ce. I'll go bail to be back here
to-morrow at five o'clock."

"Oh!... I--the message I got--"

"I put that in only to make absolutely sure of getting you.... Growing
cunning, you see."

"Oh--I didn't understand," said Cally, colorlessly, continuing to look
down at her pink fingernails.

She seemed to think of nothing further to say, but that appeared to make
no great difference. Hugo moved nearer. If he had remembered his thought
about her being too sure of him, it may be that the sight of her had
rushed his senses, as it had often done before.

"You were so unlike your natural dear self this afternoon," he said, on
the wooing note; and suddenly he had possessed himself of both her
hands. "To-night--and we've only such a little time--you are going to
make it all up to me ... Aren't you?"

Finding herself captured, the girl hastily raised eyes dark with
trouble, looking at her lover for the first time. And so looking, she
took her hands from his grasp with a hastiness which might have been a
little rasping to a morbidly sensitive man.

"Don't!--please don't! I--don't like to be touched.... I--I can only act
as I feel, Hugo."

She turned away hurriedly, passed him and went over to the fireplace.
There she stood quite silent before the dull red glow, locking and
unlocking her slim fingers, and within her a spreading coldness.

Behind her she heard the thundering feet.

"I hoped, you see," said Hugo's voice, disappointed, but hardly
chagrined, "that you would be feeling a little more--well, like your own
natural self, after your rest ... Particularly as all our plans for
these two days have been so upset."

She replied, after a pause, in a noticeably constrained voice: "I
haven't said that I don't feel my natural self. That's only your--your
interpretation of what you don't like.... I--that seems to be just the
trouble between us."

"Now, now!--my _dear_ Cally!" said Hugo, soothing, if somewhat wearied
to see still another conversation drifting toward the argumentative.
"There's no trouble between us at all. I, for one, have put our little
disagreement to-day out of my head entirely. I do feel that there's not
much happiness in these so-called modernisms, but don't let's spoil our
few minutes.... Why, Carlisle!" said Hugo, in another voice. "Why,
what's the matter?"

She had astonished him by suddenly laying her arm upon the mantel, and
burying her face in the curve of it. So close Canning stood now that he