IT had poured all the night before, and even now, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the air had the washed clearness that follows a warm rain. Fortunately the sun had shone forth before the church bells summoned the worshippers to kneel in front of the marble altars, banked high with scentless white flowers. It was Easter, and the first of April also; and, furthermore, the first warm Sunday of the spring. So the young men and maidens who clustered about the doors of the churches that afternoon were decked out in fresh apparel—the young men in light overcoats, and the maidens in all the bravery of their new bonnets.

In the corner of one of the cable-cars which were sliding along under the skeleton of the elevated railroad there sat a young man looking at his neighbors with begrudging interest, and pulling at the ends of an aggressive black mustache. Filson Shelby was not yet at home in the great city, and he knew it, and he silently protested against it. He was forever on the watch for a chance to resent the complacent attitude of city folks towards country people. Yet the metropolis had so far conquered him that his hat and his shoes and his clothes were city made.

It was six months now since the young Southwesterner had left his native village, and already he thought that he knew New York pretty well, from Harlem where he boarded to Wall Street where he worked. He was sure that he was well informed as to the customs of New-Yorkers, although the New-Yorkers changed their customs so rapidly that it was not so easy to be certain about this.

There were white flowers blossoming in the parlor windows of many of the houses in Fifty-third Street, through which the cable-car was passing, and as the car clanged around the curve and started on its way down Seventh Avenue it grazed the tail of a florist's wagon, the box of which was piled high with palms. Filson Shelby was aware that it was now a practice of New-Yorkers to give one another potted plants at Easter.

He had been told also that the habit no longer obtained of paying calls on Sunday afternoon; and none the less was he on his way down to Wall Street to take out for a walk the one girl in New York who seemed to him to have the unpretending simplicity of the girls of the Southwest. What did he care, he asked himself, whether or not it was fashionable to call on girls Sunday afternoon? What right had the New-Yorkers, anyhow, to assume that their way of doing things was the only right and proper way?

Having propounded these questions to himself, he answered them with a smile, for he had a saving sense of humor, and even a tendency towards self-analysis, and he had long ago detected his own pride in living in New York. In his earliest letters home he had expressed his delight in that he was now at the headquarters of the whole country; and he had written these letters on broad sheets of paper bought in the German quarter, and adorned with outline views of the sights of the city, picked out in the primary colors. He had sent missives thus decorated not only to his family and to his old friends, but even to mere acquaintances of his boyhood, for whom he cared little or nothing, except that they should know him to be settled in the metropolis. He could not but suspect that if he were now to go back to the village of his birth, he would seem as stuck-up to the natives as the New-Yorkers had seemed to him the first few weeks he was in the city.

The car slipped down Seventh Avenue, and stumbled into Broadway, and sped along sometimes with a smooth swiftness and again with a jerky hesitation. Gayly dressed family groups got on and got off, and the car had almost emptied itself by the time it came to Madison Square. Filson Shelby was greatly interested in the manners of two handsomely gowned girls who sat opposite to him, and who did not know each other very well. It struck him that one of them—the prettier of the two, as it happened—was a little uneasy in the other's company, and yet pleased to be seen with her. To his regret, both of them alighted at Grace Church, leaving only half a dozen people in the long car as it started again on its journey down-town.

He set down the plainer of the two as a member of the strange society known as the "Four Hundred," about which he had heard so much since he had been reading the Sunday papers. If he were right in this ascription, and if he were to judge by this sample, the girls of the Four Hundred were not a very good-looking lot, for all they were so stylishly dressed. It struck him, too, that this girl's manners were somehow offensive, although he could not state precisely where the offence lay.

He was glad that the one girl in New York whom he knew at all well had the easy good manners which spring from a naturally good heart. She was as well educated as the two girls who had just left the car; perhaps better, for she was going to graduate from the Normal College in two or three months; and yet she was unaffected and unassuming. As he phrased it in his mind, "she didn't put on any frills." He could chat with her just as easily as he used to talk to the girls who had gone to school with him at home. And yet when he considered how unlike she was really to these friends of his childhood he wondered why it was he and she had got along so well, and his thoughts went back to the occasion of his first meeting with her.

