She stopped abruptly, took Joyce’s proffered hand, and said in a softer voice:—
“It’s good of you to shake hands with me. Men are better than women. Thank God I ’ve seen you at last. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Joyce, kindly.
They parted, and went their different ways, Annie Stevens to the horror of her life and Joyce to the home that held Yvonne. The parallel and the contrast smote him as he walked along the familiar street. Both himself and this girl that had fallen were derelicts, both were expiating the past, both were carrying within them a degraded self, that with a nobler self waged cruel and eternal warfare. For the injury she had done him he cherished no resentment. He felt a great pity for her, and judged her gently.
It was strange how his rudderless course through the last six years had been influenced by other lonely and drifting craft. Annie Stevens, who had loved and nearly wrecked him, had been the cause of his linking fortunes with poor Noakes; and it was through Yvonne—with whom, sweetest of derelicts, he was now voyaging on unruffled waters—that he had first drifted towards Annie Stevens. He was pondering over this one day during an idle hour in the shop with the old bookseller, when a whimsical fancy seized him.
“You lead a very lonely life, Mr. Runcle,” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” replied the old man. “I suppose I do. Beyond one sister, who has been dying for many months, I have neither kith nor kin in the world.”