Chapter XVII

Cally crosses the Great Gulf; and it isn't quite Clear how
she will ever cross back again.

Baffling questions these, even to young philosophers. Dismissing them as foolish, Cally Heth turned from the rain-swept window, designing to rest awhile in her own room, before dressing for a little dinner at Evey McVey's. Forsaken as she felt, she was yet not unconscious of a certain remote desirability in being alone; that is, in having a little time to herself now. It occurred to her that perhaps she and Hugo had been together rather too constantly in these weeks, going forward just a little too fast....

In the hall she encountered her mother, descending the stairs in mackintosh, hat, and veil. Carlisle looked surprised, but mamma's look under the veil was roguishly dolorous, in reference to the recent farewell.

"Why, mamma, where are you going in all the rain?"

Mrs. Heth replied: "What, no tears!... I'm off to the old Dabney House, my dear--the first time in twenty years--"

"Oh!... The Settlement!"

"I promised Mr. Dayne I would go," said the capable little lady, eyeing her daughter expectantly--"it's the organization meeting and election of officers. The man has got together some excellent people for his committee. And, by the way, Cally--"

"But they haven't raised all the money already!"

At this Mrs. Heth looked still more knowing. "Confess, Cally--didn't Hugo do it? Didn't he make another big subscription after his thousand?"

Cally, arrested at the foot of the steps, stared at her mother. "Why--not that I know of. What do you mean?"

Now her mother looked somewhat disappointed, but said, snapping a glove button: "It would be like him to do it, and say not a word to anybody. Why, there's a foolish story Mrs. Wayne told me this morning that the whole thing had fallen through, when Mrs. Berkeley Page came forward anonymously with a gift of twenty-five thousand--simply buying the building outright, in fact. I don't, of course, believe a word of it. She's exactly the kind to let her right hand know what her left was doing. Still, I did think perhaps Hugo might possibly have done something of the sort. He was so interested--he spoke of the Settlement to me only yesterday...."

The girl gazed at her mother, and a sudden light broke into her eyes. Across her memory there flashed Canning's cryptic remark, only the other night: "We'll show him something about giving away money some day."... This, then, was what he had meant: perhaps he had already done it that night. She knew that Hugo had curiously disliked Dr. Vivian at sight, and that, by the bond between her and him, he had somehow entered into her own feminine feeling that to give handsomely to the fellow's own charity (to which he himself gave nothing at all) was to show him up completely in the interest of public morals. The gift of such a sum as twenty-five thousand dollars simply exploded him off the horizon....

Her heart glowing toward her understanding lover, she clapped her small hands and cried: "He did!--I remember something he said about it now. Oh, I _know_ he did!"

"I felt morally certain of it," said mamma, calmly, peering through the plate glass of the door. "Don't tell me Mary Page would do a thing like that. Ah, here is the car at last...."

Carlisle said with sudden eagerness: "Do wait a minute for me, mamma! I believe I'll go to the meeting, too."

Naturally some discussion followed this whimsical request. The upshot was that Mrs. Heth, being late already, promised to send the car back.

Cally, gloom banished, ran up the stairs, her mother's voice following behind like a trade-wind.

"It's to be in the office of that Dr. Vivian--you know?... one flight up. No difficulty in finding ... Sure to put on rubbers...."

The last words to be distinctly heard were: "Look for me right up at the front."

In her own room Carlisle flew about quite blithely, making ready for the unexpected excursion with odd anticipations beyond mamma's guessing. She felt grateful to Hugo, attached to him by a new tie; for he, however clearly he had understood it himself, had beautifully put her in just that position toward the religious fellow which she had so long desired to occupy: the position, in short, of overwhelming moral superiority. How easy now, choosing her own moment, to say what would dispel forever the man's odd little power of causing her to worry....

