Strolling together slowly in their summer twilight and their empty corner of Mayfair, they found themselves emerge at last opposite to one of the smaller gates of the Park; upon which, without any particular word about it—they were talking so of other things—they crossed the street and went in and sat down on a bench. She had gathered by this time one magnificent hope about him—the 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.”