"Did she promise not to gad about with him?"

"That was the spirit of the compact; she agreed not to marry him."

"Sometimes they--don't marry," observed Gordon, twirling his thumbs.

Lily looked up quickly; then flushed slightly.

"What do you mean, Gordon?"

"Nothing specific; anything in general."

"You mean to hint that--that Louis--Louis Neville could be--permit
himself to be so common--so unutterably low--"

"Better men have taken the half-loaf."

"Gordon!" she exclaimed, scarlet with amazement and indignation.

"Personally," he said, unperturbed, "I haven't much sympathy with such
affairs. If a man can't marry a girl he ought to leave her alone; that's
my idea of the game. But men play it in a variety of ways. Personally,
I'd as soon plug a loaded shot-gun with mud and then fire it, as block a
man who wants to marry."

"I _did_ block it!" said Lily with angry decision; "and I am glad I
did."

"Look out for the explosion then," he said philosophically, and
strolled off to see to the setting out of some young hemlocks, headed in
the year previous.

Lily Collis was deeply disturbed--more deeply than her pride and her
sophistication cared to admit. She strove to believe that such a horror
as her husband had hinted at so coolly could never happen to a Neville;
she rejected it with anger, with fear, with a proud and dainty
fastidiousness that ought to have calmed and reassured her. It did not.

Once or twice she reverted to the subject, haughtily; but Gordon merely
shrugged:

"You can't teach a man of twenty-eight when, where, and how to fall in
love," he said. "And it's all the more hopeless when the girl possesses
the qualities which you once told me this girl possesses."

Lily bit her lip, angry and disconcerted, but utterly unable to refute
him or find anything in her memory of Valerie to criticise and condemn,
except the intimacy with her brother which had continued and which, she
had supposed, would cease on Valerie's promise to her.

"It's very horrid of her to go about with him under the
circumstances--knowing she can't marry him if she keeps her word," said
Lily.

"Why? Stephanie goes about with him."

"Do you think it is good taste to compare those two people?"

"Why not. From what you told me I gather that Valerie West is as
innocent and upright a woman as Stephanie--and as proudly capable of
self-sacrifice as any woman who ever loved."

"Gordon," she said, exasperated, "do you act