Chapter XXI

That Day at the Beach, as we sit and look back at it; how
Hugo journeys to shield his Love from Harm, and Small
Beginnings can end with Uproars and a Proverb.

Canning arrived at the House of Heth shortly after four. He had had an all-day journey in summer heat, and a bad night preceding. In the still watches following his ladies' departure from New York, he had had time for calm reflection, nothing else but time; and the more he calmly reflected, the less could he understand his betrothed's singular desire to pay this tribute to the dead. The thing grew increasingly mystifying; increasingly unorthodox and undependable, too. Moreover, the second thought reproached him that, Carlisle being so greatly upset, however unreasonably, he himself should have accompanied her homeward, in her most need to go by her side. And thinking these things, the disturbed young man had tumbled out of bed in the small hours, to make inquiries regarding trains.

He was received at the House by his future mother-in-law, who was once more the accredited intermediary. Canning was hot, sooty, and suffering from want of sleep. There were cinders down the back of his neck. Mrs. Heth had Moses prepare for him a long iced drink, with rime on the glass and fragrant mint atop. And then, as the prize of her lifetime sat and sipped, she seated herself beside him, her strong voice trembling....

All hope of discreet reticence was now ripped to shreds. What chance remained of rescuing the name of Heth from the scandalous horrors of a suicide lay all in arousing this stalwart man to the imminence of the common peril. Mrs. Heth, somersaulting without hesitancy from last night's caution, flooded the dark places with lurid light.

Canning listened with consternation and chagrin. His moral sensibilities, indeed, received no particular shock, since Mrs. Heth's narrative frankly disclaimed any wrong-doing on Carlisle's part, but attributed the misunderstanding to the excited gossip at the time. And by the same token, he was not unduly perturbed over the girl's hysterical ideas of her present duty. What struck Canning most sharply, indeed, since he was human, was the personal side of the matter: the stark fact that important developments touching Carlisle's name and happiness had been running along for some time, wholly without his knowledge, but under the direct personal superintendency of another man, this Mr. Somebody's unknown friend. So extraordinary a course of behavior seemed to reveal a totally new side of his betrothed, hitherto unsuspected. Canning would have been too saintly for this earth if he had not learned of these proceedings with the deepest surprise and vexation.

And yet--what of it? Of course there was some simple and natural explanation, which she would give when she felt better able. Doubtless she had been threatened; blackmailed perhaps. And meantime the light thrown directly and indirectly on Carlisle's distraught mood touched the lover deeply. He hardly needed Mrs. Heth's frightened hints about the necessity of gentleness with firmness in dealing with a flare-up. Had he himself not known the wilful nature of her spirit in excitement, that never-forgotten evening in the library?

And when the striker of the right note withdrew at last, and Carlisle herself appeared in the drawing-room, very white and subdued, the last remnant of a personal grievance vanished from Canning's manner. Nothing could have exceeded the tenderness of his greeting....

"Did my telegram surprise you?" he said presently. "I got so troubled about you after you were gone.... I couldn't bear to leave you alone with this...."

And Cally said, with a quiver in her voice: "Oh, Hugo!... If you only knew how I've wanted you to-day!..."

She meant it with every fibre of her being. Doubly he had convinced her now that he could never be shocked or disgusted with her, that in him a perfect sympathy enfolded her, covering all mistakes. That he might not understand quite yet how she felt about everything was possible, but that was nothing now, by the fact that he understood _her_, at any rate, as mamma never could.

Some discussion of the matter was of course necessary. And presently, after they had talked a little, quite naturally, of his journey and how she had slept last night, the lovers drifted on into Mr. Heth's little study, reopened against this need.

Here they sat down and began to talk. And here, in five minutes, Carlisle's heart began mysteriously to sink within her....

She had been going through a series of violent emotional experiences in which he had had not the slightest share, and now required of him that he should catch up with the results of these experiences, upon a moment's notice and at a single bound. She could not realize the extreme difficulty of this feat. Nor, indeed, could Canning himself, confident by the ease with which his love had appeared to put down all personal irritations. To his seeming, as to hers, they had met in perfect spiritual reunion.

Accordingly, when he proposed that the matter be allowed to rest quiet for a day or two, till they were all in a little better frame of mind to view it calmly, he offered a temporary solution which he felt certain would seem to her as reasonable and as tactfully considerate as it did to him.