The streets were slippery, the journey was from pole to pole of the town and yet five minutes sufficed for it, bringing Settlementers to their destination. So easily does forty horse-power traverse the mile between Houses of Heth and Houses of Dabney. Cally Heth rolled up to the door of the abandoned hotel. Large and dismal it looked in the slanting rain. Archaic, too, so the modern of the moderns thought, glancing upward over the face of the shabby pile as the car halted, and William, who was ever attentive to his young mistress, sprang out with the umbrellas. It was an odd place for anybody to live, certainly; an even odder place to draw in storm the world of fashion foregathering to its bosom. Yet this indubitably was the spot. There was the little procession of motor-cars, lined against the broken sidewalk in the wet, to prove it. The girl's upward eye fell, too, upon a name, inscribed in white paint upon a window directly above the decayed grand entrance:

DR. VIVIAN

Carlisle became conscious of a certain excitement. She hoped very much that they hadn't read out the names of subscribers yet.

She was late, so there was nobody to show her in. From the sidewalk she stepped under a queer little portico, which seemed to waft one back to a previous century. Here, at the vestibule step, she was obliged to move carefully to avoid treading on two dirty little denizens of the neighborhood, who knew no better than to block the way of the quality. They were little Jew girls,--little Goldnagels, in short,--and while one of them sat and played at jackstones with a flat-looking rubber ball, the other and smaller lay prone upon her stomach, weeping with passionate abandon.

Her agonized wails indicated the end of the world, and worse. Carlisle said kindly:

"What's the matter, little girl?"

The lamenting one, who was about four years old, rolled around and regarded the lady with a contorted face. Her wails died to a whimper: but then, curiosity satisfied and no solace offering, she burst forth as with an access of mysterious pain.

"Did she hurt herself?" said Carlisle, third-personally, to the elder girl, who had suspended her game to stare wide-eyed. "What on earth is the matter?"

The reply was tragically simple:

"_A Lady stepped on her Junebug_."

Sure enough, full on the vestibule floor lay the murdered slumbug, who had too hardily ventured to cross a wealthy benevolent's path. The string was yet tied to the now futile hind-leg. Carlisle, lingering, repressed her desire to laugh.

"Oh!... Well, don't you think you could catch her a new one, perhaps?"

"Bopper he mout ketch her a new one mebbe to-morrow, mom.... _Hiesh_, Rebecca!"

Moved by some impulse in her own buoyant mood, Carlisle touched the littlest girl on the shoulder with a well-gloved finger.

"Here--Rebecca, poor child!... You can buy yourself something better than Junebugs."

The proprietor of the deceased bug, having raised her damp dark face, ceased crying instantly. Over the astounding windfall the chubby fingers closed with a gesture suggesting generations of acquisitiveness.

"Is it hers to keep?" spoke her aged sister, in a scared voice. "That there's a _dollar_, mom."

"Hers to keep ..." replied the goddess, smiling.

But her speech stopped there, shorn of a donator's gracious frills, and the smile became somewhat fixed upon the lovely lip....

There had appeared a man's face at the glass of the old doors, and the lady, straightening benignantly to sweep on to her triumph upstairs, had run suddenly upon his fixed gaze. Nothing, of course, could have been more natural than this man's appearance there: who upon earth more suitable for door-keeper to the distinguished visitors than he, who had given his office to the Settlement to-day, in lieu of more expensive gifts? Yet by some flashing trick of Carlisle's imagination, or of his air of immobility, seen darkly through the glass, it was almost as if he might have, been waiting there for her alone....

But the meeting of eyes was over as soon as it began. With so prompt a courtesy did the Dabney House physician swing open the door that it was as if he had been opening it all along, as if she hadn't caught him looking at her....

"How do you do, Miss Heth?... Such a dreadful day!--you were brave to venture out."

"How d'you do?" said Carlisle, in the voice of "manner," a rising voice, modulated, distant and superior. And over her shoulder, she addressed the little Jew girls, with an air of more than perfect ease:

"Well, then, good-bye! Be sure to catch her the new one to-morrow...."

