hesitated. Then: "She never seemed like that sort of a girl," he
finished, bitterly.

"She isn't that sort of girl, Joe."

"She did it. How could a fellow know she wouldn't do it again?"

"She has had a pretty sad sort of lesson."

Joe, his real business forgotten, walked on with eyes down and shoulders
drooping.

"I might as well finish with it," he said, "now I've started. I've
always been crazy about her. Of course now--I haven't slept for two
nights."

"I think it's rather like this, Joe," Willy Cameron said, after a pause.
"We are not one person, really. We are all two or three people, and
all different. We are bad and good, depending on which of us is the
strongest at the time, and now and then we pay so much for the bad we
do that we bury that part. That's what has happened to Edith. Unless, of
course," he added, "we go on convincing her that she is still the thing
she doesn't want to be."

"I'd like to kill the man," Joe said. But after a little, as they neared
the edge of the park, he looked up.

"You mean, go on as if nothing had happened?"

"Precisely," said Willy Cameron, "as though nothing had happened."

CHAPTER XLIII

The atmosphere of the Cardew house was subtly changed and very friendly.
Willy Cameron found himself received as an old friend, with no tendency
to forget the service he had rendered, or that, in their darkest hour,
he had been one of them.

To his surprise Pink Denslow was there, and he saw at once that Pink
had been telling them of the night at the farm house. Pink was himself
again, save for a small shaved place at the back of his head, covered
with plaster.

"I've told them, Cameron," he said. "If I could only tell it generally
I'd be the most popular man in the city, at dinners."

"Pair of young fools," old Anthony muttered, with his sardonic smile.
But in his hand-clasp, as in Howard's, there was warmth and a sort of
envy, envy of youth and the adventurous spirit of youth.

Lily was very quiet. The story had meant more to her than to the others.
She had more nearly understood Pink's reference to the sealed envelope
Willy Cameron had left, and the help sent by Edith Boyd. She connected
that with Louis Akers, and from that to Akers' threat against Cameron
was only a step. She was frightened and somewhat resentful, that this
other girl should have saved him from a revenge that she knew was
directed at herself. That she, who had brought this thing about, had sat
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