been
+discounted in advance, and already his place had been filled by a
+Russian agent, who had taken the first syllable of his name and
+called himself Ross.  Louis Akers heard the news apathetically,
+and went back to his chair again.
+
+By eight o'clock he knew that he had lost the election, but that,
+too, seemed relatively unimportant.  He was not thinking coherently,
+but certain vague ideas floated through his mind.  There was a law
+of compensation in the universe: it was all rot to believe that
+one was paid or punished in the hereafter for what one did.  Hell
+was real, but it was on earth and its place was in a man's mind.
+He couldn't get away from it, because each man carried his own
+hell around with him.  It was all stored up there; nothing he had
+done was left out, and the more he put into it the more he got
+out, when the time came.
+
+This was his time.
+
+Ross and Doyle, with one or two others, found him there at nine
+o'clock, an untasted meal on the table, and the ends of innumerable
+cigarettes on the hearth.  In the conference that followed he
+took but little part.  The Russian urged immediate action, and
+Doyle by a saturnine silence tacitly agreed with him.  But Louis
+only half heard them.  His mind was busy with that matter of hell.
+Only once he looked up.  Ross was making use of the phrase:
+"Militant minority."
+
+"Militant minority!" he said scornfully, "you overwork that idea,
+Ross.  What we've got here now is a militant majority, and that's
+what elected Hendricks.  You're licked before you begin.  And my
+advice is, don't begin."
+
+But they laughed at him.
+
+"You act like a whipped dog," Doyle said, "crawling under the
+doorstep for fear somebody else with a strap comes along."
+
+"They're organized against us.  We could have put it over six
+months ago.  Not now."
+
+"Then you'd better get out," Doyle said, shortly.
+
+"I'm thinking of it."
+
+But Doyle had no real fear of him.  He was sulky.  Well, let him
+sulk.
+
+Akers relapsed into silence.  His interest in the conspiracy had
+always been purely self-interest; he had never had Woslosky's
+passion, or Doyle's cold fanaticism.  They had carried him off
+his feet with their promises, but how much were they worth?  They
+had failed to elect him.  Every bit of brains, cunning and
+resource in their organization had been behind him, and they had
+failed.
+
+This matter of hell, now?  Suppose one put by something on the
+other account?  Suppose one turned square?  Wouldn't that earn
+something?  Suppose that one went to the Cardews and put all his
+cards on the table, asking nothing in return?  Suppose one gave
+up the by-paths of life, and love in a hedgerow, and did the
+other thing?  Wouldn't that earn something?
+
+He roused himself and took a perfunctory part in the conversation,
+but his mind obstinately returned to itself.  He knew every
+rendezvous of the Red element in the country; he knew where their
+literature was printed; he knew the storehouses of arms and
+ammunition, and the plans for carrying on the city government by
+the strikers after the reign of terrorization which was to subdue
+the citizens.
+
+Suppose he turned informer?  Could he set a price, and that price
+Lily?  But he discarded that.  He was not selling now, he was
+earning.  He would set himself right first, and--provided the
+government got the leaders before those leaders got him, as they
+would surely try to do--he would have earned something, surely.
+
+Lily had come to him once when he called.  She might come again,
+when he had earned her.
+
+Doyle sat back in his chair and watched him.  He saw that he had
+gone to pieces under defeat, and men did strange things at those
+times.  With uncanny shrewdness he gauged Akers' reaction; his
+loss of confidence and, he surmised, his loyalty.  He would follow
+his own interest now, and if he thought that it lay in turning
+informer, he might try it.  But it would take courage.
+
+When the conference broke up Doyle was sure of where his man stood.
+He was not worried.  They did not need Akers any longer.  He had
+been a presentable tool, a lay figure to give the organization
+front, and they had over-rated him, at that.  He had failed them.
+Doyle, watching him contemptuously, realized in him his own
+fallacious judgment, and hated Akers for proving him wrong.
+
+Outside the building Doyle drew the Russian aside, and spoke to
+him.  Ross started, then grinned.
+
+"You're wrong," he said.  "He won't try it.  But of course he may,
+and we'll see that he doesn't get away with it."
+
+From that time on Louis Akers was under espionage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+DOCTOR Smalley was by way of achieving a practice.  During his
+morning and evening office hours he had less and less time to read
+the papers and the current magazines in his little back office,
+or to compare the month's earnings, visit by visit, with the same
+month of the previous year.
+
+He took to making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather
+to the outrage of various head nurses, who did not like the staff
+to come a-visiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and
+smooth, every bed corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed
+and combed and temperatured, and in the exact center of the bed.
+
+Interns were different.  They were like husbands.  They came and
+went, seeing things at their worst as well as at their best, but
+mostly at their worst.  Like husbands, too, they developed a sort
+of philosophy as to the early morning, and would only make
+occasional remarks, such as:
+
+"Cyclone struck you this morning, or anything?"
+
+Doctor Smalley, being a bachelor, was entirely blind to the early
+morning deficiencies of his wards.  Besides, he was young and had
+had a cold shower and two eggs and various other things, and he
+saw the world at eight A.M. as a good place.  He would get into his
+little car, whistling, and driving through the market square he
+would sometimes stop and buy a bag of apples for the children's
+ward, or a bunch of fall flowers.  Thus armed, it was impossible
+for the most austere of head nurses to hate him.
+
+"We're not straightened up yet, doctor," they would say.
+
+"Looks all right to me," he would reply cheerfully, and cast an
+eager eye over the ward.  To him they were all his children, large
+and small, and if he did not exactly carry healing in his wings,
+having no wings, he brought them courage and a breath of fresh
+morning air, slightly tinged with bay rum, and the feeling that
+this was a new day.  A new page, on which to write such wonderful
+things (in the order book) as: "Jennie may get up this afternoon."
+Or: "Lizzie Smith, small piece of beef steak."
+
+On the morning after the election Doctor Smalley rose unusually
+early, and did five minutes of dumb bells, breathing very deep
+before his window, having started the cold water in the tub first.
+At the end of that time he padded in his bare feet to the top of
+the stairs and called in a huge, deep-breathing voice:
+
+"Ten minutes."