"In this moment of shock and distress," he said, with admirable restraint, "you are not quite in the best frame of mind, you see, to decide such a serious matter. Fortunately, to wait a little while and think it over quietly can do no harm to anybody now. And then, if you still feel the same way about it, of course I shall want to do what you wish."

He had had Carlisle's feelings only at second-hand, through a medium perhaps wanting in transparence. Her hesitancy considerably surprised him. To Carlisle, as was almost equally inevitable, it was as if in the solid rock of their mutual understanding there had suddenly appeared a tiny crack. She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he wanted. And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now to say that she would unsettle and postpone it all,--something, say, as if Hugo had asked her to step back into last year or the year before. And she tried to make him understand this, saying--what seemed a feeble reply to his logic:

"You see, I--I've already thought about it a good deal, Hugo ... And putting it off would only make me--miserable and ill. I can't explain very well.... I think I could begin to--to forget about it if--when...."

This she said over several times, in different ways, as the necessary discussion proceeded....

It was naturally hard for Hugo to grasp the grounds on which she rejected a mere deferment of painful discussion till to-morrow morning (for he reduced his proposal to that), or even to see why, though opposed herself, she would not readily be guided in so small a matter by his wishes. The soft chimes in the hall had rung five before it definitely came over him that the preliminaries had oddly, indeed incredibly, gone against him.

He faced the fact frankly, without perceptible sign of annoyance.

"Well, then, my dearest girl, I'm afraid we shall have to talk about it a little now...."

They sat side by side on papa's faded old lounge, where they had spent many an hour together in happier days. Canning held Carlisle's hand in a reassuring grasp. Her heart warmed to him anew: if he did not quite seem to understand--what wonder when she hardly did herself?--his was a love that drew its roots deeper than understanding. Nevertheless she flinched from a discussion which promised to be carried on chiefly by her over-strung nerves; and all at once she felt that she must know instantly what threatened, exactly what he thought about it.

"Hugo ... do you--don't you think I--I ought to tell?"

Far readier and surer was his voice in reply: "Frankly, darling, I can't as yet see any necessity."

How could he possibly see?--Ought to tell what? Had not her mother told him that he had to deal with the nightmare illusions of a disordered mind?...

Canning added with great considerateness: "I've thought it all over from every point of view--and you know I'm better able to think dispassionately to-day than you are--and I simply can't persuade myself that we have any such obligation."

Carlisle thought, with a little hopeful leap, that Hugo _must_ know. It was all irrevocably settled; and yet at the same time it may have been that, woman-wise, she had left ajar a little door somewhere, through which his man's wisdom might yet storm, and possess all....

"But--but doesn't it seem that if I--did him a wrong, I ought to be willing to set it straight?"

"Well, naturally!" said Canning, and smiled a little, sadly, to see how white and sorrowful-eyed she looked. "If you did him a wrong. But that's just the point. I'm afraid I can't agree with the somewhat extreme view this friend of the poor fellow's seems to have put forward.... By the way," he added, finding the natural question popping in so suitably here, "who is this man that has talked with you about it, Carlisle? Your mother didn't go into particulars."

Carlisle felt some surprise. "Oh--I supposed she told you. Dr. Vivian--you remember--who ..."

The name took Canning completely aback.

"Vivian?--no!... _That_ chap!..."

Both remembered in the same moment his quizzical complaint that this man was his hoodoo. Both felt that the pleasantry had a somewhat gritty flavor just now.

"I hadn't thought of him," said Canning, at once putting down his surprise and explaining it, "because I didn't think you knew him at all. In fact, I didn't know you'd ever seen him but once, or perhaps twice...."

Carlisle regretted that mamma had not explained all this. "I haven't more than three or four times.... Twice when I was with you, you remember, and then I met him again at Mr. Beirne's and the Cooneys'--some cousins of mine. You see--he was a great friend of--his...."

"And I suppose he has worried you about this every time he got anywhere near you?"

"No," Carlisle answered, laboriously, "I don't think he has ever mentioned it--since the first. Of course I've had hardly any conversation with him--and it's always been about the Works. You know, I told you he usually talked to me about that--"

He said that he remembered; and each was then aware that the harmony of a moment ago had somehow slipped away from them. Canning, indeed, instead of being enlightened by the explanation, was more bewildered than ever. How could it be that this man, her father's assailant in the newspapers, the religious fellow whom Carlisle had never mentioned but to belittle, should have been the recipient of intimate confidences which she had withheld from him, her future husband? Naturally he could not understand in the least. However, glancing at her still face, he forbore to put another question.

"Well, that's got nothing to do with it anyway," he said, lightly, dismissing the side-issue. "Now, let's see.... Sit back comfortably, my dear, and we'll take it all quietly from the beginning...."

Hugo had got his facts from Mrs. Heth, and nothing had happened yet to suggest that they were in any way inaccurate. On the contrary, they seemed to have received subtle moral corroboration, so instinctive was it for the lover to lean backward from the views foisted upon Carlisle by her singular and religious confidant. That he himself was capable of coloring the case, attorney-wise, to suit the common interest did not really cross his mind.

The whole issue in the singular muddle, he pointed out, seemed to be whether or not the poor fellow had known that the boat was upset. Well, who could say what he knew, an intoxicated man in a blind passion? Not Carlisle, certainly, plunged suddenly into the sea and intensely occupied with saving her life. How, for instance, could she know it if, in the instant when she was under water, the man had glanced back and--deadened by his drunken anger, admit that for him--had not returned for her? Of the dozens of people who had witnessed the disaster, not one had doubted that the unfortunate chap's desertion of her had been deliberate.... However, imagine that it hadn't been, exactly, imagine that the women in their excitement and resentment, and through misunderstanding of each other's statements, had failed to give him the full benefit of the doubt. It was still a great mistake to assume that what they had said or left unsaid had been decisive. Public opinion, knowing the unstable character of the man, had already judged him. Did his later life and behavior indicate, really, that that judgment was far wrong? And as to that night of excitement long ago, the world's rough-and-ready justice would hardly have taken much account of Carlisle's generous theory that perhaps the man didn't know what he was doing. By the same token, it would scarcely reopen the case now to admit that kind conjecture....

"I honor from the bottom of my heart, Carlisle," said Canning, "your wish to do the strictest justice. Need I say that I'm with you there, against the world? But what is the strictest justice? Perhaps you might bring a ray of relief to the poor man's father, and that's all. Is that really so great an object to move heaven and earth for, at the cost of much pain and distress to all who love you?..."

Having spoken at some length, Canning paused for a reply. The pause ran longer than he found encouraging. However, he was no more sensitive to it, to Carlisle's strange unresponsiveness as he talked, than was the girl herself. Indeed, it tore Cally's heart to seem to oppose her lover, pleading so strongly and sweetly for her against herself. Yet she had several times been tempted to interrupt him, so clear did it seem to her that he did not understand even now all that she had supposed was fully plain to him last night.

She said with marked nervousness, and a kind of eagerness, too: "You're so good and dear in the way you look at it, Hugo. You don't know--how sweet.... But it all comes down to whether he knew--doesn't it--just as you said. Well, you see I really _know_ he didn't--"

"You're mistaken there, my dear! Only God Almighty knows that. Don't you think we had better leave the judgment to him?"

That Canning spoke quite patiently was a great credit to his self-control. His failure to move her had filled him with a depressing and mortifying surprise. To say nothing of the regard she might be supposed to have for his wishes, he knew that he had spoken unanswerably.

"But you see--I really do know he wasn't such a coward, Hugo," said Carlisle, with the same nervous eagerness to accuse herself. "I--I knew him quite well--at one time. He was a wonderful swimmer, never afraid.... Perhaps it's only a feeling--but, indeed, I _know_ he wouldn't have swum off and left me--if--"

"My dear girl, if you were really so certain of that, why didn't you say so at the time?"

Carlisle, looking at the floor, said wistfully: "If I only had...."

She was acutely aware that his question carried a new tone into the discussion, that Hugo had criticised her for the first time. The tiny crack in their perfect understanding yawned suddenly wider. And distressed, and pitifully conscious that it was all her fault, Cally flung herself instinctively across the breach. Her gaze still lowered, she took Hugo's hand and pressed it to her smooth cheek: an endearing thing, and done with a muteness more touching than any speech.

