"Because," said Vivian, "I've felt I--did you such a wrong--that
night...."
Under the flickering Cooney gas, the two stood staring at each other.
The young man hurried on:
"I've had it on my mind ever since, and have wanted very much to tell
you.... I've felt that--what I--I said to you was all wrong--most
unjust...."
He hesitated; and the gold-and-black lashes, so piquant and gay, fell.
"Take your jump! Take your jump!" called Major Cooney in the
dining-room. You could hear him plainly, straight through the folding
doors. And young V. Vivian, who was merciless as a social philosopher
but somewhat trusting as a man, took his jump with a will.
"I was much upset about it that night--and excited, I suppose. I can't
account for--for what I said in any other way. I've hoped for the
opportunity to tell you.... Why, of course I don't believe that at
all.... It was all so confused and mixed up; that was the trouble. But
of course I know that you--that you wouldn't have said anything
that--that wasn't entirely consistent with the facts...."
He paused, expectantly it seemed; but there came no reply.
Cally Heth, indeed, stood in a dumbness which she seemed powerless to
break. Well she knew what sort of reply she ought to make to these
remarks: what was the man saying but what she had already said a hundred
times to herself? He was simply making tardy admission that her position
had been exactly right all along; that was all. Yet somehow the sane
knowledge did not seem to help much against this sequence of unique
sensations she was at present experiencing,--odd, tumultuous, falling
sensations, as of bottoms dropped out....
"I suppose," said the man's faraway voice, sounding a sudden loss of
confidence, "it's rather too much to hope that--that you can forget...."
Again his words dropped into the brief, expectant silence.... It seemed
that he had happened to say the one thing to which no reply was
possible. And somehow the effect of it was worse, even, than the
never-forgotten moment in the summer-house.
"And forgive," finished the voice.... "I've felt--"
And then, in good season, there sounded welcome footsteps, Hen's, in the
hall. They broke at a stroke, the strange petrifying numbness which
Carlisle had felt mysteriously closing over her. She murmured the name
of Henrietta, and turned away. And her voice was the voice of Lucknow,
as the friendly columns poured in....
Hen came walking in, saying something lively and Cooneyesque, and
glancing with an air of interested expectancy from her friend V.V. to
her cousin Cally. But Cally only said once more that she must be going,
and asked where Aunt Molly was. She then let fall the word good-night
for Hen's caller, while looking at a point some ninety degrees removed
from his whereabouts: by which the caller understood that his
forgiveness was problematical, to say the least of it.