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 could have taken her in his arms without moving; but some quality in her pose discouraged the idea that she might desire comfort that way.

Carlisle’s difficulties, indeed, were by no means over for the day.  The conviction which had come upon her with the first full view of her lover’s face—­where Colonel Dalhousie seemed also to have set his afflicting mark—­had suddenly grown overwhelming.  She had made her draft for payment against an account where there were no more funds.

“Are you ill?”

“No,” she answered, straightening at once....  “I ...  I’m afraid—­this is my natural self.”

“Something troubles you?” said Hugo, with penetration.

She nodded, and turned away.

She had always been capable of independent action; it was her chief strength, however mamma might speak of flare-ups.  But never in her womanhood had she felt less in tune for heroics and a scene.  Life was shaking to pieces all around her.

“Hugo,” she began, with difficulty, playing at arranging a slide of books on the table with hands like two blocks of ice ...  “I—­I hesitated about coming down at all, but now—­I think ...  As you are going away to-night, and would be coming back to-morrow entirely on my account ...  I think I ought—­”