Cally's heart had jumped a little at the sight of his tall figure, but she answered easily enough, as she moved toward the steps, that she was walking.
"Then won't you allow me to see you home?... It's getting rather dark. And I--the fact is, I wanted to speak to you."
And Cally said, far from what she had planned to say in thinking of this meeting:
"If you like.... Only you must promise not to scold me about the Works."
He gave her a look full of surprise, and touched with a curious sort of gratification; curious to her, that is, since she could not know how a well-known Labor Commissioner had taxed this man with "easiness."
"I promise," said he.
As they took the bottom step, he added, in a controlled sort of voice:
"Please tell me frankly--is it objectionable to you to--to have me walk with you?"
"Oh, no," said Cally.
Down forty feet of bricked walkway, through the swinging iron gates, out upon the public sidewalk, Carlisle walked silently beside the attacker of her father, the religious fellow whom Hugo Canning so disliked. About them in the pale dusk tall street-lights began to twinkle. Over them hung the impenetrable silence. It was but three blocks from the Woman's Club to the House of Heth. They had traversed half of one of them before Vivian gave voice: