“It's a question of principle,” said Dan doggedly. “I've got no personal kick, y'understand. Only I'm not getting anywhere, and something's got to be done about it.”
So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration of independence, Willy Cameron made his way rather heavily toward the Boyd house. He was very tired. He had made one or two speeches for Hendricks already, before local ward organizations, and he was working hard at his night class in metallurgy. He had had a letter from his mother, too, and he thought he read homesickness between the lines. He was not at all sure where his duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the Boyds flat, seemed impossible.
He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice, he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had pleaded a week of engagements.
“I'm sorry,” she had said. “I'll call you up next week some time I have a lot of things I want to talk over with you.”
But he knew she was avoiding him.
And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had learned something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not the poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the accusations against him. Lily mixed up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white flame of patriotism, was unthinkable. She must not go to the house on Cardew Way. A man's loyalty was like a woman's virtue; it could not be questionable. There was no middle ground.
He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found Ellen in the parlor. She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suit-case and brown paper bundle at her feet.
Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.
“I make it a point to hold my head high,” she was saying. “I guess there was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but—Is that you, Willy?”
“Why, Miss Ellen!” he said. “And looking as though headed for a journey!”