The car was now speeding swiftly down Broadway, obstructed by no carriages, no carts, no tracks, no wagons, and no drays. Below Astor Place the sidewalks were as bare as the street itself was empty. The shades were down in the windows of the many-storied buildings which towered above the deserted thoroughfare, and the flamboyant signs made their incessant appeals in vain. For a mile or more it was almost as though he were being carried through the avenues of an abandoned city. The one evidence of life, other than the cars themselves, was an infrequent bicyclist "riding the cable slot" up from the South Ferry. If only he had first arrived in New York in the restful quiet of a Sunday, so the young Southwesterner found himself thinking, perhaps the metropolis might not have seemed to him so overwhelming. As it was, it had been a shock to him to be plunged suddenly into the vortex of the immense city.

A telegrapher in the little town near which he was born, Filson Shelby had gone beyond his duty to oblige a New-Yorker who had chanced to be detained there for a fortnight, and the New-Yorker had repaid his courtesy by the proffer of a position as private operator in the office of a Wall Street friend. The young man had accepted eagerly, having no ties to bind him to his home; and yet he had felt desperately homesick more than once during his first three months in New York. Indeed, it was not until he had come to know Edna Leisler that he had reconciled himself to the great town, which was so crowded, and in which he was so alone. He was slow to form friendships, but he had made a few acquaintances.

It was one of these casual acquaintances who had taken him one day to the top of an old office building not far from the Stock Exchange. Here the janitor lived, and was allowed to use one of the rooms allotted to him as a lunch-room. The janitor's wife was a good cook, and Filson Shelby returned there again and again. One Saturday, when the room happened to be more crowded than usual, the rawboned and ruddy Irish girl was unable to serve everybody, and some time after he had given his order Filson Shelby was waited upon by a young lady in a neat brown dress. He was observant, and he saw a red spot burning on each cheek, and he noted that the lips were tightly set. It seemed to him that she was acting as waitress unwillingly, and yet at the same time that she was doing it of her own accord. He did not like to stare at her, and yet he could hardly take his eyes from her while she was in the room. She was not beautiful exactly, for she was but a slim slip of a girl, and she had coppery hair; and he had always been taught that red hair was ugly. Yet something about her took his fancy; perhaps it was her independent manner, perhaps it was rather her perky self-possession; perhaps, after all, it was the humorous expression which lurked in her eyes and at the corner of her mouth.

He had lingered over his luncheon that noon as long as he could, and then he was rewarded. The man who had first brought him there entered and took a seat beside him. When the young lady in brown came for his order the new-comer shook hands with her cordially, and called her "Miss Edna."

"She used to go to school with my sister," he explained to the young Southwesterner. "She's up at the Normal College now, and I've never seen her here in the dining-room before. But she has a holiday, and I suppose she thought she ought to help her mother out. It's her mother who cooks, you know—and boss cooking it is, too, isn't it?—real home sort of flavor about it."

Filson Shelby had still delayed his departure; and as Edna Leisler brought bread and butter, and went back again to the kitchen, his friend's chatter had streamed along.

"Red-hot hair, hasn't she?" was the next remark. "If there was half a dozen more of her you'd think it was a torchlight procession, wouldn't you? But it suits her style, don't it? Fact is, she's the only red-haired girl I ever saw I didn't hate at sight."

It seemed as though he had expected Filson to respond to this, and so the young Southwesterner hesitated, and cleared his throat, and admitted that her hair was red.

"Well, it is just," the other returned. "I guess her barber has to wear asbestos gloves, eh? But she's a good girl, Edna is, if she is a brand from the burning. My sister used to be very fond of her, and I like her myself, though she isn't in our set exactly. I'll introduce you, if you like?"

The cable-car now came to a halt sharply to set down passengers for Brooklyn by way of the bridge, but Filson Shelby was wholly unconscious of this. He was busy with the recollection of that winter day when he had stood up with bashful awkwardness and had heard Edna Leisler say that she was pleased to meet him. He had the memory also of the next Saturday, when he had gone back to the little low eating-room under the roof in the hope of seeing her again, and of the unaffected frankness of her manner towards him when he met her on the stairway.

He remembered how simply she had accepted his invitation to go to Central Park to lunch on Washington's Birthday, the first holiday when they were both free, and he remembered, too, what a good time they had up there. It was on that Washington's Birthday that he had first found out that in the eyes of some people red hair was not a blemish, but a beauty. The omnibus in which they came down-town had been so crowded that they were separated, and he heard one well-dressed man say to his companion: "Did you ever see such stunning hair as that girl has? It is like burnished copper—except when the sun glints on it, and then it's like spun gold."

