“I understood,” he said simply, “and was grateful to you.”

He, certainly, seemed aware of no discordance in himself.  He advanced with a beautiful consistency, looking as if he wished to say more.  But Cally, her hand gripping the back of a spindly gold divan, her gaze fallen, seemed suddenly to find her own tongue unloosed.

“It’s been so terrible,” she hurried on in the same flat, unpremeditated way—­“no one could know....  I was in New York, and we were to sail for Europe in a few days.  Everything was arranged, all our plans were made, oh, for months and months.  And then....  And now I’ve come home—­and everything is so upset—­and so dreadfully complicated.  And I haven’t seemed able to think somehow—­to decide—­”

“Try not to think about it at all,” said the man, with some firmness.  “That’s the great compensation, that you can begin to forget about it now.  Won’t you sit down?”

She sat down obediently, quite as if it were natural for him to be taking charge of her in her own drawing-room.  And staring down at her locked hands, she fluttered on with no reference to him, with a kind of frightened incredulity, like a bird in a trap.

“It seems so unjust—­so terribly unfair....  That all this could come from one little puff of wind!...  He had gotten out of the boat.  He was swimming away.  And then there came one little gust.  I had tied the sail, you see.  He had frightened me.  And now, after all these months....  But of course I never thought—­I never dreamed of—­of—­”

“I know; I understand.  No one dreamed it.  You must keep sure of that,” said Vivian, in his natural voice.  “I knew Dal very well indeed, you know; and I felt certain that he was—­safe from this.  You—­you mustn’t think of it as something that could have been foreseen....”

He was looking down at her lowered face closely as he spoke; and went on without pause: 

“You see—­what upset him so was beyond your control or mine.  I’ve heard nothing since the telegram last night.  But—­you may remember that he spoke of a girl in his letter, whose opinion he seemed to value.  It must be that when he saw her again, she was very hard on him—­so hard that he lost his grip for a moment.  I can’t account for it in any other way.  There is another thing, too....  Do you think it’s a little close in here, perhaps?  May I open a window?”

She assented without speech, and he walked away with the step of his disability to the long windows.  Into the dim great room stole the breath of the May morning, sweet with the fragrance of the balcony flowers.

The tall young man came walking back.

“There was one thing I wanted particularly to tell you.  I sent Dal a message—­a telegram—­on Monday night....”

Startled, Carlisle looked up.

“On—­Monday?...  Why—­I—­”

“Not breaking your confidence, of course—­just telling him, in a general way, to keep his courage up, that I—­I thought good news was on the way....  It was without authority.  I realized that.  And yet I felt so sure that—­when you had had a little time to think—­that would be what you would wish.  In fact, of course I knew it....”