+
+These two cryptic words seeming to be perfectly understood below,
+followed the sound of a body plunging into water, a prolonged
+"Wow!" from the bathroom, and noisy hurried splashing.  Dressing
+was a rapid process, due to a method learned during college days,
+which consists of wearing as little as possible, and arranging it
+at night so that two thrusts (trousers and under-drawers), one
+enveloping gesture (shirt and under-shirt), and a gymnastic effort
+of standing first on one leg and then on the other (socks and shoes),
+made a fairly completed toilet.
+
+While putting on his collar and tie the doctor stood again by the
+window, and lustily called the garage across the narrow street.
+
+"Jim!" he yelled.  "Annabelle breakfasted yet?"
+
+Annabelle was his shabby little car.
+
+Annabelle had breakfasted, on gasoline, oil and water.  The doctor
+finished tying his tie, singing lustily, and went to the door.
+At the door he stopped singing, put on a carefully professional
+air, restrained an impulse to slide down the stairrail, and
+descended with the dignity of a man with a growing practice and
+a possible patient in the waiting-room.
+
+At half-past seven he was on his way to the hospital.  He stopped
+at the market and bought three dozen oranges out of a ten-dollar
+bill he had won on the election, and almost bought a live rabbit
+because it looked so dreary in its slatted box.  He restrained
+himself, because his housekeeper had a weakness for stewed rabbit,
+and turned into Cardew Way.  He passed the Doyle house slowly,
+inspecting it as he went, because he had a patient there, and
+because he had felt that there was something mysterious about the
+household, quite aside from the saturnine Doyle himself.  He
+knew all about Doyle, of course; all, that is, that there was to
+know, but he was a newcomer to the city, and he did not know that
+Doyle's wife was a Cardew.  Sometimes he had felt that he was under
+a sort of espionage all the time he was in the house.  But that
+was ridiculous, wasn't it?  Because they could not know that he
+was on the Vigilance Committee.
+
+There was something curious about one of the windows.  He slowed
+Annabelle and gazed at it.  That was strange; there was a sort of
+white rope hanging from Mrs. Doyle's window.
+
+He stopped Annabelle and stared.  Then he drew up to the curb and
+got out of the car.  He was rather uneasy when he opened the gate
+and started up the walk, but there was no movement of life in the
+house.  At the foot of the steps he saw something, and almost
+stopped breathing.  Behind a clump of winter-bare shrubbery was
+what looked like a dark huddle of clothing.
+
+It was incredible.
+
+He parted the branches and saw Elinor Doyle lying there, conscious
+and white with pain.  Perhaps never in his life was Doctor Smalley
+to be so rewarded as with the look in her eyes when she saw him.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Doyle!" was all he could think to say.
+
+"I have broken my other leg, doctor," she said, "the rope gave way."
+
+"You come down that rope?"
+
+"I tried to.  I was a prisoner.  Don't take me back to the house,
+doctor.  Don't take me back!"
+
+"Of course I'll not take you back," he said, soothingly.  "I'll
+carry you out to my car.  It may hurt, but try to be quiet.  Can
+you get your arms around my neck?"
+
+She managed that, and he raised her slowly, but the pain must have
+been frightful, for a moment later he felt her arms relax and knew
+that she had fainted.  He got to the car somehow, kicked the oranges
+into the gutter, and placed her, collapsed, on the seat.  It was
+only then that he dared to look behind him, but the house, like the
+street, was without signs of life.  As he turned the next corner,
+however, he saw Doyle getting off a streetcar, and probably never
+before had Annabelle made such speed as she did for the next six
+blocks.
+
+Hours later Elinor Cardew wakened in a quiet room with gray walls,
+and with the sickening sweet odor of ether over everything.  Instead
+of Olga a quiet nurse sat by her bed, and standing by a window, in
+low-voiced conversation, were two men.  One she knew, the doctor.
+The other, a tall young man with a slight limp as he came toward
+her, she had never seen before.  A friendly young man, thin, and
+grave of voice, who put a hand over hers and said:
+
+"You are not to worry about anything, Mrs. Doyle.  You understand
+me, don't you?  Everything is all right.  I am going now to get
+your people."
+
+"My husband?"
+
+"Your own people," he said.  "I have already telephoned to your
+brother.  And the leg's fixed.  Everything's as right as rain."
+
+Elinor closed her eyes.  She felt no pain and no curiosity.  Only
+there was something she had to do, and do quickly.  What was it?
+But she could not remember, because she felt very sleepy and
+relaxed, and as though everything was indeed as right as rain.
+
+It was evening when she looked up again, and the room was dark.
+The doctor had gone, and the grave young man was still in the
+room.  There was another figure there, tall and straight, and
+at first she thought it was Jim Doyle.
+
+"Jim!" she said.  And then: "You must go away, Jim.  I warn you.
+I am going to tell all I know."
+
+But the figure turned, and it was Howard Cardew, a tense and
+strained Howard Cardew, who loomed amazingly tall and angry,
+but not with her.
+
+"I'm sorry, Nellie dear," he said, bending over her.  "If we'd
+only known--can you talk now?"
+
+Her mind was suddenly very clear.
+
+"I must.  There is very little time."
+
+"I want to tell you something first, Nellie.  I think we have
+located the Russian woman, but we haven't got Doyle."
+
+Howard was not very subtle, but Willy Cameron saw her face and
+understood.  It was strange beyond belief, he felt, this loyalty
+of women to their men, even after love had gone; this feeling that,
+having once lain in a man's arms, they have taken a vow of
+protection over that man.  It was not so much that they were his
+as that he was theirs.  Jim Doyle had made her a prisoner, had
+treated her brutally, was a traitor to her and to his country,
+but--he had been hers.  She was glad that he had got away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+It was dark when Howard Cardew and Willy Cameron left the hospital.
+Elinor's information had been detailed and exact.  Under cover of
+the general strike the radical element intended to take over the
+city.  On the evening of the first day of the strike, armed groups
+from the revolutionary party would proceed first to the municipal
+light plant, and, having driven out any employees who remained at
+their posts, or such volunteers as had replaced them, would plunge
+the city into darkness.
