Chapter XIX

How it is One Thing to run away from yourself, and another
to escape; how Cally orders the Best Cocktails, and gazes at
her Mother asleep; also of Jefferson 4127, and why Mamma left
the Table in a hurry at the Café des Ambassadeurs.

Mamma arranged it, by Amazonian effort. New York, the colossal, received the runaway with an anonymous roar, asking no questions. Here, in the late afternoon of the first day, safe forever in a well-furnished room on a seventeenth floor, Cally Heth made her answer to Dalhousie's letter. She formally cremated the scrawl in a pink saucer which had previously been doing nothing more useful in the world than holding up a toothbrush mug.

The cremation was a rite in its way, yet required only the saucer and two matches. The letter, when well torn, flamed nicely, only a few scraps holding out against immediate combustion. There was one little fragment on top, observable from the beginning; it read:

or night
fferson 4127

These topmost bits refused to respond to poking with the burnt match, and finally demanded a new match all to themselves. Within two minutes all were reduced to fine ashes, which the priestess of the rite duly took to the window, and scattered down into the "court." Then she washed her hands, put the saucer back under the mug, and raised another window to let out the smell.

This business completed, Carlisle glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes past six, or nearly time to begin to dress. The moment was an interlude in a day which had been full of exciting activity, keyed with the joy of journey's end and lovers' meeting. An evening in similar titillating vein waited just ahead. At this moment, Canning, bidden _an revoir_ some ten minutes ago, was doubtless dressing at his club, seven blocks away. Mrs. Heth, left to her own resources all afternoon, had fallen asleep in her chair, and still slept. Even the maid Flora was absent, having been given the afternoon off, after unpacking two trunks, to "git to see" her uncle, a personage of authority who served his country well by sorting letters in the New York Post-Office.

Alone in the hotel bedroom, Carlisle looked in the mirror of the mahoganized "dresser," occupied in taking off her veil and hat, and thought that Flora ought to be coming back now. Then she sniffed a little and was aware of a memorial smell from the rite. After that her mind appeared to float away for a time, and when she caught up with it again, it was thinking:

Nothing so much could really have happened, if I _had_ told.

It was an academic thought for a mind which must have known very well that everything was settled now. Carlisle, assuming charge herself, promptly turned it out. Having put her hat on the bed, she began to busy herself with preparations for the evening. Flora lingering at her avuncular pleasures, she herself went to the closet and took down a dress. A capable girl she was, who could easily get out her own clothes when absolutely necessary.

Canning was dining the two ladies at the resplendent establishment of his choice, at seven-thirty o'clock; he was due to return in an hour now. All day he had been in attendance, and all day he had been the very prince of lovers. Having lunched with Mrs. Heth and Carlisle at their hotel, he and his betrothed had spent the whole afternoon together jogging about the May-time park in a hansom-cab,--such was her whim,--with late tea at the Inn of renown upon the Drive: and through all, such talk as sped the hours on wings. How fascinating he was, she seemed to have forgotten, in these days of absence and worry. And how strong and all-conquering!--a man of such natural lordliness of mien that cabmen and policemen, proud men and strangers as they were, spoke to him with something akin to respect.

Yes, Hugo was, indeed, a rock and tower of strength. With him behind her, she had the world at her feet.... Heavens! What could gossip possibly do to Mrs. Hugo Canning?

Outside was the roar of conglomerate humanity. Up here in this strange bedroom, indifferent host to a thousand transient souls, it was quiet and even a little lonely. Once more Carlisle caught her mind at its retrospective misbehavior, and once more turned the key on it. Having laid out her dress on the bed, she stood and looked down into the cheerless light-well a minute, and then decided to wake up her mother. But she stopped on the way and turned back. Why wake up mamma half an hour too soon, just to hear the sound of one's own voice?

She took off her watch, and raised her hands to begin unfastening her waist. But she became engrossed in staring back at her reflection in the mirror, and presently her hands dropped.

Face and form, background and destiny, she was possessed of blessings many and obvious: all crowned now, sealed and stamped, with the love of Hugo Canning, which, he had pledged himself, was a love which should not die. What girl so entirely successful as she? Convincingly the excellent glass gave back the presentment of loveliness endowed with all the gifts of Fortune.

