All three looked up as a boy in buttons stood at Carlisle’s elbow, and said: 

“Got your party on the wire, mum.”

“Party on the wire?  What’s this?” said mamma.

Carlisle laid her napkin on the table.  Surprise confronted her, written large on the faces of her mother and her lover; but it did not arrest her.

“I’m wanted at the telephone.  Do you mind, Hugo?  I won’t he gone a minute.”

“But—­you mustn’t go now, my dear!” said Mrs. Heth, astonished.  “Let the boy take the number.  Why—­who on earth could it be, calling you here?—­”

“I’d rather go now, mamma, if Hugo’ll forgive me—­”

“It’s from Flora!” said Mrs. Heth, positively.  “No one else knew.  A telegram’s come, saying your father is sick—­”

Carlisle laughed and rose dazzingly, burning without but colder than Alpine snow within.

“Not in the least, mamma dear!  You see I put in this call myself.  I’ll explain all about it in a minute....”

Explain!  Why she would walk back to this table from the telephone, laughing, and saying:  “Now, praise me, Hugo and mamma, for I’ve just been doing a deed of mercy!  Do you remember that day at the Beach?...”  Was it the fear of this that she had let plague her all these days?...

“To be answered here—­at dinner—­in this public place?  Why, my dear Cally, I really....”

But Hugo, the understanding, though personally opposed to interruptions during dinner, knew the folly of arguing with the whims of the unreasoners.  He had risen with Carlisle, and now said:  “I’ll show you the way.”

Cally gave him a look of exquisite gratitude, but answered:  “Please don’t trouble, Hugo!  The boy will—­”

“No trouble.  Let’s be off before the tolls eat you out of house and home.”

“Oh, no!  Please don’t!  Couldn’t I have my way about such a little matter, Hugo dear?”

In this glaring publicity, the dialogue began to take on something of the nature of a “scene.”  Canning yielded with perfect grace.

“Of course you can, if you really prefer it.  Well, then!...  Hurry back.”

“In two minutes,” said she, with certainty; and smiled brightly into mamma’s censorious concern.

On the heels of the proud page, Cally threaded her way among the glittering tables for the telephone and Jefferson 4127, unaware for once that she was the cynosure of many eyes.  She was buoyed within, thrilled with a sense of strange adventure, baffling to analysis, but somehow comparable to that soaring moment last week.  She was captain of her soul.  That she was now standing by her flare-up, deliberately reattaching herself to a past which she had moved heaven and earth to cut away from her, did not occur to her, in just that way.  But she was conscious of a curious inner sense of freedom, and somehow of fulfilment.  And now she saw that she must have been secretly thinking of doing this for some time, nibbling fearfully at the idea....