+
+Elinor was convinced that following this would come various bomb
+outrages, perhaps a great number of them, but of this she had no
+detailed information.  What she did know, however, was the dependence
+that Doyle and the other leaders were placing in the foreign element
+in the nearby mill towns and from one or two mining districts in
+the county.
+
+Around the city, in the mill towns, there were more than forty
+thousand foreign laborers.  Subtract from that the loyal aliens,
+but add a certain percentage of the native-born element, members
+of seditious societies and followers of the red flag, and the Reds
+had a potential army of dangerous size.
+
+As an actual fighting force they were much less impressive.  Only
+a small percentage, she knew and told them, were adequately armed.
+There were a few machine guns, and some long-range rifles, but by
+far the greater number had only revolvers.  The remainder had
+extemporized weapons, bars of iron, pieces of pipe, farm implements,
+lances of wood  tipped with iron and beaten out on home forges.
+
+They were a rabble, not an army, without organization and with few
+leaders.  Their fighting was certain to be as individualistic as
+their doctrines.  They had two elements in their favor only,
+numbers and surprise.
+
+To oppose them, if the worst came, there were perhaps five thousand
+armed men, including the city and county police, the state
+constabulary, and the citizens who had signed the cards of the
+Vigilance Committee.  The local post of the American Legion stood
+ready for instant service, and a few national guard troops still
+remained in the vicinity.  "What they expect," she said, looking
+up from her pillows with tragic eyes, "is that the police and the
+troops will join them.  You don't think they will, do you?"
+
+They reassured her, and after a time she slept again.  When she
+wakened, at midnight, the room was empty save for a nurse reading
+under a night lamp behind a screen.  Elinor was not in pain.  She
+lay there, listening to the night sounds of the hospital, the
+watchman shuffling along the corridor in slippers, the closing of
+a window, the wail of a newborn infant far away.
+
+There was a shuffling of feet in the street below, the sound of
+many men, not marching but grimly walking, bent on some unknown
+errand.  The nurse opened the window and looked out.
+
+"That's queer!" she said.  "About thirty men, and not saying a word.
+They walk like soldiers, but they're not in uniform."
+
+Elinor pondered that, but it was not for some days that she knew
+that Pink Denslow and a picked number of volunteers from the
+American Legion had that night, quite silently and unemotionally,
+broken into the printing office where Doyle and Akers had met
+Cusick, and had, not so silently but still unemotionally, destroyed
+the presses and about a ton of inflammatory pamphlets.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+There was a little city, and few men within it; And there came a
+great king against it, and besieged it, And built great bulwarks
+against it; Now there was found in it a Poor Wise Man, And he by
+his wisdom delivered the city. --Ecclesiastes IX :14, 15.
+
+The general strike occurred two days later, at mid-day.  During the
+interval a joint committee representing the workers, the employers
+and the public had held a protracted sitting, but without result,
+and by one o'clock the city was in the throes of a complete tie-up.
+Laundry and delivery wagons were abandoned where they stood.  Some
+of the street cars had been returned to the barns, but others stood
+in the street where the crews had deserted them.
+
+There was no disorder, however, and the city took its difficulties
+with a quiet patience and a certain sense of humor.  Bulletins
+similar to the ones used in Seattle began to appear.
+
+"Strikers, the world is the workers' for the taking, and the workers
+are the vast majority in society.  Your interests are paramount to
+those of a small, useless band of parasites who exploit you to their
+advantage.  You have nothing to lose but your chains and you have a
+world to gain.  The world for the workers."
+
+There was one ray of light in the darkness, however.  The municipal
+employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go
+dark that night.  It was a blow to the conspirators.  In the strange
+psychology of the mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and
+by three o'clock that afternoon the light plant and city water supply
+had been secured against attack by effectual policing.  The power
+plant for the car lines was likewise protected, and at five o'clock
+a line of street cars, stalled on Amanda Street, began to show signs
+of life.
+
+The first car was boarded by a half dozen youngish men, unobtrusively
+ready for trouble, and headed by a tall youth who limped slightly
+and wore an extremely anxious expression.  He went forward and
+commenced a series of experiments with levers and brake, in which
+process incidentally he liberated a quantity of sand onto the rails.
+A moment later the car lurched forward, and then stopped with a jerk.
+
+Willy Cameron looked behind him and grinned.  The entire guard was
+piled in an ignoble mass on the floor.
+
+By six o'clock volunteer crews were running a number of cars, and
+had been subjected to nothing worse than abuse.  Strikers lined the
+streets and watched them, but the grim faces of the guards kept
+them back.  They jeered from the curbs, but except for the flinging
+of an occasional stone they made no inimical move.
+
+By eight o'clock it was clear that the tie-up would be only partial.
+Volunteers from all walks of life were in line at the temporary
+headquarters of the Vigilance Committee and were being detailed, for
+police duty, to bring in the trains with the morning milk, to move
+street cars and trucks.  The water plant and the reservoirs were
+protected.  Willy Cameron, abandoning his car after the homeward
+rush of the evening, found a line before the Committee Building
+which extended for blocks down the street.
+
+Troops had been sent for, but it took time to mobilize and move them.
+It would be morning before they arrived.  And the governor, over the
+long distance wire to the mayor, was inclined to be querulous.
+
+"We'll send them, of course," he said.  "But if the strikers are
+keeping quiet--I don't know what the country's coming to.  We're
+holding a conference here now.  There's rioting breaking out all
+over the state."
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+There was a conference held in the Mayor's office that night:
+Cameron and Cardew and one or two others of the Vigilance Committee,
+two agents of the government secret service, the captains of the
+companies of state troops and constabulary, the Chief of Police,
+the Mayor himself, and some representatives of the conservative
+element of organized labor.  Quiet men, these last, uneasy and
+anxious, as ignorant as the others of which way the black cat, the
+symbol of sabotage and destruction, would jump.  The majority of
+their men would stand for order, they declared, but there were some
+who would go over.  They urged, to offset that reflection on their
+organization that the proletariat of the city might go over, too.
