She was a Cardew, and she loved strength. There were other men, men like Willy Cameron, for instance, who were lovable in many ways, but they were not fighters. They sat back, and let life beat them, and they took the hurt bravely and stoically. But they never got life by the throat and shook it until it gave up what they wanted.
She had never been in a bachelors' apartment house before, and she was both frightened and self-conscious. The girl at the desk eyed her curiously while she telephoned her message, and watched her as she moved toward the elevator. “Ever seen her before?” she said to the hall boy.
“No. She's a new one.”
“Face's kind of familiar to me,” said the telephone girl, reflectively. “Looks worried, doesn't she? Two masked men! Huh! All Sam took up there last night was a thin fellow with a limp.”
The hall boy grinned.
“Then his limp didn't bother him any. Sam says y'ought to seen that place.”
In the meantime, outside the door of Akers' apartment, Lily's fine courage almost left her. Had it not been for the eyes of the elevator man, fixed on her while he lounged in his gateway, she might have gone away, even then. But she stood there, committed to a course of action, and rang.
Louis himself admitted her, an oddly battered Louis, in a dressing gown and slippers; an oddly watchful Louis, too, waiting, after the manner of men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat would jump. He had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge. All day he had sat there, unable to go out, and had wondered just when Cameron would see her and tell her about Edith Boyd. For, just as Willy Cameron rushed him for the first time, there had been something from between clenched teeth about marrying another girl, under the given circumstances. Only that had not been the sort of language in which it was delivered.
“I just saw about it in the newspaper,” Lily said. “How dreadful, Louis.”
He straightened himself and drew a deep breath. The game was still his, if he played it right.