r won't have me back. You mustn't
blame him, Pink. We quarreled and I left. I was as much responsible as
he was."

For a moment after she turned and disappeared inside the pharmacy door
he stood there, then he put on his hat and strode down the street,
unhappy and perplexed. If only she had needed him, if she had not looked
so self-possessed and so ever so faintly defiant, as though she dared
him to pity her, he would have known what to do. All he needed was to be
needed. His open face was full of trouble. It was unthinkable that Lily
should be in that center of anarchy; more unthinkable that Doyle might
have filled her up with all sorts of wild ideas. Women were queer; they
liked theories. A man could have a theory of life and play with it and
boast about it, but never dream of living up to it. But give one to a
woman, and she chewed on it like a dog on a bone. If those Bolshevists
had got hold of Lily--!

The encounter had hurt Lily, too. The fine edge of her exaltation was
gone, and it did not return during her brief talk with Willy Cameron.
He looked much older and very thin; there were lines around his eyes
she had never seen before, and she hated seeing him in his present
surroundings. But she liked him for his very unconsciousness of those
surroundings. One always had to take Willy Cameron as he was.

"Do you like it, Willy?" she asked. It had dawned on her, with a sort
of panic, that there was really very little to talk about. All that they
had had in common lay far in the past.

"Well, it's my daily bread, and with bread costing what it does, I cling
to it like a limpet to a rock."

"But I thought you were studying, so you could do something else."

"I had to give up the night school. But I'll get back to it sometime."

She was lost again. She glanced around the little shop, where once
Edith Boyd had manicured her nails behind the counter, and where now a
middle-aged woman stood with listless eyes looking out over the street.

"You still have Jinx, I suppose?"

"Yes. I--"

Lily glanced up as he stopped. She had drawn off her gloves, and his
eyes had fallen on her engagement ring. To Lily there had always been a
feeling of unreality about his declaration of love for her. He had
been so restrained, so careful to ask nothing in exchange, so without
expectation of return, that she had put it out of her mind as an
impulse. She had not dreamed that he could still care, after these
months of silence. But h