Mamma laughed delightedly.  She was of course in the woman’s league for the general putting down of the enemy, Man.  The two women stood staring at each other in the stately hall.

“Next month!” said mamma.  “We can’t do it, Cally!  November would be better—­much better—­just before Thanksgiving, don’t you think?”

Cally laughed merrily, and extricated herself.

“We’ll have plenty of time to decide about that....  Now, I must fly and dress.  I shan’t have time for dinner, mamma.  Will you send me up something—­just some soup and coffee?”

“Certainly, darling,” said mamma.

Already there had crept a certain absentness into the campaigner’s voice.  Her strong, constructive mind was slipping away from this present, measuring over the triumphs that lay ahead.  After her darling vanished upstairs, she remained standing motionless by the newel-post, in her fixed eyes the gleam of a brigadier-general who has pulled out brilliant victory over overwhelming obstacles.  The god in the machine had, indeed, forever put the name of Heth beyond the reach of hateful malice....

Suddenly mamma said aloud, rather indignantly:  “I wish I had that ten thousand back!”

In her own room, Cally bathed, dressed at some speed, and dined lightly between whiles.  She was in a state of inner exaltation, contrasting oddly with her depression two hours earlier.  Obliterated now was her conviction of her own human uselessness in a world of sexes, though it couldn’t be said that anything had happened to disprove that conviction, exactly.  In this moment she was continuously elated by all that was signified in the fact that Hugo Canning was to spend the evening downstairs talking decorously with mamma and papa while she, Cally, loved of him, was to go off to the theatre with J. Forsythe Avery....

If Canning had failed her in her greatest need, time, indeed, had exquisitely avenged her.  The Lord of the righteous had delivered the prince of lovers into her hand.  With his very first words in the dim drawing-room, Hugo had admitted, for the second time in their somewhat stormy courtship, his unconditional surrender.  He made no mistake this time about the nature of a woman’s heart; he was not logical or controversial or just; but advancing straight upon her over her decidedly forbidding greeting, he had spoken out with evident emotion: 

“Don’t look at me that way—­I can’t bear it....  Don’t you know now that I love you?  I love you so that I won’t live without you.”

Yes, Cally did know it now.  She had clearly wronged both Hugo and herself in ever thinking of him as a male flirt, a light-loving jilt who too easily found balm for a heart not made for deep hurts.  Busy and gay with her dressing, Carlisle thought of the Honorable Kitty Belden, and laughed musically to herself.