Mr. Dale walked with his hands clasped behind him, and his stick under his arm; his soft felt hat was pulled down over his eyes, so that his keeping the path was more by chance than sight. He stopped once to pluck a sprig from the hawthorn hedge, to put between his lips. This gave Mr. Denner breath, and a chance to speak.
"I think I will walk home with you, Henry," he said. "I want to have a talk with you."
His heart thumped as he said that; he felt he had committed himself.
"Well, now, that's very pleasant," responded Mr. Dale. "I was just thinking I should be alone half the way home."
"But you would not be alone when you got there," Mr. Denner said meditatively; "now, with me it is different."
"Oh, quite different,—quite different."
"Yes," proceeded the other, "I have very little companionship. I go home and sit in my library all by myself. Sometimes, I get up and wander about the house, with only my cigar for company."
"I suppose," said Mr. Dale, "that you can smoke wherever you want, in your house? I often think of your loneliness; coming and going just as you please, quite independently."
Mr. Denner gave him a sudden questioning look, and then appeared to reproach himself for having misunderstood his friend.
"Yes, just so,—just so. I knew you would appreciate it; but you can never know from experience, Henry, how a man feels left quite to himself. You do not think of the independence; it is the loneliness. You cannot know that."