od was nothing but a raid on private
property, a scheme of pillage and arson. They allied with themselves
imported laborers from Europe, men with everything to gain and nothing
to lose, and by magnifying real grievances and inflaming them with
imaginary ones, were building out of this material the rank and file of
an anarchist army.

And against it, what?

On toward morning he remembered something, and sat bolt upright in bed.
Edith had once said something about knowing of a secret telephone. She
had known Louis Akers very well. He might have told her what she knew,
or have shown her, in some braggart moment. A certain type of man was
unable to keep a secret from a woman. But that would imply--For the
first time he wondered what Edith's relations with Louis Akers might
have been.

CHAPTER XIX

The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the even tenor of her
days there, the feeling she had of sanctuary did not offset Lily's clear
knowledge that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing. Even her
grandfather, whose anger had driven her away, she remembered now as a
feeble old man, fighting his losing battle in a changing world, and yet
with a sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors to the end.

She had determined, that first night in Elinor's immaculate guest room,
to go back the next day. They had been right at home, by all the tenets
to which they adhered so religiously. She had broken the unwritten law
not to break bread with an enemy of her house. She had done what they
had expressly forbidden, done it over and over.

"On top of all this," old Anthony had said, after reading the tale of
her delinquencies from some notes in his hand, "you dined last night
openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a man openly
my enemy, and openly of impure life."

"I do not believe he is your enemy."

"He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened to
kill me."

"Oh, Lily, Lily!" said her mother.

But it was to her father, standing grave and still, that Lily replied.

"I don't believe that, father. He is not a murderer. If you would let
him come here--"

"Never in this house," said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in his
hand. "He will come here over my dead body."

"You have no right to condemn a man unheard."

"Unheard! I tell you I know all about him. The man is an anarchist, a
rake, a--dog."

"Just a moment, father," Howard had put in, quietly. "Lily, do y