She had seen that the strange young man was smiling. And by that she knew that he remembered their last meeting, and wanted to trade upon her queer weakness at that time, pretending that he and she were pleasant acquaintances together. Presently she should inform him better as to that. But why, oh, why, that small flinching at the sight of him, the very man she had fared into the downpour to explode, not pausing even to mourn her lover's going?...

"I'm a search-party of one," said Dr. Vivian, throwing wider the door, "for Mr. Pond. I wondered if he could have got lost, somewhere down here--he's never turned up yet."

"Mr. Pond?"

"The director of the Settlement, you know, when it opens for business in the fall. He happened to be in Washington, and was good enough to run down to-day to make us a little address."

"Oh."

Carlisle found herself, beyond the door, in a quaint high-ceiled court, enfolded with peristyles in two long rows, and paved with discolored tiles loose under the foot. At the farther end of the court there ran away a broad corridor into the dusk, and here also, full fifty feet distant, rose the grand stairway with ornate sweeping balustrade ending in a tall carved newel-post. Obsolete and ruined and queer the whole placed looked, indeed....

"Luckily," added Dr. Vivian, "I'm in good time to serve as a guide."

But Miss Heth was already walking past him with an expensive rustle, moving straight toward the stairway. For this, needless to say, was not the moment to speak that pointed word or two which should unmask the man; there would be an unavoidable vulgarity about it here, in this solitude. And even if she should get no further opportunity upstairs--well, after all, the situation spoke for itself; nay, thundered. Had not Hugo--come to think of it--struck the note of the subtler victory, he who had given magnificently and said nothing? _Noblesse oblige_, as the Gauls say....

"Oh, no, that's not necessary," she replied, walking on. "There are the stairs...."

The young man fell in behind her.

"The old house is really quite bewildering, upstairs. It happened that my office was the only place available. Perhaps you will let me show you--"

"Oh, I don't think I need trouble you, thank you."

"It is no trouble," said V. Vivian.

Good sentences these, and well pronounced. With them, conversation seemed to languish. The processional pair moved across the shadowy court in entire silence. The benevolent lady led, never so securely entrenched in the victorious order, the beloved of prodigal Hugo Canning, to whom no harm should befall. After her proceeded the slum doctor: the hard marble betrayed the inequality of his footsteps. A minute more and they would be upstairs, swallowed and dispersed in the publicity of the meeting. Floor and ceiling above them brought down the sounds of a company near at hand, the scraping of a chair-leg, the muffled echo of voices. Carlisle's foot trod upon the bottom step of the broad stairway.

"I wonder if you would give me five minutes after the meeting, Miss Heth?" said the young man's voice behind her. "There's a--a matter I've wanted very much to speak to you about."

Cally's heart seemed to jump a little.

"What is it that you want to speak to me about?" she asked coolly, not turning. And, to her own surprise, she brought her other foot up on the stair.

"Well, it concerns the Works," said Vivian.

And he added at once, hastily: "Oh, nothing that you need object to at all, I hope. Not at all...."

She had stopped short at the fighting-word, and turned, pink-cheeked. Certes, there was a point at which _noblesse oblige_ becomes mere flabby spinelessness.

And upstairs Mrs. Heth, complacent right up at the front, craned round her neck, and thought that Cally was very long in coming....

"Yes? What about the Works?" said Cally, her breath quickening.

"Oh, I don't mean to detain you now, of course--"

"But now that you have detained me?" she pursued, with no great polish of courtesy.

The young man raised a hand and pushed back his hair, which was short but wavy. It was observed that he wore, doubtless in memory of his uncle, a mourning tie of grosgrain silk, replacing the piquant aquarium scene.

"I could hardly explain it all in just a few sentences," said he, affecting reluctance, "and I--certainly don't want to give you a wrong impression.... To begin quite at the end, I've been wondering if I--I might be allowed to make one or two small improvements there, at the Works, I mean,--in fact, out of a--a sort of fund I have."

