“You must not blame yourself too hard,” came the distant voice, dropping out of space like the sentences of destiny.  “It’s ... cruel, the way it’s happened.  But you’ll always know you had the courage and the will to set him free, when you might—­”

Carlisle’s hand clenched the edge of the little table where she sat.

“Tell me,” said her voice, pitifully faint.  “Did he ...  I—­must know—­Did he ...?”

There was a roaring in her ears, but through it the words came clear as flame: 

“He went out of his mind.  I know that.  That could not be foreseen.  Not waiting ... he took his own life.  It was this afternoon.  A telegram came—­from some friend of his....”

All further words, if more there were, bounded off from the sudden iron stillness within her.  Mechanically she raised the receiver to the hook, for was not her talk with Meeghan’s quite finished?  Jack Dalhousie had killed himself.  Sackcloth and ashes would not get a telegram to him now....  And then, some flying remembrance of the bearer of the tidings struck through her numbness, and she caught down the receiver again and said indistinctly: 

“I can’t talk any more now....  I’ll be all right....”

Then all thought stopped, and her head went forward upon her hands.  The yellow plume nodded bravely....

Outside the door of the booth was the brilliant corridor, and beyond a glimpse of the dining-room, pretty with shaded lights, gay with music and talk, and eyes that stared unabashed.  Somewhere in there were Mrs. Heth and Canning, dining well.

The page stood near, the call-slip offered upon his tray.  He, who admired her, was aware of a subtle distortion in this lady’s winning loveliness.

“Take it, please,” said she, “to the lady at the table where you found me.  And say I shall not come back to dinner.”

Then Carlisle found herself in the cloak-room, which happened to be empty except for the smiling maid.  She had hardly entered and repelled the woman’s overtures, when she heard the hurried step of her mother, brought quickly by the buttons’ strange words.

“Cally!  Are you ill?  What on earth’s happened?”

Cally sat stiffly in a chair against the wall, her face colorless.  Different, this, from the telling she had contemplated, not five minutes ago.  What had happened, indeed?

She said in a small flat voice:  “I heard some bad news—­over the telephone.  A man—­has died.  He killed himself, this afternoon—­”

Commanding even in that moment, Mrs. Heth turned upon the hovering maid and said:  “A glass of water.”

When the woman had passed out of earshot, she turned again, and put her two strong hands on Cally’s shoulders.

“What man?  Who was this you called up long-distance?”

“Mr. Dalhousie,” said Cally’s small voice.  “I called up a friend of his....”  She looked up fixedly at her mother and said:  “Mamma, he did it because of me.”