"I just won't take sides," announced Lydia, obstinately.
Billy stepped round in front of the young girl and put both hands gently on her shoulders. "Look at me, Lydia," he said. "You have to take sides! You can't escape it. You mean too much to too many of us men. You've got to take a perfectly clear stand on questions like this. It means too much to America for you not to. Your influence counts, in that way if in no other, don't you see."
Lydia's throat tightened. "I won't take sides against Mr. Levine," she repeated.
"Do you mean that you don't want me to expose Marshall?" asked Billy.
"You've no right to ask me that." Lydia's voice was cross.
"But I have. Lydia, though you don't want it, my life is yours. No matter whether we can ever be anything else, we are friends, aren't we, friends in the deepest sense of the word,—aren't we, Lydia?"
Lydia stared at Billy in silence. Perhaps it was the glow from the west that helped to deepen and soften his gray eyes, for there was nothing searching in them now. There was a depth and loyalty in them and a something besides that reminded her vaguely of the way John Levine looked at her. A crow cawed faintly from the woods and the wind fluttered Billy's hair.
Friendship! Something very warm and high and fine entered Lydia's heart.
"Yes, we are friends. Billy," she said slowly. "But oh, Billy, don't make me decide that!"
"Lydia, you must! You can't have a friend and not share his problems and you can't live in a community and not share its problems, if you're going to be worth anything to the world."