Carlisle stared at him spellbound. She stood on the bottom step of the old grand stairway, one gloved hand on the balustrade; and, as she so stood, her eyes just came on a level with those of the tall doctor. His hare-brained audacity almost took her breath away.

"Oh," said she. "Out of a fund you have."

And she thought wildly of accepting his offer at once, compelling him to name a definite sum, just for the fun of seeing how he would wriggle out of it afterwards.

"I'm tremendously interested in the Works, you know," the man rushed on, quite as if he found encouragement in her reply, "because I have so many friends who work there. It's to gratify my peace of mind, just to know that they have--everything they need. As I say, I happen to--to have a sort of fund--a little public fund, you might say--for--for purposes of the kind. And the idea of outside coöperation in such a matter is a perfectly sound one, as you doubtless know, a--a sound, advanced socialistic idea. It's simply the community acknowledging some responsibility where it already claims the right to regulate ..."

At this point her stare seemed to penetrate him with a doubt, and he said, with the air of having skipped hastily and turned back:

"I mustn't detain you now to give the full argument, of course, but I assure you the idea is sound and--mutually beneficial, as I believe. Unfortunately," he added, with a certain embarrassment, "I don't know your father."

"Tell me," said Carlisle, feeling an excitement mounting within her, "how is it that you are always thinking up these plans for doing good to other people?"

Before Dr. Vivian could meet this poser, the front door opened with a bang, and a youngish man in a wet yellow raincoat came striding rapidly across the court toward them. He was a powerfully built man with a blue-tinged chin, and wore the air of a person of authority.

"Meeting not begun yet?" he demanded, without salutation, apparently addressing Carlisle. "Thought I was late."

"Ah, Mr. Pond--glad to see you," said Vivian, stepping forward a little to meet the newcomer. "They've just begun--you'll find an ovation waiting for you."

"In your office? Aren't you going up, to lead the applause?"

The doctor bowed gravely. "In my office. I'll join you directly."

"I see," said the man, nodding, having never checked his stride.

But all that he had seemed to see with his keen black eyes was the lovely girl posed on the last step of the ornamental stairway. He almost brushed against her as he strode by.

The Pond person's footsteps diminished up the long stairs. A moment later a volley of hand-clapping, sounding very near, indicated his arrival in the meeting-room. But his interruption and his irritating stare had accomplished no mollifying purpose down in the court. But one end, indeed, could justify the proud Miss Heth in lingering in a public hall with the slanderer of herself and her family.

"Doesn't it occur to you," she said, hardly waiting for the intruder to get out of earshot, "that so much preaching about other people's business seems rather--odd, coming from you?"

Dr. Vivian now affected to look troubled.

"There was just that difficulty," said he, slowly, "that you might think I was preaching. I'm not, this time, really--"

"Don't you know perfectly well you only said that in a--a horrid way to try to make me feel uncomfortable?"

She paused for a reply; her excitement was growing. Her figure was enveloped in a slim raincoat of fine gray; she wore a yellow straw hat of an intriguing shape, and over it a white veil closely drawn to keep the wet wind from her face. Now and then, as her eyes moved, a descending black-and-gold eyelash became entangled with this veil; that occurrence, in fact, took place at this precise moment, creating an emergency situation of some consequence. It was a matter of considerable public interest to see how it would all work out. However, the girl merely raised an indifferent hand, and plucked the veil out a little. The man V.V. looked hurriedly away.

He was saying: "I assure you I meant nothing of the kind. However, doubtless it's natural that you should think so--"

"It seems _very_ natural to me--especially here in the new Settlement building!... What about the _parable of the rich young man now_?"

He stood looking at her without a reply; one of his quaint looks, it was.

However, Carlisle knew positively that he did not want to improve the Works out of any fund he pretended to have, and was resolved to show him no mercy now. She had really meant to spare him, and he, mistaking magnanimity for weakness, had said what he had said. On his head be it: his deceptive trusting look should not save him now.

