ight. And back into her smooth young cheek trickled
that color so loved by her betrothed, who had not bought the Settlement
House after all....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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