Cally moved away from Hugo, not caring to witness the breaking-up of his self-control. She leaned against the heavy mahogany table, clenching a tiny handkerchief between chill little hands. If the months had brought her perfect vengeance on the man who had once failed her in her need, she was finding it, indeed, a joyless victory. "I'm to blame for not telling you before--when you were here last month," she said, with some agitation ... "Only I really didn't know my own mind ... All summer I seemed to ... just to take it for granted that--everything was the same--that I still cared for you. But--Hugo, I don't. I'm sorrier than I can say for what has been my fault...." The young man had been standing like one in a trancelike illness, who can hear, indeed, with horrible distinctness, but can neither move nor speak. But now the increasing finality of her words seemed all at once to galvanize him; he shook himself slightly and took one heavy step forward. "What you need is a protector, little girl--a man. I know about the summer--I suffered, too.... Of course. And in the loneliness--you've let yourself be affected.... The unrest of the day--" "No, no! _Please_," said she, almost ready to scream--"don't think this is one of my new little ideas you speak of. I--it's true that we don't seem to think alike about things.... But I'd never have noticed that at all if I loved you. I'd want to think and do only as you wished. But I don't--" "I've spoiled you ... letting you think you could have your way with me," said Hugo, in his thick and gritty voice. "You're mad to-night, little girl ... aren't responsible for what you say...." Flicked in her spirit, she broke across his argument with a changed voice and gaze. "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.