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 w