not upset ... I--Hugo, I can't marry you. I'm truly
sorry--I've tried--but now I'm quite sure--"

"But this is madness," said Hugo's queer voice. "Don't you see it is as
you say the words?... Not marry me--because an old ruffian waylaid you,
called you--hard names--"

"No, but because what he said was true. No--of course that's not the
reason ... I must tell you the truth ..."

Cally lifted misty eyes, beneath which faint circles were beginning to
appear, and said with sadness:

"Hugo, I don't love you."

Then she watched, painfully, the last remnants of his assurance drop
away from his face: and after that, she saw, with a certain fear, that
she had still to make herself believed.

Hugo, supported not merely by his own justifiable confidences but by her
mother's affirmations, could, indeed, put no credence in his ears. Many
explanations were possible for this extraordinary feminine perversity;
she had happened to mention the one explanation that was not possible.

"You don't know what you're saying," he began, huskily, out of the
silence. "You're not yourself at all nowadays ... Full of new little
ideas. You've taken a whim, because an old rascal ... whom I shall
punish as he deserves--"

"No ... That helped me to make up my mind, perhaps. But I've learned
I've never loved you--since you left me last year."

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
yoursel