Hitherto he had been willing to overlook her aggressive locks in consideration of her good qualities, but thereafter he came rapidly to accept the view of the well-dressed man in the omnibus, and to look upon her red hair as a crown of glory. She did not seem any more attractive to him than she did at first meeting, but he knew now that other men might be attracted also. He wondered whether there were any other men whom she knew as well as she knew him. It seemed to him that they had taken to each other at the start, and they were now very good friends indeed. But there was no reason why she should not have other friends also.

The current of his retrospection was not so sweeping that he could not follow the course of the cable-car in which he was seated, and just then he saw the brown spire of Trinity Church and heard the clock strike three. He signalled to the conductor, and the car stopped before the church door and at the head of Wall Street.

As he stood looking down the crooked street, washed white by the rain and looking clean in the April sunshine, he asked himself why he was going to meet Edna Leisler—and especially why it was his heart had slowed up at the suggestion that perhaps other men were as attentive to her as he was. He was not in love with her, was he? That she had made New York tolerable to him he was ready to admit, and also that he liked her better than any girl he had ever met. But if he was jealous of her, did not that prove that he loved her?

These were the questions he propounded as he walked from Broadway to the old building on the top floor of which the Leislers lived. When Edna Leisler came down-stairs to meet him, with her new Easter hat, he knew the answers to these questions; he knew that he would be miserable if he were to lose the privilege of her society; he knew furthermore that he had loved her since the first day he had seen her, even though he had not hitherto suspected it. He knew also that he would never have a better chance to tell her that he loved her than he would have that afternoon; and while they were shaking hands he made up his mind that before he took her back to her mother's he would get her promise to marry him.

With this resolve fixed, he took refuge in the commonplace.

"Am I late?" he asked.

"Five minutes," she answered. "I didn't know but what you were going to April-fool me."

"Oh, Miss Edna," he cried, "you know I wouldn't do that!"

"I didn't think you would really," she laughed back. "And I felt sure I could get even with you if you did."

Thus lightly chatting, they came to the corner of Broad Street.

"Shall we go down to the Battery?" he suggested, thinking that he might find a chance there to say what was in his heart.

"Yes," she assented; "it'll be first-rate to get a whiff of the salt breeze. It's as warm as spring to-day, isn't it?"

In front of the Stock Exchange, and for two or three blocks below, Broad Street was absolutely bare, except for a little knot of men working over a man-hole of the electrical conduit. The ten-story buildings lifted themselves aloft on both sides of the street, without any evidence of life from window or doorway; they were as silent and seemingly empty as though they belonged to a deserted city of the plains. Bar-rooms in cellars had bock-beer placards before their closed portals. On the glass panel of the swing-door which admitted the week-day passer-by to the Business Men's Quick Lunch there was wafered the bill of fare of the day before, but the door itself was closed tight. So were the entrances to more pretentious restaurants.

But as Filson Shelby and Edna Leisler went on farther down-town, Broad Street slowly changed its character. There were not so many office buildings and more retail shops; there were a few wholesale warehouses; there were even cheap flat-houses; and there were more signs of life. Children began to fill the roadway and the sidewalks. There were boys on tri-cycles, and there were Little Mothers pushing perambulators in which babies lay asleep. There were girls on roller-skates; and one of these, a tall, lanky child, had a frolicsome black poodle, which pulled her quickly along the sidewalk.

Seeing some of these things, and not seeing others, and being taken up wholly by their own talk, the young Southwesterner and the New York girl passed through Whitehall Street and came out on the Battery. They walked to the edge of the water, and looked across the waves to the Statue of Liberty holding her torch aloft. An Italian steamer full of immigrants was just coming up from Quarantine. The afternoon was clear, after the rain of the night before, and yet there was a haze on the horizon. The huge grain-elevators over on the Jersey shore stood out against the sky defiantly.

A fringe of men and women sat on the seats around the grass-plots and along the sea-wall. Many of the women had children in their arms or at their skirts. Most of the men were reading the gaudily illustrated Sunday newspapers; some of them were smoking. The sea-breeze blew mildly, with a foretaste of warm weather. The grass-plots were brownish-gray, with but the barest touch of green at the edges, and there was never a bud yet on any of the skeleton trees. None the less did every one know that the winter was gone for good, and that any day almost the spring might come in with a rush.

