Chapter XXVII

Of one of the Triumphs of Cally's Life, and the Tête-à-tête
following, which vaguely depresses her; of the Little
Work-Girl who brought the Note that Sunday, oddly remet at
Gentlemen's Furnishings.

Canning was absent more than two weeks. His attorney's business had brought entanglements before and behind; he was by no means a free man even now. Not all the powers of government could have detained him, we may be sure, had he considered such detention hurtful to the dearest matter in the world. But Canning, in the peculiar circumstances, had concluded that a period of meditation was well, that absence made the heart grow fonder; and, if human calculations are worth anything at all, his conclusions were amply justified. Through the days of their separation his chosen had constantly felt upon her the weight of that vast intangible pressure which pins each mortal of us, except the strong, to his own predestined groove. Chiefly mamma, but many other things, too, had been pressing Cally steadily from thoughts of useful deeds, of which she knew so little, toward thoughts of Mrs. Hugo Canning, of which she knew so much. For sixteen days, time and circumstance had played straight into her lover's hands....

Hugo paused to be welcomed, on his way from the train, Olympian of mien, and beautifully dressed, he looked indeed exactly the sort of man who would shortly have use for the contents of the little velvet box, at this moment reposing snugly in his waistcoat pocket. Still, he had turned up the collar of his big travelling-coat, and a slight hoarseness indicated that the throat trouble which had sent him south last year had returned with the first frost.

"I can draw on it for another six months' furlough," said he, meeting Cally's eyes with gay meaning, "just as soon as I have need for such a thing."

He had come this time as the open gallant, Lochinvar in all men's sight. If his lady desired ceremonies all in order, in sooth she should have them. For the first week of his absence, he had strategically allowed himself to be lost in silence. And then the postman and expressman had suddenly begun to bring reminders of him, letters, bon-bons, books even, flowers every day, and every day a different sort. Cally greeted him wearing out-of-season violets from his own florist. And by telegraph to the faithful Willie Kerr, the gifted wooer had arranged a little dinner for his first evening, to give his official courtship a background which in other days it had sometimes lacked....

"To my mind it's a bore," said he, as they parted. "Please expect to give me a little time of my own afterwards."

The occasion was no bore to Carlisle. She recognized it as one of the triumphs of her life. The material dinner could of course be no better than the New Arlington could make it; but then the New Arlington was a hotel which supercilious tourists always mentioned with pleased surprise in their letters home; that is, if they had any homes and ever thought of writing to them. And Cousin Willie Kerr, having got "off" at three-thirty with _carte blanche _for the arrangements, that night proved that the world of Epicurus had lost an artist when he had turned his talents to commerce. But of course Carlisle's triumph lay not in glowing candle-shades or masses of red and pink roses, not in delicate viands or vintages, however costly. She read her brilliance in the eyes and bearing of Hugo Canning's guests.

They sat down twelve at table. Beside Carlisle's own little coterie, there were present Mr. and Mrs. Allison Payne, who, before they had retired to the country to bring up their children, had been conspicuous in that little old-school set which included Mrs. Berkeley Page: simple-mannered, agreeable people these were, who were always very pleasant when you met them, but whom you never really seemed to know any better. And Mrs. Payne, who was Hugo's first cousin, had kissed Carlisle when they met in the tiring-room, and hoped very prettily that they were going to be friends. Still more open was the gratulation of the somewhat less exclusive. Papa had been detained by business, and J. Forsythe Avery, having been asked at the last moment to fill his place, had broken up another dinner-table to be seen at Canning's. Unquestionably he must have recognized a doughty rival, but Carlisle, who sat next him, easily saw how high she had shot up in his pink imagination. As for dear Mats Allen, her late funeral note had quite vanished in loving rapture, with just that undercurrent of honest envy so dear to the heart of woman.

"He's simply mad about you, Cally! The way he looked and looked at you!... And he never even listened to poor little me, chatting away beside him, and frightened out of my wits all the time, he's so lordly."

