He wore for this meeting, not his holiday raiment of blue, with the sprigged waistcoat that his Uncle Armistead might have left him, but that selfsame suit she had seen upon him all last year; including that other memorable day in her life when she had come clicking down the stairs to find the tall outlander standing here in her familiar background.  Only there was no feeling in her now that he was an alien in the Heth drawing-room.  No, here V. Vivian seemed to belong to-day, the best and worthiest thing in the room.

To her, that was; but it was not so with others.  The one speck in the perfect balm was that, to have this man here at all, she had had to manage it secretly, as if it were something discreditable....

The greetings were over; they were seated; he was advised that it was about a building matter that she desired his help; and even when, as talk progressed, she placed her building lot for him at Seventeenth and Canal Streets, the doctor’s manner, which was quite eager and interested and pleased at being summoned for help, showed no signs of understanding.

“Seventeenth and Canal Streets,” he repeated, alert and businesslike.  “Yes?  It’s to be a business building, then?”

“There’s a building there now, but I’m going to pull that one down,” said Cally.  “I don’t like it.”

And at this moment it was that she saw consciousness burst into the unconscious; burst with the strong suddenness of an explosion.

“Seventeenth and Canal Streets!...  That’s the Heth Works corner!”

“That’s the building I’m going to pull down.  I—­I’ve taken a dislike to it.”

The tall young man came to his feet, slowly, as if hoisted from above by an invisible block and tackle.  All in a moment, his face had become quite pale.

“What do you mean?” he asked, in a queer clipped voice.

“I mean ...  I don’t think you will have to say anything about my father in your articles....  We’re going to build a new Works—­now!”

He stood staring a second like a man of stone; and then turned abruptly from her and walked away.  But in that second she saw that his petrifaction was already scattering, and his face wore the strangest look, like a kind of glory....

So Cally thought that he understood now; and that was all the reward she wanted.  Sitting silent, she looked after his retreating back.  She perceived, with a queer little twitching in her heart, that the polished spaces upon Mr. V.V.’s right elbow had thinned away into an unmistakable darning.  And then it came over her quite suddenly that the reason he wore this suit to-day was probably that he had given his blue suit away, to one of his sick.  She seemed quite sure that that was it.  And oh, how like him, and like nobody else in the world, to give away his best one, and keep the patches for himself....

And the first thing that he said, returning to her after his thunderbolt surprise, seemed also beautifully characteristic of his strange faiths.