A meadow lark suddenly pierced the sky with its wild sweet note high in
the air somewhere, and Billy wondered with a sick thud of his soul how
larks dared to sing in a world like this where one could upset a whole
circle of friends by a single little turn of finance that he hadn't
meant anything wrong by at all? The bees droned around the honeysuckle
that billowed over the little iron fence about a family burying lot,
and once Lynn Severn's laugh--not her regular laugh, but a kind of a
company polite one--echoed lightly across to his ears and his face
dropped into his hands. He almost groaned. Billy Gaston was at the
lowest ebb he had ever been in his young life, and his conscience, a
thing he hadn't suspected he had, and wouldn't have owned if he had,
had risen up within him to accuse him, and there seemed no way on earth
to get rid of it. A conscience wasn't a manly thing according to
his code, yet here he was, he Billy Gaston, with a conscience!
It was ghastly!