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 crystallized all his fears of the past hours; seeing her there, too, had intensified his want of her.  She stood there, where he had so often dreamed of seeing her, but still holding him off with the aloofness that both chilled and inflamed him, and with a question in her eyes.  He held out his arms, but she drew back.

“Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them, if I marry you, and doing all you can to stop them?”

“You know I mean it.”