As Filson Shelby looked about him he saw more than one young couple sitting side by side on the benches or sauntering languidly along the winding walks, and he knew that he was not the only young fellow who felt the stirring of the season. No one of the other girls was as good-looking as Edna, nor as stylish; he saw this at half a glance. With every minute his desire grew to tell her how dear she was to him, and still he put it off and put it off. Once or twice when she spoke to him he left her remark unanswered, and then hastily begged her pardon for his rudeness. He did not quite know what he was saying, and he feared that she must think him a fool. He was restless, too, and it seemed to him quite impossible to ask her to marry him in such an exposed place as the Battery.

"Suppose we go up to Trinity Church?" he suggested. "It's always quiet enough in the graveyard there."

"Isn't it quiet enough here?" she asked, as they turned their footsteps away from Castle Garden.

"It isn't really noisy, I'll admit," he responded; "but I get mighty tired of those elevated trains snorting along over the back of my head, don't you?"

She gave him a queer little look out of the corner of her eye, and then she laughed lightly.

"Oh, well," she replied, "if you think Trinity Church Yard is a better place, I don't mind."

Then her cheeks suddenly flamed crimson, and she turned away her head.

They were now crossing the barren space under the elevated railroad, and, as it happened, the young man did not see her swift blush.

As they skirted the oval of Bowling Green the girl nodded to a gray-coated policeman on guard over the little park.

"Who's that?" asked the young man, acutely jealous, although he saw that the officer was not less than fifty years old.

"That's Mr. O'Rourke," she explained. "He's Rose O'Rourke's father. She was graduated from the Normal College only two years ago, and then she went on the stage. She's getting on splendidly, too. She played Queen Elizabeth last year—and didn't she look it? I'm sure she's a great deal handsomer than that old Queen was."

"But that old Queen," he returned, "wasn't the daughter of a sparrow-cop—that's what you call them, don't you?"

"I don't call them so," she responded, "for I think it's vulgar to talk slang."

"But the boys do call a park policeman a sparrow-cop, don't they?" he persisted.

"The little boys do," she answered, "but I know Mr. O'Rourke doesn't like it."

"I can understand that," he replied. "If I had Queen Elizabeth for a daughter, I think I should want to be a king myself."

"Well," the girl went on to explain, "Rose did want him to give up his appointment. She said she was earning enough for her father not to work. But he wouldn't, for all she urged him. She's a kind girl, is Rose, and not a bit stuck-up. She came up to the college last year and recited for us. You should have heard her do 'Curfew shall not ring to-night'; I tell you she was splendid."

"I don't believe she did it any better than you could," he declared.

"Oh, don't you?" she returned, heartily; "that's only because you didn't hear her. And she was very nice to me, too. She complimented me on my piece."

"What did you speak?" he asked.

"Oh, I always choose something fiery and patriotic. I spoke 'Sheridan's Ride' first, and then, when the girls encored me, I spoke 'Old Ironsides'—but I like 'Sheridan's Ride' best; and Rose O'Rourke said I got more out of it than anybody she had ever heard. But then she always was so complimentary."

"I reckon she knows it's lucky for her you don't go on the stage," the lover asserted. "It would be a cold day for her if you did. I haven't seen her, but I'm sure she isn't such a good looker as you are!"

"Thank you for the compliment," the girl answered. "If we weren't here in Broadway, in front of Trinity Church, I'd drop you a courtesy. But you wouldn't say that if you had seen her, for she's as pretty as a picture."

"Do you mean that she is as fresh as paint?" he asked.

"That's real mean of you," she retorted, "for Rose doesn't need to paint at all, even on the stage; she has just the loveliest complexion."

"She's not the only girl in New York who has a lovely complexion," he declared; and again the color rose swiftly on her cheek, and then as swiftly faded.

They had now come to the gates of Trinity Church, and they saw a little stream of men and women pouring in to attend the afternoon service.

"You must not be down on Rose," the girl said, as they turned away from Broadway and began to ramble slowly amid the tombstones. "She's a good friend of mine. She said she'd get me an engagement if I'd go on the stage—"

"But you are not going to?" he broke in, earnestly.

"I'd love to," she answered, calmly. "But I'm too big a coward. I'd never dare stand up before the people in a great big theatre and feel they were all looking at me."

"I'm glad you're not going to," he declared.

