‘Oh, but you didn’t!’ came eagerly from the girl’s lips.  ’You’ve forgotten, but I can’t.  You were very kind to me—­you helped me more than you can think—­you never saw me without speaking kindly.  Don’t you remember that night when I came to fetch you from the workshop, and you took off your coat and put it over me, because it was cold and raining?’

‘Jane, what a long, long time ago that seems!’

’As long as I live I shall never forget it—­never!  You were the only friend I had then.’

‘No; there was some one else who took thought for you,’ said Sidney, regarding her gravely.

Jane met his look for an instant—­they could just read each other’s features in the pale light—­then dropped her eyes.

‘I don’t think you’ve forgotten that either,’ he added, in the same unusual voice.

‘No,’ said Jane, below her breath.

‘Say who it is I mean.’

‘You mean Miss Hewett,’ was the reply, after a troubled moment.

’I wanted you to say her name.  You remember one evening not long ago, when your grandfather was away?  I had the same wish then.  Why shouldn’t we speak of her?  She was a friend to you when you needed one badly, and it’s right that you should remember her with gratitude.  I think of her just like we do of people that are dead.’

Jane stood with one hand on the low wall, half-turned to him, hut her face bent downwards.  Regarding her for what seemed a long time, Sidney felt as though the fragrance of the earth and the flowers were mingling with his blood and confusing him with emotions.  At the same his tongue was paralysed.  Frequently of late he had known a timidity in Jane’s presence, which prevented him from meeting her eyes, and now this tremor came upon him with painful intensity.  He knew to what his last words had tended; it was with consciousness of a distinct purpose that he had led the conversation to Clara; but now he was powerless to speak the words his heart prompted.  Of a sudden he experienced a kind of shame, the result of comparison between himself and the simple girl who stood before him; she was so young, and the memory of passions from which he had suffered years ago affected him with a sense of unworthiness, almost of impurity.  Jane had come to be his ideal of maidenhood, but till this moment he had not understood the full significance of the feeling with which he regarded her.  He could not transform with a word their relations to each other.  The temptation of the hour had hurried him towards an end which he must approach with more thought, more preparation of himself.

It was scarcely for ten heart-beats.  Then Jane raised her eyes and said in a voice that trembled: 

’I’ve often wished I could see her again, and thank her for her kindness that night.’

’That will help me to think with less pain of things that are long since over and done with,’ Sidney replied, forcing himself to speak firmly.  ’We can’t alter the past, Jane, but we can try to remember only the best part of it.  You, I hope, very seldom look back at all.’