"Why don't you say something?" she demanded.

The young man gave an embarrassed laugh.

"Well, to tell the honest truth, I don't seem to think of anything to say--"

"Oh!... So the Settlement suggests _nothing_ to you--as to picking the beam from your own eye?"

"Not at this moment, I think. In fact, I don't seem to grasp at all--"

"_Oh!_" said Cally, with a little gasp.

And then, stung on by his reckless hardihood, she struck to kill:

"How can you _look_ at me, and pretend that you're so anxious to help other people's businesses, when you know you wouldn't even give to your own Settlement--_not a cent_!"

The two stood facing each other, hardly a yard apart, their eyes dead-level. V.V., as Henrietta Cooney called him, continued to look at her, and though he was far from a florid young man, it seemed now as if he must have been so, so much color did he have to lose. And Cally discovered that the man had somehow managed to keep, over all these brilliant weeks, that mysterious trick he had of making her feel unfair, and even rather horrid and common, when she knew perfectly well she wasn't. For the look on his unreliable face was that of one stabbed from behind in a company where he had trusted, and his eyes seemed to be saying to her quite distinctly: "Don't you worry about _me!_ Just give me a minute or two, and _I'll_ be all right...."

But all that his actual voice said, in rather a remote way, was:

"What a terrific hypocrite you must think me!... I hadn't realized ..."

It was precisely the point that Carlisle Heth had been trying to establish, for a long, long time. Yet now, in the moment of triumph, her gaze suddenly wavered from his; and she heard herself, to her own secret confusion, saying hurriedly and weakly:

"At least, I understood--some one _told_ me--you hadn't.... Of course you--you _might_ have given something, and--this person not have known...."

But Jack Dalhousie's friend only answered, in the same detached way:

"It's unpardonable, my detaining you this way. I'd no idea ... May I show you the way up--"

"No--_no!_ Please wait!..."

He waited, silent. Carlisle, having paused long enough to take firm hold of her consciousness of vast superiorities, resumed more strongly:

"Perhaps I ought to explain why I--thought that. I was told that the whole thing had fallen through, when a--a wealthy subscriber stepped in and secretly gave a very large amount--had bought the building for you. So I--I naturally thought--"

"It was absolutely natural. In fact, it's quite true.... Shall we go to the meeting now?"

But no, something in her required that he must state in plain words the fact that would justify her accusation, alleged by his eyes to be so unjust: namely, that it was (practically) a member of her family who had done this splendid thing for him. Yet she went rather further than she had intended when she said, glancing away over the queer dusky court:

"I will tell you. Some one gave us to understand--not he himself, of course,--that it was a friend of ours who had done this ... Mr. Hugo Canning."

He made no answer.

An uncontrollable desire carried the girl yet further. She said, in a weakening voice:

"_Was it?_"

In saying this, she brought her eyes back fully to her victim. And if ever guilt was written large upon a human countenance, it was upon the face of V. Vivian at that moment. Brightly flushed he was, with an embarrassment painful to witness. And yet, so strange is the way of life, the joy of victory once again seemed to slip from the clutch of Cally Heth. What house of cards was this she had pulled down upon herself?...

"Really, you must appreciate," the man was saying, in a light, dry voice, "I shouldn't feel at liberty to betray a secret of that sort, even if I knew. I'm sorry, but--"

But the girl's sickening sensations of falling through space broke out in faltering speech:

"_Oh!_... Do you _mean_ ..." She halted, to steady herself, and took a fresh start, no better than the first: "Do you mean--that--"

"I mean only, Miss Heth, that I haven't the slightest idea what this is all about. I thought," he said, in a voice of increasing hardness, "that we were talking of the Works. If, at another time, you can give me a few minutes--"

"Was it YOU?" said Carlisle, breaking through his defenses ... "Do you mean--it was YOU, all along?..."

"I mean nothing of any sort. Does it occur to you that these questions are quite unfair?--that they put me in a ..."