"It would be too delightful for anything!" she asserted; "but I'd never have the courage. I know I wouldn't, so I've given up the idea. I'll finish my course at the college, and get my diploma, and then I'll be a teacher—that is, if I can get an appointment. But it isn't easy if you haven't any influence; and father doesn't take any interest in politics, and he doesn't know any of the trustees of this district, and I can't see how I'm ever to get into a school. Now Mr. O'Rourke could help me if he wanted—"

"The sparrow-cop?" interrupted the young Southwesterner. "Why, what has he got to do with the public schools?"

"Mr. O'Rourke has a great deal of influence in this ward, I can tell you that," she returned. "He has a pull on more than one of the trustees. If he were to back me, I'd get my position sure! And maybe I had better go to Rose and ask her for her father's influence."

They were now almost in the centre of that part of the church-yard which lies above the church, and behind the monument to the American prisoners who died during the British occupancy of New York. The afternoon service was about to begin, and the solemn tones of the organ were audible where they stood.

It seemed to Filson Shelby that the time had come for him to speak.

He swallowed a lump in his throat, and began.

"Miss Edna," he said, hesitatingly, "why do you want to be a school-teacher?"

"To earn my living, to be sure!" she answered, calmly enough, although the color was rising again on her cheeks.

"But you don't need ever so many scholars to earn your living, do you?" he asked, gaining courage slowly.

"What do you mean?" she returned, forcing herself to look him in the face.

"I mean," he responded, "that I don't see why you couldn't earn your living just as well by having only one scholar—"

"Only one scholar?" she echoed.

"Yes—only one scholar," he declared; "but you could take him for life. And you could teach him everything that was good and true and beautiful—and he would work hard for you, and try and make you happy."

The color ebbed from her cheeks, but she said nothing. The low notes of the organ were dying away, and on the elevated railroad just behind the young couple a train came hissing along wreathed in swirling steam.

"I'm not worthy of you, Edna; I know that only too well; but you can make me ever so much better if you'll only try," he urged. "I love you with my whole heart—that's what I've been trying to say. Will you marry me?"

She raised her eyes to his and simply answered,

"Yes."

An hour later, as they were going through the dropping twilight down Wall Street to the old office building, on the top floor of which she lived with her parents, they were still talking of each other, of their united future, and of their separate past.

When they came to the door and stood at the foot of the five flights of stairs that led up to the janitor's apartment, they had still many things to say to each other.

What seemed to Filson Shelby most astonishing was that he should now be engaged to be married, when that very morning he was not even aware of his love for her. And being a very young fellow, and, moreover, being very much in love, he could not keep this astonishing thing to himself, but must needs tell her.

"Do you know, Edna," he began, "that I must have been in love with you a long while without knowing it? Isn't that most extraordinary? And it was only this morning that I found it out!"

Standing on the stairs above him, and just out of his reach, she broke into a merry little laugh, and the tendrils of red hair quivered around her broad brow.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she answered, and then she laughed again. "At least, not much. It is only because men are so much slower to see things than women are."

"What do you mean?" he asked again.

"Well," she returned, laughing once more, and retreating two or three steps higher up the stairs, "I mean that you say you only found out this morning that you were in love with me—"

"Yes?"

"Well," she continued, making ready for flight, "I found it out more than two months ago."

(1895.)

AS he came down the steps of his sister's little house, that first Saturday in May, he saw before him the fresh greenery of the grass in Stuyvesant Square and the delicate blossoms on its sparse bushes and the young leaves on its trees; and he felt in himself also the subtle influences of the spring-tide. The sky was cloudless, serene, and unfathomably blue. The sun shone clearly, and the shadows it cast were already lengthening along the street. The gentle breeze blew hesitatingly. He heard the inarticulate shriek of the hawker bearing a tray containing a dozen square boxes of strawberries and walking near a cart piled high with crates. When he crossed Third Avenue he noticed that a white umbrella had flowered out over the raised chair of the Italian boot-black at the corner. A butcher-boy, with basket on arm, was lingering at a basement door in lively banter with a good-looking Irish cook. A country wagon, full of growing plants, crawled down the street while the vender bawled forth the cheapness of his wares.

