Late that night John Merkle telephoned Bob Wharton to say:
"Headquarters just rang me up and told me—prepare yourself for a shock—Lilas Lynn is dead."
"Dead?" Bob cried, in a startled voice. "Dead! How? When did it happen?
I can't believe it."
Merkle made known the details that had come to him. "Looks like suicide, but they're not sure. Anyhow, she took too much dope of some sort. You can sleep easy now. I wish I could."
"I suppose it's the law of compensation."
"Compensation?" Merkle's voice sounded querulous. "There's no such thing. Don't talk to a Wall Street man about the law of compensation."
"Well, then, call it Providence."
"Providence has too much on its hands to bother with people like her.
No, there is a certain—well, immovability about the conventional, and
Lilas wasn't strong enough to topple it over."
"I—I'm shocked, of course, and yet I can't help feeling greatly relieved. Rotten thing to say—"
"Not at all. I'm delighted."