Canning was moved. She was not demonstrative by habit. He kissed the cheek, for once almost as if she were a child. And he said that of course she would have said so that night, except that she hadn't really been certain of anything of the sort then. That feeling came now, born of excessive sympathy and nervous shock. The mistake would be to accept these feelings for her final judgment on such a very complicated and serious matter.

So he was arguing the case for postponement of discussion once more, with excellent good sense and an even more moving insistence....

If he had now but ceased his argument, turned, gathered her to his arms, and adjured her by his overflowing love to entrust herself to him, it is possible that within two minutes he might have had her weeping on his breast, in complete surrender. Body and soul, she was sore with much pounding: more than an hour ago, she needed sympathy and comfort now, loverly occupation of the desolating lonely places within her. But Canning argued, seeing nothing else to do, argued with a deepening note of patience in his voice. And when he stopped at length, it was natural that she should argue back: though she really meant this for her last attempt to convey the dim light that was in her.

"I hate to seem so silly and obstinate, Hugo. I--I can't seem to explain it exactly. But I really don't think that waiting would make any difference--in my feeling. And don't you think, if I feel I ... couldn't be happy till I--got this off my mind...."

Again he explained that this feeling was but a passing illusion, here to-day, gone to-morrow.

Carlisle hesitated. But Canning, seeing only silence for his pains, said with a little quickening of his tone:

"Tell me, my dear! Honestly, would such a thought as that--about your happiness--ever have occurred to you if it hadn't been suggested to you by Dr. Vivian?"

Natural as the inquiry was to Canning, it jangled oddly upon Carlisle. She could not understand Hugo's recurrence to this man; it seemed curiously unreasonable, quite unlike him and somehow quite unjust....

"Why, I don't know, Hugo. I--I seem to have had it on my mind a good deal lately. Perhaps he first made me think of it that way--I don't know."

"Don't you think perhaps we might have understood each other a little better all along, if you had talked it over with me before you talked to him about it?"

"Yes, I do now. I didn't seem to think.... It all happened so unexpectedly--I never planned anything at all. And then I thought--I hoped--you would think I was doing right."

"My dear girl, nobody in his senses could possibly think you were doing right, and nobody who cared for you could want you to abandon yourself to the impulses of a moment of nervous hysteria."

He rose and paced the floor, four paces to the room. A handsome and impressive figure of a man he looked, his hands rammed into the pockets of his beautiful blue-flannel coat, his fine brow wrinkled with a responsible frown. He was seven years older than Carlisle, and, in the absence of Mr. Heth (whom neither telephone nor telegraph, prayer nor fasting, had yet been able to reach), he stood as her lawful protector and the man of her family. He must save her from the effects of her own hysterical moment, or nobody would. Clearer and clearer it had grown that he had to do with a distracted creature who, in a state of shock, had somehow passed under the influence of a man of the unscrupulous revivalist type, and upon whom, in her present mood, all reasoning was thrown away. Gentleness and firmness were the notes for dealing with a flare-up. Well, gentleness had been tried in vain....

Carlisle looked at Canning as he paced, in the grip of a heart-sick fear. The same comfortable, homely little room, with tight-closed door; the same evening sunshine filtering in across the faded carpet; the same situation, the same man and woman. But what was this new shape that peeped at her from behind the familiar objects? A delusion and a snare had been her first feeling of perfect unity. But was it conceivable that she and Hugo might _quarrel?_...

That was the one thing that could not be borne; anything to avoid that. She must give him his way, since he would not give her hers. She must agree to put it off till to-morrow, and then to-morrow he would still think she was unreasonable, and so they would put it off again, forever. She thought of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back, but with open eyes which did not cease to question her; of poor Dr. Vivian, even now awaiting her word with trusting eyes which did not question anything; and she saw that to turn back now would be like a physical fracture somehow, like breaking her leg, and that the moment she had said she would, she would have to cry again, and afterwards she would be quite sick. And then she looked at Hugo, who was so manly and sure, who _must_ be right, no matter how she felt now: and so began to nerve herself to speak....

But Canning had a new thought, a new argument, which now became definite. Coming to a halt in front of her, he said in a businesslike sort of way:

"Let's see now. You want to send word to Dr. Vivian this afternoon that he is to tell Colonel Dalhousie that you feel you did his son an injustice. Is that it?"

Checked in her drift toward yielding, Carlisle said that was what she had thought.