This was when dinner was over, and the guests were strolling from the little dining-room for coffee in the winter garden. Cally smiled. She had observed that most of her best friend's time had gone, not to chatting to Hugo, but to lavishing her delicious ignorance and working her telling optic system on J. Forsythe Avery, who was so evidently now to be released for general circulation....

Mats seized the moment to inquire, simply, whether she or Evey was to be maid of honor; and Cally then laughed merrily.

"Perhaps we shall have it done by a justice of the peace.... Mats, you're the greatest little romancer I ever saw. How you got it into your pretty noddle that Mr. Canning has the faintest interest in me I can't imagine...."

Willie Kerr, too, paid his tribute, having momentarily withdrawn himself from mamma, whose loyal escort he was once more. Willie was a shade balder than last year, when he had played his great part in Cally's life and then sunk below her horizon; a shade more rotund; a shade rosier in the face. But he was as genial as ever, being well lined now with a menu to his own taste and an exceptionally good champagne.

"Knew he'd come back, Carlisle," said Willie, standing before a florid oil-painting he had lured her into a parlor to look at. "Said to Eva Payne in September--no, August, one Sunday it was--'Canning'll be back soon as she gets home,' s'I. 'Don't know what happened, that trouble in the spring. Don't want to know--none of my business. But mark my words, Eva Payne,' s'I, 'Hugo Canning'll be back.' Fact," said Willie, grinning cordially. "Funny how I knew. And don't forget, Carlisle, m'dear, 'twas your Uncle Cosmo did it all! Hey? Remember that tea in my apartments? Always keep a spare room ready for Uncle Cosmo, and, by gad, I'll come and spend my summers with you."

And later, Eva Payne, the once far unattainable, asked Mrs. Heth and her daughter for luncheon on Friday--"with a few of our friends." Mamma received the invitation like an accolade. Truly that ten thousand dollars might well have remained in bank, subject to personal check....

The little dinner, with its air of everything being all settled, was a huge success; a bit too huge to Hugo's way of thinking. It was eleven o'clock before he really had a word with Carlisle.

"It began to look like a house-party," said he....

They were alone now in the drawing-room at home, a room whose dim beautiful lights made it look always at its best at night. Mamma had just gone up. Cally stood in front of a small plaque-mirror; she had taken off her wraps, and was now fluffing up her fine ash-gold hair where the scarf over her head had pressed it down. The pose, with upraised arms, was an alluring one; she was lithe, with a charming figure. And she still looked very young, as fresh as a rose, as new as spring and first love.

"Cally," said Canning, behind her--"I've fallen in love with your little name, you see, and I'm always going to call you by it after this--Cally, did I ever mention to you that you're the prettiest girl I ever saw. Only pretty is not the word...."

Cally laughed at her reflection in the glass.

"You could never have fallen in love with me--or my name--unless you'd thought so.... Could you?"

"I've never asked myself. But I could fall in love with everything else about you, too, because I've gone and done it."

"I wonder ... Anyhow none of the other things matter much, do they? I can't imagine your falling in love with a hideosity, no matter how worth loving she might be."

"Under the circumstances, why bother to try?"

"It's no bother, and it's intensely interesting...."

Canning advanced a step. Carlisle's gaze moved a little and encountered his in the glass. In his eyes lay his whole opinion of one half the human world....

"_Don't_ look at me in that proprietary way...."

Canning laughed softly. He was fully prepared for coquetry.

"Proprietary! It's the last way, my dear, I should venture to look at _you_."

She had allowed him to linger, certainly with no blindness as to what he desired to say to her. She had stood there with no ignorance that the moment was favorable. But now something seemed to have gone amiss, and she turned suddenly, frustrating whatever loverly intention he may have had.

Carlisle sat down in a circular brocaded chair, in which gold back and gold arms were one; a sufficiently decorative background for her shining _décolleté_. Hugo, standing and fingering his white tie, looked down at her with no loss of confidence in his handsome eyes.

"You've changed somehow," said he. "I haven't quite placed it yet. Still, I can feel it there."