There were other signs of the season at Union Square—the dingy landaus with their tops half open, the flowers bedded out in bright profusion, the aquatic plants adorning the broad basin of the fountain, the pigeons wooing and cooing languidly, the sparrows energetically flirting and fighting, the young men and maidens walking slowly along the curving paths and smiling in each other's faces. To Harry Grant, just home from a long winter in the bleak Northwest, it seemed as though man and nature were alike rejoicing in the rising of the sap and the bourgeoning of spring. It was as though the pulse of the strong city were beating more swiftly and with renewed youth. Harry Grant felt his own heart rejoice that he was back again amid the sights he loved, within a stone's-throw of the house where he was born, within pistol-shot of the residence of the girl he was now going at last to ask to marry him.

It was nearly a year since he had last seen her, but he knew she would greet him as cordially as she had always done. That Winifred was a good friend of his he knew well enough; what he did not know at all was whether or not the friendship had changed to love on her part also. He could hardly recall the time when he had not known her. He could distinctly remember the occasion when he had first told her that he intended to marry her when he was grown up—that was on a spring day like this, and he was seven and she was five, and they were playing together in Gramercy Park while their nurses followed them slowly around the enclosure. Now he was twenty-three and she was twenty-one; and in all these sixteen years there had been no day when he had not looked forward to their marriage. Of course, when he had grown to be a big boy and had been sent away to boarding-school, he had been ashamed to talk about such things. But when he went to college he had gazed ahead four years and almost fixed on the day he intended to propose.

Then his father had died, and the family affairs were left in inexplicable confusion. His uncle had offered to pay Harry's way through Columbia, but he was in a haste to be independent, to make his own path, to have a position which he could ask Winifred to share. He found a place at once in the office of a great dry-goods house; and he had been so successful there that one of their customers had offered him inducements to go out to a swiftly growing city in the new Northwest. Two years had Harry Grant spent out there—two years of hard work amid men who were all toiling mightily and who were capable of appreciating his youthful energy. Now he was back again in New York to act as the Eastern representative of the chief capitalist of the Northwestern city, an old man, who liked Harry, and who saw how useful his address and his character might be. The position was onerous for a man so young; but it was honorable also, and the salary was liberal even from a New York standpoint. At last he was again able to look at life from the point of view of a New-Yorker. At last he was ready to ask her to share his life.

He was in no hurry for the moment, as he could not make sure of finding her at home until nearly five o'clock, and it was now barely four by the transparent dial which Atlas bore on his back in the jeweller's upper window on the opposite side of the square. He crossed Broadway at Fourteenth Street, and there he was caught up at once and swept along by the spring-flood rolling up from down-town that beautiful afternoon in May. The windows of the florists' were lovely with Easter lilies and fragrant with branches of lilac. The windows of the confectioners' were gay with gaudy Easter eggs and with elaborate chocolate rabbits. Young girls pressed giggling through the doors to stand packed beside the soda-water fountains. Elderly men lingered at the street corners to stare at the young women.

Within an hour or two at the most Harry Grant intended to ask Winifred to be his wife, and as he saw the dread question so close before him he could not but wonder what the answer would be. Winifred liked him—that much he felt sure about. Whether she loved him, even a little, that he could not venture to guess. She had sturdy common-sense and she was self-reliant, he knew well, and yet he could not help fearing that perhaps the influence of her grandmother had been more powerful than he wished. It was possible, of course, that the restless and ambitious old lady had inoculated her young granddaughter with some of her own dissatisfaction.

As Harry's circumstances had changed since they were boy and girl together, so had Winifred's. Her father had died also, and then her grandfather, leaving a very large fortune to his widow, and Winifred had gone to live with her grandmother, Mrs. Winston-Smith. (It was her grandmother who had put the hyphen into the name, and who had insisted on its adoption by the son and the granddaughter.) That Mrs. Winston-Smith did not like him, Harry Grant knew only too well, or, at least, that she did not approve of him as a possible suitor for the hand of Miss Winston-Smith. She thought that her granddaughter ought to make a brilliant marriage. She had been heard to say that in England Winifred would have no difficulty in marrying a title. She had taken her granddaughter to London the season before, and they had been presented at court, to go afterwards on a round of country-house visits, returning late to finish the summer at Lenox.

