Yes, Hugo was, indeed, a rock and tower of strength.  With him behind her, she had the world at her feet....  Heavens!  What could gossip possibly do to Mrs. Hugo Canning?

Outside was the roar of conglomerate humanity.  Up here in this strange bedroom, indifferent host to a thousand transient souls, it was quiet and even a little lonely.  Once more Carlisle caught her mind at its retrospective misbehavior, and once more turned the key on it.  Having laid out her dress on the bed, she stood and looked down into the cheerless light-well a minute, and then decided to wake up her mother.  But she stopped on the way and turned back.  Why wake up mamma half an hour too soon, just to hear the sound of one’s own voice?

She took off her watch, and raised her hands to begin unfastening her waist.  But she became engrossed in staring back at her reflection in the mirror, and presently her hands dropped.

Face and form, background and destiny, she was possessed of blessings many and obvious:  all crowned now, sealed and stamped, with the love of Hugo Canning, which, he had pledged himself, was a love which should not die.  What girl so entirely successful as she?  Convincingly the excellent glass gave back the presentment of loveliness endowed with all the gifts of Fortune.

And yet she had run away:  there was no evading that.  An insignificant boy thousands of miles away had sent out a cry for help, and she, the proud and blessed, who had always considered herself quite as spunky as another person, had bolted in a panic.  And she had bolted too fast, it seemed, to consider even that, with that cry, there had come a new element into the situation, disturbing to the old argument.  The full reach and meaning of Jack Dalhousie’s letter seemed to be coming upon her now for the first time, just when she had ritually cremated it.  Out of the pink saucer had mysteriously blown the knowledge that the author of that poor composition could no more be pictured as doing splendidly down in Texas....

For a third time her over-mind spied upon and detected the nether’s treason; and this time Cally, turning abruptly from the mirror, was troubled.  Having run away, could she not at least enjoy a runaway’s peace?  Why backward glances now?  She had escaped Dalhousie.  She had escaped Dalhousie’s friend.  She stood in this room the safest person in the world.  No one on earth could betray her except herself.

The watch ticked loud, steadily drawing Hugo, and mamma and Flora.  Up through the windows came the twilight and the rumble of the vast heedless city.  Carlisle snapped on the lights.  And then all at once, without warning, there closed down upon her an enormous depression, a sense as of standing on the brink of irretrievable disaster.  Or it was as if she had run away, indeed, but had not escaped.  Or as if, in cutting herself off from the past, she had cut away something important, which something here gave notice that it would not be peacefully abandoned.  And mixed with this there was again that sense of large pressure upon her, so tangible that it was almost like a person in the room with her, sharing, dominating her councils....