They sat for an hour on the club piazza looking out over smooth rolling hills, now green, now wooded, all fair in the late September sunshine. Away to the left there was the faint gleam of the river. All day Canning, in his subtle way, made love to Cally, but he was too wise to press hard upon her girlish hesitancy.
"I don't believe you've missed me much," he remarked, once, on the wooing note. "Have you?"
Cally smiled into space and answered: "At times."
"That's cheerful ... When there's not been an hour for me, all summer, I swear it, that hasn't been singing with thoughts of you."
"You might have run up from Trouville, in July, and called on us in Paris."
His reply indicated that running, whether up or down, involved a considerable conquest of pride. And Cally understood that.
"I," said she, tranquilly, "have been growing weary of society. Perhaps that is your doing...."
She told him of her experience at the Settlement yesterday, of her rebuff at the hands of Mr. Pond. Canning thanked heaven that she need not bother herself with such dreary faddisms of the day.
"You can safely leave all that," said he, "to the women who have failed in their own careers."
"And what career is that?"