the hall, through which she had come a little while
before, the broken young man paused. His face was stony gray, touched
with livid streaks. Standing, he looked unseeingly about the room,
around and over her; then at last at her. It had seemed to be his
intention to say something, to claim the woman's privilege of the last
word. But now, when the moment arrived, there came no words.

For once Hugo must be indifferent to anti-climax, must fail to leave a
lady's presence with an air. Standing and looking, he suddenly flung out
one arm in a wild, curious gesture; and on that he opened the door,
very quickly.

The door shut again, quietly enough. And that was all. The beginning at
the Beach had touched an end indeed. Hugo was gone. His feet would
thunder this way no more.

* * * * *

But the latter end of these things was not yet. One doesn't, of course,
kick out of one's groove for nothing.

Cally, returning after a time to her own room, did not go at once to
bed, much as she would have liked to do that. She sat up, fully dressed,
by a dying fire, waiting for what must come. She waited till quarter to
eleven, so long did the dinner-guests linger downstairs. But it came at
last, just as she had known it would: on gliding heels, not knocking,
beaming just at first....

The interview lasted till hard upon midnight. When it ended, both women
were in tears. Cally retired to a fitful rest. At nine o'clock next
morning, papa telephoned for Dr. Halstead, who came and found
temperature, and prescribed a pale-green medicine, which was to be
shaken well before using. The positive command was that the patient
should not get out of bed that day.

And Cally did not get up that day, or the next, or the next. She lay
abed, pale and uncommunicative, denying herself even to Mattie Allen,
but less easily shutting herself from the operations of her mind.

And at night, when the troubled brain slips all control, she dreamed
continually of horrors. Horrors in which neither Hugo nor mamma had
part: of giant machines crashing through floors upon screaming girls, of
great crowded buildings falling down with frightful uproars and bedlam
shrieks. Through these phantasms the tall figure of Colonel Dalhousie
perpetually moved, smiling softly. But when Cally met the doctor of the
Dabney House in her dreams, the trust was gone from his eyes.

XXXI

Second Cataclysm in the House; of the Dark Cl