Jinx was tired.  He begged to be carried, planting two muddy feet on his master’s shabby trouser leg, and pleading with low whines.  Willy Cameron stooped and, gathering up the little animal, tucked him under his arm.  When it commenced to rain he put him under his coat and plunged his head through the mud and wet toward home.

Lily had entered the house in a white fury, but a moment later she was remorseful.  For one thing, her own anger bewildered her.  After all, he had meant well, and it was like him to be honest, even if it cost him something he valued.

She ran to the door and looked around for him, but he had disappeared.  She went in again, remorseful and unhappy.  What had come over her to treat him like that?  He had looked almost stricken.

“Mr. Akers is calling, Miss Cardew,” said the footman.  “He is in the drawing-room.”

Lily went in slowly.

Louis Akers had been waiting for some time.  He had lounged into the drawing-room, with an ease assumed for the servant’s benefit, and had immediately lighted a cigarette.  That done, and the servant departed, he had carefully appraised his surroundings.  He liked the stiff formality of the room.  He liked the servant in his dark maroon livery.  He liked the silence and decorum.  Most of all, he liked himself in these surroundings.  He wandered around, touching a bowl here, a vase there, eyeing carefully the ancient altar cloth that lay on a table, the old needle-work tapestry on the chairs.

He saw himself fitted into this environment, a part of it; coming down the staircase, followed by his wife, and getting into his waiting limousine; sitting at the head of his table, while the important men of the city listened to what he had to say.  It would come, as sure as God made little fishes.  And Doyle was a fool.  He, Louis Akers, would marry Lily Cardew and block that other game.  But he would let the Cardews know who it was who had blocked it and saved their skins.  They’d have to receive him after that; they would cringe to him.

Then, unexpectedly, he had one of the shocks of his life.  He had gone to the window and through it he saw Lily and Willy Cameron outside.  He clutched at the curtain and cursed under his breath, apprehensively.  But Willy Cameron did not come in; Akers watched him up the street with calculating, slightly narrowed eyes.  The fact that Lily Cardew knew the clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an unexpected complication.  His surprise was lost in anxiety.  But Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather pale and unsmiling, found him facing the door, his manner easy, his head well up, and drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height.  She found her poise entirely gone, and it was he who spoke first.

“I know,” he said.  “You didn’t ask me, but I came anyhow.”

She held out her hand rather primly.

“It is very good of you to come.”