"I'm older, my friend, years older than when you used to know me. And then I'm suffering from a serious bereavement, too. I've lost my good opinion of myself."

"Perhaps I can be of some help in restoring it to you."

"That is the question.... Besides ageing immensely, I'm also getting frightfully modern, you see...."

And pursuing this latter thought a little, she presently replied to him:

"Oh, no--sociology, not politics.... I've been thinking for some time of inspecting the Works, to see if it needed repairs. How horrid of you to laugh! Don't you think a woman should take some interest in how the money is made that she lives on?..."

She said this smiling, in the lightest way imaginable. Small wonder if Hugo didn't guess that she had thought twenty times in two weeks of actually doing this thing she spoke of. Still less if it never occurred to him that he here confronted again the footprint of the condemned revivalist fellow, lately become his beloved's sworn friend....

"Have you asked your father that question yet?"

"I thought I'd better get the advice of a prominent lawyer first. Tell me what you think?"

"The point would early arise as to how you would know, on visiting the Works, whether or not it needed repairs. You've inspected many factories, of course?"

"That's true!--I know nothing in the world about it. Of course not!"

She spoke with a sort of eagerness; but went on presently in another tone: "Do you know, I really don't know anything ...? I've never thought of it specially before, but all at once I'm constantly being impressed with my ignorance...."

And Hugo, with all his accomplishment and skill, could not thenceforward bring the conversation back where it belonged. Only the time and the place were his to-night, it seemed....

"I," said the girl, "belong to the useless classes. I don't pay my way. I'm a social deadbeat. So Mr. Pond told me the other night. You must meet Mr. Pond, Hugo, the Director of the Settlement you gave all that money to last year. He can be as horrid as anybody on earth, but is really nice in a rude interesting way. He's packed full of quarrelsome ideas. You know, he doesn't believe in giving money to the poor under any circumstances. Harmful temporizing, he calls it ..." A rather wide sweep here gave Mr. Pond's views on poor relief in detail ... "Are you listening, Hugo? This information is being given for your benefit. And oh, he wants me to learn millinery from Mme. Smythe (Jennie T. Smith, _née_) and help him start a class in hat-trimming, to train girls for shop assistants. Or perhaps I'll learn cooking instead...."

"He seems to have aired his views to you pretty thoroughly," said Canning, dryly.

He rose to go, a little later, rather amused by the skill with which he had been held off. He admired the piquancy of spirit with which she took advantage of the altered positions. For him tameness was the great disillusionizer; his undefined ideal was a woman who must be won anew every day. Still, he had been rubbed a little the wrong way by the new-woman catch-phrases she had picked up somewhere, by the faintly argumentative note in her conversation....

"Plans for to-morrow!... By the way," said Cally, glancing away to conceal a smile as she rose, "how long shall you be in town?"

"Just as long, Miss Heth, as my business here makes necessary."

"What can I say to that?... If I say I hope you won't be with us long, it sounds quite rude. And if I say I hope it will be very, very long ..."

But he would not follow that lead now. His instinct, her expression warned him; and he was fully resolved that when he spoke again, it would be to land this "wild sweet thing" fluttering safe in his net. However, his laugh was not quite natural.

"I may," said he, "get a telegram calling me off, at almost any minute. Let every one be kind to the stranger within the gates. May I nominate myself for luncheon?"

He was unanimously elected. This time, at parting, he did not touch his former betrothed's hand. His bow was accompanied by a slightly ironic smile; it seemed to say: "Since you prefer it this way, my dear ... But really--what's the use?"

Cally, snapping out the lights, felt vaguely depressed.

* * * * *

Next day, half an hour after luncheon, Hugo said to the greatest admirer he had on earth:

"Where did Carlisle get the notion that she wanted to go in for Settlement work?"

Mrs. Heth's reply, delivered with a beam, was masterly in its way.

"Why, my dear Hugo! Don't you know the sorry little makeshifts women go to, waiting for love to come to them?"

Hugo's comment intimated that he had fancied it was something of the sort. He then went out, to his future mother-in-law's regret; she often wondered how it was that she and Hugo had so few good talks.

Her two young people, as the good lady loved to call them once more, had separated almost from the table, but soon to re-meet. Carlisle, having spent "the morning" shopping,--that is from twelve o'clock to one-fifteen,--had departed to finish her commissions. Canning had a regretted engagement with Allison Payne, downtown, to advise Mr. Payne touching some of his investments. But he was to pick Carlisle up at Morland's establishment at four o'clock, with the car he had hired by the week; and the remainder of the afternoon would belong to him alone. He was to have the evening, too, at the House, following a large dinner-party of the elders arranged by Mrs. Heth before she knew the date of his return. And these two occasions, the lover resolved, should suffice his need....

Cally had her hour in the shops, enjoying herself considerably. Her purchases this afternoon were partly utilitarian, it was true, concerned with Mrs. Heth's annual box to her poor Thompson kin in Prince William County. But she took more than one little flyer on her own account. Nothing more had Cally said to her father as to giving him back the fifteen hundred dollars, dividend on her stock. Consequently she bristled with money nowadays, and had been splurging largely on highly desirable little "extras." And mamma, usually quite strict in her accounts, thought of trousseaux, and only smiled at these extravagances.

Cally moved in her destined orbit. From shop to shop, she pleasurably pursued the material. Nevertheless, she cogitated problems as she bought; chiefly with reference to Hugo, and the two or three hours' _tête-à-tête_ that waited just ahead.... At just what point should the needs of discipline be regarded as satisfied? That was the question, as she had remarked last night.

At Baird & Himmel's these knotty reflections were interrupted for a space. In this spreading mart Cally chanced to fall in with an acquaintance.

Baird & Himmel's was the great popular department store of the town, just now rapidly flowing over its whole block, and building all around the usual drug-store which declined to sell. Here rich and poor rubbed elbows with something like that human equality so lauded by Mr. V.V. and others. And here Cally had pushed her way to Gentlemen's Furnishings, her purpose being to buy two shirts for James Thompson, Jr., neck size 13, and not to cost over one dollar each, as mamma had duly noted on the memorandum.

It was ten minutes to four o'clock, as a glance at her watch now showed. Cally swung a little on her circular seat, and encountered the full stare of a girl of the lower orders, seated next her. Her own glance, which had been casual, suddenly became intent: the girl's face, an unusual one in its way, touched a chord somewhere. In a second Cally remembered the little factory hand who had brought her the note from Dr. Vivian, that fateful Sunday afternoon in May ...

The little creature bobbed her head at her, with the beginnings of an eager smile, which did not change her wide fixed stare.

"Good evenin', ma'am--Miss Heth."

"Good afternoon ..."

No more talk there had been about the Works at home, other than as to papa's plan to have Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill to dinner, to talk over matters in a friendly way. But if Cally had desired a sign of how much this subject had been on her mind since her talk with Vivian she could have found it in the mingling sensations that rose in her now. For this little apparition at her elbow--so she had learned incidentally through Hen Cooney, who knew everything--was the connecting link in the whole argument. Here, on the next seat, sat that "strong necessity" which had impelled Vivian to attack Mr. Heth in the papers.

"I remember you," said Carlisle, slowly. "I understood from Miss Cooney that you had been very sick. You don't look sick--especially."

"I been away, ma'am. On a Trip," explained the pale operative with a kind of eagerness. "Dr. Vivian he sent me off to Atlantic City, in New Jersey, and then to a hotel in the Adriondacts. I conv'lessed, ma'am, y'know?"

"I see. Now you are going back to the Works, I suppose?"

It was not a question easy to answer with delicacy, to answer and avoid all risk of hurting a lady's feelings. How explain that the Works were expressly prohibited by doctor's orders, though you yourself knew that you ought to go back? How tell of special lessons at a Writing Desk every night, such as prepared people to be Authors, when anybody could see by looking at you that you were only a work-girl, and you yourself felt that it was all wrong someway?...