And yet she had run away: there was no evading that. An insignificant boy thousands of miles away had sent out a cry for help, and she, the proud and blessed, who had always considered herself quite as spunky as another person, had bolted in a panic. And she had bolted too fast, it seemed, to consider even that, with that cry, there had come a new element into the situation, disturbing to the old argument. The full reach and meaning of Jack Dalhousie's letter seemed to be coming upon her now for the first time, just when she had ritually cremated it. Out of the pink saucer had mysteriously blown the knowledge that the author of that poor composition could no more be pictured as doing splendidly down in Texas....

For a third time her over-mind spied upon and detected the nether's treason; and this time Cally, turning abruptly from the mirror, was troubled. Having run away, could she not at least enjoy a runaway's peace? Why backward glances now? She had escaped Dalhousie. She had escaped Dalhousie's friend. She stood in this room the safest person in the world. No one on earth could betray her except herself.

The watch ticked loud, steadily drawing Hugo, and mamma and Flora. Up through the windows came the twilight and the rumble of the vast heedless city. Carlisle snapped on the lights. And then all at once, without warning, there closed down upon her an enormous depression, a sense as of standing on the brink of irretrievable disaster. Or it was as if she had run away, indeed, but had not escaped. Or as if, in cutting herself off from the past, she had cut away something important, which something here gave notice that it would not be peacefully abandoned. And mixed with this there was again that sense of large pressure upon her, so tangible that it was almost like a person in the room with her, sharing, dominating her councils....

She was far from understanding these feelings, but she did understand that she felt suddenly sickish and quite faint; and she thought practically of mamma's little flask of brandy in her bag somewhere, if only she could find it. Then speculations on this point vanished with the recollection that she stood in the modern Arabian Nights, all the resources of the world at her beck.

Cally stepped to the telephone and called down in a small but authoritative voice:

"Send me up a cocktail at once, please. Room 1704."

"Yes, mum," replied the experienced voice far below. "What kind would you wish?"

"Oh ... the best," said she, less authoritatively; and then, rang off hurriedly, thinking how funny it was that she couldn't produce the name of a cocktail when needed, since papa shook one up for himself nearly every evening, and Hugo always ordered them when they dined together, and laughed at the little faces she made....

The cocktail came, on rubber heels, and she sipped it, walking about the room and not thinking at all about dressing. A spoonful or so of the yellow concoction, and the sickish feeling vanished, and she felt instead rather devilish and fast, like the blondined villainess in a play. She was a daring woman of the new school, a Woman with a Past, who rang up hotel bars and ordered the best cocktails sent up at once....

Possibly the cocktail had this moral reaction, that she no longer sought to discipline her mind. She sipped the drink gingerly, and her thought fluttered backward and forward, full of contradictions and repetitions, as thought is in life, but now free.... Suppose, after all, that her past was not escaped? It wasn't such an easy thing to do, it seemed. Dalhousie thought he had escaped his, but it had run him down at last, way off in Texas. Suppose Dr. Vivian now decided (in view of her being a fugitive) that it was his duty to lay the matter before Colonel Dalhousie, and the tempestuous Colonel took the next train....

There was a knock at the door, causing her to start violently, and spill some of the cocktail. However, it was not Colonel Dalhousie, but only the maid Flora, who entered with that air of eager hurry so characteristic of an habitually tardy race. It appeared that the infernal powers had conspired against her promptitude in the shape of a blockade, not to mention losting her way through the malicious misdirection of a white man selling little men that danced on a string....

Having learned further that the postal uncle was poly las' month but tollable now, Flora's young mistress said:

"We must dress in a hurry now, Flora. It's quarter to seven."

And then she went on through to the sitting-room of the suite, to wake her mother, thinking: "I can't go on this way the rest of my life, jumping out of my skin every time there's a knock.... What on earth have I been so afraid of?..."

