you."

His heart thumped as he said that; he felt he had committed himself.

"Well, now, that's very pleasant," responded Mr. Dale. "I was just
thinking I should be alone half the way home."

"But you would not be alone when you got there," Mr. Denner said
meditatively; "now, with me it is different."

"Oh, quite different,--quite different."

"Yes," proceeded the other, "I have very little companionship. I go home
and sit in my library all by myself. Sometimes, I get up and wander about
the house, with only my cigar for company."

"I suppose," said Mr. Dale, "that you can smoke wherever you want, in
your house? I often think of your loneliness; coming and going just as
you please, quite independently."

Mr. Denner gave him a sudden questioning look, and then appeared to
reproach himself for having misunderstood his friend.

"Yes, just so,--just so. I knew you would appreciate it; but you can
never know from experience, Henry, how a man feels left quite to himself.
You do not think of the independence; it is the loneliness. You cannot
know that."

"No," murmured Mr. Dale, "perhaps not, but I can imagine it."

When they reached the iron gate of Dale house, they followed the trim
path across the lawn to the north side of the house, where it ended in
a little walk, three bricks wide, laid end to end, and so damp with
perpetual shade, they were slippery with green mould, and had tufts of
moss between them.

Mr. Dale's study was in a sort of half basement one went down two steps
to reach the doorway, and the windows, set in thick stone walls and
almost hidden in a tangle of wistaria, were just above the level of the
path.

The two old men entered, Mr. Dale bending his tall white head a little;
and while the lawyer unwound a long blue muffler from about his throat,
the host lighted a lamp, and, getting down on his knees, blew the dim
embers in the rusty grate into a flickering blaze. Then he pulled a
blackened crane from the jamb, and hung on it a dinted brass kettle, so
that he might add some hot water to Mr. Denner's gin and sugar, and also
make himself a cup of tea. That done, he took off his overcoat, throwing
it across the mahogany arm of the horse-hair sofa, which was piled with
books and pamphlets, and whitened here and there with ashes from his
silver pipe; then he knotted the cord of his flowered dressing-gown about
his waist, spread his red silk handkerchief over his thin locks, and,
placing his feet