One afternoon at twilight he was walking round the reservoir in the Park when he recognized something familiar in a trim little figure approaching him--something that changed the beat of his heart. It was Miss Bennett. He stopped her, uncertain of his reception. "Is that Mr. O'Bannon?" she said, staring up at him in the dim light. The city beyond the bare trees had begun to turn into a sort of universal lilac mist, punctuated with yellow dots of light. It was too dark for Miss Bennett to see any change in O'Bannon's appearance, anything ravaged and worn, anything suggesting an abnormal strain. Miss Bennett, though kind and gentle, was not imaginative about turbulent, irregular emotions, such as she herself did not experience. She was not on the lookout for danger signals. She did not feel unfriendly to O'Bannon. On the contrary she admired him. She could, as she said, see his side of it. She prided herself on seeing both sides of every question. She greeted him cordially as soon as she was sure it was he. He turned and walked with her. They had the reservoir to themselves. Miss Bennett thought it more tactful not to refer to Lydia. She began talking about the beauty of the city. Country people always spoke as if all natural beauty were excluded from towns, but for her part---- O'Bannon suddenly interrupted her. "Have you seen Miss Thorne lately?" he said in a queer, quick, low tone. When Benny felt a thing she could always express it. This was fortunate for her because when she expressed it she relieved the acuteness of her own feeling. She very naturally, therefore, sought the right phrase, even sometimes one of an almost indecent poignancy, because the more poignantly she made the other person feel the more sure she could be of her own relief. Then, too, she was not sorry that O'Bannon should understand just what it was he had done--his duty, perhaps, but he might as well know the consequences. "Have I seen her?" she exclaimed. "Oh, Mr. O'Bannon!" There was a pause as if it were too terrible to go on with, but of course she did go on. "I see her every week. She's like an animal in a trap. Perhaps you never saw one--in a trap, I mean. Lydia had a gray wolfhound once, and in the woods it strayed away and got caught in a mink trap. It was almost dead when we found it, but so patient and hopeless. She's getting to be like that--each week a little more patient than the week before--she who was never patient. Oh, Mr. O'Bannon, I feel sometimes as if I couldn't bear it--the way they've ground it out of her in a few months! She seems like an old woman in a lovely young woman's body. They haven't spoiled that--at least they haven't yet."