How it sounded like an Epitaph, but still she would not cry; how she thinks of the Beach again, and hugs a Hateful Word to her Bosom; and Hugo starts suddenly on a sort of Wedding-Trip.

In her own room Carlisle was seized with a wild desire to cry. Her spirit, shocked past bearing, demanded this instant relief. But she fought down the loosening impulses within her, knowing their worse than uselessness; she had shed her heart’s tears for this before now. And her need now was for strength; strength to meet her mother when need be, against whom key nor bolt brought privacy: strength, above all, to wipe out this mark set upon her forehead....

She resisted the impulse to fling herself face downward upon the bed, which would have been fatal; kept stoutly upon her feet. And presently, summoning all her courage, she stood at the window and peeped, pale-faced, between the curtains. All was well down there now. The old avenger was gone. There were only people passing serenely over the familiar sidewalk, and the sunlight dying where she had stood and learned just now that a lie has a long life.

Yes, the Colonel was gone: and with him, so it seemed, all veils and draperies, all misty sublimations. One doesn’t idealize one’s self too much, with curses ringing in one’s ears.

Cally leaned weakly against the wall, both gloved palms pressed into the cold smoothness of her cheeks. Somewhere in the still house a door suddenly banged shut, and she just repressed a scream....

Old Colonel Dalhousie did not deal in moral subtleties, that was clear. Regret, penitence, sufferings, tears, or dreamy aspiration: he did not stay to split such hairs as these. His eye was for the large, the stark effect. And by the intense singleness of his vision, he had freighted his opinions with an extraordinary conviction. He had shouted down, as from a high bench, the world’s judgment on the life of Cally Heth.

Twenty-four years and over she had lived in this town; and at the end to be called a she-devil and a hell-cat.

The girl’s bosom heaved. She became intensely busy in the bedroom, by dint of some determination; taking off her street things and putting them painstakingly away, straightening objects here or there which did very well as they were. Flora knocked, and was sent away. On the mantel was discovered a square lavender box, bearing a blazoned name well known in another city. Fresh flowers from Canning, these were; and Carlisle, removing the purple tinsel from the bound stems, carefully disposed the blossoms in a bowl of water. Once in her goings and comings, she encountered her reflection in the mirror, and then she quickly averted her eyes. One glance of recognition between herself and that poor frightened little thing, and down would come the flood-gates, with profitless explanations to follow in a certain quarter. She avoided that catastrophe; but not so easily did she elude the echoing words of her neighbor the Colonel, which were like to take on the inflection of an epitaph....

After a time, when the dread of weeping had waned, Cally threw herself down in her chaise-longue near the window, and covered her eyes with her hand. And now with all her will-and she had never lacked for will-she strove to take her mind from what no piety or wit could now amend: struggling to think and remember how she had tried once, at a price, to set right that wrong she had done. For other comfort there was none: what she had written, she had written. She might give her life to the ways of Dorcas; she might beat her breast and fill her hands with pluckings of her gay hair. But she could not bring Dalhousie back to life now, or face his poor father as a girl who had done no wrong....

Life in the House moved on. There was a caller or two, who found the ladies excused; there was a telephone summons from Miss Evelyn McVey, whose desire it was to entertain Mr. Canning at dinner, but who now met only with a maid’s message; and then, toward seven, there came mamma herself, who was, of course, not so lightly to be disposed of.

But Cally had fortified herself for the little visit, and passed the inspection without mishap. Mrs. Heth was acquiescent enough in her daughter’s desire to dine upstairs, which saved the bother of hunting up another man in Hugo’s stead, though involving regrettable waste of two covers already prepared. Mamma lingered for fifteen minutes making arch, tactful inquiries about the afternoon; but she noticed nothing more than was accountable for by the slight headache to which Carlisle frankly admitted. The little general’s side remarks conceded no doubt whatever that Hugo would present himself very shortly indeed after dinner, for resumption of the agreeable matter in hand. They should have the library to themselves, she promised, company or no company....

