She saw her position with the utmost clearness.  To go home was to abandon him, to lose him for those who needed what he could give, to send him back to the enemy.  She had told Pink she could secure an ally for a price, and she was the price.  There was not an ounce of melodrama in her, as she stood facing the situation.  She considered, quite simply, that she had assumed an obligation which she must carry out.  Perhaps her pride was dictating to her also.  To go crawling home, bowed to the dust, to admit that life had beaten her, to face old Anthony’s sneers and her mother’s pity —­that was hard for any Cardew.

She remembered Elinor’s home-comings of years ago, the strained air of the household, the whispering servants, and Elinor herself shut away, or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father was out of the house.

No, she could not face that.

Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass; she faced that uncompromisingly.  She would marry Louis, and hold him to his promise, and so perhaps out of all this misery some good would come.  But at the thought of marriage she found herself trembling violently.  With no love and no real respect to build on, with an intuitive knowledge of the man’s primitive violences, the reluctance toward marriage with him which she had always felt crystallized into something very close to dread.

But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and fully determined.  At Elinor’s door she tapped lightly, and she heard movements within.  Then Elinor opened the door wide.  She had been lying on her bed, and automatically after closing the door she began to smooth it.  Lily felt a wave of intense pity for her.

“I wish you would go away from here, Aunt Elinor,” she said.

Elinor glanced up, without surprise.

“Where could I go?”

“If you left him definitely, you could go home.”

Elinor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly to desperation.

“You know what is going on,” she said, her voice strained.  “You don’t believe it is right; you know it is wicked.  Clothe it in all the fine language in the world, Aunt Elinor, and it is still wicked.  If you stay here you condone it.  I won’t.  I am going away.”

“I wish you had never come, Lily.”

“It’s too late for that,” Lily said, stonily.  “But it is not too late for you to get away.”

“I shall stay,” Elinor said, with an air of finality.  But Lily made one more effort.

“He is killing you.”

“No, he is killing himself.”  Suddenly Elinor flared into a passionate outburst.  “Don’t you think I know where all this is leading?  Do you believe for a moment that I think all this can lead to anything but death?  It is a madness, Lily; they are all mad, these men.  Don’t you know that I have talked and argued and prayed, against it?”