He stared at her.
"If they have been teaching you their dirty doctrines, Lily," he said at last, "I can only tell you this. They can disguise it in all the fine terms they want. It is treason, and they are traitors. I know. I've had a talk with the Chief of Police."
"I don't believe it."
"How well do you know Louis Akers?"
"Not very well." But there were spots of vivid color flaming in her cheeks. He drew a long breath.
"I can't retract it," he said. "I didn't know, of course. Shall we start back?"
They were very silent as they walked. Willy Cameron was pained and anxious. He knew Akers' type rather than the man himself, but he knew the type well. Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal who attracted girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made passionate, pagan love promiscuously, and put the responsibility for the misery they caused on the Creator because He had made them as they were.
He was agonized by another train of thought. For him Lily had always been something fine, beautiful, infinitely remote. There were other girls, girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less, with the soil of life. Even when they kept clean they saw it all about them, and looked on it with shrewd, sophisticated eyes. But Lily was--Lily. The very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as he had seen him look at Edith Boyd made him cold with rage.
"Do you mind if I say something?"
"That sounds disagreeable. Is it?"
"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."