Cally dined at a reading-table, set by the fire. Later, when the tray was gone and she was alone again, she relapsed into thoughts which had gained unwonted lucidity and vigor.

She had been thinking of the night, a year ago this month, to which everything in her life since seemed to run straight back. She had not certainly calculated the ruin of Dalhousie that night: rather her lack was that she had hardly cared what she did to him. In that narrow circle of engrossments where she had moved, mistaking it for the living universe, the great want, so it seemed now, was that she had never been asked to measure herself by moral standards at all. What she got: this was all that people looked at here, and according to this she had well managed her affairs, snug in the snugness of the horse-leech’s daughters. She had been all for the walled little island,-as she had heard it called,-the island of the upward bound, where self-propelment was the test of right or wrong, and a marriage well above her the touchstone of a girl’s sound morality. On this island such as Jack Dalhousie had no merit. What simpler than to kick him off, and turn away with your fingers in your ears?...

Improbable people these, no doubt, if you were of those who judged people by what they did, and never by what they had; hell-cats, perhaps, if you happened to be a father thus made sonless....

Her abasement now fairly met the portrait of her sketched by a stranger two hours since; outran what another stranger had said to her, one night in a summer-house. She looked back over a year, and seemed to see herself as truly one empty within, a poor little thing; common in her whole outlook, vulgar in her soul.... Yes, vulgar. Let her hug the hateful word to her bosom. How else could she have been made to feel so again and again, by an obscure youth who had no power over anybody but that he had kept his own face turned toward the stars?...

And when Cally’s thoughts turned toward this present, struggling to show beyond doubt that that girl and this were not one, they ran perpetually into that new cloud of her own weakness which had unrolled above her to-day, and now spread and blackened over the skies.

And yet she felt that it was not cowardice that tied her hands against the fainting girls in the bunching-room. Her strung nerves had carried it all deeper than that. She had spied on her father, found him out in guilt; he, it seemed, must for years have been leading a double life that would not bear looking at. How bring herself to confront papa, who had always been so affectionate and generous to her, with his discovered secret?...

If she but had some right, even, some standing from which to speak.... And here her new resolve was that when she saw Dr. Vivian at the Settlement next week, she would consult him directly: now asking him to say, not that she had no responsibilities about her father’s business, but that she had them in abundance.

But deeper than this, beneath all the flutterings of her mind, there ran the increasing sense that, whatever the logic of it might be, responsibility was on her nevertheless: the supreme responsibility put upon free beings by the trust of a friend....

Hugo, it was presumable, would be detained with his Mr. Deming until the latter’s departure, or near it. He could hardly appear before nine o’clock, or even nine-thirty; and perhaps he might not come at all. Cally had felt unable to agree with her mother’s theory that she was required to sit awaiting Hugo’s convenience there. At all events, she had early resolved to settle the point by definitely “retiring” before his possible arrival; relying upon a worse aching head to justify her with mamma, who was not of the few to be favored with fuller confidences.

But a little after eight, when this resolve was almost ready to shape into the deed, the sensible reasoning on which it was based was suddenly upset. The maid Flora came, bringing a new message from the preoccupied lover, brief but decisive.

The business entanglements, it appeared, had only got worse with talking. Hugo, beyond all expectation, found himself compelled to go back to Washington with his law-partner to-night; possibly to go on to New York to-morrow. Would Carlisle accordingly arrange to see him now, for a few moments?

“Now?”

“Yas’m, he say as soon as you c’d make it convenient.”

The girl had risen sharply in the first complete surprise of Flora’s message; she walked hastily across her floor. But having done these things, she did not at once give the obviously due reply. She stood by her dressing-table, staring fixedly at the colored woman, the aimless fingers of her left hand continually pulling out and putting back the silver top of a squat cut-glass bottle. She appeared to be thinking, weighing pros and cons: processes surely unnecessary to a pasteboard actor, sliding smoothly toward a manifest destiny.