Kern spoke timidly, though her wide eyes did not falter.

"Well--not just to-reckly, ma'am. The plan was, till I got my strength back, that I might lay off a little and go--go to School."

"I see."

The tone was cool, and the girl added with a little gasp:

"And then go back to bunchin' again,--yes, ma'am. It's--it's my trade...."

Many feelings moved in Cally, and it might be that the best of them were not uppermost. Perhaps the glittering material possessed her blood, even more than of habit. Perhaps it was only her instinct warning her to take her stand now with her father, where was safety and her ordered course. Or at least it was hardly a pure impulse of generosity that made her open the plump little gold bag at her side, and produce a bill with a yellow back.

"I'm very sorry you've been ill," she said, in her pretty modulated voice. "As you probably feel that you got your illness in the Works, I should like you to take this. Please consider it as coming from my father--and buy yourself something--"

All the blood in the little creature's body seemed to rush headlong to her face. She shrank away as from something more painful than a blow. But all that she said was:

"_Oh!... Ma'am!_"

It was Miss Heth's turn to show a red flag in her cheek.

"You don't want it?"

"I--why ma'am,--I _couldn't_ ..."

"As you like, of course."

She dropped the spurned gift back into her bag, with studied leisureliness, and rose at once, though she had made no purchase. Standing, she made a slight inclination of her prettily-set head. And then Miss Heth was walking away through the crowded aisle with a somewhat proud bearing and a very silken swish.

And Kern Garland swung round on her seat at Gentlemen's Furnishings, staring wide-eyed after her, her finger at her lip ...

No fairy coming-true here, indeed, of that gorgeous fever-dream in which Miss Heth with lovely courtesy informed Miss Garland that she had been a lady all the time. But consider the Dream-Maker's difficulties with such far-flown fancies as this: difficulties the more perplexing in a world where men's opinions differ, and some do say that she in the finest skirt is not always the finest lady ...

Yet times change, and we with them. It is a beautiful thing to believe in fairies. In the valley, men have met angels. Kern sat staring at Miss Heth's retreating back: and lo, a miracle. When the lovely lady had gone perhaps ten steps down the aisle, her pace seemed to slacken all at once, and she suddenly glanced back over her shoulder. And then--oh, wonder of wonders!--Miss Heth stopped, turned around, and came swishing straight back to the seat beside Kern Garland.

"That was silly of me," said the pretty voice. "You were quite right not to take it if you didn't want it ..."

Kern desired to cry. But that would be very ridiculous, in a store, and doubtless annoying to Others. So the little girl began to wink hard, while staring fixedly at a given point. You could often pass it off that way, and nobody a whit the wiser.

"I've happened to have the Works on my mind a little of late," added Carlisle, almost as if in apology. "But I--I'm really glad to see you again."

She perceived the signs of agitation in the little work-girl, and attributing it all to the twenty-dollar bill, saw that she must pave the way to a conversation. And conversation, now that the ice was broken, she eagerly desired, fascinated by the thought that this girl knew at first-hand everything about the Works.

"Let me see--your name is Corinne, isn't it?"

Kern's eyes, wider than ever, shot back to the lady's face. A new wonder here!--Miss Heth said it just like in the Dream: _Co-rinne_.

"Yes, ma'am," said Co-rinne, with a little gulp and a sniff.

"And what are you doing at the Men's Furnishing counter, Corinne?" said Carlisle, pleasantly but quite at random. "Buying a present for Mr. V.V., I suppose?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Having taken Carlisle completely aback, she hesitated and then added timidly:

"Only a fulldress-shirt protector--for his birthday, y' know?... All his sick give him little presents now'n then, ma'am, find out his sizes and all. You know how he is, spending all his money on them, and never thinking about himself, and giving away the clo'es off his back."

"Yes, I know.... Find out his sizes?"