Mrs. Heth slept on in her deep-bosomed chair, undisturbed by the click of switch or burst of light into her enveloping dusk. She had a magazine, face downward, in her lap; also a one-pound box of mixed chocolates, open. Her head had fallen upon her chair-back; a position which brought the strange dark little mustache into prominence, and also threw into relief the unexpected heaviness of the jaw and neck. The face of an indomitable creature, certainly, of one of those fittest to survive; but not exactly a spiritual face, perhaps, hardly a face finely sensitive to immaterial values....

To gaze at a person who is unaware of being watched may be worse than eavesdropping. Arrested in the act of waking her mother, Carlisle stood for some moments looking down at her. What was there lacking in mamma that you couldn't ever talk things over with her? Upon the unconscious face it was plainly inscribed that this lady would stand against telling to the last ditch. Somehow the knowledge brought the daughter no comfort....

And now that she stopped to consider in calm security, what, really, if she did send Vivian a little note just before she sailed, authorizing him to tell? What had she, of all people, to fear from the clacking tattle of a few old cats? Suppose, to-morrow, she calmly said to Hugo and mamma, "I've felt all along that I did him an injustice, and now that I know he's so unhappy, I want to set it straight." What, really, could they say that would be so bad? If there was a price for telling, it appeared now that there was a price also for not telling.

Minutes passed ...

And then at the shake, Mrs. Heth stirred, turned, rolled a little, and opened her eyes with a start and a blink.

"I must have dropped asleep," said she.

"No!" said Cally; and she gave a sudden gay burst of laughter.

"I don't see anything so funny in that," said Mrs. Heth, yawning and sitting up. "What time is it?"

"I think it's a perfect scream, and it's nearly seven, and Hugo will be here at quarter past, punctually. _Now_ will you fly?"

"You might have waked me a little earlier. Good gracious!... How long have you been in? Anything happen while I napped?"

"Not a single, solitary, blessed thing.... There you are!--Easy does it!"

"I'll be dressed long before you are now," was the maternal retort, accompanied by a long stretch.

And, though unchallenged, she was as good as her word. Highly efficient at the toilet as elsewhere, she required small assistance from Flora, whom she dispatched to tidy up the sitting-room instead. The good little lady was armed cap-a-pie by seven-fifteen, at which time a glance into Carlisle's room revealed much backwardness there, not concealed by the appearances of haste. Hugo would have to wait, that was clear; and just as it was clear, up Mr. Canning's name came skipping from the office.

In the tidied-up sitting-room Mrs. Heth entertained her distinguished son-to-be, during the little delay. She always enjoyed a good talk with Hugo. He was her pledge of a well-spent life, her Order of Merit, her V.C. and Star and Garter, rolled together in a single godlike figure. She beamed upon him, tugging at white gloves half a size too small. Canning tapped a well-shod foot with his walking-stick, and wished for his love.

The wish grew by what it fed on, and the banquet ran long. Half an hour passed before the door from Mrs. Heth's bedroom opened and Carlisle appeared. However, she looked worth waiting for. She shimmered a moment from the threshold, and the two in the sitting-room thought together that they had never seen her so radiantly lovely.

"I made her!" thought Mrs. Heth.

"Mine!" thought Canning.

And Cally thought, her eyes upon her lover: "_Me afraid!_..."

"My dear Cally! Really, I can say nothing for you but better late than never," said mamma.

"Salutations!" said Hugo, rising. "And by Jove! What a perfectly stunning dress!"

"Oh, do you like it?" said Carlisle, trailing forward, her eyes shining. "Then you won't scold, will you, if my watch _was_ a trifle slow! And I should have been ready hours ago, even at that, but for Flora's over-staying at her uncle's. Tell Mr. Canning, Flora, wasn't it all your fault?"

And Flora, having followed her young mistress in with the carriage-cloak, giggled into her hand as at a royal jest and said yas'm, it certny was....

In holiday vein the trio departed from the suite, dropped sixteen stories in the lift, and presently came by taxicab to the Café des Ambassadeurs, where had taken place the memorable dinner for two, just two months ago to a night....

Here all was glittering and gay. The Ambassadeurs, pending the arrival of something newer, was on the pinnacle of expensive popularity. At this hour everything was in fullest swing, and the impressive looking major-domo was shaking his head without hope to arriving applicants who had not ordered a table beforehand, as Hugo had done by messenger.

