She paused for a reply; her excitement was growing.  Her figure was enveloped in a slim raincoat of fine gray; she wore a yellow straw hat of an intriguing shape, and over it a white veil closely drawn to keep the wet wind from her face.  Now and then, as her eyes moved, a descending black-and-gold eyelash became entangled with this veil; that occurrence, in fact, took place at this precise moment, creating an emergency situation of some consequence.  It was a matter of considerable public interest to see how it would all work out.  However, the girl merely raised an indifferent hand, and plucked the veil out a little.  The man V.V. looked hurriedly away.

He was saying:  “I assure you I meant nothing of the kind.  However, doubtless it’s natural that you should think so—­”

“It seems very natural to me—­especially here in the new Settlement building!...  What about the parable of the rich young man now?”

He stood looking at her without a reply; one of his quaint looks, it was.

However, Carlisle knew positively that he did not want to improve the Works out of any fund he pretended to have, and was resolved to show him no mercy now.  She had really meant to spare him, and he, mistaking magnanimity for weakness, had said what he had said.  On his head be it:  his deceptive trusting look should not save him now.

“Why don’t you say something?” she demanded.

The young man gave an embarrassed laugh.

“Well, to tell the honest truth, I don’t seem to think of anything to say—­”

“Oh!...  So the Settlement suggests nothing to you—­as to picking the beam from your own eye?”

“Not at this moment, I think.  In fact, I don’t seem to grasp at all—­”

“Oh!” said Cally, with a little gasp.

And then, stung on by his reckless hardihood, she struck to kill: 

“How can you look at me, and pretend that you’re so anxious to help other people’s businesses, when you know you wouldn’t even give to your own Settlement—­not a cent!”

The two stood facing each other, hardly a yard apart, their eyes dead-level.  V.V., as Henrietta Cooney called him, continued to look at her, and though he was far from a florid young man, it seemed now as if he must have been so, so much color did he have to lose.  And Cally discovered that the man had somehow managed to keep, over all these brilliant weeks, that mysterious trick he had of making her feel unfair, and even rather horrid and common, when she knew perfectly well she wasn’t.  For the look on his unreliable face was that of one stabbed from behind in a company where he had trusted, and his eyes seemed to be saying to her quite distinctly:  “Don’t you worry about me! Just give me a minute or two, and I’ll be all right....”

But all that his actual voice said, in rather a remote way, was: 

“What a terrific hypocrite you must think me!...  I hadn’t realized ...”