She stood this way so long and so silent that Flora prompted with a giggle and further information.

“Miss Cyahlile, he say if you was to answer no, to say could he please speak to you a minute on the ’phone.”

Upon that Miss Carlisle was seen to replace the bottle stopper with consciousness of movement, and to turn her slate-blue eyes briefly toward the ceiling, with no movement of her head at all.

“Very well ... Say that I’ll see him at half-past eight, for a few minutes.”

Flora, naturally, was not a woman without understanding the sign language of her sex. It might be that she had learned the color of the Canning money-and she had-but her dusky heart, like yours or mine, was not for sale.

“Yas’m-certny ... Yas’m. Or, Miss Cyahlile-I moût just say we ’re mighty sorry-but not knowin’ he was expected, and you feelin’ po’ly an’ all-you just this minute went to baid-an’-”

“No!-do as I say,” said the young mistress, quite sharply. But, as her faithful friend turned away, she added in another voice: “You’re a good girl, Flora.... Be sure to say just for a few minutes.”

After the solitude and meditation came action at speed.

The maid vanished, the mistress slipped off her flowered negligee and drew hot water in the bathroom. She proceeded, with no want of experience or skill, to make herself beautiful for her lover: the lover who had seemed over a gulf from her this afternoon, and now what worlds away.... And if the rites were done somewhat hurriedly perforce, there was no lack of conscientiousness here. She, who had said that she had never paid her way through life, could only pay in what coin she had....

Events moved quickly. Flora, who was “on the doorbell” to-night because of the dinner-party, was soon back to say that Mr. Canning was in the library. She was sent ahead to make sure that the coast was clear.

Cally, in a soft black house-dress with an apricot waist-ribbon, went down the back-stairs. She passed through the busy pantry, where Moses and Annie were just ready for an expert entrance with the fish; went through the back hall, where Flora stood flashing her teeth beside the closed door of the dining-room; came to the side door of the library. This door Cally opened, and shut it again behind her....

It was a massive and dark-beamed room, softened now with the light of lamps and fire. Hugo stood in the middle of it, turning quickly at the sound of the door. He, whose afternoon had taken a course so different from his planning, still wore the clothes he had had on then, a dark gray walking-suit which well became his fine-figured masculinity. Over his brow there hovered a vexed business frown, nor did this altogether vanish as he advanced upon Carlisle, a lover’s welcome springing imperiously into his eyes.

“Isn’t this the devil’s own luck?... Deming insists it all depends on me.”

“You go at nine-thirty?”

“He says he’ll manacle me if necessary. It’s confoundedly important, you see-there are large interests involved. You know I wouldn’t go otherwise. Don’t you?”

“And to-morrow you go on to New York?”

“No!-There’s only the remotest chance. I’ll go bail to be back here to-morrow at five o’clock.”

“Oh!... I-the message I got-”

“I put that in only to make absolutely sure of getting you.... Growing cunning, you see.”

“Oh-I didn’t understand,” said Cally, colorlessly, continuing to look down at her pink fingernails.

She seemed to think of nothing further to say, but that appeared to make no great difference. Hugo moved nearer. If he had remembered his thought about her being too sure of him, it may be that the sight of her had rushed his senses, as it had often done before.

“You were so unlike your natural dear self this afternoon,” he said, on the wooing note; and suddenly he had possessed himself of both her hands. “To-night-and we’ve only such a little time-you are going to make it all up to me ... Aren’t you?”

Finding herself captured, the girl hastily raised eyes dark with trouble, looking at her lover for the first time. And so looking, she took her hands from his grasp with a hastiness which might have been a little rasping to a morbidly sensitive man.

“Don’t!-please don’t! I-don’t like to be touched.... I-I can only act as I feel, Hugo.”