"Well, let's imagine what would happen then. I said just now that for you to do this would accomplish nothing, but it would of course raise a cloud of doubt, of which the Colonel would probably make the very most. He would not be so scrupulous about giving you the benefit of the doubt as you feel, at the moment, about giving it to his son. He could make a most unpleasant story of it."

Carlisle sat with lowered eyes, listening to the firm just tones. Very lovely and desirable she looked in a "little" white dress which Hugo had praised once....

"And malice would seize on this story and make it worse and worse the further it travelled. If you stop to think a moment, you will easily see what a sensation the scandalmongers can make out of the materials you ingenuously wish to offer them."

He himself stopped to think; his keen mind flung out little exploring parties over the prospect he hinted at, and they raced back shrieking with vulgar horrors. Surely, surely his chosen bride could never have contemplated this.

"Carlisle, have you reflected that you would be pointed at, whispered about, till the longest day you live?"

She sat motionless, with averted face, and felt that she was slipping from her last mooring. Was it conceivable that Hugo was persuading her to hush it all up again--just because it was _easier?_... She and mamma had done that and thought nothing of it. But, for this moment, at least, it seemed horribly different to have such a thought about Hugo....

She said in a little voice: "But if it's right, I oughtn't to think about consequences, ought I?"

Canning groaned.

"How many times must I tell you that it's not right, that it's preposterous, that you yourself will say so to-morrow!..."

She made no reply, and then Canning, goaded on by his sense of strange impotence, spoke the depths of his secret resentment:

"Really, I should have thought that the views of your future husband would have more weight with you than those of a casual medical missionary, known to be irresponsible and untrustworthy."

Cally gave him a look full of young reproach, rose with nervous purposelessness, and went over to the empty hearthside. Much nearer now peeped that startling shape. She leaned upon the mantel and tried to think: of her duty to Hugo, of how natural it was that he shouldn't understand, of how all this had begun. But unhappily the tone of his last remark seemed to have set other chords quivering within her, and all that she seemed able to think of was that it was cruelly unjust for him to misjudge her so. He had promised to stand by her no matter what happened, and besides Dr. Vivian wasn't irresponsible and untrustworthy. The wild thought knocked that Hugo, now that he knew the truth about her, had ceased to love her....

"Carlisle," said Canning, with more restraint, "isn't it reasonable for me to think that?"

Her reply showed some signs of agitation: "Why, Hugo--of course ... You must know your views have all the weight in the world with me. His have none ..."

He came up to her on the hearthstone, raised her hand, and kissed the little pink palm.

"Never mind--I'm sure that's true.... Now, my dear, we seem unable to understand each other to-day, and trying to do so only throws us farther and farther apart. We both need rest, and time for quiet thought. You must let me decide this point for you. I am going to send word to Dr. Vivian now that you will let him hear from you to-morrow morning."

He released her hand, and turned decisively away. At that moment, the dim hall chimes began to strike six.

"Oh, no, Hugo! Please don't," she broke out, taking a little step after him.... "_Please!_ I don't think I could bear it...."

Canning wheeled instantly, his virile face darkening and flushing.

"You don't?... My views don't seem to matter so tremendously, after all!"

"Ah, Hugo dear! That hurts. How--"

"Tell me, Carlisle, did the idea of telling Colonel Dalhousie, for your happiness, originate with you or with this man?"

Touched once more in her spirit by his singular obsession, she replied, with constraint: "I don't remember, Hugo. Perhaps with him. But it wasn't his saying so that made it true. It is the way I feel ..."

"That brings us back to the beginning again. I have done my best to persuade you that this feeling is an hallucination."

Over and over this ground they went with quickening exchanges, Canning's patience wearing sharper at each circuit, Carlisle growing steadily whiter, but unluckily not more yielding. At last Canning said:

"You are going to trust your whole future life to me, Carlisle. It is hard for me to grasp that you refuse to trust me in this, the first thing I have ever asked of you. Tell me plainly that you mean to have no regard for my wishes."

Carlisle felt ready to scream. How had this miserable misunderstanding arisen? What was it all about? Her mind glanced back, but she could not remember, could not begin to retrace the bewildering steps. Worse yet, she hardly seemed to want to now, for Hugo could not possibly speak to her in this way if he loved her as he had said.

