"Why don't you say something?" she demanded.
"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--"
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 ..."
It was precisely the point that Carlisle Heth had been trying to establish, for a long, long time. Yet now, in the moment of triumph, her gaze suddenly wavered from his; and she heard herself, to her own secret confusion, saying hurriedly and weakly:
"At least, I understood--some one _told_ me--you hadn't.... Of course you--you _might_ have given something, and--this person not have known...."
But Jack Dalhousie's friend only answered, in the same detached way:
"It's unpardonable, my detaining you this way. I'd no idea ... May I show you the way up--"
He waited, silent. Carlisle, having paused long enough to take firm hold of her consciousness of vast superiorities, resumed more strongly:
"Perhaps I ought to explain why I--thought that. I was told that the whole thing had fallen through, when a--a wealthy subscriber stepped in and secretly gave a very large amount--had bought the building for you. So I--I naturally thought--"