Lily had one of the truth-telling impulses which redeemed her from the artifices of her mother. "Oh," said she, "I wanted to come. I proposed coming myself. It is dull evenings at home, and I did not know that Maria would go to bed or that you would come in." "Well, mother has gone to that tea-party, too," said George, "and I looked over here and saw the light, and I thought I would just run in a minute." For some unexplained reason tears were standing in Lily's eyes and her mouth quivered a little. George could not see, for the life of him, why she should be on the verge of tears. He felt a little impatient, but at the same time she became more interesting to him. He had never seen Lily weeping since the time when she was a child at school, and used to conceal her weeping little face in a ring of her right arm, as was the fashion among the little girls. "This light must shine right in your sitting-room windows," said Lily, in a faint voice. She was considering how pitiful it was that George had not had the impulse to call upon her, Lily, when she was so lovely and loving in her green gown; and how even this little happiness was not really her own, but another girl's. She had not the least realization of how Maria was suffering, lying in her room directly overhead. Maria suffered as she had never suffered before. George Ramsey was her first love; the others had been merely childish playthings. She was strangling love, and that is a desperate deed, and the strangler suffers more than love. Maria, with the memory of that marriage which was, indeed, no marriage, but the absurd travesty of one, upon her, was in almost a suicidal frame of mind. She knew perfectly well that if it had not been for that marriage secret which she held always in mind, that George Ramsey would continue to call, that they would become engaged, that her life might be like other women's. And now he was down there with Lily--Lily, in her green gown. She knew just how Lily would look at him, with her beautiful, soft eyes. She hated her, and yet she hated herself more than she hated her. She told herself that she had no good reason for hating another girl for doing what she herself had done--for falling in love with George Ramsey. She knew that she should never have made a confidant of another girl, as Lily had made of her. She realized a righteous contempt because of her weakness, and yet she felt that Lily was the normal girl, that nine out of ten would do exactly what she had done. And she also had a sort of pity for her. She could not quite believe that a young man like George Ramsey could like Lily, who, however beautiful she was, was undeniably silly. But then she reflected how young men were popularly supposed not to mind a girl's being silly if she was beautiful. Then she ceased to pity Lily, and hated her again. She became quite convinced that George Ramsey would marry her.