of coals of fire, the strange,
new shame of being trusted, but untrustworthy. So there had entered her
a guilty disquiet: and afterwards, however she had struggled, however
Hugo's protecting strength had compassed her about, that novel sense had
kept growing through the months, steadily gathering momentum....

All this was quite clear to her now. Nothing had made her tell the truth
about Jack Dalhousie except that one man had expected her to. Of all
that had happened to her, here was the beating heart.

No one in her life had met her on this ground before. She had been
expected to be a charming woman if she could, a woman as ornamental as
possible. He only had expected her to be a good woman; and something in
her had found the strange call irresistible. He, by the trusting eyes he
had, had put her upon her honor; not her "woman's honor," but her honor;
and she, who had never had an honor before, had grown one, all for him.
As long as she could remember, men had paid tribute to her in all the
ways of men with maids. But he alone had put any trust in her as a free
and moral being; and she had bent the high heavens and all but broken
her mother's heart that he should not have trusted her in vain.

She was far, far from being a good woman. Hugo certainly was anything
but a bad man. Yet, when all was said, it was her expanding desire to be
good that Hugo had stood against. And the collision had destroyed him.

Was this the great mystery then, the world's secret? Was this the wish
that each human being had, planted away in the deeps, overlaid and
choked, forgotten, yet charged with omnipotence: _the wish to be good_?
Were they all waiting for somebody to pass by, sounding the secret call,
to drop all and follow?...

Oh, wonder, wonder, that the simple faith of one good man should have
power to overthrow princes and powers!...

The car rolled swiftly, its windows open to the sunny day. All about
were the sights and noises of city streets. But the flying panorama
brought no distraction: out there, men walked as trees. There blew a
light autumn wind, gently kicking at Cally's veil, waving tendrils of
fine hair about her face. Unaware, suffering had laid its touch upon
her; this face was lovely with a deeper meaning: and yet the young
girl's April-freshness clung to her still. She was in the first
exquisite bloom of her womanhood. And she sat very still in the rolling
car, full of a breathless wonder at the miracle of life.