Hetty yielded—the more, it would seem, because she had not the strength to resist love pleadings than from any desire for the “outing” recommended by Hester. Taking shawl and cushion with her, she passed down the garden alley to the gate. There was a broad track through the orchard, worn by the wheeled chair and Hester’s attendants. It led straight to the king apple tree. From this bourne another track, not so distinctly marked, diverged to the white picket fence shutting in the Gilchrist garden. Hetty’s feet had never trodden this, she reflected with a pang, after she had settled herself against the brown trunk. It was most probable that she never would. Her one little dream was dead, and she was too practical a business woman to resuscitate it. Her consistent plan of avoiding March Gilchrist and abjuring the painful sweet of association with his sister was adopted before she returned to the house from her ineffectual quest for Homer and the parsley. She was filled with wonder, in looking back to the time—was it three minutes, or thirty?—she had wasted, leaning on the gate, enveloped in lilac perfume as in a viewless mantle, and daring to feel as other and unexceptional girls feel—that she could have forgotten herself so utterly. _She_ said—“so shamelessly.” “The worm on the earth may look up to the star,” if it fancies that method of spending an ignoble life, but star-gazing and presumptuous longing for a million centuries would bring planets and worms no nearer together. Hetty was very humble in imagining the figure. Some people must live on the shady side of the street, where rents are low, and green mold gathers upon stones, and snails crawl in areas. If the wretches who pune and pale in the malaria-breeding damps would not go mad, they must not look too often across the way where flowers and people bloom. If they do, they must support the consequences. This misguided girl had looked. She was now suffering. That she merited what she had to bear did not make the pain less.