He had had Carlisle’s feelings only at second-hand, through a medium perhaps wanting in transparence.  Her hesitancy considerably surprised him.  To Carlisle, as was almost equally inevitable, it was as if in the solid rock of their mutual understanding there had suddenly appeared a tiny crack.  She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he wanted.  And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now to say that she would unsettle and postpone it all,—­something, say, as if Hugo had asked her to step back into last year or the year before.  And she tried to make him understand this, saying—­what seemed a feeble reply to his logic: 

“You see, I—­I’ve already thought about it a good deal, Hugo ...  And putting it off would only make me—­miserable and ill.  I can’t explain very well....  I think I could begin to—­to forget about it if—­when....”

This she said over several times, in different ways, as the necessary discussion proceeded....

It was naturally hard for Hugo to grasp the grounds on which she rejected a mere deferment of painful discussion till to-morrow morning (for he reduced his proposal to that), or even to see why, though opposed herself, she would not readily be guided in so small a matter by his wishes.  The soft chimes in the hall had rung five before it definitely came over him that the preliminaries had oddly, indeed incredibly, gone against him.

He faced the fact frankly, without perceptible sign of annoyance.

“Well, then, my dearest girl, I’m afraid we shall have to talk about it a little now....”

They sat side by side on papa’s faded old lounge, where they had spent many an hour together in happier days.  Canning held Carlisle’s hand in a reassuring grasp.  Her heart warmed to him anew:  if he did not quite seem to understand—­what wonder when she hardly did herself?—­his was a love that drew its roots deeper than understanding.  Nevertheless she flinched from a discussion which promised to be carried on chiefly by her over-strung nerves; and all at once she felt that she must know instantly what threatened, exactly what he thought about it.

“Hugo ... do you—­don’t you think I—­I ought to tell?”

Far readier and surer was his voice in reply:  “Frankly, darling, I can’t as yet see any necessity.”

How could he possibly see?—­Ought to tell what?  Had not her mother told him that he had to deal with the nightmare illusions of a disordered mind?...

Canning added with great considerateness:  “I’ve thought it all over from every point of view—­and you know I’m better able to think dispassionately to-day than you are—­and I simply can’t persuade myself that we have any such obligation.”

Carlisle thought, with a little hopeful leap, that Hugo must know.  It was all irrevocably settled; and yet at the same time it may have been that, woman-wise, she had left ajar a little door somewhere, through which his man’s wisdom might yet storm, and possess all....