She demanded in a small voice: "_Did you buy this house for the Settlement?_"

Shot down with the pointblank question, the tall young man, whose coat was so extremely polished at the elbows, died game, saying with sudden gentleness:

"No, it was my Uncle Armistead."

And then there was no sound but the steady beat of the rain upon sidewalk and roofs ...

Upstairs, just a floor and a ceiling away, Mrs. Heth, craning her neck for the last time, perceived that Cally had decided not to come to the meeting; also that it was just as well, viewing the inclement weather. Downstairs, almost directly beneath her, Cally stood front to front with the family enemy, her face quite white.

"Of course you understand," the enemy was saying, hurriedly and yet firmly too, "he gave me the money expecting it to be used for the public good. I've considered that I merely had it in trust, as a fund for--for these purposes, as I've explained. And this--well, you may easily imagine that it was the most perfect form of self-indulgence.... I've gotten so fond of this old place ... But I can't imagine how we came to be talking of it, and I beg that you'll forget the whole matter. I--my uncle would have been very much annoyed to--to have it known or talked about...."

Not in that singular experience in the Cooney parlor, not even in the memorable New Year's moment in her own library, had Carlisle been swept with such a desire to dissociate herself from her own person, to sneak away from herself, to drop through the floor. Nevertheless, some dignity in her, standing fast, struck out for salvage; and out of the uprush of humiliating sensation, she heard her voice, colorless and flat:

"I'm sorry I said that. You make me ... quite ashamed...."

The flush deepened abruptly on the tall doctor's cheek.

"_Don't_ say that! Don't you suppose I understand how absolutely natural it was?... Everybody'd have thought just the same, in your place...."

Carlisle had turned away from his translucent eye, finding it unbearable; she descended from the stair, took an irresolute step or two over the ruined floor of the once stately court. And then she halted, having really nowhere to go, staring fixedly toward the distant doors....

Mamma's nearness could not help her now. Hugo's fortifying love was no buffer against this extraordinary moment. All alone Cally stood with the contemned religious fellow who had unhorsed and disarmed her once again, and now there would be no more weapons. And there was a worse thing here than her mean looking for hypocrisy, and the discovery, instead, of a mad generosity, a princely folly. Bad enough all that seemed; very bad indeed: but Cally's painful moment seemed to cut deeper yet.

After all the struggling, had it come to this? Was the author of the Beach opinion of her a man whom she must greatly admire?...

Behind her stood the stairway, which led on up to mamma and the embracing security of the victorious order. Behind her also stood the man, the royal giver of the granary where finer-feathered birds now made merry among the spoils. With what speech should Cally Heth, mocked and jeered by her feeble "I'm sorry," turn now and pass him?...

She heard the sound of his unequal footstep, and then his voice behind her, stirred with a sudden feeling:

"Why, it's not a thing to be sorry about--how could you possibly have thought otherwise?... Don't you suppose I realize what cause I've given you to--to distrust and dislike me? You'd be more than human if you could forgive and forget--what I said to you one night. How could you, when it was so unforgivable? And since then--"

"_Don't!_" Carlisle said, in a muffled sort of voice. And then, clearly and distinctly: "Don't!... I can't quite stand that!"

She turned on the old floor, with the sound of her own strengthening voice, and came again face to face with the man, V.V. There had seemed to come to her a light. And back into her smooth young cheek trickled that color so loved by her betrothed, who had not bought the Settlement House after all....

She was a brilliantly successful girl, the chosen wife of the most shiningly eligible of men; and he was a lame slum doctor in a worn-out suit, beneath her notice as a man altogether. And yet, as Hugo stood above her in all those material aspects which had always summed up her whole demand of life, so this man stood above her in some more subtle and mysterious way. And it had always been so: by bright swift flickers of intuition she had seemed suddenly to see that now. All the restlessness and discontent which the thought and sight of him had power to awake in her from the beginning came from just this; and she had never been able to put him down, no matter how she had chafed and denounced, because the final fact had always been that he, in his queer way, stood above her ...