All this Harry knew from the newspapers; but what Winifred had thought of it all he did not know, for he had not seen her since the day before her departure for England. And that interview itself had been in the presence of the grandmother and of two or three casual callers. Really he had not had chance of speech with the woman he had loved for three years—ever since Mrs. Winston-Smith had asked him to dinner one night, only to take him into the library and to tell him that she saw that he was attracted by Winifred, and no wonder, but that he must give up the hope of winning her. Mrs. Winston-Smith was some sixty-years old at the time of this talk with Harry Grant, and she was a very stately dame, with no lack of manner, but she could, if she chose, express herself with absolute frankness and directness. On that occasion she had seen fit to be perfectly plain-spoken. She had told him that Winifred had been used to luxury and could not do without it, and that if Winifred married against her wishes she would give all her money to the new cathedral, cutting the girl off without a cent. She asked Harry if he did not think it would be very selfish of him to press his suit when its success would mean the misery of the woman he pretended to love. She reminded him that his own income was meagre, and that he had no prospects. If, then, Winifred had no money, how could she as his wife have all the luxuries to which she was accustomed, and which had now become necessities? Of course she did not admit that Winifred was in any way interested in him. In fact, she hoped and trusted that the girl's affections were in no way engaged; and she relied on Mr. Grant's good sense and on his unwillingness to be so brutally selfish. After all, Winifred was a mere child, and had seen nothing of the world as yet.

Harry Grant had made no promises to Mrs. Winston-Smith, but he had felt the force of some of her arguments. Plainly he had no right to ask the woman he loved to give up everything for his sake; and as plainly he had no wish to live on any money her grandmother might give her. He meant, more than ever, to win her for his wife; but he saw clearly that he must make himself independent first. To be able to give her a home not unworthy of her he had worked hard all these years. At last he had succeeded, and he was in a position to ask her to marry him without at the same time asking her to surrender the most of the little comforts which made her life easy. With the salary he had now he could make her comfortable, even if her grandmother chose to take offence and cut her off without a cent. There was no false pride about the young fellow, and he did not pretend to himself that he did not care whether or not the grandmother carried out her threat. He was well aware that life would be very much pleasanter if Mrs. Winston-Smith should accept the situation and make the best of it, and give her granddaughter an adequate allowance.

Then, as these thoughts ran through his head, he smiled at his own fatuity in taking Winifred's consent for granted in this summary fashion. What Mrs. Winston-Smith said or did mattered little. What was of vital importance was Winifred's own answer to his question. He could not but recognize that to call on a young lady after a year's separation and to ask her in marriage, suddenly, without warning, was an unusual proceeding. And yet that was just what he was going to do; and he found himself musing over schemes for getting her away from her grandmother and from any chance visitors. He tried to devise a means of luring her into the library or of coaxing her into the conservatory. He cared not how soon they might be interrupted; he knew what he had to say, and he was prepared to say it briefly. Five minutes would be time enough—five minutes, if he could but have them clear. When a man has been wanting for years to be able to put a simple question, it ought not to take him long to say the needful words; and he knew that Winifred would not keep him waiting for his answer. Whether it was to be yes or no, she would know her own mind, and be ready and willing to accept him at once or to reject him with as little hesitation.

He had been keeping pace with the throng that was sweeping massively up-town, but as the fear seized him that, after all, he had little right to think she might love him, he lengthened his stride in futile impatience to get his answer sooner. He glanced up at Tiffany's clock, then almost over his head, and he slackened his speed as he saw that it was not yet five minutes past four. He had at least half an hour to wait before he could hope to find her at home.

Then, most unexpectedly, he was favored with fortune. The foremost of the carriages drawn up in Fifteenth Street alongside the jeweller's was a handsome coupé, in which a young lady was sitting alone. As Harry Grant drew near to the corner his glance fell on this coupé, and at that moment the young lady looked up. He saw that it was Winifred. As their eyes met a swift blush bloomed in her face, and faded as speedily. She smiled and held out her hand and laughed happily as he sprang to the door of the carriage.

"Winifred!" he cried.

"Harry!" she answered.

"I didn't expect to see you here!" he declared.

"Is that the reason you are here, then?" she returned.

He made no reply. He could not take his eyes from her. In his delight at seeing her again he had nothing to say.

"Well?" she asked, when she thought he had stared enough.

"Well," he answered, "I couldn't help it. You are prettier than ever."

Again a flush flitted across her face, fainter this time, and fleeting sooner.

"That's a very direct compliment, don't you think?" she retorted, withdrawing her hand, which he had kept clasped in his own. "And you are looking well, too. Your life out West there is good for you. I don't wonder you prefer it to this noisy old New York of ours."

"But I don't prefer it," he declared, hotly. "A week of New York is worth a year of the whole wide West put together. And I've done with all that now. I've come back here for good now—"

"Have you really?" she responded, as he hesitated, having so much to say that he did not know where to begin.