She said in a small, chilled voice: "That's unjust, Hugo. I have every regard--"

"So you say, Carlisle. But nothing else that you say supports it in the slightest."

The girl made no reply. And then Canning struck out:

"My entreaties carry no weight with you, it seems. Well, then I forbid you."

For the first time a tinge of color touched Carlisle's cheek.

"You forbid me?"

He had no sooner said the words than he regretted them. In the beginning nothing of this sort had been within his dreams; had he foreseen the possibility, it is probable that he would have given Carlisle her head at the start without argument. But, once the position taken, he could not bend back his pride to recede. And to him, too, came prodding thoughts, of a bride who was revealing strange sides of her nature, strange unlovelinesses....

"Good God!" broke from him. "With such excessive consideration for _two_ other men, haven't you an atom for the man you are to marry? Hasn't it occurred to you that in a matter seriously involving my life as well as yours, I have a claim, a joint authority with yourself?"

"Occurred to me? It has never been out of my mind."

"Yet you resent it, it seems. I say that I forbid your doing something so full of painful consequences to us both, and you show that you resent it ... Don't you?"

"It's a surprise to me that you would want to use your authority in such a way. But--"

"Then you must have failed to grasp that this act of folly you contemplate, over my entreaty and command, would bring an entirely new element into the situation ..."

Carlisle looked at him without shrinking now. "A new element into the situation? I don't understand. How do you mean?"

"Carlisle! Be frank! You know the effects of all this. Have you the right, when I have sought one girl for my wife, to offer me quite another?"

Pink deepened on the girl's cheek.

"I don't think I have.... Well, Hugo, you are free...."

"_Don't say that!"_ cried Canning, in a voice thick with a chaos of feeling. "It's unendurable ..."

He turned abruptly away.

Of the two, in that disruptive moment, Canning was far the more visibly perturbed. If women think with their emotions, Carlisle's emotions, rebelling at long overstrain, had now run away with her. She was never a docile girl, as her mother well knew. To Canning she had dealt the ultimate unbelievable buffet. Through all her incredible obstinacy, through all his knowledge of the capabilities of her spirit, he had hardly doubted that one hint of betrothal restiveness would be sufficient to bring her to her knees. Now he seemed to wear her words like a frontlet, branded in the mantling scarlet of his brow. The young man felt himself falling through space....

The same familiar little room, but now with a new face. Twilight began to steal into it. On the cheerless hearthside, the lovers stood, and each knew that words once spoken live forever. And looking at each other's faces each knew, and could not change it, that the lover was not uppermost in them now. They were two human beings spent with long arguing, two wills hopelessly at the clash.

In the sudden break-up of the trusted and reliable, Canning's polished style had been torn from him. He owned, laboriously and at some length, that this serious disagreement between them was terribly disturbing to him. How would it be later, if she refused now to show any regard for his urgent requests? Was it unreasonable for him to expect his chosen wife to consider the responsibilities entailed by his name and position, to share his ambition to hold both above the stings of malice and unmerited scandal?

At another moment, both the manner and matter of Hugo's remarks would have touched Carlisle profoundly. But she was beyond thinking of Hugo now. All that her fluttering heart could feel was that when he had promised to stand by her through all time, he had meant only to stand by her as long as she did everything as he told her....

"No, Hugo, it is reasonable. That is what I say. I am unreasonable. I don't seem able to help it to-day."

And Hugo, with the last remnant of his unconquerable incredulities, for the twentieth time mentioned another day. A post-mortem flicker of reargument started: started, but went out, quickly extinguished by the perilous fascination of the personal. Unspoken thoughts pressed in upon them as they circled, lifelessly reiterating. These thoughts grew rapidly louder; and Canning, striving to keep his bitter hostility from his tone, gave voice:

"Of course the truth is--though I am sure you don't realize it yourself--this man has somehow got you under his influence ... A sort of moral hypnosis ... to compel you to do what is against your nature ... and will bring you great harm."

At what conceivable point had the grounds of discussion become so completely metamorphosed?

"No, that isn't true. I'm not doing--"

"I suggest that in your interest ... Otherwise I should be unable to account for the predominant part you have allowed him to play in this."

"And yet, Hugo, he was right in saying that I couldn't be happy if I didn't tell the truth. And you don't understand that even now."

