ngs."

"But I never forget them, anyhow. Sometimes I almost go mad,
remembering. It isn't quite as selfish as it sounds. I've hurt them all
so. Willy, do you mind telling me about the girl who opened that letter
and sent you help?"

"About Edith Boyd? I'd like to tell you, Lily. Her mother is dead, and
she lost her child. She is in the Memorial Hospital."

"Then she has no one but you?"

"She has a brother."

"Tell me about her sending help that night. She really saved your life,
didn't she?"

While he was telling her she sat staring straight ahead, her fingers
interlaced in her lap. She was telling herself that all this could
not possibly matter to her, that she had cut herself off, finally and
forever, from the man before her; that she did not even deserve his
friendship.

Quite suddenly she knew that she did not want his friendship. She wanted
to see again in his face the look that had been there the night he had
told her, very simply, that he loved her. And it would never be there;
it was not there now. She had killed his love. All the light in his face
was for some one else, another girl, a girl more unfortunate but less
wicked than herself.

When he stopped she was silent. Then:

"I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not intend
to tell?"

"That I didn't intend to tell? I have made no reservations, Lily."

"Are you sure? Or don't you realize it yourself?"

"Realize what?" He was greatly puzzled.

"I think, Willy," she said, quietly, "that you care a great deal more
for Edith Boyd than you think you do."

He looked at her in stupefaction. How could she say that? How could she
fail to know better than that? And he did not see the hurt behind her
careful smile.

"You are wrong about that. I--" He made a little gesture of despair. He
could not tell her now that he loved her. That was all over.

"She is in love with you."

He felt absurd and helpless. He could not deny that, yet how could she
sit there, cool and faintly smiling, and not know that as she sat there
so she sat enshrined in his heart. She was his saint, to kneel and pray
to; and she was his woman, the one woman of his life. More woman than
saint, he knew, and even for that he loved her. But he did not know the
barbarous cruelty of the loving woman.

"I don't know what to say to you, Lily," he said, at last. "She--it is
possible that she thinks she cares, but under the circumstances--"

"Ellen told Mademoisell