So V. Vivian was led away by Annie to the downstairs telephone in the butler’s pantry; whence he was back in a moment, looking relieved, and assuring Miss Heth that it was nothing in the least urgent or important.  There was no hurry at all, it seemed.  But Cally felt that the business talk was drawing to a close, with a good deal still left unsaid....

Returning with eager interest to his drawing, Mr. V.V. fell to planting shade-trees of the best quality all down the Seventeenth Street side of the new building.  So engaged, he observed suddenly: 

“Don’t worry any more about those floors, please—­will you?  That’s all going to work out very nicely....  I’ll get a figure from Jem Noonan right away on that plan of yours.  And I’ll see that it’s a low figure, too,—­it’s got to be low!...  Good heavens!” said V.V., eyeing his drawing with a queer little introspective smile.  “We can’t be expected to spend anything much on a building that’s going to come down in a couple of months, you know.”

She looked, smiling a little, too, at his unconscious face, fine, to thinness, which had once made Mr. Pond think of a bishop who never grew up.  And her look became suddenly full of tenderness....

“I don’t worry,” said Cally, “now that I’ve got you to help me.”

The man from the Dabney House spoke again: 

“I was just thinking, out there at the telephone, that if there’s no further business before the house, you might feel like beginning that long story you—­you spoke of just now.”

That took her by surprise.  She seemed to be less and less at her ease.  But now surely had come her moment to take her courage in her hands, and render him his due.

“I believe I ought to,” said she, lightly—­“a chapter or two, at least.  For I don’t think you’ll ever work it out for yourself....  And I’m glad you’re that way.”

He made no reply, going on carefully with his arbor-day practice.

“When you said just now that this was wonderful,” said Cally, beginning to lose the light touch already—­“you meant that it was a wonderful happening, didn’t you?  Your idea seems to be that all this just happened.”

But no, Mr. V.V. denied that vigorously, and stated his logical theory:  that her father had chanced to postpone his intentions, merely through the well-known fact that men get accustomed to conditions that they constantly see; but that she, going there with fresh eyes....

“I might have gone there a hundred times, but I’d never have thought of it as having anything to do with me—­don’t you know it?—­if it hadn’t been for you.”

He looked at her briefly; and she saw that his look was as bewildered as a battle-ground.

“Oh!...  Do you mean that you are doing it because of—­to—­to avoid the—­that is, on account of the articles?”

“Oh, not the articles!—­no!  That’s just what I don’t mean.  I’ve never thought of the articles!  I don’t think of you that way at all....”