+
+But, by midnight, it seemed as though the situation was solving
+itself.  In the segregated district there had been a small riot,
+and another along the river front, disturbances quickly ended by
+the police and the volunteer deputies.  The city had not gone dark.
+The bombs had not exploded.  Word came in that by back roads and
+devious paths the most rabid of the agitators were leaving town.
+And before two o'clock Howard Cardew and some of the others went
+home to bed.
+
+At three o'clock the Cardew doorbell rang, and Howard, not asleep,
+flung on his dressing gown and went out into the hall.  Lily was
+in her doorway, intent and anxious.
+
+"Don't answer it, father," she begged.  "You don't know what it
+may be."
+
+Howard smiled, but went back and got his revolver.  The visitor
+was Willy Cameron.
+
+"I don't like to waken you," he said, "but word has come in of
+suspicious movements at Baxter and Friendship, and one or two other
+places.  It looks like concerted action of some sort."
+
+"What sort of concerted action?"
+
+"They still have one card to play.  The foreign element outside
+hasn't been heard from.  It looks as though the fellows who left
+town to-night have been getting busy up the river."
+
+"They wouldn't be such fools as to come to the city."
+
+"They've been made a lot of promises.  They may be out of hand,
+you know."
+
+While Howard was hastily dressing, Willy Cameron waited below.  He
+caught a glimpse of himself in the big mirror and looked away.  His
+face was drawn and haggard, his eyes hollow and his collar a wilted
+string.  He was dusty and shabby, too, and to Lily, coming down
+the staircase, he looked almost ill.
+
+Lily was in a soft negligee garment, her bare feet thrust into
+slippers, but she was too anxious to be self-conscious.
+
+"Willy," she said, "there is trouble after all?"
+
+"Not in the city.  Things are not so quiet up the river."
+
+She placed a hand on his arm.
+
+"Are you and father going up the river?"
+
+He explained, after a momentary hesitation.  "It may crystallize
+into something, or it may not," he finished.
+
+"You think it will, don't you?"
+
+"It will be nothing more, at the worst, than rioting."
+
+"But you may be hurt!"
+
+"I may have one chance to fight for my country," he said, rather
+grimly.  "Don't begrudge me that."  But he added: "I'll not be hurt.
+The thing will blow up as soon as it starts."
+
+"You don't really believe that, do you?"
+
+"I know they'll never get into the city."
+
+But as he moved away she called him back, more breathlessly than
+ever, and quite white.
+
+"I don't want you to go without knowing-- Willy, do you remember
+once that you said you cared for me?"
+
+"I remember."  He stared straight ahead.
+
+"Are you--all over that?"
+
+"You know better than that, don't you?"
+
+"But I've done so many things," she said, wistfully.  "You ought
+to hate me."  And when he said nothing, for the simple reason that
+he could not speak: "I've ruined us both, haven't I?"
+
+Suddenly he caught up her hand and, bending over it, held it to
+his lips.
+
+"Always," he said, huskily, "I love you, Lily.  I shall always love
+you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+Howard went back to the municipal building, driving furiously
+through the empty streets.  The news was ominous.  Small bodies of
+men, avoiding the highways, were focusing at different points in
+the open country.  The state police had been fired at from ambush,
+and two of them had been killed.  They had ridden into and dispersed
+various gatherings in the darkness, but only to have them re-form in
+other places.  The enemy was still shadowy, elusive; it was
+apparently saving its ammunition.  It did little shooting, but
+reports of the firing of farmhouses and of buildings in small,
+unprotected towns began to come in rapidly.
+
+In a short time the messages began to be more significant, indicating
+that the groups were coalescing and that a revolutionary army, with
+the city its objective, was coming down the river, evidently making
+for the bridge at Chester Street.
+
+"They've lighted a fire they can't put out," was Howard's comment.
+His mouth was very dry and his face twitching, for he saw, behind
+the frail barrier of the Chester Street bridge, the quiet houses of
+the city, the sleeping children.  He saw Grace and Lily, and Elinor.
+He was among the first to reach the river front.
+
+All through the dawn volunteers labored at the bridge head.  Members
+of the Vigilance Committee, policemen and firemen, doctors, lawyers,
+clerks, shop-keepers, they looted the river wharves with willing,
+unskillful hands.  They turned coal wagons on their sides, carried
+packing cases and boxes, and, under the direction of men who wore the
+Legion button, built skillfully and well.  Willy Cameron toiled with
+the others.  He lifted and pulled and struggled, and in the midst of
+his labor he had again that old dream of the city.  The city was a
+vast number of units, and those units were homes.  Behind each of
+those men there was, somewhere, in some quiet neighborhood, a home.
+It was for their homes they were fighting, for the right of children
+to play in peaceful streets, for the right to go back at night to
+the rest they had earned by honest labor, for the right of the
+hearth, of lamp-light and sunlight, of love, of happiness.
+
+Then, in the flare of a gasoline torch, he came face to face with
+Louis Akers.  The two men confronted each other, silently, with
+hostility.  Neither moved aside, but it was Akers who spoke first.
+
+"Always busy, Cameron," he said.  "What'd the world do without
+you, anyhow?"
+
+"Aren't you on the wrong side of this barricade?"
+
+"Smart as ever," Akers observed, watching him intently.  "As it
+happens, I'm here because I want to be, and because I can't get
+where I ought to be."
+
+For a furious moment Willy Cameron thought he was referring to his
+wife, but there was something strange in Akers' tone.
+
+"I could be useful to you fellows," he was saying, "but it seems
+you don't want help.  I've been trying to see the Mayor all night."
+
+"What do you want to see him about?"
+
+"I'll tell him that."
+
+Willy Cameron hesitated.
+
+"I think it's a trick, Akers."
+
+"All right.  Then go to the devil!"
+
+He turned away sullenly, leaving Willy Cameron still undecided.  It
+would be like the man as he knew him, this turning informer when he
+saw the strength of the defense, and Cameron had a flash of
+intuition, too, that Akers might see, in this new role, some possible
+chance to win back with Lily Cardew.  He saw how the man's cheap soul
+might dramatize itself.
