"Oh--I--I'm sure you meant to do what you thought was right. But--oh, Cally!..." And then she was weeping in her daughter's arms. Perhaps the stout little lady was ready now for a reconciliation. Perhaps the strain of silent censoriousness had worn out even her strong will. Perhaps, in some far cranny of her practical heart, there was a spark which secretly admired Cally for her suicidal madness. At any rate, drying her eyes presently, she said: "How Mary Page will gloat over this.... Well, we can't go on this way, my child. We'll die if we don't have some diversion. Lord knows we'll need all our strength for the fall." And still later, she suddenly cried: "LET'S GO TO PARIS!" To Paris they went; and there, occupying more fashionable quarters, began to look about for pleasure. The looking required effort at first and was scantily rewarded; but of course it was not long before the women's spirits responded to the more hopeful atmosphere. Soon they fell in with some lively people from home, the Wintons, who, being a peg or two lower than the Heths in the gay world, made it almost indelicately plain that they were completely unaware of anything's having happened. To Paris also came J. Forsythe Avery. And now, in the passage of the weeks, the mother and daughter were at home again, with Carlisle finding that memory still had power to stab, and Mrs. Heth stoutly girding herself for the great fight of her life, and almost happy.... If it had taken the violent break to reveal to Cally how deeply Hugo Canning had come into her life, it seemed to take this home-coming to impress upon her how definitely he had departed. There was hardly anything in the house that was not in some way associated with him, or with her thought of him. Outdoors it was hardly better: wherever she turned, she found, mementoes of his absence. Strange and sad to think that he and she would ride these familiar streets no more. He had left her alone, to find her feet again in a changed world as best she might. Where was he on this day and on this, with whom making merry, her false knight who could not love as he could fear the world's opinion?... It was September, and people were beginning to troop back in numbers from the holiday places of their desire. Cally's first days at home were full of meetings, with those now seen for the first time under strangely altered conditions.