“Then—­I’ll not go home.”

“You are going to marry me?  Now?”

“Whenever you say.”

Suddenly she was trembling violently, and her lips felt dry and stiff.  He pushed her into a chair, and knelt down beside her.

“You poor little kid,” he said, softly.

Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts; Lily his, in his arms, in spite of that white-faced drug clerk with the cold eyes; himself in the Cardew house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardew at his own cynical game; and persistently held back and often rising again to the surface, Woslosky and Doyle and the others, killers that they were, pursuing him with their vengeance over the world.  They would have to be counted in; they were his price, as he, had he known it, was Lily’s.

“My wife!” he said.  “My wife.”

She stiffened in his arms.

“I must go, Louis,” she said.  “I can’t stay here.  I felt very queer downstairs.  They all stared so.”

There was a clock on the mantel shelf, and he looked at it.  It was a quarter before five.

“One thing is sure, Lily,” he said.  “You can’t wander about alone, and you are right—­you can’t stay here.  They probably recognized you downstairs.  You are pretty well known.”

For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised herself, and that the net, of her own making, was closing fast about her.

“I wish I hadn’t come.”

“Why?  We can fix that all right in a jiffy.”

But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final struggle.  In a few days, even to-morrow, but not just then.  He listened, impatiently, his eyes on the clock.  Beside it in the mirror he saw his own marred face, and it added to his anger.  In the end he took control of the situation; went into his bedroom, changed into a coat, and came out again, ready for the street.  He telephoned down for a taxicab, and then confronted her, his face grim.

“I’ve let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily,” he said.  “Now I’m in charge.  It won’t be to-morrow or next week or next month.  It will be now.  You’re here.  You’ve given them a chance to talk downstairs.  You’ve nowhere to go, and you’re going to marry me at once.”

In the cab he explained more fully.  They would get a license, and then go to one of the hotels.  There they could be married, in their own suite.

“All regularly and in order, honey,” he said, and kissed her hand.  She had hardly heard.  She was staring ahead, not thinking, not listening, not seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man before her, of his sheer physical proximity, of his increasing exuberance.

“I’m mad about you, girl,” he said.  “Mad.  And now you are going to be mine, until death do us part.”

She shivered and drew away, and he laughed a little.  Girls were like that, at such times.  They always took a step back for every two steps forward.  He let her hand go, and took a careful survey of his face in the mirror of the cab.  The swelling had gone down, but that bruise below his eye would last for days.  He cursed under his breath.