They stared at her.  “What about my pride?” Dwight called to her, as across great distances.  “Do you think I want everybody to know my brother did a thing like that?”

“You can’t help that,” said Lulu.

“But I want you to help it.  I want you to promise me that you won’t shame us like this before all our friends.”

“You want me to promise what?”

“I want you—­I ask you,” Dwight said with an effort, “to promise me that you will keep this, with us—­a family secret.”

“No!” Lulu cried.  “No.  I won’t do it!  I won’t do it!  I won’t do it!”

It was like some crude chant, knowing only two tones.  She threw out her hands, her wrists long and dark on her blue skirt.  “Can’t you understand anything?” she asked.  “I’ve lived here all my life—­on your money.  I’ve not been strong enough to work, they say—­well, but I’ve been strong enough to be a hired girl in your house—­and I’ve been glad to pay for my keep....  But there wasn’t anything about it I liked.  Nothing about being here that I liked....  Well, then I got a little something, same as other folks.  I thought I was married and I went off on the train and he bought me things and I saw the different towns.  And then it was all a mistake.  I didn’t have any of it.  I came back here and went into your kitchen again—­I don’t know why I came back.  I s’pose because I’m most thirty-four and new things ain’t so easy any more—­but what have I got or what’ll I ever have?  And now you want to put on to me having folks look at me and think he run off and left me, and having ’em all wonder....  I can’t stand it.  I can’t stand it.  I can’t....”

“You’d rather they’d know he fooled you, when he had another wife?” Dwight sneered.

“Yes!  Because he wanted me.  How do I know—­maybe he wanted me only just because he was lonesome, the way I was.  I don’t care why!  And I won’t have folks think he went and left me.”

“That,” said Dwight, “is a wicked vanity.”

“That’s the truth.  Well, why can’t they know the truth?”

“And bring disgrace on us all.”

“It’s me—­it’s me——­” Lulu’s individualism strove against that terrible tribal sense, was shattered by it.

“It’s all of us!” Dwight boomed.  “It’s Di.”

“Di?” He had Lulu’s eyes now.

“Why, it’s chiefly on Di’s account that I’m talking,” said Dwight.

“How would it hurt Di?”

“To have a thing like that in the family?  Well, can’t you see how it’d hurt her?”

“Would it, Ina?  Would it hurt Di?”

“Why, it would shame her—­embarrass her—­make people wonder what kind of stock she came from—­oh,” Ina sobbed, “my pure little girl!”

“Hurt her prospects, of course,” said Dwight.  “Anybody could see that.”

“I s’pose it would,” said Lulu.

She clasped her arms tightly, awkwardly, and stepped about the floor, her broken shoes showing beneath her cotton skirt.