“I’d naturally ask him in here, Cally, while I went up to see if things are ready for him upstairs.  Of course, if you’d rather not see him ...”

Cally had risen too.  The two girls stood looking at each other.

“No,” said Cally, “I’d like to see him.  Only I can’t speak to him about the Works.  I cannot.”

“No, no—­of course not, dear, if you don’t feel like it.”

Hen went out to open the door.  Greetings floated in....

Cally stood at the parlor window, staring out into the shabby street.  Over the way was the flaring sign of an unpained dentist, making promises never to be redeemed, and two doors away the old stand of the artificial limb-maker.  Cally looked full at a show-window full of shiny new legs; but she did not see the grisly spectacle, so it did not matter.

The unexpected encounter was deeply disturbing to her.  There stirred in her the memory of another night when she had similarly met the slum doctor in this room, between engagements with Hugo Canning.  That night he had asked her forgiveness for calling her a poor little thing, which she was, and she had charged him with wicked untruthfulness for calling the Works homicidal, which—­she said it in her secret heart—­they were....  How history repeats itself, how time brought changed angles!  Strange, strange, that in the revolving months it had now come her turn to apologize to Mr. V.V. in the Cooney parlor.  Only she could not make her apology, no matter how much she might want to....

“...  Stop a minute,” Hen was heard to say, “and pass the time of day ...”

Unintelligible murmuring, and then:  “D’you know who it was that invented stopping and passing the time of day?” said the nearing voice of Mr. V.V., gayer than Cally Heth had ever heard it.  “Take my word, ’t was a woman.”

“To make things pleasant for some man!—­and we’ve been doing it ever since....  Cally Heth’s here ...”

The two came in.  Cally, turning, held out her hand to the Cooneys’ physician, with a sufficiently natural air and greeting....

They had not met since the afternoon at the Woman’s Club, a day which had brought a strange change in their relations.  But then, each of their meetings seemed marked by some such realignment, and always to his advantage.  Again and again she had put this man down, at first with all her strength; and each time when she turned and looked at him again, behold he had shot up higher than ever.

So Cally had just been thinking.  But now that V. Vivian stood in the room, and she looked at him, she was suddenly reminded that he was her good friend nevertheless.  And something like ease came back to her.

When Hen had disappeared to make the sick-room ready (or for whatever purpose she went), Cally said: 

“I hope Chas isn’t really going to be ill?”

“Oh, there’s no trouble at all with him,” replied the young man, “but to make him stay in bed.  It’s all come down to a touch of sore throat, a little sort of quinsy.  We were rather afraid of diphtheria, the other night.”