“Maybe, but I'm going to anyhow, Lily. I don't like to think of you seeing Akers. I don't know anything against him, and I suppose if I did I wouldn't tell you. But he is not your sort.”
An impulse of honesty prevailed with her.
“I know that as well as you do. I know him better than you do. But, he stands for something, at least,” she added rather hotly. “None of the other men I know stand for anything very much. Even you, Willy.”
“I stand for the preservation of my country,” he said gravely. “I mean, I represent a lot of people who—well, who don't believe that change always means progress, and who do intend that the changes Doyle and Akers and that lot want they won't get. I don't believe—if you say you want what they want—that you know what you are talking about.”
“Perhaps I am more intelligent than you think I am.”
He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of arguing with her.
“Do your people know that you are seeing Louis Akers!”
“You are being rather solicitous, aren't you?”
“I am being rather anxious. I wouldn't dare, of course, if we hadn't been such friends. But Akers is wrong, wrong every way, and I have to tell you that, even if it means that you will never see me again. He takes a credulous girl—”
“Thank you!”