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.