When Lily entered the library she closed the door behind her.  She had, on turning, a swift picture of Grayson, taking up his stand in the hall, and it gave her a sense of comfort.  She knew he would remain there, impassively waiting, so long as Akers was in the house.

Then she faced the man standing by the center table.  He made no move toward her, did not even speak at once.  It left on her the burden of the opening, of setting the key of what was to come.  She was steady enough now.

“Perhaps it is as well that you came, Louis,” she said.  “I suppose we must talk it over some time.”

“Yes,” he agreed, his eyes on her.  “We must.  I have married a wife, and I want her, Lily.”

“You know that is impossible.”

“Because of something that happened before I knew you?  I never made any pretensions about my life before we met.  But I did promise to go straight if you’d have me, and I have.  I’ve lived up to my bargain.  What about you?”

“It was not a part of my bargain to marry you while you—­I have thought and thought, Louis.  There is only one thing to be done.  You will have to divorce me, and marry her.”

“Marry her?  A girl of the streets, who chooses to say that I am the father of her child!  It’s the oldest trick in the word.  Besides—­” He played his best card—­“she won’t marry me.  Ask Cameron, who chose to make himself so damned busy about my affairs.  He’s in love with her.  Ask him.”

In spite of herself Lily winced.  Out of the wreckage of the past few weeks one thing had seemed to remain, something to hold to, solid and dependable and fine, and that had been Willy Cameron.  She had found, in these last days, something infinitely comforting in the thought that he cared for her.  It was because he had cared that he had saved her from herself.  But, if this were true—­

“I am not going back to you, Louis.  I think you know that.  No amount of talking about things can change that.”

“Why don’t you face life and try to understand it?” he demanded, brutally.  “Men are like that.  Women are like that—­sometimes.  You can’t measure human passions with a tape line.  That’s what you good women try to do, and you make life a merry little hell.”  He made an effort, and softened his voice.  “I’ll be true to you, Lily, if you’ll come back.”

“No,” she said, “you would mean to be, but you would not.  You have no foundation to build on.”

“Meaning that I am not a gentleman.”

“Not that.  I know you, that’s all.  I understand so much that I didn’t before.  What you call love is only something different.  When that was gone there would be the same thing again.  You would be sorry, but I would be lost.”

Her coolness disconcerted him.  Two small triangular bits of color showed in his face.  He had been prepared for tears, even for a refusal to return, but this clear-eyed appraisal of himself, and the accuracy of it, confused him.  He took refuge in the only method he knew; he threw himself on her pity; he made violent, passionate love to her, but her only expression was one of distaste.  When at last he caught her to him she perforce submitted, a frozen thing that told him, more than any words, how completely he had lost her.  He threw her away from him, then, baffled and angry.