They were very silent as they walked.  Willy Cameron was pained and anxious.  He knew Akers’ type rather than the man himself, but he knew the type well.  Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal who attracted girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made passionate, pagan love promiscuously, and put the responsibility for the misery they caused on the Creator because He had made them as they were.

He was agonized by another train of thought.  For him Lily had always been something fine, beautiful, infinitely remote.  There were other girls, girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less, with the soil of life.  Even when they kept clean they saw it all about them, and looked on it with shrewd, sophisticated eyes.  But Lily was—­Lily.  The very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as he had seen him look at Edith Boyd made him cold with rage.

“Do you mind if I say something?”

“That sounds disagreeable.  Is it?”

“Maybe, but I’m going to anyhow, Lily.  I don’t like to think of you seeing Akers.  I don’t know anything against him, and I suppose if I did I wouldn’t tell you.  But he is not your sort.”

An impulse of honesty prevailed with her.

“I know that as well as you do.  I know him better than you do.  But, he stands for something, at least,” she added rather hotly.  “None of the other men I know stand for anything very much.  Even you, Willy.”

“I stand for the preservation of my country,” he said gravely.  “I mean, I represent a lot of people who—­well, who don’t believe that change always means progress, and who do intend that the changes Doyle and Akers and that lot want they won’t get.  I don’t believe —­if you say you want what they want—­that you know what you are talking about.”

“Perhaps I am more intelligent than you think I am.”

He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of arguing with her.

“Do your people know that you are seeing Louis Akers!”

“You are being rather solicitous, aren’t you?”

“I am being rather anxious.  I wouldn’t dare, of course, if we hadn’t been such friends.  But Akers is wrong, wrong every way, and I have to tell you that, even if it means that you will never see me again.  He takes a credulous girl—­”

“Thank you!”

“And talks bunk to her and possibly makes love to her—­”

“Haven’t we had enough of Mr. Akers?” Lily asked coldly.  “If you cannot speak of anything else, please don’t talk.”

The result of which was a frozen silence until they reached the house.

“Good-by,” she said primly.  “It was very nice of you to call me up.  Good-by, Jinx.”  She went up the steps, leaving him bare-headed and rather haggard, looking after her.

He took the dog and went out into the country on foot, tramping through the mud without noticing it, and now and then making little despairing gestures.  He was helpless.  He had cut himself off from her like a fool.  Akers.  Akers and Edith Boyd.  Other women.  Akers and other women.  And now Lily.  Good God, Lily!