+
+"Akers!" he called.
+
+Akers stopped, but he did not turn.
+
+"I've got a car here.  If you mean what you say, and it's straight,
+I'll take you."
+
+"Where's the car?"
+
+On their way to it, threading in and out among the toiling crowd,
+Willy Cameron had a chance to observe the change in the other man,
+his drooping shoulders and the almost lassitude of his walk.  He
+went ahead, charging the mass and going through it by sheer bulk
+and weight, his hands in his coat pockets, his soft hat pulled
+low over his face.  Neither of them noticed that one of the former
+clerks of the Myers Housecleaning Company followed close behind,
+or that, holding to a tire, he rode on the rear of the Cardew
+automobile as it made its way into the center of the city.
+
+In the car Akers spoke only once.
+
+"Where is Howard Cardew?" he asked.
+
+"With the Mayor, probably.  I left him there."
+
+It seemed to him that Akers found the answer satisfactory.  He sat
+back in the deep seat, and lighted a cigarette.
+
+The Municipal Building was under guard.  Willy Cameron went up the
+steps and spoke to the sentry there.  It was while his back was
+turned that the sharp crack of a revolver rang out, and he whirled,
+in time to see Louis Akers fall forward on his face and lie still.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+The shadowy groups through the countryside had commenced to coalesce.
+Groups of twenty became a rabble of five hundred.  The five hundred
+grew, and joined other five hundreds.  From Baxter alone over two
+thousand rioters, mostly foreigners, started out, and by daylight
+the main body of the enemy reached the outskirts of the city, a long,
+irregular line of laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly
+renewed at the rear until the procession covered miles of roadway.
+They were of all races and all types; individually they were, many
+of them, like boys playing truant from school, not quite certain of
+themselves, smiling and yet uneasy, not entirely wicked in intent.
+But they were shepherded by men with cunning eyes, men who knew
+well that a mob is greater than the sum of its parts, more wicked
+than the individuals who compose it, more cruel, more courageous.
+
+As it marched it laughed.  It was like a lion at play, ready to
+leap at the first scratch that brought blood.
+
+Where the street car line met the Friendship Road the advance was
+met by the Chief of Police, on horseback and followed by a guard of
+mounted men, and ordered back.  The van hesitated, but it was urged
+ahead, pushed on by the irresistible force behind it, and it came
+on no longer singing, but slowly, inevitably, sullenly protesting
+and muttering.  Its good nature was gone.
+
+As the Chief turned his horse was shot under him.  He took another
+horse from one of his guard, and they retired, moving slowly and
+with drawn revolvers.  There was no further shooting at that time,
+nothing but the irresistible advance.  The police could no more
+have held the armed rabble than they could have held the invading
+hordes in Belgium.  At the end of the street the Chief stopped and
+looked back.  They had passed over his dead horse as though it
+were not there.
+
+In the mill district, which they had now reached, they received
+reenforcements, justifying the judgment of the conference that to
+have erected their barricades there would have been to expose the
+city's defenders to attack from the rear.  And the mill district
+suffered comparatively little.  It was the business portion of the
+city toward which they turned their covetous eyes, the great stores,
+the hotels and restaurants, the homes of the wealthy.
+
+Pleased by the lack of opposition the mob grew more cheerful.  The
+lion played.  They pressed forward, wanton and jeering, firing
+now and then at random, breaking windows as they passed, looting
+small shops which they stripped like locusts.  Their pockets
+bulging, and the taste of pillage forecasting what was to come,
+they moved onward more rapidly, shooting at upper windows or into
+the air, laughing, yelling, cursing, talking.  From the barricades,
+long before the miles-long column came into view, could be heard
+the ominous far-off muttering of the mob.
+
+It was when they found the bridge barricaded on the far side,
+however, that the lion bared its teeth and snarled.  Temporarily
+checked by the play of machine guns which swept the bridge and
+kept it clear for a time, they commenced wild, wasteful firing,
+from the bridge-head and from along the Cardew wharves.  Their
+leaders were prepared, and sent snipers into the bridge towers,
+but the machine guns continued to fire.
+
+That the struggle would be on the bridge Doyle and his Council
+had anticipated from the reports of the night before.  They were
+prepared to take a heavy loss on the bridges, but they had not
+prepared for the thing that defeated them; that as the mob is
+braver than the individual, so also it is more cowardly.
+
+Pushed forward from the rear and unable to retreat through the
+dense mass behind that was every moment growing denser, a few
+hundreds found themselves facing the steady machine-gun fire
+from behind the barricades, and unable either to advance or to
+retire.  Thus trapped, they turned on their own forces behind
+them, and tried to fight their way to safety, but the inexorable
+pressure kept on, and the defenders, watching and powerless, saw
+men fling themselves from the bridges and disappear in the water
+below, rather than advance into the machine-gun zone.  The guns
+were not firing into the rioters, but before them, to hold them
+back, and into that leaden stream there were no brave spirits
+to hurl themselves.
+
+The trapped men turned on their own and battled for escape.  With
+the same violence which had been directed toward the city they now
+fought each other, and the bridge slowly cleared.  But the mob did
+not disperse.
+
+It spread out on the bank across, a howling, frustrated, futile
+mass, disorganized and demoralized, which fired its useless guns
+across the river, which seethed and tossed and struggled, and
+spent itself in its own wild fury.  And all the time cool-eyed men,
+on the wharves across, watched and waited for the time to attack.
+
+"They're sick at their stomachs now," said an old army sergeant,
+watching, to Willy Cameron.  "The dirty devils!  They'll be starting
+their filthy work over there soon, and that's the zero hour."
+
+Willy Cameron nodded.  He had seen one young Russian boy with a
+child-like face venture forward alone into the fire zone and drop.
+He still lay there, on the bridge.  And all of Willy Cameron was in
+revolt.  What had he been told, that boy, that had made him ready
+to pour out his young life like wine?  There were others like him
+in that milling multitude on the river bank across, young men who
+had come to America with a dream in their hearts, and America had
+done this to them.  Or had she?  She had taken them in, but they
+were not her own, and now, since she would not take them, they
+would take her.  Was that it?  Was it that America had made them
+her servants, but not her children?  He did not know.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+Robbed of the city proper, the mob turned on the mill district it
+had invaded.  Its dream of lust and greed was over, but it could
+still destroy.
