* * * * *

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 Cloud obscuring the New Day, and the Violets that had faded behind a Curtain, etc.; but chiefly of a Little Talk with Mamma, which produced Moral Results, after all.

The foolish nightmares receded; the sad faces of a dream dwindled again into air; and she waked suddenly in the sunshine to find herself quite well.  This she knew with the first opening of her eyes.  The familiar objects in the room, the face of the morning, wore the unmistakable well look.  Wellness there seemed within, too, refreshment in body, mind, and spirit.  Life called to the young and the strong, and the sunlight, streaming royally through the shuttered windows, was the ringing reveille of a new day....

But Cally Heth, having waked to life, lay on in bed.  She heard the summons, was strong to answer it; but was held back as by a high surrounding wall.  She was like a tied bird, unfolding wings with the heart to soar, and continually brought down by the shortness of her tether.