Billy stepped round in front of the young girl and put both hands gently on her shoulders.  “Look at me, Lydia,” he said.  “You have to take sides!  You can’t escape it.  You mean too much to too many of us men.  You’ve got to take a perfectly clear stand on questions like this.  It means too much to America for you not to.  Your influence counts, in that way if in no other, don’t you see.”

Lydia’s throat tightened.  “I won’t take sides against Mr. Levine,” she repeated.

“Do you mean that you don’t want me to expose Marshall?” asked Billy.

“You’ve no right to ask me that.”  Lydia’s voice was cross.

“But I have.  Lydia, though you don’t want it, my life is yours.  No matter whether we can ever be anything else, we are friends, aren’t we, friends in the deepest sense of the word,—­aren’t we, Lydia?”

Lydia stared at Billy in silence.  Perhaps it was the glow from the west that helped to deepen and soften his gray eyes, for there was nothing searching in them now.  There was a depth and loyalty in them and a something besides that reminded her vaguely of the way John Levine looked at her.  A crow cawed faintly from the woods and the wind fluttered Billy’s hair.

Friendship!  Something very warm and high and fine entered Lydia’s heart.

“Yes, we are friends.  Billy,” she said slowly.  “But oh, Billy, don’t make me decide that!”

“Lydia, you must!  You can’t have a friend and not share his problems and you can’t live in a community and not share its problems, if you’re going to be worth anything to the world.”

“But if the problems really meant anything to you,” protested Lydia, “you wouldn’t depend on some girl to shove you into them.”

“But men do.  They are built that way.  Not some girl but the girl.  Every great cause was fought for some woman!  Oh, Lydia, Lydia!”

“Billy,” Lydia looked away from him to the lake, “you’ll have to let me think about it.  You see, it’s deciding my attitude toward all my friends, even toward Dad.  And I hadn’t intended ever to decide.”

“And will you tell me, to-morrow, or next day, Lydia?”

“I’ll tell you as soon as I decide,” she answered.

Amos brought John Levine home with him for supper.  It seemed to Lydia that Levine never had been dearer to her than he was that evening.  After supper, they drew up around the base burner in the old way, while the two men smoked.  Lizzie sat rocking and rubbing her rheumatism-racked old hands and Adam, who snored worse as he grew old, wheezed with his head baking under the stove.  Levine did not talk of the Indians, to Lydia’s relief, but of Washington politics.  As the evening drew to a close, and Amos went out to his chickens as usual after Lizzie had gone to bed, John turned to Lydia.

“What are you reading, these days, young Lydia?”

“Browning—­’The Ring and the Book,’” replied Lydia.