"I fear I've always been dull at these camp-meeting metaphors."

Now they had struck the greased road, and easy was the descent to Avernus. Carlisle said, all weakness gone from her:

"Well, I don't ask you to understand any more. You feel that I'm not the same girl--"

"I didn't say that! I asked ... if you had the right--now--to make yourself a--different girl. By that--"

"I'm afraid I've already made myself a different girl from what you thought. You knew that when mamma told you what I had done...."

Why couldn't he say that he wanted her twenty times over, no matter what she had done? It would have been easy to say that half an hour ago. Canning's reply was: "I've said again and again that you've done nothing. All this malicious scandal cannot touch you unless you yourself wilfully start it."

"You seem to care less about what I am, than about what people might think I am. And yet," she added, her hand upon her heart and her breath coming quicker and quicker, "you wonder that I let somebody else tell me what I am."

The deliberate reference to the revivalist fellow stung Canning like the flick of a glove in his face.

"Dr. Vivian? He has not my disadvantage of laboring to save his affianced's name from everlasting disgrace."

"Perhaps he doesn't find disgrace where you seem to look for it."

"It is cheap to be prodigal with other men's belongings. What is this man to you?"

"Hugo!--Hugo!" broke from her. "I can't bear this!... You must leave me."

"If I go," said Canning, trembling, "I do not return."

"It is what I wish," said Carlisle.

And her other hand came to her heart, to his glittering pledge upon her finger....

Canning stood watching her, paling and purpling. How they had come to this he knew no more than Carlisle; and no more than she could he force his steps backward. In truth, the deeps of him had never so passionately desired her as now, yearning beyond reason or understanding to the untamed spirit. And yet ... What did he know of her, whom he thought he knew so well? She had flirted with a young drunkard, fraternized with a low crank, inextricably involved herself in the scandals of a suicide. Taxed with these things, she was wantonly rebellious, contemptuously indifferent to his wishes. Lovely and wild she stood there. And yet ...

He heard his hoarse voice saying: "Think, Carlisle. You are sure that this is what you wish ..."

"You leave me no alternative."

"Oh, but I have ... I do."

"Not one that I can accept."

"Then you force me to say good-bye."

"Good-bye."

His legs could not have heard the marching-order; he remained rooted where he stood. Ebbings and flowings of color mottled his handsome face.

"One last word ... Is it to come to this? We stand ... at the final parting of the ways. Think ... This is what you wish?"

If he still hoped for impossible reconciliation, or if merely some instinct moved him to put the burden for the breaking upon her, Carlisle did not know. She was past arguing now.

"This is yours."

On the pink palm he had kissed such a little while ago she held out the glorious diamond he had given her in the first radiance of the engagement. Canning saw no way of escaping the offering; he accepted it with a stiff bow, dropped it in the pocket of his coat. But it was a business to which even he quite failed to impart any dignity.

He looked blindly about for his hat and stick, remembered that he had left them outside, turned and faced his love again. Between them passed a long look.

"Then ... this is good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Cally again.

And then Hugo opened the door of papa's study and went away. And in a moment there was the sound of the front door shutting.

Was it over, then? Was the parting of lovers so brief, so final?...

Cally started, as from a trance. She ran out of the study and through the dark library to the drawing-room and the front windows. Just in time, she stood behind the curtains, and caught a last glimpse of Canning's receding back. Brave and dear it looked, departing.

Over and over she said to herself: "He's gone ... Hugo's gone ... He has thrown me over ..."

Gone was the prince of lovers. Calamity fell upon calamity. It would be better to be dead. And suddenly all that was hard and resisting in the girl broke with the taut strain, broke with a poignant bodily throe, and she fell face downward into a great chair, weeping with wild abandon.

Here, within two minutes from the shutting of the door, her mother found her.

* * * * *

So the beginning at the Beach touched its farther end. It touched with the shocks of cataclysm, whose echoes did not soon cease to reverberate. The word of the Lord came to Jack Dalhousie's father, and he would not suffer in silence. Mr. Heth arrived at the House at ten o'clock that night; it was the best he had been able to do, but it was too late for a family reunion by an hour. The two women had fled away to New York, probably on the very same train that bore back Hugo Canning. And behind them Rumor of the triple head had already risen, roaring an astonishment and a proverb.