+
+Like a battle charge, as indeed it was, the mounted city and state
+police crossed the bridge.  It was followed by the state troops on
+foot, by city policemen in orderly files, and then by the armed
+citizens.  The bridge vibrated to the step of marching men, going
+out to fight for their homes.  The real battle was fought there,
+around the Cardew mills, a battle where the loyalists were greatly
+outnumbered, and where the rioters fought, according to their
+teaching, with every trick they could devise.  Posted in upper
+windows they fired down from comparative safety; ambulances crossed
+and re-crossed the bridges.  The streets were filled with rioting
+men, striking out murderously with bars and spikes.  Fires flamed
+up and burned themselves out.  In one place, eight blocks of
+mill-workers' houses, with their furnishings, went in a quarter
+of an hour.
+
+Willy Cameron was fighting like a demon.  Long ago his reserve of
+ammunition had given out, and he was fighting with the butt end of
+his revolver.  Around him had rallied some of the men he knew best,
+Pink and Mr. Hendricks, Doctor Smalley, Dan and Joe Wilkinson, and
+they stayed together as, street by street, the revolutionists were
+driven back.  There were dead and wounded everywhere, injured men
+who had crawled into the shelter of doorways and sat or lay there,
+nursing their wounds.
+
+Suddenly, to his amazement, Willy saw old Anthony Cardew.  He had
+somehow achieved an upper window of the mill office building, and
+he was showing himself fearlessly, a rifle in his hands; in his
+face was a great anger, but there was more than that.  Willy Cameron,
+thinking it over later, decided that it was perplexity.  He could
+not understand.
+
+He never did understand.  For other eyes also had seen old Anthony
+Cardew.  Willy Cameron, breasting the mob and fighting madly toward
+the door of the building, with Pink behind him, heard a cheer and
+an angry roar, and, looking up, saw that the old man had disappeared.
+They found him there later on, the rifle beside him, his small and
+valiant figure looking, with eyes no longer defiant, toward the
+Heaven which puts, for its own strange purpose, both evil and good
+into the same heart.
+
+By eleven o'clock the revolution was over.  Sodden groups of men,
+thoroughly cowed and frightened, were on their way by back roads to
+the places they had left a few hours before.  They had no longer
+dreams of empire.  Behind them they could see, on the horizon, the
+city itself, the smoke from its chimneys, the spires of its churches.
+Both, homes and churches, they had meant to destroy, but behind both
+there was the indestructible.  They had failed.
+
+They turned, looked back, and went on.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+On the crest of a hill-top overlooking the city a man was standing,
+looking down to where the softened towers of the great steel bridges
+rose above the river mist like fairy towers.  Below him lay the city,
+powerful, significant, important.
+
+The man saw the city only as a vast crucible, into which he had
+flung his all, and out of which had come only defeat and failure.
+But the city was not a crucible.  The melting pot of a nation is not
+a thing of cities, but of the human soul.
+
+The city was not a melting pot.  It was a sanctuary.  The man stood
+silent and morose, his chin dropped on his chest, and stared down.
+
+Beside and somewhat behind him stood a woman, a somber, passionate
+figure, waiting passively.  His eyes traveled from the city to her,
+and rested on her, contemptuous, thwarted, cynical.
+
+"You fool," he said, "I hate you, and you know it."
+
+But she only smiled faintly.  "We'd better get away now, Jim," she
+said.
+
+He got into the car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+Late that afternoon Joe Wilkinson and Dan came slowly up the street,
+toward the Boyd house.  The light of battle was still in Dan's eyes,
+his clothes were torn and his collar missing, and he walked with
+the fine swagger of the conqueror.
+
+"Y'ask me," he said, "and I'll tell the world this thing's done for.
+It was just as well to let them give it a try, and find out it won't
+work."
+
+Joe said nothing.  He was white and very tired, and a little sick.
+
+"If you don't mind I'll go in your place and wash up," he remarked,
+as they neared the house.  "I'll scare the kids to death if they
+see me like this."
+
+Edith was in the parlor.  She had sat there almost all day, in an
+agony of fear.  At four o'clock the smallest Wilkinson had hammered
+at the front door, and on being admitted had made a shameless demand.
+
+"Bed and thugar," she had said, looking up with an ingratiating
+smile.
+
+"You little beggar!"
+
+"Bed and thugar."
+
+Edith had got the bread and sugar, and, having lured the baby into
+the parlor, had held her while she ate, receiving now and then an
+exceedingly sticky kiss in payment.  After a little the child's head
+began to droop, and Edith drew the small head down onto her breast.
+She sat there, rocking gently, while the chair slowly traveled,
+according to its wont, about the room.
+
+The child brought her comfort.  She began to understand those grave
+rocking figures in the hospital ward, women who sat, with eyes that
+seemed to look into distant places, with a child's head on their
+breasts.
+
+After all, that was life for a woman.  Love was only a part of the
+scheme of life, a means to an end.  And that end was the child.
+
+For the first time she wished that her child had lived.
+
+She felt no bitterness now, and no anger.  He was dead.  It was hard
+to think of him as dead, who had been so vitally alive.  She was
+sorry he had had to die, but death was like love and children, it
+was a part of some general scheme of things.  Suppose this had been
+his child she was holding?  Would she so easily have forgiven him?
+She did not know.
+
+Then she thought of Willy Cameron.  The bitterness had strangely
+gone out of that, too.  Perhaps, vaguely, she began to realize that
+only young love gives itself passionately and desperately, when
+there is no hope of a return, and that the agonies of youth,
+although terrible enough, pass with youth itself.
+
+She felt very old.
+
+Joe found her there, the chair displaying its usual tendency to
+climb the chimney flue, and stood in the doorway, looking at her
+with haunted, hungry eyes.  There was a sort of despair in Joe those
+days, and now he was tired and shaken from the battle.