The Heth ladies turned into the cloak-room to remove their wraps. The air of vivacity pervading the place, or possibly it was her daughter's staccato liveliness, entered the blood of Mrs. Heth: she was imperious with the ladies' maid who assisted with the unwrapping. Carlisle, strolling about as she unbuttoned her gloves, came to the elaborate screen which sheltered the doorway and glanced out. Directly opposite, over the brilliant corridor, her gaze fell upon the glass and yellow-wood of a long-distance telephone booth.

Then she caught sight of Hugo, and smiled at him, and at the same moment mamma's voice said at her elbow:

"There's Hugo, waiting.... Are you ready?"

"And waiting, too," said Carlisle.

They emerged from the ladies' bower into the stir of the antechamber. Met halfway by their escort, they proceeded toward the dining-room. Advance was a little slow; there was some confusion here and even crowding, replete diners blocking the way of those just going in. Just at the door, a party of five or six managed to come between Carlisle and Canning, who was dutifully looking out for his future mother-in-law; the girl became momentarily separated from her protectors. Or perhaps it was partly Cally's own fault, precipitated by the sight of a page standing near, who certainly seemed to have been stationed there by the hand of Providence....

Having stared fascinated at this page for half a second, Carlisle brought him to her side by a nod. The lad was fifteen and had seen lovely ladies in his time, but raising his eyes to this one, he acknowledged that she was a Queen.

"Call long distance for me, boy.... I'll write the number."

The boy produced pad and pencil, and she scribbled rapidly, a smile hovering over the sweet mouth whose slight irregularity charmed the eye beyond flawlessness.

Why, indeed, wait longer, running and sticking one's head in the sand, when here was the telephone, immediate and conclusive, when she felt now so brave and sure, and could tell mamma and Hugo this very night without a tremor? All was simple now, and highly adventurous besides. And then there was Jack Dalhousie to whom even a day or two, now that she stopped to think of it, would probably make a good deal of difference....

Turning again with bright cheeks, Cally encountered strange faces; and then, in a second or two, the familiar ones of her mother and Canning, both looking back for her....

"There you are!" she laughed, coming up with them again. "What an exciting jam!"

They proceeded into the dining-place and to their table, a somewhat ceremonial progress headed by three spiketails. Even in that display of beauty, wealth, consequence, and their lifelike imitations, these three, or perhaps we should say these two, drew much attention. Carlisle was conscious of lorgnettes; once she caught the whisper of the name so soon to be her own. Late as they were, the room was still crowded: the well-bred but wandering eye saw no vacant seat anywhere. There was music in the air, and the clash of cutlery, the vocal hum, and the faint tinkle of glasses. There were flushing faces and eyes that sparkled like the wine, and of it, many fragrances commingled, of flowers, chefs' _chefs-d'oeuvre_, of Pinaud and Roget. Through all, too, was to be felt the hard inquisitive stare of New York, each man wondering who and whence his neighbor was, speculating under his smile as to which man of them made, on the whole, the best appearance, seemed most plentiful of his money....

Pink-shaded candles stood on the little table; also La France roses of Canning's purchasing; also glasses, three more of them brought as they took their seats.

"Do you spurn your cocktail, Carlisle?" asked Canning, and when she convivially indicated that she didn't, he added, man to man: "How!"

"How," said Cally.

She touched it to her lips, giving back his smile over the rim of her glass, and feeling gay, indeed. Two cocktails before one dinner--well!

"What kind of one is this, Hugo?" she demanded, quite knowingly.

Canning named it.

"Well, then," said she, "it was a Bronx I had before."

She did not say before what, and nobody asked. About them, as they sat in the lively hum, circled servitors without end. One fellow had brought their bit of caviare; another bore away the traces of it; another had no share of them but to fetch crisp rolls. Little omnibuses in white suits moved about, gathering up papers or napkins dropped by careless diners; bigger omnibuses in dinner jackets exported trays of dishes which the lordly artists of the serving force were above touching. Other varlets merely stood about and cooed....

