"Louis," she faltered--"I--I didn't mean that!--I was beside myself; forgive me, please! Don't look like that; you are frightening me--" She caught his arm as he passed her, clung to it, pallid, fearful, imploring,--"W-what are you going to do, Louis! Don't go, dear, please. I'm sorry, I'm very, very humble. Won't you speak to me? I said too much; I was wrong;--I--I will try to be different--try to reconcile myself to--to what--you--wish--" He looked down at her where she hung to him, tearful face lifted to his: "I didn't know women could feel that way about another woman," he said, in a dull voice. "There's no use--no use--" "But--but I love you dearly, Louis! I couldn't endure it to have anything come between us--disrupt the family--" "Nothing will, Lily.... I must go now." "Don't you believe I love you?" He drew a deep, unconscious breath. "I suppose so. Different people express love differently. There's no use in asking you to be different--" She said, piteously: "I'm trying. Don't you see I'm trying? Give me time, Louis! Make allowances. You can't utterly change people in a few hours." He gazed at her intently for a moment. "You mean that you are trying to be fair to--her?" "I--if you call it that;--yes! But a family can not adapt itself, instantaneously, to such a cataclysm as threatens--I mean--I mean--oh, Louis! Try to understand us and sympathise a little with us!" His arms closed around her shoulders: "Little sister, we both have the family temper--and beneath it, the family instinct for cohesion. If we are also selfish it is not individual but family selfishness. It is the family which has always said to the world, '_Noli me tangere_!' while we, individually, are really inclined to be kinder, more sympathetic, more curious about the neighbours outside our gate. Let it be so now. Once inside the family, what can harm Valerie?" "Dearest, dearest brother," she murmured, "you talk like a foolish man. Women understand better. And if it is a part of your program that this girl is to be accepted by an old-fashioned society, now almost obsolete, but in which this family is merely a single superannuated unit, that program can never be carried out." "I think you are mistaken," he said.