“Ah, that’s a question.”

CHAPTER 46

After he had put the question, the reply to which meant so much to him, Will’s eyes, avoiding Bertha, turned to the window.  Though there wanted still a couple of hours to sunset, a sky overcast was already dusking the little parlour.  Distant bells made summons to evening service, and footfalls sounded in the otherwise silent street.

“It’s a question,” he resumed, “which has troubled me for a long time.  Do you remember—­when was it?  A year ago?—­going one Sunday with Mrs. Cross to Kew?”

“I remember it very well.”

“I happened to be at Kew that day,” Will continued, still nervously.  “You passed me as I stood on the bridge.  I saw you go into the Gardens, and I said to myself how pleasant it would be if I could have ventured to join you in your walk.  You knew me—­as your grocer.  For me to have approached and spoken, would have been an outrage.  That day I had villainous thoughts.”

Bertha raised her eyes; just raised them till they met his, then bent her head again.

“We thought your name was really Jolly man,” she said, in a half-apologetic tone.

“Of course you did.  A good invention, by the bye, that name, wasn’t it?”

“Very good indeed,” she answered, smiling.  “And you used to come to the shop.” pursued Will.

“And I looked forward to it.  There was something human in your way of talking to me.”

“I hope so.”

“Yes, but—­it made me ask myself that question.  I comforted myself by saying that of course the shop was only a temporary expedient; I should get out of it; I should find another way of making money; but, you see, I’m as far from that as ever; and if I decide to go on shopkeeping—­don’t I condemn myself to solitude?”

“It is a difficulty,” said Bertha, in the tone of one who lightly ponders an abstract question.

“Now and then, some time ago, I half persuaded myself that, even though a difficulty, it needn’t be a fatal one.”  He was speaking now with his eyes steadily fixed upon her; “but that was when you still came to the shop.  Suddenly you ceased—­”

His voice dropped.  In the silence, Bertha uttered a little “Yes.”

“I have been wondering what that meant—­”

His speech was a mere parched gasp.  Bertha looked at him, and her eyebrows contracted, as if in sympathetic trouble.  Gently she asked

“No explanation occurred to you?”

With a convulsive movement, Will changed his position, and by so doing seemed to have released his tongue.

“Several,” he said, with a strange smile.  “The one which most plagued me, I should very likely do better to keep to myself; but I won’t; you shall know it.  Perhaps you are prepared for it.  Do you know that I went abroad last summer?”

“I heard of it.”

“From Miss Elvan?”