To Lily herself the word she used was not extravagant at all; it was merely her definition of Crabbe Osborne. As he went toward the door Lily saw a brightness moving with him, an effulgence that would depart with him and leave but darkness when he had passed the threshold. No doubt the true being of young Crabbe was neither as Mrs. Dodge conceived it nor as Lily saw it;—no earthly intellect could have defined just what he was: nor, for that matter, can any earthly intellect say what anything is, since all of our descriptive words express nothing more than how the things appear to ourselves; and our descriptions, therefore, are all but bits of autobiography. Thus, Lily’s word really expressed not Crabbe but her own condition, and that was what shocked her mother. Yet Lily sincerely believed that the word described Crabbe; and, in her opinion, since her lover’s effulgence was divine, this word was natural, moderate, and peculiarly accurate. “Take me away with you,” she wailed; and then, in a voice beset with tears, she hoarsely called him, “Angel”! “Oh, murder!” cried Mrs. Dodge. And she was inspired to turn upon Crabbe Osborne a look that expressed in full her critical thought of Lily’s term for him. Unquestionably he found himself in difficulties. Called “angel” in the presence of a third party, he may have been hampered by some sense of personal inadequacy. He produced a few sounds in his throat, but nothing in the way of appropriate response; and under the circumstances the expression of Mrs. Dodge was not long to be endured by any merely human being. “I guess maybe—maybe I better be stepping along,” he murmured, and acted upon the supposition that his guess was a correct one. Lily cried, “No! Don’t _leave_ me!” And piteously she used her strange word for him again; but her mother held her fast until after the closing of the front door was heard. “Oh, Heaven!” Lily wailed, “won’t you even let me go and watch him till he’s out of sight? Won’t you even let me _look_ at him?” “No, I won’t!” Upon this the daughter slid downward from the mother’s grasp and cast herself upon the floor. “He’s gone!” she sobbed. “Oh, he’s gone! He’s gone, and you drove him out! You drove him! You did! You drove him!” “Get up from there,” Mrs. Dodge said, fiercely. “Be quiet! Do you want the servants to hear you?” “What do _I_ care who hears me? You drove him! You drove him, Mamma! You did! You _drove_ him!” IX MRS. DODGE’S HUSBAND