the man's strange, stern words to
her: "You can't be happy now, till you let the truth be known."

All at once it seemed almost as if there were some one in the room with
her. She looked around hastily: but of course there was no one. She
became very much frightened....

There came a knock on the door, and a voice:

"Genaman in the parlor to see you, Miss Cyahlile. Mist' Avery."

"I can't come down."

"Ma'am?"

"Say I'm not well and am lying down."

In the hall below, the parlormaid Annie encountered Mrs. Heth, waked
from her nap by the two rings at the bell. Mrs. Heth ascended to
Carlisle's room and rattled the knob.

"Cally?... Why, your door's locked!"

The door opened, and Carlisle confronted her mother with a white
tremulous face.

"What's the matter?" said Mrs. Heth, gliding in with an expression of
maternal solicitude. "Annie said you weren't well and were lying down."

"I'm not well ... Mamma, let's go to New York to-morrow."

"Go _to-morrow!_... Why, _what's_ the matter?"

"Nothing. Only I--I'm so tired of being at home."

Then her strained stiffness broke abruptly, and she flung her arms
around her mother's neck with an hysterical abandon by no means
characteristic.

"Oh, I can't stand it here another day. _I_ can't! Please, please,
mamma! It must be not having Hugo. I can't explain--it's just the way I
feel. I'm so miserable here, I could die. _Please_, mamma!..."

Mrs. Heth, detecting with alarm the incipiences of a dangerous flare-up,
said with startling gentleness:

"There, there, dear! Mamma will arrange it as you wish."

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 Cafe 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 again