Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/162

 bitterly, made that perilous journey through the riots of Halsted street only because it was Mis' Lily who was returning. Certainly no other cause had induced him to venture outside the barren park.

The encounter, for Hattie Tolliver, was no ordinary one. From her manner it was clear that she was opening the door to a woman. . . her own cousin. . . who had lived in sin, who had borne a child out of wedlock. Indeed the woman might still be living in sin. Paris was a Babylon where it was impossible to know any one's manner of living. Like all the others, Mrs. Tolliver had lived all her life secure in the belief that she knew Lily. She remembered the day of her cousin's birth. . a snowy blustering day. She knew Lily throughout her childhood. She knew her as a woman. "Lily," she undoubtedly told herself, "was thus and so. If any one knows Lily, I know her." And then all this knowledge had been upset suddenly by a single word from Lily's mother. It was necessary to create a whole new pattern. The woman who stood on the other side of the door was not Lily at all—at least not the old Lily—but a new woman, a stranger, whom she did not know. There might be, after all, something in what Aunt Julia said about never really knowing any one.

All this her manner declared unmistakably during the few strained seconds that she stood in the doorway facing her cousin. For an instant, while the two women, the worldly and the provincial, faced each other, the making of family history hung in the balance. It was Mrs. Tolliver who decided the issue. Suddenly she took her beautiful cousin into her arms, encircling her in an embrace so warm and so filled with defiance of all the world that Lily's black hat, trimmed with camelias, was knocked awry.

"Your poor mother!" were Cousin Hattie's first words. "She is very low indeed. She has been asking for you."

And so Lily won another victory in her long line of conquests, a victory which she must have known was a real triumph in which to take a profound pride.

Then while Lily took off her hat and set her fine hair in order, her cousin poured out the news of the last few days. It