“Why, I don’t know, Hugo.  I—­I seem to have had it on my mind a good deal lately.  Perhaps he first made me think of it that way—­I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think perhaps we might have understood each other a little better all along, if you had talked it over with me before you talked to him about it?”

“Yes, I do now.  I didn’t seem to think....  It all happened so unexpectedly—­I never planned anything at all.  And then I thought—­I hoped—­you would think I was doing right.”

“My dear girl, nobody in his senses could possibly think you were doing right, and nobody who cared for you could want you to abandon yourself to the impulses of a moment of nervous hysteria.”

He rose and paced the floor, four paces to the room.  A handsome and impressive figure of a man he looked, his hands rammed into the pockets of his beautiful blue-flannel coat, his fine brow wrinkled with a responsible frown.  He was seven years older than Carlisle, and, in the absence of Mr. Heth (whom neither telephone nor telegraph, prayer nor fasting, had yet been able to reach), he stood as her lawful protector and the man of her family.  He must save her from the effects of her own hysterical moment, or nobody would.  Clearer and clearer it had grown that he had to do with a distracted creature who, in a state of shock, had somehow passed under the influence of a man of the unscrupulous revivalist type, and upon whom, in her present mood, all reasoning was thrown away.  Gentleness and firmness were the notes for dealing with a flare-up.  Well, gentleness had been tried in vain....

Carlisle looked at Canning as he paced, in the grip of a heart-sick fear.  The same comfortable, homely little room, with tight-closed door; the same evening sunshine filtering in across the faded carpet; the same situation, the same man and woman.  But what was this new shape that peeped at her from behind the familiar objects?  A delusion and a snare had been her first feeling of perfect unity.  But was it conceivable that she and Hugo might quarrel?...

That was the one thing that could not be borne; anything to avoid that.  She must give him his way, since he would not give her hers.  She must agree to put it off till to-morrow, and then to-morrow he would still think she was unreasonable, and so they would put it off again, forever.  She thought of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back, but with open eyes which did not cease to question her; of poor Dr. Vivian, even now awaiting her word with trusting eyes which did not question anything; and she saw that to turn back now would be like a physical fracture somehow, like breaking her leg, and that the moment she had said she would, she would have to cry again, and afterwards she would be quite sick.  And then she looked at Hugo, who was so manly and sure, who must be right, no matter how she felt now:  and so began to nerve herself to speak....

But Canning had a new thought, a new argument, which now became definite.  Coming to a halt in front of her, he said in a businesslike sort of way: