failed to grasp that this act of folly you
contemplate, over my entreaty and command, would bring an entirely new
element into the situation ..."

Carlisle looked at him without shrinking now. "A new element into the
situation? I don't understand. How do you mean?"

"Carlisle! Be frank! You know the effects of all this. Have you the
right, when I have sought one girl for my wife, to offer me
quite another?"

Pink deepened on the girl's cheek.

"I don't think I have.... Well, Hugo, you are free...."

"_Don't say that!"_ cried Canning, in a voice thick with a chaos of
feeling. "It's unendurable ..."

He turned abruptly away.

Of the two, in that disruptive moment, Canning was far the more visibly
perturbed. If women think with their emotions, Carlisle's emotions,
rebelling at long overstrain, had now run away with her. She was never a
docile girl, as her mother well knew. To Canning she had dealt the
ultimate unbelievable buffet. Through all her incredible obstinacy,
through all his knowledge of the capabilities of her spirit, he had
hardly doubted that one hint of betrothal restiveness would be
sufficient to bring her to her knees. Now he seemed to wear her words
like a frontlet, branded in the mantling scarlet of his brow. The young
man felt himself falling through space....

The same familiar little room, but now with a new face. Twilight began
to steal into it. On the cheerless hearthside, the lovers stood, and
each knew that words once spoken live forever. And looking at each
other's faces each knew, and could not change it, that the lover was not
uppermost in them now. They were two human beings spent with long
arguing, two wills hopelessly at the clash.

In the sudden break-up of the trusted and reliable, Canning's polished
style had been torn from him. He owned, laboriously and at some length,
that this serious disagreement between them was terribly disturbing to
him. How would it be later, if she refused now to show any regard for
his urgent requests? Was it unreasonable for him to expect his chosen
wife to consider the responsibilities entailed by his name and position,
to share his ambition to hold both above the stings of malice and
unmerited scandal?

At another moment, both the manner and matter of Hugo's remarks would
have touched Carlisle profoundly. But she was beyond thinking of Hugo
now. All that her fluttering heart could feel was that when he had
promised to stand by her through all time