y asked, unsteadily.

"All of us. Your grandfather, too. He expects to find you here to-night.
I can explain to your Aunt Elinor over the telephone, and we can send
for your clothes."

Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room. When she came
back her eyes were filled with tears, and her left hand was bare.

"It nearly kills me to hurt you," she said, "but--what about this?"

She held out her hand.

Grace seemed frozen in her chair. At the sight of her mother's face Lily
flung herself on her knees beside the chair.

"Mother, mother," she said, "you must know how I love you. Love you
both. Don't look like that. I can't bear it."

Grace turned away her face.

"You don't love us. You can't. Not if you are going to marry that man."

"Mother," Lily begged, desperately, "let me come home. Let me bring him
here. I'll wait, if you'll only do that. He is different; I know all
that you want to say about his past. He has never had a real chance
in all his life. He won't belong at first, but--he's a man, mother, a
strong man. And it's awfully important. He can do so much, if he only
will. And he says he will, if I marry him."

"I don't understand you," Grace said coldly. "What can a man like that
do, but wreck all our lives?"

Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down. "I'll tell you
about that later," she said, and slowly got to her feet. "Is that all,
mother? You won't see him? I can't bring him here? Isn't there any
compromise? Won't you meet me half-way?"

"When you say half-way, you mean all the way, Lily."

"I wanted you so," Lily said, drearily, "I need you so just now. I am
going to be married, and I have no one to go to. Aunt Elinor doesn't
understand, either. Every way I look I find--I suppose I can't come back
at all, then."

"Your grandfather's condition was that you never see this Louis Akers
again."

Lily's resentment left her. Anger was a thing for small matters, trivial
affairs. This that was happening, an irrevocable break with her family,
was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears. She wondered dully if
any man were worth all this. Perhaps she knew, sub-consciously, that
Louis Akers was not. All her exaltation was gone, and in its stead was a
sort of dogged determination to see the thing through now, at any cost;
to re-make Louis into the man he could be, to build her own house of
life, and having built it, to live in it as best she could.

"That is a condition I