"Yes, ma'am. Like, say, 'Why, Mr.--why, Dr. Vivian, what small feet you got, sir, for a gempman!' And he'll say, like, 'I don't call six and a half C so small!' Yes, ma'am--just as innocent."

A block and a half away, Hugo Canning's car whirled to a standstill, and Hugo sat gazing at the select door of Morland's. In Baird & Himmel's vast commonwealth, Kern Garland sat beside Miss Carlisle Heth at Gentlemen's Furnishings, and could not look at the lady's lovely clothes since her eyes could not bear to leave the yet lovelier face. Kern had not confided the secret of the protector without a turning of her heart, but now at least the thrill in her rose above that.... She and Mr. V.V.'s beautiful lady, side by side.... It was nearly as good as the velvet settee in the Dream--only for the founting, and the boy with the pink lamp on his head, and Mr. V.V....

An extremely full-busted Saleslady, with snapping black eyes, deposited a lean bundle and a ten-cent piece before the work-girl, oddly murmured something that sounded like 'Look who's ear,' and then said proudly to Carlisle:

"What did you wish 'm?"

"Nothing just now, thank you."

The Saleslady gave her a glance of intense disapproval, pushed down her generous waist-line, arrogantly patted a coal-black transformation, and wheeled with open indignation.

"That's nice," said Carlisle, to the factory-girl. "Then the presents come as a surprise to him."

"Surprise--no, ma'am. He don't never know. Take the tags off 'n 'em, and slip 'em in his drawer, and he'll put 'em on and never notice nor suspicion, shirts and such. It's like he thought raiment was brought him by the crows,--like in the Bible, ma'am, y' know?"

There was a brief silence. Carlisle's sheltered life had not too often touched the simple annals of the poor. She seemed to get a picture....

The little work-girl's face was not coarse, strangely enough, or even common-looking; it was pleasing in an odd, elfin way. Her white dress and black jacket were in good taste for her station, without vulgarity. Such details Carlisle's feminine eye soon gathered in. The touch she missed was that that cheap dress was an exact copy of one she herself had worn one Sunday afternoon in May, as near as Kern Garland could remember it.

"How long were you at the Works?" said the lady suddenly.

"At the Works? More'n three years, ma'am."

There was another silence amid the bustle of the people's emporium.

"Tell me," said Carlisle, with some effort, "do you--did you--looking at it from a worker's point of view--find it such a very bad place to work?"

"Oh, _no_, ma'am!" said Kern. "Bad--oh, no! It's--it's fine!"

Carlisle's gaze became wider than the little girl's own. "But--Mr. V.V. says it's a terrible place...."

"It's only the beautiful way he talks," said Kern, eagerly. "I mean, he's so, so sorry for the poor.... But lor, ma'am, we know how rich is rich, and poor poor, and so it must always be this side o' the pearly gates--"

She stopped short; and then added shyly, with a kind of anxiousness in her wide dark gaze: "An expression, ma'am--for Heaven. I--I just learned it."

The lady's look was absent. "Oh!... Where did you learn that?"

"Off Sadie Whirtle, ma'am--a friend of mine." The girl hesitated, and then said: "That's her now."

And she pointed a small finger at the enormous snapping Saleslady, who stood glowering and patting her transformation at another customer ten feet away.

But Carlisle did not follow the finger, and so missed the sight of Miss Whirtle. Her rising relief had been penetrated by a doubt, not a new one ... Would her friend Vivian have committed himself to the articles for only a foolish sentimentalism which the poor themselves repudiated?...

"But tell me frankly, Corinne, for I want to know," said she--"I know working must be hard in any case--but do the girls at the Works consider it a--a reasonably nice place?"

Kern knew nothing of the articles, of any situation: and at that _Co-rinne_, her heart ran to water within her. She would have said anything for that.

"Oh, ma'am, all say it's the nicest place to work in town. Yes, ma'am ... And some of 'em has rich fathers and needn't work at all anywhere, but they just go on and work at the Works, yes, ma'am, because they druther ..."

