She stopped precipitately, with a break in her voice; turned from him.

“Oh!—­I understand ...  Poor little girl.”

At the mention of the name of ill omen, Canning’s strong heart had missed a beat.  He had thought the old corpse buried past exhumation; the sudden rising of the ghost to walk had staggered for an instant even his superb incredulities.  But with that sudden tremulousness of hers, he was himself again, or almost, with a new light upon her whole strange and unreliable demeanor.  Small wonder, after such an encounter, if she was brought to the verge of hysteria, her feminine reason unseated, her mind wandering mistily over the forgotten past....

He tried to take at least one hand in loving sympathy, but found that the matter could not be arranged.

“The shock has upset you—­poor darling!  I understand.  No wonder!...”

“No—­I’m not upset ...  I—­Hugo, I can’t marry you.  I’m truly sorry—­I’ve tried—­but now I’m quite sure—­”

“But this is madness,” said Hugo’s queer voice.  “Don’t you see it is as you say the words?...  Not marry me—­because an old ruffian waylaid you, called you—­hard names—­”

“No, but because what he said was true.  No—­of course that’s not the reason ...  I must tell you the truth ...”

Cally lifted misty eyes, beneath which faint circles were beginning to appear, and said with sadness: 

“Hugo, I don’t love you.”

Then she watched, painfully, the last remnants of his assurance drop away from his face:  and after that, she saw, with a certain fear, that she had still to make herself believed.

Hugo, supported not merely by his own justifiable confidences but by her mother’s affirmations, could, indeed, put no credence in his ears.  Many explanations were possible for this extraordinary feminine perversity; she had happened to mention the one explanation that was not possible.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he began, huskily, out of the silence.  “You’re not yourself at all nowadays ...  Full of new little ideas.  You’ve taken a whim, because an old rascal ... whom I shall punish as he deserves—­”

“No ...  That helped me to make up my mind, perhaps.  But I’ve learned I’ve never loved you—­since you left me last year.”

Cally moved away from Hugo, not caring to witness the breaking-up of his self-control.  She leaned against the heavy mahogany table, clenching a tiny handkerchief between chill little hands.  If the months had brought her perfect vengeance on the man who had once failed her in her need, she was finding it, indeed, a joyless victory.

“I’m to blame for not telling you before—­when you were here last month,” she said, with some agitation ...  “Only I really didn’t know my own mind ...  All summer I seemed to ... just to take it for granted that—­everything was the same—­that I still cared for you.  But—­Hugo, I don’t.  I’m sorrier than I can say for what has been my fault....”