ympathy with Will's indignation: she only wanted to
convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to
have turned away from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly
world.

"It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any
meanness to you," she began. Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead
with him, she moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old
place in the window, saying, "Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in
you?"

When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the
window, without meeting her glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement
following up the previous anger of his tone. She was ready to say that
it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those
strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could
explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much. At
this moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted
to marry her, and she feared using words which might imply such a
belief. She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word--

"I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you."

Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these
words of hers seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and
miserable after his angry outburst. He went to the table and fastened
up his portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from the distance. They
were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence. What
could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was
the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter? What
could she say, since she might offer him no help--since she was forced
to keep the money that ought to have been his?--since to-day he seemed
not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?

But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the
window again.

"I must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which
sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and
burned with gazing too close at a light.

"What shall you do in life?" said Dorothea, timidly. "Have your
intentions remained just the same as when we said good-by before?"

"Yes," said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as
uninteresting. "I shall work away at the first thing that offers. I
suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope."

"O