It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore one morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came suddenly upon the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in the immediate neighbourhood of the Gormers’ newly-acquired estate, and in her motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught one or two passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved 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 on her. “But why can’t we be friends–why not, when I’ve repented in dust and ashes? Isn’t it hard that you should condemn me to suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I was punished enough at the time–is there to be no respite for me?”
“I should have thought you had found complete respite in the reconciliation which was effected at my expense,” Lily began, with renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: “Don’t put it in that way–when that’s been the worst of my punishment. My God! what could I do–wasn’t I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice: any word I might have said would have been turned against you–-”
“I have told you I don’t blame you; all I ask you to understand is that, after the use Bertha chose to make of me–after all that her behaviour has since implied–it’s impossible that you and I should meet.”
He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. “Is it–need it be? Mightn’t there be circumstances–-?” he checked himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he began again: “Miss Bart, listen–give me a minute. If we’re not to meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we can’t be friends after–after what has happened. But can’t I at least appeal to your pity? Can’t I move you if I ask you to think of me as a prisoner–a prisoner you alone can set free?”