n, her mother and Dan. Only let them let her
go on, too. She had tried her best to change herself, the house, the
whole rotten mess. But they wouldn't let her.

Her mood of disgust continued the next morning. When, at eleven o'clock,
Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at him
somberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did it
matter? So long as something took her for a little while away from
the sordidness of home, its stale odors, its untidiness, its querulous
inmates.

"What's got into you lately, Edith?" he inquired, lowering his voice.
"You used to be the best little pal ever. Now the other day, when I
called up--"

"Had the headache," she said laconically. "Well?"

"Want to play around this evening?"

She hesitated. Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be that
night, and her face hardened. Had any one told Edith that she was
beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, with
his exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and his
sentimental whistling, she would have laughed. But he gave her something
that the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of self-respect. It
was perhaps not so much that she cared for him, as that he enabled her
to care more for herself.

But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew.

"I might, depending on what you've got to offer."

"I've got a car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outside
work, and the organization came over. I've been after it for six months.
We can have a ride, and supper somewhere. How's the young man with the
wooden leg?"

"If you want to know I'll call him out and let him tell you."

"Quick, aren't you?" He smiled down at where she stood, firmly
entrenched behind a show case. "Well, don't fall in love with him.
That's all. I'm a bad man when I'm jealous."

He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him. He did
not know, nor would have cared had he known, that her acceptance of his
invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, and
of the fact that Willy Cameron was dining at the Cardews that night.

CHAPTER XII

Howard Cardew was in his dressing room, sitting before the fire. His
man had put out his dinner clothes and retired, and Howard was sifting
before the fire rather listlessly.

In Grace's room, adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices.
Before Lily's return, now and then when he was tired Grace and he had