“She won’t be around any one’s neck very long, Edith dear.”

“After that, will you go away?”

“Not if you still want me.”

“Want you!”

Dan was out, and Ellen had gone up for the invalid’s tray.  They were alone together, standing in the kitchen doorway.

Suddenly Edith, beside him, ran her hand through his arm.

“If I had been a different sort of girl, Willy, do you think—­could you ever have cared for me?”

“I never thought about you that way,” he said, simply.  “I do care for you.  You know that.”

She dropped her hand.

“You are in love with Lily Cardew.  That’s why you don’t—­I’ve known it all along, Willy.  I used to think you’d get over it, never seeing her and all that.  But you don’t, do you?” She looked up at him.  “The real thing lasts, I suppose.  It will with me.  I wish to heaven it wouldn’t.”

He was most uncomfortable, but he drew her hand within his arm again and held it there.

“Don’t get to thinking that you care anything about me,” he said.  “There’s not as much love in the world as there ought to be, and we all need to hold hands, but—­don’t fancy anything like that.”

“I wanted to tell you.  If I hadn’t known about her I wouldn’t have told you, but—­you said it when you said there’s not as much love as there ought to be.  I’m gone, but I guess my caring for you hasn’t hurt me any.  It’s the only reason I’m alive to-day.”

She freed her hand, and stood staring out over the little autumn garden.  There was such brooding trouble in her face that he watched her anxiously.

“I think mother suspects,” she said at last.

“I hope not, Edith.”

“I think she does.  She watches me all the time, and she asked to see Dan to-night.  Only he didn’t come home.”

“You must deny it, Edith,” he said, almost fiercely.  “She must not know, ever.  That is one thing we can save her, and must save her.”

But, going upstairs as usual before he went out, he realized that Edith was right, and that matters had reached a crisis.  The sick woman had eaten nothing, and her eyes were sunken and anxious.  There was an unspoken question in them, too, as she turned them on him.  Most significant of all, the little album was not beside her, nor the usual litter of newspapers on the bed.

“I wish you weren’t going out, Willy,” she said querulously.  “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Can’t we discuss it in the morning?”

“I won’t sleep till I get it off my mind, Willy.”  But he could not face that situation then.  He needed time, for one thing.  Surely there must be some way out, some way to send this frail little woman dreamless to her last sleep, life could not be so cruel that death would seem kind.

He spoke at three different meetings that night, for the election was close at hand.  Pink Denslow took him about in his car, and stood waiting for him at the back of the crowd.  In the intervals between hall and hall Pink found Willy Cameron very silent and very grave, but he could not know that the young man beside him was trying to solve a difficult question.  Which was:  did two wrongs ever make a right?