And now, in this unsteadied moment, with all hope of bringing him down beaten finally to death, there had seemed to rise and beckon a finer way of bridging this gap between them. All that was best in the girl suddenly rose, demanding for once to be allowed to meet the shabby alien on his own reckless level.

"Look here," said Cally, with a kind of tremulous eagerness, "I want to tell you something...."

Yes, surely it was all a matter between herself and him: she could meet his eyes now with no sense that did not add to her curious inner exaltation. Had not these eyes said to her from the beginning that they would give her no peace till she came to this?...

"You were right to say what you did that night. A puff of wind blew the boat over after he got out. Mr. Dalhousie never knew I was upset."

The words dropped unafraid into a perfect silence. The girl's manner was as simple, as undramatic, as possible. Yet, considering who these two were, considering the intentions with which she had entered his Dabney House not ten minutes before, no more startling words could have been devised by the wit of man.

"He never knew," repeated Vivian, in a voice suddenly mechanical.

No doubt it was by his good fortune alone that he had avoided any alarming change of expression, as he listened to the announcement which seemed to shake and stagger his visible world. The girl was soaring upon her unimagined moment of spiritual adventure. But V. Vivian stood like a man turned to stone, gazing blind into a void....

Presently, out of the general chaos the young man's dazed mind stirred; leapt to life. Thought shook him through like waves of pain. It came upon him first, with crushing force, that this sweet-voiced girl with a face like all the angels had after all coldly lied, murderously lied, and maintained her lie through many months. Hard upon that, blotting it out, there swept the juster knowledge that, no matter what she had done, truth had triumphed at last; what was good in her had overcome her poor weakness. Lastly, he thought of Jack Dalhousie who, from the clouds, had received his release from prison. Yes, old Dal could come home now....

"He never knew," said V.V., in his curious voice. "I'm so glad ... This clears him ... I never understood how he could have ... I'm so glad to--have it settled...."

If he was so glad, his face libelled him past forgiveness. But Cally Heth still soared, too high in the unplumbed blue to note, even now, what house was this she had destroyed.

"I really didn't realize at all at the time," she said, with the same simplicity. "It all happened so quickly, and it was so bewildering, and I didn't have time to think. The story about him just seemed to spring up of itself, and then it grew and grew all the time. I've worried a great deal about it, all along...."

A kind of passion came into the man's face, and he said:

"Thank God, there's still time to make it all right."

Then his look brought her down a little.... "To make it all right?"

Vivian gazed down. He thought of what lay ahead for her now; and his heart seemed to turn within him.... However, sympathy was not desired of him: his lot was but to strengthen the hands of the brave.

"Miss Heth--indeed, I could envy you all the happiness you are going to give. Think--just think what it means ... I know you must be eager--to begin, to--"

"To begin?" she echoed again, feeling somehow that their privacy was being invaded. "Why--what do you mean?... I don't understand."

"I jump ahead too fast, of course. But--you must be so anxious ... to have it all off your mind, and not think of it any more. I know you must be impatient to get word to Dal at the first possible moment--it means so much to him. More than meat and drink.... And then there's his poor old father ..."

Cally stared at him, speechless. There was no exaltation now; no more soaring. Rooted in her tracks she stood, yet seemed to herself to shrink and recoil from him, in her sudden self-horror. What, oh what, had she done?

And by chance at this very moment--doubtless through some Settlementer's opening a door for air--there came floating down to her the distinct voice of her mother, the strong voice of authority and no nonsense, the voice of Wealth and Permanence, of the victorious knowledge that God thinks twice before he condemns a person of quality.... "_In accepting the Chairmanship of the Finance Committee, I desire to say_ ..."

Cally raised a gloved little hand to her veiled lips. Plainer than speech her frightened eyes said: _Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?_

"You--you've misunderstood. No ... no! I didn't mean that at all."