Dinner, having begun with the cocktails, swept on with a rattle of talk. There was debate about the theatre afterwards. The girl's eyes turned often toward the door.

"What do you think of it all, Carlisle?"

"Sweet, Hugo!... So simple and artless and homey!"

"Exactly," said Canning; and obtained permission for a cigarette. "But yet interesting as a vaudeville show, don't you think? What so amusing as to see human vanity displaying itself not merely without reserve but with a terrific blowing of horns?"

"Well put, Hugo!" said Mrs. Heth, who held that any kind of generalization constituted good talk. She added: "Who are all these people? How would one place them?"

Canning could indicate a celebrity or two. He had bowed several times, finding acquaintances, it seemed, even in this glittering farrago. But his eyes returned to his bride-to-be, from whom he removed his gaze with reluctance to-night. She wore a dress of yellow crêpe-de-chine, with a draped arrangement of blue chiffon, which followed faithfully the long lines of her figure; and a hat of blue straw with an uncurled yellow plume. It was a beautiful dress, though mamma considered it just a thought too low, even with a handkerchief put in.

And Cally looked back at her lover and thought: Who so honored and honorable as he? He'll only be sorry that I've waited so long....

"Only," she said, aloud, "they do keep the room rather hot for the provinces, where some air is preferred. More good things to eat, Hugo? It's a collation...."

"A poor one, I'm afraid. You've touched nothing."

He dispatched an army of men to adjust electric fans, turn patent ventilators, and even to do so crude a thing as open a window.

"It is all most delicious, Hugo," reassured Mrs. Heth. "I hadn't noticed that the room was warm, either."

"My cheeks are burning. Touch my hand, Hugo. You see it's on fire."

All three looked up as a boy in buttons stood at Carlisle's elbow, and said:

"Got your party on the wire, mum."

"Party on the wire? What's this?" said mamma.

Carlisle laid her napkin on the table. Surprise confronted her, written large on the faces of her mother and her lover; but it did not arrest her.

"I'm wanted at the telephone. Do you mind, Hugo? I won't he gone a minute."

"_But_--you mustn't go _now_, my dear!" said Mrs. Heth, astonished. "Let the boy take the number. Why--who on earth could it be, calling you _here?_--"

"I'd rather go now, mamma, if Hugo'll forgive me--"

"It's from Flora!" said Mrs. Heth, positively. "No one else knew. A telegram's come, saying your father is sick--"

Carlisle laughed and rose dazzingly, burning without but colder than Alpine snow within.

"Not in the least, mamma dear! You see I put in this call myself. I'll explain all about it in a minute...."

Explain! Why she would walk back to this table from the telephone, laughing, and saying: "Now, praise me, Hugo and mamma, for I've just been doing a deed of mercy! Do you remember that day at the Beach?..." Was it the fear of this that she had let plague her all these days?...

"To be answered _here_--at dinner--in this public place? Why, my dear Cally, I really...."

But Hugo, the understanding, though personally opposed to interruptions during dinner, knew the folly of arguing with the whims of the unreasoners. He had risen with Carlisle, and now said: "I'll show you the way."

Cally gave him a look of exquisite gratitude, but answered: "_Please_ don't trouble, Hugo! The boy will--"

"No trouble. Let's be off before the tolls eat you out of house and home."

"Oh, no! Please don't! Couldn't I have my way about such a little matter, Hugo dear?"

In this glaring publicity, the dialogue began to take on something of the nature of a "scene." Canning yielded with perfect grace.

"Of course you can, if you really prefer it. Well, then!... Hurry back."

"In two minutes," said she, with certainty; and smiled brightly into mamma's censorious concern.

On the heels of the proud page, Cally threaded her way among the glittering tables for the telephone and Jefferson 4127, unaware for once that she was the cynosure of many eyes. She was buoyed within, thrilled with a sense of strange adventure, baffling to analysis, but somehow comparable to that soaring moment last week. She was captain of her soul. That she was now standing by her flare-up, deliberately reattaching herself to a past which she had moved heaven and earth to cut away from her, did not occur to her, in just that way. But she was conscious of a curious inner sense of freedom, and somehow of fulfilment. And now she saw that she must have been secretly thinking of doing this for some time, nibbling fearfully at the idea....

