“She has a brother.”

“Tell me about her sending help that night.  She really saved your life, didn’t she?”

While he was telling her she sat staring straight ahead, her fingers interlaced in her lap.  She was telling herself that all this could not possibly matter to her, that she had cut herself off, finally and forever, from the man before her; that she did not even deserve his friendship.

Quite suddenly she knew that she did not want his friendship.  She wanted to see again in his face the look that had been there the night he had told her, very simply, that he loved her.  And it would never be there; it was not there now.  She had killed his love.  All the light in his face was for some one else, another girl, a girl more unfortunate but less wicked than herself.

When he stopped she was silent.  Then: 

“I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not intend to tell?”

“That I didn’t intend to tell?  I have made no reservations, Lily.”

“Are you sure?  Or don’t you realize it yourself?”

“Realize what?” He was greatly puzzled.

“I think, Willy,” she said, quietly, “that you care a great deal more for Edith Boyd than you think you do.”

He looked at her in stupefaction.  How could she say that?  How could she fail to know better than that?  And he did not see the hurt behind her careful smile.

“You are wrong about that.  I—­” He made a little gesture of despair.  He could not tell her now that he loved her.  That was all over.

“She is in love with you.”

He felt absurd and helpless.  He could not deny that, yet how could she sit there, cool and faintly smiling, and not know that as she sat there so she sat enshrined in his heart.  She was his saint, to kneel and pray to; and she was his woman, the one woman of his life.  More woman than saint, he knew, and even for that he loved her.  But he did not know the barbarous cruelty of the loving woman.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Lily,” he said, at last.  “She —­it is possible that she thinks she cares, but under the circumstances—­”

“Ellen told Mademoiselle you were going to marry her.  That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You always said that marriage without love was wicked, Willy.”

“Her child had a right to a name.  And there were other things.  I can’t very well explain them to you.  Her mother was ill.  Can’t you understand, Lily?  I don’t want to throw any heroics.”  In his excitement he had lapsed into boyish vernacular.  “Here was a plain problem, and a simple way to solve it.  But it is off now, anyhow; things cleared up without that.”

She got up and held out her hand.

“It was like you to try to save her,” she said.

“Does this mean I am to go?”

“I am very tired, Willy.”

He had a mad impulse to take her in his arms, and holding her close to rest her there.  She looked so tired.  For fear he might do it he held his arms rigidly at his sides.