“No!” And she held out her hand, as if to shake hands. But he took it in both his.

“Shall I come again?” she asked wistfully.

“Yes! Yes!”

She left him and went across the park.

He stood back and watched her going into the dark, against the pallor of the horizon. Almost with bitterness he watched her go. She had connected him up again, when he had wanted to be alone. She had cost him that bitter privacy of a man who at last wants only to be alone.