The two stood facing each other, hardly a yard apart, their eyes dead-level. V.V., as Henrietta Cooney called him, continued to look at her, and though he was far from a florid young man, it seemed now as if he must have been so, so much color did he have to lose. And Cally discovered that the man had somehow managed to keep, over all these brilliant weeks, that mysterious trick he had of making her feel unfair, and even rather horrid and common, when she knew perfectly well she wasn't. For the look on his unreliable face was that of one stabbed from behind in a company where he had trusted, and his eyes seemed to be saying to her quite distinctly: "Don't you worry about _me!_ Just give me a minute or two, and _I'll_ be all right...." But all that his actual voice said, in rather a remote way, was: "What a terrific hypocrite you must think me!... I hadn't realized ..." It was precisely the point that Carlisle Heth had been trying to establish, for a long, long time. Yet now, in the moment of triumph, her gaze suddenly wavered from his; and she heard herself, to her own secret confusion, saying hurriedly and weakly: "At least, I understood--some one _told_ me--you hadn't.... Of course you--you _might_ have given something, and--this person not have known...." But Jack Dalhousie's friend only answered, in the same detached way: "It's unpardonable, my detaining you this way. I'd no idea ... May I show you the way up--" "No--_no!_ Please wait!..." He waited, silent. Carlisle, having paused long enough to take firm hold of her consciousness of vast superiorities, resumed more strongly: "Perhaps I ought to explain why I--thought that. I was told that the whole thing had fallen through, when a--a wealthy subscriber stepped in and secretly gave a very large amount--had bought the building for you. So I--I naturally thought--" "It was absolutely natural. In fact, it's quite true.... Shall we go to the meeting now?" But no, something in her required that he must state in plain words the fact that would justify her accusation, alleged by his eyes to be so unjust: namely, that it was (practically) a member of her family who had done this splendid thing for him. Yet she went rather further than she had intended when she said, glancing away over the queer dusky court: "I will tell you. Some one gave us to understand--not he himself, of course,--that it was a friend of ours who had done this ... Mr. Hugo Canning." He made no answer. An uncontrollable desire carried the girl yet further. She said, in a weakening voice: "_Was it?_"