hope he would say nothing vulgar.  She knew thoroughly what she meant by that; she meant something quite apart from any matter of his being “false.”  Their bench was not far 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—­be all there like a little hoard of gold in her lap.  Certainly he might look at it, handle it, take up the pieces.  Yet if he understood anything he must understand all.  “I consider you’ve already immensely thanked me.”  The horror was back upon her of having seemed to hang about for some reward.  “It’s awfully odd you should have been there just the one time—!”