“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.