had fallen to the floor, fainting for the
first time in her healthy young life.

* * * * *

An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She found
Willy Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a look
of wild despair in his eyes.

Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her view-point somewhat
since the spring. After all, what mattered was happiness. Wealth and
worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end,
to the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with the
shades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers over everything.

"She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron," she said. "It was but a crisis
of the nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands to see you."

Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure,
which issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went up
the stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figure
lost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently moved
forward on tiptoe. Grayson went into the library and sniffed at the
unmistakable odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went and
stood before a great portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood in
the old man's eyes, but there was a faint smile on his lips. He saw the
endless procession of life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Then
death. Grayson was old, but he had lived to see young love in the Cardew
house. Out of love, life. He addressed a little speech to the picture.

"Wherever you are, sir," he said, "you needn't worry any more. The line
will carry on, sir. The line will carry on."

Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, and
gathered Lily close in his arms.

CHAPTER LII

Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many changes. It saw,
slowly emerging from the chaos of war, new nations, like children,
taking their first feeble steps. It saw a socialism which, born at full
term might have thrived, prematurely and forcibly delivered, and making
a valiant but losing fight for life. It saw that war is never good,
but always evil; that war takes everything and gives nothing, save that
sometimes a man may lose the whole world and gain his own soul.

It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into the vast democracy
of heaven, and Louis Akers passed through the Traitors' Gate of eternity
to b