et.

"It's a question," he resumed, "which has troubled me for a long time.
Do you remember--when was it? A year ago?--going one Sunday with Mrs.
Cross to Kew?"

"I remember it very well."

"I happened to be at Kew that day," Will continued, still nervously.
"You passed me as I stood on the bridge. I saw you go into the Gardens,
and I said to myself how pleasant it would be if I could have ventured
to join you in your walk. You knew me--as your grocer. For me to have
approached and spoken, would have been an outrage. That day I had
villainous thoughts."

Bertha raised her eyes; just raised them till they met his, then bent
her head again.

"We thought your name was really Jolly man," she said, in a
half-apologetic tone.

"Of course you did. A good invention, by the bye, that name, wasn't it?"

"Very good indeed," she answered, smiling. "And you used to come to the
shop." pursued Will.

"And I looked forward to it. There was something human in your way of
talking to me."

"I hope so."

"Yes, but--it made me ask myself that question. I comforted myself by
saying that of course the shop was only a temporary expedient; I should
get out of it; I should find another way of making money; but, you see,
I'm as far from that as ever; and if I decide to go on
shopkeeping--don't I condemn myself to solitude?"

"It _is_ a difficulty," said Bertha, in the tone of one who lightly
ponders an abstract question.

"Now and then, some time ago, I half persuaded myself that, even though
a difficulty, it needn't be a fatal one." He was speaking now with his
eyes steadily fixed upon her; "but that was when you still came to the
shop. Suddenly you ceased--"

His voice dropped. In the silence, Bertha uttered a little "Yes."

"I have been wondering what that meant--"

His speech was a mere parched gasp. Bertha looked at him, and her
eyebrows contracted, as if in sympathetic trouble. Gently she asked:

"No explanation occurred to you?"

With a convulsive movement, Will changed his position, and by so doing
seemed to have released his tongue.

"Several," he said, with a strange smile. "The one which most plagued
me, I should very likely do better to keep to myself; but I won't; you
shall know it. Perhaps you are prepared for it. Do you know that I went
abroad last summer?"

"I heard of it."

"From Miss Elvan?"

"From Mrs. Franks."

"Mrs. Franks--yes. She told you, then, that I had been to St. Jean de
Luz? She told y