"How can you call it beautiful?"
"Isn't it rather fine when two people, a man and a woman, suddenly find a tremendous attraction that draws them together, in spite of the fact that everything else is conspiring to keep them apart?"
"I don't know," she said uncertainly. "It just seemed all wrong, somehow."
"An honest impulse is never wrong."
"I don't want to discuss it, Mr. Akers. It is over."
While he was away from her, her attraction for him loomed less than the things she promised, of power and gratified ambition. But he found her, with her gentle aloofness, exceedingly appealing, and with the tact of the man who understands women he adapted himself to her humor.
"You are making me very unhappy; Miss Lily," he said. "If you'll only promise to let me see you now and then, I'll promise to be as mild as dish-water. Will you promise?"
She was still struggling, still remembering Willy Cameron, still trying to remember all the things that Louis Akers was not.
"I think I ought not to see you at all."
"Then," he said slowly, "you are going to cut me off from the one decent influence in my life."
She was still revolving that in her mind when tea came. Akers, having shot his bolt, watched with interest the preparation for the little ceremony, the old Georgian teaspoons, the Crown Derby cups, the bell-shaped Queen Anne teapot, beautifully chased, the old pierced sugar basin. Almost his gaze was proprietary. And he watched Lily, her casual handling of those priceless treasures, her taking for granted of service and beauty, her acceptance of quality because she had never known anything else, watched her with possessive eyes.
When the servant had gone, he said: "You are being very nice to me, in view of the fact that you did not ask me to come. And also remembering that your family does not happen to care about me."
"They are not at home."
"I knew that, or I should not have come. I don't want to make trouble for you, child." His voice was infinitely caressing. "As it happens, I know your grandfather's Sunday habits, and I met your father and mother on the road going out of town at noon. I knew they had not come back."
"How do you know that?"
He smiled down at her. "I have ways of knowing quite a lot of things. Especially when they are as vital to me as this few minutes alone with you."