She was alone in a glass booth, with a telephone before her, receiver off its hook. She sat down, put the receiver to her ear, and said:

"Hello?"

There reached her only a faint great buzzing, the humming of distant wires, fleeting snatches of talk a long way off, striking out of nowhere back into nothing.... And now she was the Lady Bountiful, stepping aside a moment from her brilliant entourage to scatter boons to the poor and needy. Jack Dalhousie would know to-morrow morning, at the latest, by the telegram from his friend Mr. V.V.,--as that little creature called him,--and whatever vexation he might be inclined to feel towards her at first, his joy and his father's would soon dispose of that. And of course he would hurry straight off with his news to that girl from the East he had fallen in love with--what a hand he was for affairs, poor old Jack!--and....

Out of the confused murmuring, a soft voice spoke clearly:

"Hello, New York. I got your party. What's the matter?"

A nasal voice gave answer, apparently at Carlisle's elbow:

"Well, be ca'm, little one. You people got the rush-bug worsen some full-size cities aintyer? Butt out and gimme a chanst. Hello! W'ere arey'r, Bassadoors!"

"Here I am," said Bassadoors.

"Miss Heth?"

"I am Miss Heth."

"Minute 'm...."

In the glass beside her Cally caught a reflection of her head and bare shoulders, and her eyes were shining, the long and slightly tri-corner eyes so piquantly fringed. A minute--that was all it would take. A minute more and she would thread her way back through the glitter to Hugo and mamma, and Hugo at least would say well-done....

"Well, whatsermatter? There y' are!"

The soft voice said: "All right, Dr. Vivian. Ready now!... Hello! All right...."

"Hello," said Cally.

Then all sounds faded away, and out of a sudden great desert of silence, she heard a man's voice, clear though it came all the way from Meeghan's Grocery, across the street from the old Dabney House, back home.

"Hello?"

_Mr. V.V.!_

And the moment she heard that voice, Carlisle was aware that her feeling toward the owner of it had mysteriously changed somewhere in the last week, that he stood in her mind now almost as a friend. Had he not been, by the strangeness of fate, her one confidant in the world, who now could never think of her again as a poor little thing?...

"Dr. Vivian?... Can you guess who it is? Or did the operator give me away?"

"Yes.... I don't hear you very well.... Where are you?"

"I'm in New York, if you please, to sail for Europe next week! We left home last night.... Is that better?"

"Yes.... That's much better."

Mr. V.V.'s voice, over the long miles of wire, sounded strained and hard; but the girl noticed nothing, being full of novel thrills.

"Perhaps you can guess why I've called you up.... Though, you know, it was to be a secret unless you saw me again, and _I_ really don't count a letter as seeing!..."

"I didn't see you," came back the unfamiliar voice. "I am to blame."

"Ah, but the letter was just as good," said Carlisle, and laughed excitedly into the transmitter. And then, having never admitted any particular sense of guilt, having felt almost no "conviction of sin" as religious fellows would term it, she went on without the smallest embarrassment: "You see, I flew into a panic for some reason, and didn't mean for you ever to see me again. I ran away! And then I couldn't get his letter out of mind--I'd never taken it in that he was so miserable, really!--and I was quite ashamed of being such a coward. And so," she said, the upward-lifting lip pressing the instrument in her eagerness, "I've called up now to say I want--"

His voice broke in, not with the burst of praise and thanksgiving she had looked for, but only to say abruptly and anti-climacterically:

"I can't hear you. Will you say that again?"

However, but few words were needed, after all, to ring this climax. Carlisle said, slowly and distinctly:

"I say I want you to tell Mr. Dalhousie now--and his father, too. To-night, if you wish."

Then there was a desolating silence, out of which she heard something far off like a man groaning.

"Hello!" she called sharply. "Are you there?"

"Where are you, Miss Heth?" was Dr. Vivian's reply; and his voice was like the voice of the man who had groaned....

"Are you in your room at the hotel? Is your mother with you there?"

