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.