at Friendship an army of workers was sprinkling and tamping the turf
of the polo field. After two years of war, there was to be polo again
that spring and early summer. The Cherry Hill Hunt team was still
intact, although some of the visiting outfits had been badly shot to
pieces by the war. But the war was over. It lay behind, a nightmare to
be forgotten as soon as possible. It had left its train of misery and
debt, but--spring had come.

On a pleasant Monday, Lily motored out to the field with Pink Denslow.
It had touched her that he still wanted her, and it had offered an
escape from her own worries. She was fighting a sense of failure that
day. It seemed impossible to reconcile the warring elements at home.
Old Anthony and his son were quarreling over the strike, and Anthony was
jibing constantly at Howard over the playground. It was not so much her
grandfather's irritability that depressed her as his tyranny over the
household, and his attitude toward her mother roused her to bitter
resentment.

The night before she had left the table after one of his scourging
speeches, only to have what amounted to a scene with her mother
afterward.

"But I cannot sit by while he insults you, mother."

"It is just his way. I don't mind, really. Oh, Lily, don't destroy what
I have built up so carefully. It hurts your father so."

"Sometimes," Lily said slowly, "he makes me think Aunt Elinor's husband
was right. He believes a lot of things--"

"What things?" Grace had asked, suspiciously.

Lily hesitated.

"Well, a sort of Socialism, for one thing, only it isn't exactly that.
It's individualism, really, or I think so; the sort of thing that this
house stifles." Grace was too horrified for speech. "I don't want to
hurt you, mother, but don't you see? He tyrannizes over all of us, and
it's bad for our souls. Why should he bellow at the servants? Or talk to
you the way he did to-night?" She smiled faintly. "We're all drowning,
and I want to swim, that's all. Mr. Doyle--"

"You are talking nonsense," said Grace sharply. "You have got a lot of
ideas from that wretched house, and now you think they are your own.
Lily, I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles I shall take
you abroad."

Lily turned and walked out of the room, and there was something
suggestive of old Anthony in the pitch of her shoulders. Her anger did
not last long, but her uneasiness persisted. Already she knew that she
was older in many ways t