Singular words these, from the receiver of confidences and high favors. There fell upon Cally a nameless fear.

"N-no--I'm alone--Why, what--"

"Could I speak to your mother a moment--first? I have some bad news. It would be better--"

"No--tell me! My mother's at dinner. I--what are you talking about?..."

Had he betrayed her already, then? Was the town now ringing with her name? Had Colonel Dalhousie ...

Quite distinctly, though he evidently was not addressing her, she heard the man's hard voice say: "This cannot be borne."

And then in a different voice, there came these words over the miles from Meeghan's Grocery:

"Miss Heth;--I didn't see you when I should have--and now we are just too late. I can't reach Dal now."

"You--don't mean?..."

"He is dead."

_"Dead!"_

And it was this girl's shame, the fruit of her long fear, that her first feeling was one of base relief. So works Nature's first law. Dal was dead; all was settled; there was nothing to tell now. And then, as by the turning of a corner, she came front to front with a sudden horror, and there unrolled before her a moment of blackness....

"You must not blame yourself too hard," came the distant voice, dropping out of space like the sentences of destiny. "It's ... cruel, the way it's happened. But you'll always know you had the courage and the will to set him free, when you might--"

Carlisle's hand clenched the edge of the little table where she sat.

"Tell me," said her voice, pitifully faint. "Did he ... I--must know--Did he ...?"

There was a roaring in her ears, but through it the words came clear as flame:

"He went out of his mind. I know that. That could not be foreseen. Not waiting ... he took his own life. It was this afternoon. A telegram came--from some friend of his...."

All further words, if more there were, bounded off from the sudden iron stillness within her. Mechanically she raised the receiver to the hook, for was not her talk with Meeghan's quite finished? Jack Dalhousie had killed himself. Sackcloth and ashes would not get a telegram to him now.... And then, some flying remembrance of the bearer of the tidings struck through her numbness, and she caught down the receiver again and said indistinctly:

"I can't talk any more now.... I'll be all right...."

Then all thought stopped, and her head went forward upon her hands. The yellow plume nodded bravely....

Outside the door of the booth was the brilliant corridor, and beyond a glimpse of the dining-room, pretty with shaded lights, gay with music and talk, and eyes that stared unabashed. Somewhere in there were Mrs. Heth and Canning, dining well.

The page stood near, the call-slip offered upon his tray. He, who admired her, was aware of a subtle distortion in this lady's winning loveliness.

"Take it, please," said she, "to the lady at the table where you found me. And say I shall not come back to dinner."

Then Carlisle found herself in the cloak-room, which happened to be empty except for the smiling maid. She had hardly entered and repelled the woman's overtures, when she heard the hurried step of her mother, brought quickly by the buttons' strange words.

"Cally! Are you ill? What on earth's happened?"

Cally sat stiffly in a chair against the wall, her face colorless. Different, this, from the telling she had contemplated, not five minutes ago. What had happened, indeed?

She said in a small flat voice: "I heard some bad news--over the telephone. A man--has died. He killed himself, this afternoon--"

Commanding even in that moment, Mrs. Heth turned upon the hovering maid and said: "A glass of water."

When the woman had passed out of earshot, she turned again, and put her two strong hands on Cally's shoulders.

"What man? Who was this you called up long-distance?"

"Mr. Dalhousie," said Cally's small voice. "I called up a friend of his...." She looked up fixedly at her mother and said: "Mamma, he did it because of me."

The name of ill omen staggered the mother a little. Her voice was half harsh, half frightened:

"Because of you! You are ill, my poor child. The shock has upset you. You are out of your head. The boy's mind was unhinged by drink. Every one said so. He had broken his father's heart with--"

"But he did this because of me. Because of what I let everybody think of him.... Mamma, I--I must go back home. I'm sorry to upset everything so...."

The maid stood by with her tray and glass, but no hand reached for the offering.

"Back to the hotel? Of course!--you are ill, my poor dear! You need rest...."

"I mean back home. You see I can't be here now ... when this has happened. I must go now, to-night. I remember the train goes at nine-fifty-five."

Mrs. Heth, wheeling upon the maid with livid perturbation, cried:

"Get my wraps."