"Oh!... Do you mean--you don't wish to see Colonel Dalhousie--personally? Of course not!... It wouldn't be necessary in the least. Perhaps you would let me.... And as to a telegram to Dal--"

"_No_--_no!_... You mustn't go to see him. You mustn't send a telegram. I can't allow that--you've misunderstood entirely. _You mustn't tell anybody_...."

They stared at each other with the same colorless faces, and again the rain became audible. In the man's too-confiding eyes, hope died hard.

"Not tell anybody? Why, I don't see ... There's no other way of making it right, I'm afraid.... And you have told me--"

"But I didn't tell you to tell anybody else. I didn't. I only meant to tell _you_, don't you see?..."

This subtlety was past the vision of the donator of the Dabney House. North, south, east, or west, he could see nothing but a seraph-faced girl whose misery it was to feel the penitential pangs, yet not be able quite to rise to the fulness of reparation. That she had reached for that fulness was to him the one thing certain in all the world. What want of delicacy in him had caused her to falter and look backward?...

Into the lucid gray of his eyes had come that look which more than once before Carlisle Heth had found intolerable. Little she recked for it now. Was not this the heart of her present dilemma, that she had already followed his ocular incitements too fatally far? By what religious prestidigitation he had trapped her secret from her must remain a thick mystery now. Nothing mattered but that he, having deceitfully seemed to agree that it was all a matter between herself and him, should not now turn and betray her.... _Tell now?_ The sudden vista of scandal horrified her. How would she ever face mamma again? How would Hugo, whose bride and pride she was, regard her then?...

"Don't you see?" she said, with gathering tensity--"I--I meant it as _a confidence to you_. You mustn't dream of telling anybody else...."

"But neither you nor I own the truth. This belongs to Dalhousie...."

"Oh, it doesn't!--it doesn't! How can you! You misunderstand!--What I said to you gave you a totally wrong impression. He was entirely to blame for my upsetting. _Entirely!_ He behaved abominably--and I--"

"_Tell now!" _cried the man, with his strange stern passion. "Once it's done, you'll always be glad. Don't you know you _must_, now! Don't you see you can't be happy, till you let the truth be known?..."

There came from above the unmistakable movement of chairs, the sound of many feet. It appeared that the Settlement meeting was breaking up. The man's entreaties bounded back dead.

"I couldn't!--Don't you understand? There's nothing to tell. It was not my fault. The story was distorted, distorted, and distorted! I regretted that as much as any one. But I could do nothing, nothing to stop it. And don't you understand I couldn't possibly tell this broadcast _now_, when it's been done with for _months!_ What would people think of me? Don't you--"

"What will you have to think of yourself if you don't tell?"

But the hard shot missed fire, the reason being that what she thought of herself did not matter in the least just now. She was mamma's daughter, Hugo Canning's betrothed, fighting for her own: and now that movement upstairs warned her that she had no moment to lose.

Carlisle seized the slum doctor's arm with a resolute little hand. Her voice, though panicky, was as inexorable as mamma's own.

"Promise me," said she, "that you will never repeat to anybody what I told you in confidence."

The face of the young man, which was usually so harmless-looking, had suddenly become quite stern. He looked as if he might ask God to pity her again, given a very little more. When he spoke, he spoke brusquely:

"What you ask is a conspiracy of silence. I cannot make such a promise. I cannot."

"Oh, how _can_ you be so hard! You've never meant anything but trouble to me since the first minute I saw you! It isn't fair, don't you see it isn't? This has happened so suddenly--I _must_ have time to think. Promise that you won't say anything--at least till you hear from me again...."

Silence. And then V. Vivian said, in a suddenly hopeless voice:

"I will agree to say nothing without first seeing you...."

Cally Heth dropped his arm instantly, turned from him. She fled, not up the grand stairway, but over the court for the doors, with the protecting arms of the House of Heth beyond. And none of her other routs from the family enemy had been quite like this one.