As she turned from him, she reeled. There was a great chair near, beside the window. Cary caught her by both hands, forced her to sit down, and drew the curtains apart so that the air of night came fully in. The quiet street was now deserted; the maple boughs, too, screened the place. "Look!" he said. "Look how brightly Venus shines! All the immense rack of clouds that we had at sunset has vanished. The box smells like the garden at Fontenoy, where, I make no doubt, Deb and Major Edward are walking up and down, counting the stars. Yes, I knew, that afternoon in the cedar wood--but not for happiness itself would I have robbed you of that faith, that confidence--" She leaned forward in the great chair, her hands clasped upon its arms, her dark eyes wide upon the night without the window. "I sent for you because I wished you to tell me all. I wanted truth as I wanted air! I want it now. That day we met in the cedar wood--you and Uncle Edward talked together." She drew a difficult breath. "It was then that they--Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward--began to treat me as though--as though I had never left home! It was then--" "They feared," said Cary gently, "for your happiness." "I returned to Roselands, and in three days we were to travel across the mountains. Then at sunset, underneath the beech tree"--She sat for a moment perfectly still, then turned in her chair and spoke in a clear voice. "That was why you forced him to challenge you, and that was why you named a distant time and place? The truth, please." "That was why." She rose from the chair and leaned, panting, against the window-frame. "Was there no other way--" "It seemed the simplest way," he answered quietly. "There was no harm done, and it answered my purpose." He paused, then went on. "My purpose was to detain Mr. Rand from so rash and so fatal a step until it was too late for him to take it." She turned from the window. "You are generous," she said, in a stifled voice. "I ask your pardon for my hard thoughts of you. Oh, for a storm and a wind to blow! It is too hot, too heavy a night. I never wish to smell the honeysuckle again."