That, by a little, drew the long-bow too hard. Cally saw that the small three-years' buncher, through politeness or otherwise, was speaking without reference to the truth. And hard upon that she had another thought, striking down the impulse to cross-examine further. What an undignified, what a cowardly way, to try to find things out! What a baby she was, to be sure!... V. Vivian knew about the Works, though it was certainly no affair of his. This frail girl, who did look rather sick now that you stopped and looked at her, knew all about it. Only she, her father's daughter, knew nothing, wrapped in her layers of pretty pink wool ...

The lady came abruptly to her feet.

"I'm glad to hear it," said she ... "But I 'm afraid I must go on now. Some one is waiting for me outside."

"Oh!--yes, ma'am!"

Kern had risen with her, though she had not learned that from the Netiquette. Much it would have amazed her to know that the heavenly visitor was regarding her with a flickering conviction of inferiority....

"Good-bye, then. I hope you'll soon get your strength back again.... And I'm very glad I saw you."

And then there was her hand held out; not lady to lady, of course, but still her lady's hand. Poor Kern, with her exaltation and her pangs, felt ready to go down on one knee to take it.

"Oh, ma'am!" she stammered. "I'm the glad one ..."

Miss Heth smiled--oh, so sweet, almost like in the Dream--and then it was all over, and she was walking away, with the loveliest rustle ever was. And Kern stood lost in the thronging aisle, staring at the point where she had disappeared and giving little pinches to her thin arm--just to make certain-sure, y' know ...

This till the voice of Miss Whirtle spoke in her ear:

"Say, Kurrin, I like that! Whyn't you ask me to shake hands with your swell dame friend?"

And Miss Heth, out in the crowded street, was heading toward Morland's with an adventurous resolution in her mind.

It had needed but a touch to make up her mind here, whether she realized it or not; and this touch the girl Corinne had given her. Now, too, impulse met convenient opportunity. For two weeks she had been thinking that if she _did_ ever happen to go to the Works, she would make a point of going in some offhand, incidental sort of way, thus proving to herself and the public that she had not the slightest responsibility for whatever might be going on there. (How could she possibly have, no matter what Mr. V.V. thought, with his exaggerated sympathies for the poor?) Now here was Hugo waiting, perfectly fitted, to her need. What could be more natural and incidental than this? She would simply be showing her father's factory to her friend, Mr. Canning....

And perhaps Cally had an even deeper feeling of Mr. Canning's admirable suitability in this connection. Somewhere just above the line of consciousness, did there not lie the subtle thought that, if what she saw at the Works _should_ have power to work dangerously on her own sympathies, Hugo, with his strong worldly sense, his material perfection, his whole splendid embodiment of the victorious-class ideal, would be just the corrective she needed to keep her safe and sane?...

* * * * *

When she was seated in the car beside him, and he was tucking the robe around her, Cally inquired with a deceptive air of indifference:

"You don't care particularly where we go, do you, Hugo?"

"The point seems of no importance whatever, now that I've got you."

"Then," said she, smiling, "I shall take you first to the Heth Cheroot Works."

Canning's face, which had been buoyant from the moment his eyes discovered her in the crowd, betrayed surprise and strong disapproval. That, surely, would give his afternoon a slant different from his plannings....

"I bar the Works. I feel all ways but sociological to-day. Let's go to the country."

"Afterwards," said she, with the same lightness, clear proof of the casual nature of the proposed excursion. "We'll simply pop in for a minute or two, to see what it looks like--"

"But you can't tell what it looks like, even--"

"Well, at least I'll have seen it. Do give me my way about this. _You'll_ enjoy it ..."

And leaning forward on that, she said to his hired driver: "Take us to Seventeenth and Canal Streets."

The shadow of disapprobation did not lift from Hugo's face.

"I had no idea," he said, boredly and somewhat stiffly, "that you took your new-thought so seriously."

Cally laughed brightly. "But then you never think women are serious, Hugo."

It was on the tip of her tongue to add: "Until it's too late." But she held that back, as being too pointedly reminiscent.