She turned away hurriedly, passed him and went over to the fireplace. There she stood quite silent before the dull red glow, locking and unlocking her slim fingers, and within her a spreading coldness.

Behind her she heard the thundering feet.

“I hoped, you see,” said Hugo’s voice, disappointed, but hardly chagrined, “that you would be feeling a little more-well, like your own natural self, after your rest ... Particularly as all our plans for these two days have been so upset.”

She replied, after a pause, in a noticeably constrained voice: “I haven’t said that I don’t feel my natural self. That’s only your-your interpretation of what you don’t like.... I-that seems to be just the trouble between us.”

“Now, now!-my dear Cally!” said Hugo, soothing, if somewhat wearied to see still another conversation drifting toward the argumentative. “There’s no trouble between us at all. I, for one, have put our little disagreement to-day out of my head entirely. I do feel that there’s not much happiness in these so-called modernisms, but don’t let’s spoil our few minutes.... Why, Carlisle!” said Hugo, in another voice. “Why, what’s the matter?”

She had astonished him by suddenly laying her arm upon the mantel, and burying her face in the curve of it. So close Canning stood now that he could have taken her in his arms without moving; but some quality in her pose discouraged the idea that she might desire comfort that way.

Carlisle’s difficulties, indeed, were by no means over for the day. The conviction which had come upon her with the first full view of her lover’s face-where Colonel Dalhousie seemed also to have set his afflicting mark-had suddenly grown overwhelming. She had made her draft for payment against an account where there were no more funds.

“Are you ill?”

“No,” she answered, straightening at once.... “I ... I’m afraid-this is my natural self.”

“Something troubles you?” said Hugo, with penetration.

She nodded, and turned away.

She had always been capable of independent action; it was her chief strength, however mamma might speak of flare-ups. But never in her womanhood had she felt less in tune for heroics and a scene. Life was shaking to pieces all around her.

“Hugo,” she began, with difficulty, playing at arranging a slide of books on the table with hands like two blocks of ice ... “I-I hesitated about coming down at all, but now-I think ... As you are going away to-night, and would be coming back to-morrow entirely on my account ... I think I ought-”

“Why, my dear! What’s all this about?... Do you mean you’ve let your feelings be hurt by my going off? Why, you-”

“It isn’t that.”

The nature of his understanding seemed to stir something in her, and she went on in a rather steadier voice:

“I’ve been thinking of something you said to me once-that I wasn’t the girl you had asked to marry you ... It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve learned that that was the truth. I’m not-”

She was checked, to her surprise, by a soft laugh.

“So that’s been it!... I never imagined-no wonder!... Why, Cally! How could you suppose I meant it? Don’t you know I was angry that day?-off my head? Would I-”

“But it’s true! I’m not that girl at all-I feel differently-I-”

“Well! Let’s not waste good time in mare’s nests of that sort. Why, dear little girl, would I be here now, if I wasn’t satisfied as no other man on earth-”

“But I’m not satisfied, Hugo.”

Cally turned now, faced him fully, a faint color coming into her cheek. In the man’s handsome eyes she had surprised an unmistakable complacence.

“I’m not satisfied,” she said, hurriedly, “to know that we are miles apart, and drifting further every minute. Don’t you see there’s no sympathy-no understanding-between us? What interests me, appeals to me, what is really my natural self-that only annoys you, makes you think-”

“I’ve been at fault there, I own,” he interrupted, soothingly, nodding his head respectfully up and down. “To tell the truth, I’ve been so immensely interested in you,-in Carlisle the woman,-that I haven’t seemed able to make proper allowance for your-your other interests. I promise to turn over a new leaf there. And, on your side, I am sure, you do realize, Carlisle-”

“Hugo,” said the girl, desperately, “you don’t understand me. I am trying to say that I can’t marry you. I cannot.”

Then the faint hum of voices from the dining-room down the hall became quite audible in the library. By the ebbing of color from Hugo’s virile face, Cally knew that she had penetrated his satisfaction at last; but by the look in his eyes she learned that she had lodged no conviction in him.

