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 th