in so different an orbit
that she had not considered the possibility of a direct encounter.

Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did not see
Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight, instead of bringing
him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent him toward her with an
eagerness which found expression in his opening words.

"Miss Bart!--You'll shake hands, won't you? I've been hoping to meet
you--I should have written to you if I'd dared." His face, with its
tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look, as
though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the thoughts
at his heels.

The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he pressed
on, as if encouraged by her tone: "I wanted to apologize--to ask you to
forgive me for the miserable part I played----"

She checked him with a quick gesture. "Don't let us speak of it: I was
very sorry for you," she said, with a tinge of disdain which, as she
instantly perceived, was not lost on him.

He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she repented the
thrust. "You might well be; you don't know--you must let me explain. I
was deceived: abominably deceived----"

"I am still more sorry for you, then," she interposed, without irony;
"but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom the subject
can be discussed."

He met this with a look of genuine wonder. "Why not? Isn't it to you, of
all people, that I owe an explanation----"

"No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to me."

"Ah----" he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute hand
switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a movement
to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: "Miss Bart, for God's sake
don't turn from me! We used to be good friends--you were always kind to
me--and you don't know how I need a friend now."

The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily's
breast. She too needed friends--she had tasted the pang of loneliness;
and her resentment of Bertha Dorset's cruelty softened her heart to the
poor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha's victims.

"I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you," she said. "But
you must understand that after what has happened we can't be friends
again--we can't see each other."

"Ah, you ARE kind--you're merciful--you always were!" He fixed his
miserable gaze