“I hesitated when you asked me in September,” said she, slowly, and trying her best to make her voice sound firm. “I should have made up my mind sooner-I’ve been to blame. I’m sorry to-”

He said in a slightly hoarsened voice: “What has happened since I left you this afternoon?”

What, indeed? Everything seemed to have happened.

“Something did happen ... But I-I don’t think there’s any use to talk about it.”

“Tell me what has happened. I have a right to know.”

“I will, if you wish-but it won’t do any good.... I went out, to my cousins’. And at the door, as I came back, I-I met Colonel Dalhousie. He stopped me ... expressed his opinion of me. He said things that I-I-”

She stopped precipitately, with a break in her voice; turned from him.

“Oh!-I understand ... Poor little girl.”

At the mention of the name of ill omen, Canning’s strong heart had missed a beat. He had thought the old corpse buried past exhumation; the sudden rising of the ghost to walk had staggered for an instant even his superb incredulities. But with that sudden tremulousness of hers, he was himself again, or almost, with a new light upon her whole strange and unreliable demeanor. Small wonder, after such an encounter, if she was brought to the verge of hysteria, her feminine reason unseated, her mind wandering mistily over the forgotten past....

He tried to take at least one hand in loving sympathy, but found that the matter could not be arranged.

“The shock has upset you-poor darling! I understand. No wonder!...”

“No-I’m not upset ... I-Hugo, I can’t marry you. I’m truly sorry-I’ve tried-but now I’m quite sure-”

“But this is madness,” said Hugo’s queer voice. “Don’t you see it is as you say the words?... Not marry me-because an old ruffian waylaid you, called you-hard names-”

“No, but because what he said was true. No-of course that’s not the reason ... I must tell you the truth ...”

Cally lifted misty eyes, beneath which faint circles were beginning to appear, and said with sadness:

“Hugo, I don’t love you.”

Then she watched, painfully, the last remnants of his assurance drop away from his face: and after that, she saw, with a certain fear, that she had still to make herself believed.

Hugo, supported not merely by his own justifiable confidences but by her mother’s affirmations, could, indeed, put no credence in his ears. Many explanations were possible for this extraordinary feminine perversity; she had happened to mention the one explanation that was not possible.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he began, huskily, out of the silence. “You’re not yourself at all nowadays ... Full of new little ideas. You’ve taken a whim, because an old rascal ... whom I shall punish as he deserves-”

“No ... That helped me to make up my mind, perhaps. But I’ve learned I’ve never loved you-since you left me last year.”

Cally moved away from Hugo, not caring to witness the breaking-up of his self-control. She leaned against the heavy mahogany table, clenching a tiny handkerchief between chill little hands. If the months had brought her perfect vengeance on the man who had once failed her in her need, she was finding it, indeed, a joyless victory.

“I’m to blame for not telling you before-when you were here last month,” she said, with some agitation ... “Only I really didn’t know my own mind ... All summer I seemed to ... just to take it for granted that-everything was the same-that I still cared for you. But-Hugo, I don’t. I’m sorrier than I can say for what has been my fault....”

The young man had been standing like one in a trancelike illness, who can hear, indeed, with horrible distinctness, but can neither move nor speak. But now the increasing finality of her words seemed all at once to galvanize him; he shook himself slightly and took one heavy step forward.

“What you need is a protector, little girl-a man. I know about the summer-I suffered, too.... Of course. And in the loneliness-you’ve let yourself be affected.... The unrest of the day-”

“No, no! Please,” said she, almost ready to scream-“don’t think this is one of my new little ideas you speak of. I-it’s true that we don’t seem to think alike about things.... But I’d never have noticed that at all if I loved you. I’d want to think and do only as you wished. But I don’t-”

“I’ve spoiled you ... letting you think you could have your way with me,” said Hugo, in his thick and gritty voice. “You’re mad to-night, little girl ... aren’t responsible for what you say....”

