The young man had been standing like one in a trancelike illness, who can hear, indeed, with horrible distinctness, but can neither move nor speak.  But now the increasing finality of her words seemed all at once to galvanize him; he shook himself slightly and took one heavy step forward.

“What you need is a protector, little girl—­a man.  I know about the summer—­I suffered, too....  Of course.  And in the loneliness—­you’ve let yourself be affected....  The unrest of the day—­”

“No, no! Please,” said she, almost ready to scream—­“don’t think this is one of my new little ideas you speak of.  I—­it’s true that we don’t seem to think alike about things....  But I’d never have noticed that at all if I loved you.  I’d want to think and do only as you wished.  But I don’t—­”

“I’ve spoiled you ... letting you think you could have your way with me,” said Hugo, in his thick and gritty voice.  “You’re mad to-night, little girl ... aren’t responsible for what you say....”

Flicked in her spirit, she broke across his argument with a changed voice and gaze.

“Why is it madness not to love you?”

“It’s not a thing to argue about now, I say.  You do love me ...  I know it.  You’ll marry me next month, that I swear.  Why—­”

“No!—­when I love, I want to look up, and when I marry, I’ll marry above me....”

That checked his queer truculence; and Cally, desperate with the need to drive home her meaning, swept on with no more nervousness.

“And—­don’t you see?—­I’ve not been able to look up to you since that day last year....  The day—­I’m sorry to have to say it—­when you came all the way down from New York to show me that you didn’t care for a woman who was getting new little ideas about telling the truth....”

Canning’s face was the color of chalk, his look increasingly stony; in his eyes strange passions mounted.  Now he seemed, to intend to say something, but the girl’s words flowed with gathering intensity.

“Why, think what you did that day, Hugo!—­think, think! If I needed a protector and a man,—­and I did,—­that was the time for you to show me how protectors and men can act and love.  If I was wrong, it seems to me that was the time of all times when you ought to have stood by me, protected me.  But I was right—­don’t you know I was?...  I—­it was the first time I had ever thought about doing right—­and you threw me over for it....  Of course I know there was a quarrel, but—­you know perfectly well what you said.  You said then, just as you say now, that I was shocked out of my senses, didn’t know what I was saying.  And then you said that people would point at me to the longest day I lived, so the thing to do was to hush it all up, or else I wasn’t the girl you had asked to be your wife.  Anything—­anything—­except that I should tell the truth....  So you went off and left me to bear it all alone.  And then,