ely.
"Looks worried, doesn't she? Two masked men! Huh! All Sam took up there
last night was a thin fellow with a limp."

The hall boy grinned.

"Then his limp didn't bother him any. Sam says y'ought to seen that
place."

In the meantime, outside the door of Akers' apartment, Lily's fine
courage almost left her. Had it not been for the eyes of the elevator
man, fixed on her while he lounged in his gateway, she might have gone
away, even then. But she stood there, committed to a course of action,
and rang.

Louis himself admitted her, an oddly battered Louis, in a dressing gown
and slippers; an oddly watchful Louis, too, waiting, after the manner of
men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat would jump.
He had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge. All day he had sat
there, unable to go out, and had wondered just when Cameron would see
her and tell her about Edith Boyd. For, just as Willy Cameron rushed him
for the first time, there had been something from between clenched teeth
about marrying another girl, under the given circumstances. Only that
had not been the sort of language in which it was delivered.

"I just saw about it in the newspaper," Lily said. "How dreadful,
Louis."

He straightened himself and drew a deep breath. The game was still his,
if he played it right.

"Bad enough, dear," he said, "but I gave them some trouble, too." He
pushed a chair toward her. "It was like you to come. But I don't like
your seeing me all mussed up, little girl."

He made a move then to kiss her, but she drew back.

"Please!" she said. "Not here. And I can't sit down. I can't stay. I
only came because I wanted to tell you something and I didn't want to
telephone it. Louis, Jim Doyle knew about those bombs last night. He
didn't want it to happen before the election, but--that doesn't alter
the fact, does it?"

"How do you know he knew?"

"I do know. That's all. And I have left Aunt Elinor's."

"No!"

"I couldn't stay, could I?" She looked up at him, the little wistful
glance that Willy always found so infinitely touching, like the appeal
of a willful but lovable child, that has somehow got into trouble. "And
I can't go home, Louis, unless I--"

"Unless you give me up," he finished for her. "Well?"

She hesitated. She hated making terms with him, and yet somehow she must
make terms.

"Well?" he repeated. "Are you going to throw me over?"

Apparently merely putting the thought into words cr