Flicked in her spirit, she broke across his argument with a changed voice and gaze.

“Why is it madness not to love you?”

“It’s not a thing to argue about now, I say. You do love me ... I know it. You’ll marry me next month, that I swear. Why-”

“No!-when I love, I want to look up, and when I marry, I’ll marry above me....”

That checked his queer truculence; and Cally, desperate with the need to drive home her meaning, swept on with no more nervousness.

“And-don’t you see?-I’ve not been able to look up to you since that day last year.... The day-I’m sorry to have to say it-when you came all the way down from New York to show me that you didn’t care for a woman who was getting new little ideas about telling the truth....”

Canning’s face was the color of chalk, his look increasingly stony; in his eyes strange passions mounted. Now he seemed, to intend to say something, but the girl’s words flowed with gathering intensity.

“Why, think what you did that day, Hugo!-think, think! If I needed a protector and a man,-and I did,-that was the time for you to show me how protectors and men can act and love. If I was wrong, it seems to me that was the time of all times when you ought to have stood by me, protected me. But I was right-don’t you know I was?... I-it was the first time I had ever thought about doing right-and you threw me over for it.... Of course I know there was a quarrel, but-you know perfectly well what you said. You said then, just as you say now, that I was shocked out of my senses, didn’t know what I was saying. And then you said that people would point at me to the longest day I lived, so the thing to do was to hush it all up, or else I wasn’t the girl you had asked to be your wife. Anything-anything-except that I should tell the truth.... So you went off and left me to bear it all alone. And then, when my heart had been broken into little pieces, when I’d cried my eyes out a hundred times, then, when all the trouble was over, and people weren’t cutting me on the street,-then you came back. And even then you never said once that you were ashamed, or sorry for the way you’d treated me. You just came back, when I’d fought it all out without you, and whistled, and thought that I’d tumble into your arms.... Oh, it’s natural, I suppose, for a woman to lie and be mean, and afraid of what people will say-for that seems to be the-the way they’re brought up.... But-but-”

Her voice, which had begun to trail a little, dropped off into silence. She turned away; made a visible effort to control herself. And then there floated again into the still room the sounds of muffled revelry: strong Mrs. Heth making merry with her friends, a few of the best people....

“But I only hurt your feelings for nothing,” said the girl, in quite a gentle voice.... “Hugo, try to forgive me if I’ve done you any wrong. But ... you-you have your train to make. Don’t you think you’d better go now?”

Hugo’s extraordinary reply was to seize her in his arms.

“Go?... Yes, and take you with me ... you little witch. Why, you’re raving, little witch,” said the hoarse, violent voice in her ear. “Gone out of your head with notions.... D’you think I’ll let your life and mine be spoiled for a few minutes’ crazy madness? You need to remember you’re a woman, that’s all.... Don’t struggle. It’s no use.”

Her wild efforts to release herself, indeed, only drew his embrace tighter. His cheek rested upon her hair.

“Don’t struggle, little witch. You’ve had your head too long. I’ll make up your mind for you. You’re going to marry me now. To-night. Don’t tire yourself so. It’s all settled. You belong to me-you see that now, don’t you?...”

Now his hand was beneath her chin; he raised the still face she had kept so resolutely buried against his breast. And Cally felt his burning kiss upon her forehead, her cheek, upon lips that would nevermore be his.

“Little temptress ... you were so anxious for me to love you last year.... Doesn’t this teach you that I’ll never give you up? It’s all settled now. We’ll be married at once. I’ll hold you this way-kiss you this way-till you learn to do what I say. Then you’ll go up and put on travelling-clothes. Never mind lug....”

His wedding-trip ended in the middle of a word. His clasp had been weakened by that hand he had raised, and with the sudden strength of desperation his bride had broken from him. In an instant she had put the table between them.

