r within; it
was near the Park Lane paling and the patchy lamplight and the rumbling
cabs and 'buses. A strange emotion had come to her, and she felt indeed
excitement within excitement; above all a conscious joy in testing him
with chances he didn't take. She had an intense desire he should know
the type she really conformed to without her doing anything so low as
tell him, and he had surely begun to know it from the moment he didn't
seize the opportunities into which a common man would promptly have
blundered. These were on the mere awkward surface, and _their_ relation
was beautiful behind and below them. She had questioned so little on the
way what they might be doing that as soon as they were seated she took
straight hold of it. Her hours, her confinement, the many conditions of
service in the post-office, had--with a glance at his own postal
resources and alternatives--formed, up to this stage, the subject of
their talk. "Well, here we are, and it may be right enough; but this
isn't the least, you know, where I was going."

"You were going home?"

"Yes, and I was already rather late. I was going to my supper."

"You haven't had it?"

"No indeed!"

"Then you haven't eaten--?"

He looked of a sudden so extravagantly concerned that she laughed out.
"All day? Yes, we do feed once. But that was long ago. So I must
presently say good-bye."

"Oh deary _me_!" he exclaimed with an intonation so droll and yet a touch
so light and a distress so marked--a confession of helplessness for such
a case, in short, so unrelieved--that she at once felt sure she had made
the great difference plain. He looked at her with the kindest eyes and
still without saying what she had known he wouldn't. She had known he
wouldn't say "Then sup with _me_!" but the proof of it made her feel as
if she had feasted.

"I'm not a bit hungry," she went on.

"Ah you _must_ be, awfully!" he made answer, but settling himself on the
bench as if, after all, that needn't interfere with his spending his
evening. "I've always quite wanted the chance to thank you for the
trouble you so often take for me."

"Yes, I know," she replied; uttering the words with a sense of the
situation far deeper than any pretence of not fitting his allusion. She
immediately felt him surprised and even a little puzzled at her frank
assent; but for herself the trouble she had taken could only, in these
fleeting minutes--they would probably never come back--b