+
+"I'll take her home in a minute," he said, still with the strange
+eyes.
+
+He came into the room, and suddenly he was kneeling beside the chair,
+his head buried against the baby's warm, round body.  His bent
+shoulders shook, and Edith, still with the maternal impulse strong
+within her, put her hand on his bowed head.
+
+"Don't, Joe!"
+
+He looked up.
+
+"I loved you so, Edith!"
+
+"Don't you love me now?"
+
+"God knows I do.  I can't get over it.  I can't.  I've tried, Edith."
+
+He sat back on the floor and looked at her.
+
+"I can't," he repeated.  "And when I saw you like that just now,
+with the kid in your arms--I used to think that maybe you and I--"
+
+"I know, Joe.  No decent man would want me now."
+
+She was still strangely composed, peaceful, almost detached.
+
+"That!" he said, astonished.  "I don't mean that, Edith.  I've had
+my fight about that, and got it over.  That's done with.  I mean--"
+he got up and straightened himself.  "You don't care about me."
+
+"But I do care for you.  Perhaps not quite the way you care, Joe, but
+I've been through such a lot.  I can't seem to feel anything terribly.
+I just want peace."
+
+"I could give you that," he said eagerly.
+
+Edith smiled.  Peace, in that noisy house next door, with children
+and kittens and puppies everywhere!  And yet it would be peace,
+after all, a peace of the soul, the peace of a good man's love.
+After a time, too, there might come another peace, the peace of
+those tired women in the ward, rocking.
+
+"If you want me, I'll marry you," she said, very simply.  "I'll be
+a good wife, Joe.  And I want children.  I want the right to have
+them."
+
+He never noticed that the kiss she gave him, over the sleeping baby,
+was slightly tinged with granulated sugar.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his
+great bed.  There had been a bad hour; death seems so strangely to
+erase faults and leave virtues.  Something strong and vital had gone
+from the house, and the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless
+steps.  In Grace's boudoir, Howard was sitting, his arms around his
+wife, telling her the story of the day.  At dawn he had notified
+her by telephone of Akers' murder.
+
+"Shall I tell Lily?" she had asked, trembling.
+
+"Do you want to wait until I get back?"
+
+"I don't know how she will take it, Howard.  I wish you could be
+here, anyhow."
+
+But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end
+it was Willy Cameron who told her.  He had brought back all that was
+mortal of Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession
+up the stairs, had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping
+to be useful.  Howard found him there, a strange, disheveled figure,
+bearing the scars of battle, and held out his hand.
+
+"It's hard to thank you, Cameron," he said; "you seem to be always
+about when we need help.  And"--he paused--"we seem to have needed
+it considerably lately."
+
+Willy Cameron flushed.
+
+"I feel rather like a meddler, sir."
+
+"Better go up and wash," Howard said.  "I'll go up with you."
+
+It happened, therefore, that it was in Howard Cardew's opulent
+dressing-room that Howard first spoke to Willy Cameron of Akers'
+death, pacing the floor as he did so.
+
+"I haven't told her, Cameron."  He was anxious and puzzled.  "She'll
+have to be told soon, of course.  I don't know anything about women.
+I don't know how she'll take it."
+
+"She has a great deal of courage.  It will be a shock, but not a
+grief.  But I have been thinking--" Willy Cameron hesitated.  "She
+must not feel any remorse," he went on.  "She must not feel that she
+contributed to it in any way.  If you can make that clear to her--"
+
+"Are you sure she did not?"
+
+"It isn't facts that matter now.  We can't help those.  And no one
+can tell what actually led to his change of heart.  It is what she
+is to think the rest of her life."
+
+Howard nodded.
+
+"I wish you would tell her," he said.  "I'm a blundering fool when
+it comes to her.  I suppose I care too much."
+
+He caught rather an odd look in Willy Cameron's face at that, and
+pondered over it later.
+
+"I will tell her, if you wish."
+
+And Howard drew a deep breath of relief.  It was shortly after that
+he broached another matter, rather diffidently.
+
+"I don't know whether you realize it or not, Cameron," he said, "but
+this thing to-day might have been a different story if it had not
+been for you.  And--don't think I'm putting this on a reward basis.
+It's nothing of the sort--but I would like to feel that you were
+working with me.  I'd hate like thunder to have you working against
+me," he added.
+
+"I am only trained for one thing."
+
+"We use chemists in the mills."
+
+But the discussion ended there.  Both men knew that it would be
+taken up later, at some more opportune time, and in the meantime
+both had one thought, Lily.
+
+So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from
+Willy Cameron.  She stood, straight and erect, and heard him through,
+watching him with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain
+of the day.  But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one
+she had known long ago, in some infinitely remote past.
+
+"I am sorry," she said, when he finished.  "I didn't want him to die.
+You know that, don't you?  I never wished him--Willy, I say I am
+sorry, but I don't really feel anything.  It's dreadful."
+
+Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for
+the first time in her healthy young life.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door.  She found
+Willy Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a
+look of wild despair in his eyes.
+
+Mademoiselle took a long breath.  She had changed her view-point
+somewhat since the spring.  After all, what mattered was happiness.
+Wealth and worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one,
+in the end, to the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs
+room, with the shades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers
+over everything.
+
+"She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron," she said.  "It was but a
+crisis of the nerves, and to be expected.  And now she demands to
+see you."
+
+Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure,
+which issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went
+up the stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles.  But
+the figure lost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and
+apparently moved forward on tiptoe.  Grayson went into the library
+and sniffed at the unmistakable odor of a pipe.  Then, having opened
+a window, he went and stood before a great portrait of old Anthony
+Cardew.  Tears stood in the old man's eyes, but there was a faint
+smile on his lips.  He saw the endless procession of life.  First,
+love.  Then, out of love, life.  Then death.  Grayson was old, but
+he had lived to see young love in the Cardew house.  Out of love,
+life.  He addressed a little speech to the picture.
+
+"Wherever you are, sir," he said, "you needn't worry any more.  The
+line will carry on, sir.  The line will carry on."
+
+Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch,
+and gathered Lily close in his arms.