Over ten feet of lamplit space, the lovers of yesteryear regarded each other. Both were white, both trembling. The girl now suffered a brief collapse; her face dropped into her upraised hands, through which, presently, her voice came brokenly:

“Go!... Go, I beg you....”

Canning stood panting, shaken and speechless. Upon him was the last measure of defeat. He had staked his passion and his pride in the supreme attack, and had been crushingly repulsed. Doubt not that he read the incredible portents in the heavens now. His face went from chalk to leaden gray.

He drew his tongue once across his lips, and said, just articulately:

“If I go-out of this room-alone ... as God lives, you’ll never see me again.”

It must have been something in Hugo’s difficult voice, surely nothing in the words, that set a chord to stirring in Cally. She took her eyes from her hands, glanced once at his subtly distorted face. And then she stood silent by the barrier table, looking down, knotting and unknotting her yellow sash-ends....

That other night of humiliation in the library, which she had never been able to forget, had risen swiftly on the wings of memory. But, curiously, she felt no such uprush of shame now; her fury mysteriously ebbed from her. Even in this moment, still trembling from his familiar handling, still with the frightening sense of her life going to ruin about her, she felt a rising pity for her prince of lovers whom time and circumstance had brought to this....

“Perhaps,” said she, out of the silence, in almost a natural tone, “I ought to feel very-angry and-and indignant.... But I don’t. I only feel sad.... Hugo, why need there be any bitterness between us? We’ve both made a mistake, that’s all, and I feel it’s been my fault from the beginning. If you seem to take me-rather-lightly.... I must have taught you to think of me that way.... And you’ll soon see how-how superficial my attraction for you was, soon forget....”

Strangely, these mild words seemed to affect Hugo more than anything done or said before. In fact, he appeared unable to bear them. He had checked her speech suddenly by lifting his hand, in a vague way, to his head; and now, without a word, he turned away, walking blindly toward the door.

She, in silence, followed his going with dark eyes that looked half ready to weep.

By the door into the hall, through which she had come a little while before, the broken young man paused. His face was stony gray, touched with livid streaks. Standing, he looked unseeingly about the room, around and over her; then at last at her. It had seemed to be his intention to say something, to claim the woman’s privilege of the last word. But now, when the moment arrived, there came no words.

For once Hugo must be indifferent to anti-climax, must fail to leave a lady’s presence with an air. Standing and looking, he suddenly flung out one arm in a wild, curious gesture; and on that he opened the door, very quickly.

The door shut again, quietly enough. And that was all. The beginning at the Beach had touched an end indeed. Hugo was gone. His feet would thunder this way no more.

But the latter end of these things was not yet. One doesn’t, of course, kick out of one’s groove for nothing.

Cally, returning after a time to her own room, did not go at once to bed, much as she would have liked to do that. She sat up, fully dressed, by a dying fire, waiting for what must come. She waited till quarter to eleven, so long did the dinner-guests linger downstairs. But it came at last, just as she had known it would: on gliding heels, not knocking, beaming just at first....

The interview lasted till hard upon midnight. When it ended, both women were in tears. Cally retired to a fitful rest. At nine o’clock next morning, papa telephoned for Dr. Halstead, who came and found temperature, and prescribed a pale-green medicine, which was to be shaken well before using. The positive command was that the patient should not get out of bed that day.

And Cally did not get up that day, or the next, or the next. She lay abed, pale and uncommunicative, denying herself even to Mattie Allen, but less easily shutting herself from the operations of her mind.

And at night, when the troubled brain slips all control, she dreamed continually of horrors. Horrors in which neither Hugo nor mamma had part: of giant machines crashing through floors upon screaming girls, of great crowded buildings falling down with frightful uproars and bedlam shrieks. Through these phantasms the tall figure of Colonel Dalhousie perpetually moved, smiling softly. But when Cally met the doctor of the Dabney House in her dreams, the trust was gone from his eyes.