“Carlisle,” said Canning, with more restraint, “isn’t it reasonable for me to think that?”

Her reply showed some signs of agitation:  “Why, Hugo—­of course ...  You must know your views have all the weight in the world with me.  His have none ...”

He came up to her on the hearthstone, raised her hand, and kissed the little pink palm.

“Never mind—­I’m sure that’s true....  Now, my dear, we seem unable to understand each other to-day, and trying to do so only throws us farther and farther apart.  We both need rest, and time for quiet thought.  You must let me decide this point for you.  I am going to send word to Dr. Vivian now that you will let him hear from you to-morrow morning.”

He released her hand, and turned decisively away.  At that moment, the dim hall chimes began to strike six.

“Oh, no, Hugo!  Please don’t,” she broke out, taking a little step after him.... “Please! I don’t think I could bear it....”

Canning wheeled instantly, his virile face darkening and flushing.

“You don’t?...  My views don’t seem to matter so tremendously, after all!”

“Ah, Hugo dear!  That hurts.  How—­”

“Tell me, Carlisle, did the idea of telling Colonel Dalhousie, for your happiness, originate with you or with this man?”

Touched once more in her spirit by his singular obsession, she replied, with constraint:  “I don’t remember, Hugo.  Perhaps with him.  But it wasn’t his saying so that made it true.  It is the way I feel ...”

“That brings us back to the beginning again.  I have done my best to persuade you that this feeling is an hallucination.”

Over and over this ground they went with quickening exchanges, Canning’s patience wearing sharper at each circuit, Carlisle growing steadily whiter, but unluckily not more yielding.  At last Canning said: 

“You are going to trust your whole future life to me, Carlisle.  It is hard for me to grasp that you refuse to trust me in this, the first thing I have ever asked of you.  Tell me plainly that you mean to have no regard for my wishes.”

Carlisle felt ready to scream.  How had this miserable misunderstanding arisen?  What was it all about?  Her mind glanced back, but she could not remember, could not begin to retrace the bewildering steps.  Worse yet, she hardly seemed to want to now, for Hugo could not possibly speak to her in this way if he loved her as he had said.

She said in a small, chilled voice:  “That’s unjust, Hugo.  I have every regard—­”

“So you say, Carlisle.  But nothing else that you say supports it in the slightest.”

The girl made no reply.  And then Canning struck out: 

“My entreaties carry no weight with you, it seems.  Well, then I forbid you.”

For the first time a tinge of color touched Carlisle’s cheek.

“You forbid me?”

He had no sooner said the words than he regretted them.  In the beginning nothing of this sort had been within his dreams; had he foreseen the possibility, it is probable that he would have given Carlisle her head at the start without argument.  But, once the position taken, he could not bend back his pride to recede.  And to him, too, came prodding thoughts, of a bride who was revealing strange sides of her nature, strange unlovelinesses....