"Oh, _why_ should you be so that all that happened!" cried Lydia suddenly. "If it was too hard for me, why couldn't you have made it easier--thought differently--acted like other people. _Would_ you--if I hadn't--if we had gone on knowing each other?"
Rankin turned very white. "No," he said; "I couldn't."
"It seems to me," said Lydia hurriedly, "that, without being willing to concede anything to their ideas, you ask a great deal of your friends."
"Yes," said Rankin, "I do. It's a hard struggle I'm in with myself and the world--oh, evidently much too hard for you even to look at from a distance." His voice broke. "The best thing I can do for you is to stay away--" He rose, and stepped into the aisle. "But you are so kind--you will let me serve you in any other way, if I can--ever. If I can ever do something that's hard for you to do--you must know that I stand as ready as even Dr. Melton to do it for you if I can."
Indeed, for the moment, as Lydia looked up into his kind, strong face, his impersonal tenderness made him seem almost such an old, tried friend as her godfather; almost as unlikely to expect any intimate personal return from her.
"You must remember," he went on, "the great joy it gave us both to-day even to see an act of kindness. Give me an opportunity to do one for you if I ever can."
It already seemed to Lydia as though he had gone away from her, as though this were but a beneficent memory of him lingering by her side. She hardly noticed when he left her alone in the car.
The conductor started up, wakened by the silence, and announced wildly, "Wardsboro', Wardsboro'!"
"No, it ain't; it's the first stop in Hardville," contradicted the motorman, sticking his head in through the door. "Turn on them lights!"
As the glass bulbs leaped to a dazzling glare, Lydia blinked and looked away out of the window. A moment later an arm laid about her neck made her bound up in amazement and confront a small, middle-aged woman, with a hat too young for her tired, sallow face, with a note-book in her hand and an apologetic expression of affection in her light blue eyes. "I'm sorry I startled you, Miss Lydia," she said. "I keep forgetting you're not still a little girl I can pick up and hug."