lery was innocuous enough. Louis Akers met her
there, and carefully made the rounds with her. Then he suggested tea,
and chose a quiet tea-room, and a corner.

"I'll tell you something, now it's over," he said, his bold eyes fixed
on hers. "I loathe galleries and pictures. I wanted to see you again.
That's all. You see, I am starting in by being honest with you."

She was rather uncomfortable.

"Why don't you like pictures?"

"Because they are only imitations of life. I like life." He pushed
his teacup away. "I don't want tea either. Tea was an excuse, too." He
smiled at her. "Perhaps you don't like honesty," he said. "If you don't
you won't care for me."

She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness and
effrontery, but he made her vaguely uneasy. He knew so many things, and
yet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her family's sense of
the word. He had a curious effect on her, too, one that she resented. He
made her insistently conscious of her sex.

And of his. His very deference had something of restraint about it. She
thought, trying to drink her tea quietly, that he might be very terrible
if he loved any one. There was a sort of repressed fierceness behind his
suavity.

But he interested her, and he was undeniably handsome, not in her
father's way but with high-colored, almost dramatic good looks. There
could be no doubt, too, that he was interested in her. He rarely took
his eyes off hers. Afterwards she was to know well that bold possessive
look of his.

It was just before they left that he said:

"I am going to see you again, you know. May I come in some afternoon?"

Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments, and she raised frank
eyes to his.

"I am afraid not," she said. "You see, you are a friend of Mr. Doyle's,
and you must know that my people and Aunt Elinor's husband are on bad
terms."

"What has that got to do with you and me?" Then he laughed. "Might be
unpleasant, I suppose. But you go to the Doyles'."

She was very earnest.

"My mother knows, but my grandfather wouldn't permit it if he knew."

"And you put up with that sort of thing?" He leaned closer to her. "You
are not a baby, you know. But I will say you are a good sport to do it,
anyhow."

"I'm not very comfortable about it."

"Bosh," he said, abruptly. "You go there as often as you can. Elinor
Doyle's a lonely woman, and Jim is all right. You pick your own friends,
my child, and live your o