"Why is it madness not to love you?"
"It's not a thing to argue about now, I say. You do love me ... I know it. You'll marry me next month, that I swear. Why--"
"No!--when I love, I want to look up, and when I marry, I'll marry above me...."
That checked his queer truculence; and Cally, desperate with the need to drive home her meaning, swept on with no more nervousness.
"And--don't you see?--I've not been able to look up to you since that day last year.... The day--I'm sorry to have to say it--when you came all the way down from New York to show me that you didn't care for a woman who was getting new little ideas about telling the truth...."
Canning's face was the color of chalk, his look increasingly stony; in his eyes strange passions mounted. Now he seemed, to intend to say something, but the girl's words flowed with gathering intensity.
"Why, think what you did that day, Hugo!--think, think! If I needed a protector and a man,--and I did,--that was the time for you to show me how protectors and men can act and love. If I was wrong, it seems to me that was the time of all times when you ought to have stood by me, protected me. But I was right--don't you know I was?... I--it was the first time I had ever thought about doing right--and you threw me over for it.... Of course I know there was a quarrel, but--you know perfectly well what you said. You said then, just as you say now, that I was shocked out of my senses, didn't know what I was saying. And then you said that people would point at me to the longest day I lived, so the thing to do was to hush it all up, or else I wasn't the girl you had asked to be your wife. Anything--anything--except that I should tell the truth.... So you went off and left me to bear it all alone. And then, when my heart had been broken into little pieces, when I'd cried my eyes out a hundred times, then, when all the trouble was over, and people weren't cutting me on the street,--then you came back. And even then you never said once that you were ashamed, or sorry for the way you'd treated me. You just came back, when I'd fought it all out without you, and whistled, and thought that I'd tumble into your arms.... Oh, it's natural, I suppose, for a woman to lie and be mean, and afraid of what people will say--for that seems to be the--the way they're brought up.... But--but--"
Her voice, which had begun to trail a little, dropped off into silence. She turned away; made a visible effort to control herself. And then there floated again into the still room the sounds of muffled revelry: strong Mrs. Heth making merry with her friends, a few of the best people....
"But I only hurt your feelings for nothing," said the girl, in quite a gentle voice.... "Hugo, try to forgive me if I've done you any wrong. But ... you--you have your train to make. Don't you think you'd better go now?"
Hugo's extraordinary reply was to seize her in his arms.