to take you home."

Akers had wheeled at the voice, and now stood staring incredulously.
First anger, and then a grin of triumph, showed in his face. Drink had
made him not so much drunk as reckless. He had lost last night, but
to-day he had won.

"Hello, Cameron," he said.

Willy Cameron ignored him.

"Will you come?" he said to Lily.

"I can't, Willy."

"Listen, Lily dear," he said gravely. "Your father is searching the city
for you. Do you know what that means? Don't you see that you must go
home at once? You can't dine here in a private suite, like this, and not
expose yourself to all sorts of talk."

"Go on," said Akers, leering. "I like to hear you."

"Especially," continued Willy Cameron, "with a man like this."

Akers took a step toward him, but he was not too sure of himself, and
he knew now that the other man had a swing to his right arm like the
driving rod of a locomotive. He retreated again to the table, and his
hand closed over a knife there.

"Louis!" Lily said sharply.

He picked up the knife and smiled at her, his eyes cunning. "Not going
to kill him, my dear," he said. "Merely to give him a hint that I'm not
as easy as I was last night."

That was a slip, and he knew it. Lily had left the window and come
forward, a stricken slip of a girl, and he turned to her angrily.

"Go into the other room and close the door," he ordered. "When I've
thrown this fellow out, you can come back."

But Lily's eyes were fixed on Willy Cameron's face.

"It was you last night?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because," Willy Cameron said steadily, "he had got a girl into trouble,
and then insulted her. I wouldn't tell you, but you've got to know the
truth before it's too late."

Lily threw out both hands dizzily, as though catching for support. But
she steadied herself. Neither man moved.

"It is too late, Willy," she said. "I have just married him."

CHAPTER XXX

At midnight Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired and broken man.
Grace had been lying awake in her bedroom, puzzled by his unexplained
absence, and brooding, as she now did continually, over Lily's absence.

At half past eleven she heard Anthony Cardew come in and go upstairs,
and for some time after that she heard him steadily pacing back and
forth overhead. Sometimes Grace felt sorry for Anthony. He had made
himself at such cost, and now when he was old, he had everything and yet
nothing.

They had never understood women, these Ca