time. The tiny
crack in their perfect understanding yawned suddenly wider. And
distressed, and pitifully conscious that it was all her fault, Cally
flung herself instinctively across the breach. Her gaze still lowered,
she took Hugo's hand and pressed it to her smooth cheek: an endearing
thing, and done with a muteness more touching than any speech.

Canning was moved. She was not demonstrative by habit. He kissed the
cheek, for once almost as if she were a child. And he said that of
course she would have said so that night, except that she hadn't really
been certain of anything of the sort then. That feeling came now, born
of excessive sympathy and nervous shock. The mistake would be to accept
these feelings for her final judgment on such a very complicated and
serious matter.

So he was arguing the case for postponement of discussion once more,
with excellent good sense and an even more moving insistence....

If he had now but ceased his argument, turned, gathered her to his arms,
and adjured her by his overflowing love to entrust herself to him, it is
possible that within two minutes he might have had her weeping on his
breast, in complete surrender. Body and soul, she was sore with much
pounding: more than an hour ago, she needed sympathy and comfort now,
loverly occupation of the desolating lonely places within her. But
Canning argued, seeing nothing else to do, argued with a deepening note
of patience in his voice. And when he stopped at length, it was natural
that she should argue back: though she really meant this for her last
attempt to convey the dim light that was in her.

"I hate to seem so silly and obstinate, Hugo. I--I can't seem to explain
it exactly. But I really don't think that waiting would make any
difference--in my feeling. And don't you think, if I feel I ... couldn't
be happy till I--got this off my mind...."

Again he explained that this feeling was but a passing illusion, here
to-day, gone to-morrow.

Carlisle hesitated. But Canning, seeing only silence for his pains, said
with a little quickening of his tone:

"Tell me, my dear! Honestly, would such a thought as that--about your
happiness--ever have occurred to you if it hadn't been suggested to you
by Dr. Vivian?"

Natural as the inquiry was to Canning, it jangled oddly upon Carlisle.
She could not understand Hugo's recurrence to this man; it seemed
curiously unreasonable, quite unlike him and somehow quite unjust....

"Why, I don