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many changes.  It saw,
+slowly emerging from the chaos of war, new nations, like children,
+taking their first feeble steps.  It saw a socialism which, born at
+full term might have thrived, prematurely and forcibly delivered,
+and making a valiant but losing fight for life.  It saw that war is
+never good, but always evil; that war takes everything and gives
+nothing, save that sometimes a man may lose the whole world and gain
+his own soul.
+
+It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into the vast
+democracy of heaven, and Louis Akers passed through the Traitors'
+Gate of eternity to be judged and perhaps reprieved.  For a man is
+many men, good and bad, and the Judge of the Tower of Heaven is a
+just Judge.
+
+It saw Jim Doyle a fugitive, Woslosky dead, and the Russian, Ross,
+bland, cunning and eternally plotting, in New England under another
+name.  And Mr. Hendricks ordering a new suit for the day of taking
+office.  And Doctor Smalley tying a bunch of chrysanthemums on
+Annabelle, against a football game, and taking a pretty nurse to
+see it.
+
+It saw Ellen roasting a turkey, and a strange young man in the Eagle
+Pharmacy, a young man who did not smoke a pipe, and allowed no
+visitors in the back room.  And it saw Willy Cameron in the
+laboratory of the reopened Cardew Mills, dealing in tons instead of
+grains and drams, and learning to touch any piece of metal in the
+mill with a moistened fore-finger before he sat down upon it.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+But it saw more than that.
+
+On the evening of Thanksgiving Day there was an air of repressed
+excitement about the Cardew house.  Mademoiselle, in a new silk
+dress, ran about the lower floor, followed by an agitated Grayson
+with a cloth, for Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with
+trembling hands vases of flowers, and spilling water at each shift.
+At six o'clock had arrived a large square white box, which the
+footman had carried to the rear and there exhibited, allowing a
+palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers other excitable and
+emotional women to peep within.
+
+After which he tied it up again and carried it upstairs.
+
+At seven o'clock Elinor Cardew, lovely in black satin, was carried
+down the stairs and placed in a position which commanded both the
+hall and the drawing-room.  For some strange reason it was essential
+that she should see both.
+
+At seven-thirty came in a rush:
+
+(a)--Mr. Alston Denslow, in evening clothes and gardenia, and
+feeling in his right waist-coat pocket nervously every few minutes.
+
+(b)--An excited woman of middle age, in a black silk dress still
+faintly bearing the creases of five days in a trunk, and accompanied
+by a mongrel dog, both being taken upstairs by Grayson, Mademoiselle,
+Pink, and Howard Cardew.  ("He said Jinx was to come," she explained
+breathlessly to her bodyguard.  "I never knew such a boy!")
+
+(c)--Mr. Davis, in a frock coat and white lawn tie, and taken
+upstairs by Grayson, who mistook him for the bishop.
+
+(d)--Aunt Caroline, in her diamond dog collar and purple velvet,
+and determined to make the best of things.
+
+(e)--The real bishop this time, and his assistant, followed by a
+valet with a suitcase, containing the proper habiliments for a
+prince of the church while functioning.  (A military term, since
+the Bishop had been in the army.)
+
+(f)--A few unimportant important people, very curious, and the
+women uncertain about the proper garb for a festive occasion in a
+house of mourning.
+
+(g)--Set of silver table vases, belated.
+
+(h)--Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks, Mayor and Mayoress-elect.  Extremely
+dignified.
+
+(i)--An overfull taxicab, containing inside it Ellen, Edith, Dan
+and Joe.  The overflow, consisting of a tall young man, displaying
+repressed excitement and new evening clothes, with gardenia, sat
+on the seat outside beside the chauffeur and repeated to himself a
+sort of chant accompanied by furious searchings of his pockets.
+"Money.  Checkbook.  Tickets.  Trunk checks," was the burden of
+his song.
+
+(j)--Doctor Smalley and Annabelle.  He left Annabelle outside.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+The city moved on about its business.  In thousands of homes the
+lights shone down on little family groups, infinitely tender little
+groups.  The workers of the city were there, the doors shut, the
+fires burning.  To each man the thing he had earned, not the thing
+that he took.  To all men the right to labor, to love, and to rest.
+To children, the right to play.  To women, the hearth, and the peace
+of the hearth.  To lovers, love, and marriage, and home.
+
+The city moved on about its business, and its business was homes.
+
+      *           *           *           *           *
+
+At the great organ behind the staircase the organist sat.  In stiff
+rows near him were the Cardew servants, marshaled by Grayson and
+in their best.
+
+Grayson stood, very rigid, and waited.  And as he waited he kept
+his eyes on the portrait of old Anthony, in the drawing-room beyond.
+There was a fixed, rapt look in Grayson's eyes, and there was
+reassurance.   It was as though he would say to the portrait: "It
+has all come out very well, you see, sir.  It always works out
+somehow.  We worry and fret, we old ones, but the young come along,
+and somehow or other they manage, sir."
+
+What he actually said was to tell a house maid to stop sniveling.
+
+Over the house was the strange hush of waiting.  It had waited
+before this, for birth and for death, but never before--
+
+The Bishop was waiting also, and he too had his eyes fixed on old
+Anthony's portrait, a straight, level-eyed gaze, as of man to man,
+as of prince of the church to prince of industry.  The Bishop's eyes
+said: "All shall be done properly and in order, and as befits the
+Cardews, Anthony."
+
+The Bishop was as successful in his line as Anthony Cardew had been
+in his.  He cleared his throat.
+
+The organist sat at the great organ behind the staircase, waiting.
+He was playing very softly, with his eyes turned up.  He had played
+the same music many times before, and always he felt very solemn,
+as one who makes history.  He sighed.  Sometimes it seemed to him
+that he was only an accompaniment to life, to which others sang
+and prayed, were christened, confirmed and married.  But what was
+the song without the music?  He wished the scullery maid would stop
+crying.
+
+Grayson touched him on the arm.
+
+"All ready, sir," he said.
+
+*****
+
+Willy Cameron stood at the foot of the staircase, looking up.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext A Poor Wise Man, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
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