"I got back this morning," he explained, "and I was coming to see you this afternoon. I've—I've so many things to tell you."

She looked at him for a second, and then she glanced away, as she said: "You will have to talk very fast, then, if you have so many things to tell me. We are going to sail on Tuesday morning, and this afternoon we are off to Tuxedo for over Sunday."

"You sail on Tuesday?" he cried, despairingly. "Just when I have come back on purpose to see you again!"

"You didn't telegraph grandma that you were coming, or she might have made other arrangements," the young woman retorted, with a little laugh.

FOR the third time that afternoon the young man stood before the window of the post-office to ask the same question and to receive the same answer:

"Has any letter come for McDowell Sutro?"

"No."

This time he persisted, for he could not take no for an answer at that late hour of the day.

"Are you sure?" he asked, urgently.

"Certain sure," was the answer that came through the window.

"Will there be another mail from California to-night?" he inquired, clutching a last hope.

"Not to-night," responded the clerk.

The young man stood there for a second, staring unconsciously into the window, and not seeing anybody or anything. Then he turned slowly to go.

The clerk knew that look on the face of men who asked for letters, and he had a movement of kindness.

"Say, young feller!" he called, brusquely.

McDowell Sutro faced about instantly, with a swift flash of hope.

"If you're expecting money in that letter, maybe it's registered," suggested the clerk. "Ask over there in the corner."

"Thank you," the young man answered, gratefully; and he walked to the window in the corner with expectation again lighting his face.

But there was no registered letter for McDowell Sutro, and there could none arrive before the next morning. And as the handsome young Californian left the post-office he knew that he had hardly a right even to hope that the letter he was asking for should ever arrive.

He stepped out on Fifth Avenue; and though a warm June wind blew balmily up from Washington Square, his heart was chill within him. He shivered as he wondered what he was to do now. He knew no one in New York, and he had not a cent in his pocket.

In his youth he had expected to inherit a fortune, and so he learned no trade and studied no profession. He had taught himself how to be idle elegantly; he had never planned how to earn his own living. Perhaps this was the reason why he had failed to find any work to do during the two gliding weeks since he had suddenly been brought face to face with his final ten-dollar bill.

He had no more resources than he had friends. His trunk, with the little clothing he owned, was still at the boarding-house he had left ten days before; it was held by the landlady till he paid her what he owed. His modest jewelry had been pawned, bit by bit.

It was now about seven in the evening, and he had had no food since the coffee and cakes taken perhaps twelve hours earlier, and bought with the last dime left him after he had paid for his night's lodging. Having walked all day, he was weary and hungry, and he had no idea how he could get a roof over his head once again or fill his stomach once more. He had heard of men and women starving to death in the streets of New York, and he found himself inquiring if that were to be his fate.

Not guiding his steps consciously, he went up Fifth Avenue to the corner of Fourteenth Street, and then turned towards Broadway. The long June day was drawing to an end. Behind his back the red sun was settling down slowly. The street was crowded with cars and with carts; and people hurried along, eager to be with their families, and giving no attention to the homeless young man they brushed against.

When he came to Broadway it seemed to him as though the rush and the tumult redoubled, and as though the men and the women who passed him were being tossed to and fro by invisible breakers. The roar of the city rose all about him; it smote on his tired ears like the deafening crash of the surf after a northeaster. He likened himself to a spent swimmer about to have the life beaten out of him by the pounding of the waves, and certain sooner or later to be cast up on the beach, a stripped and bruised corpse.

So vividly did he picture this that involuntarily he straightened himself and drew a long breath. He was a good-looking young fellow, with a graceful brown mustache curling over his weak mouth. As he stood there, erect as though ready to fight for his life, more than one woman passing briskly along the street let his figure fill her eye with pleasure.

The cable-cars whisked around the curves before him, and beyond them he beheld the green fairness of Union Square. The freshness of its foliage as he saw it through the darksome twilight attracted him. He crossed cautiously, keeping a sharp lookout for the cars, and smiling as he noted how careful he was of his life, now he did not know how he was to sustain it.

As he stood at last in the verdant oasis in the centre of the square, suddenly the electric light whitewashed the pavement, and his unexpected shadow lay black and sprawling under his feet. He looked up, startled, and he saw the infinite arch of the sky curving over him—clear, cloudless, and illimitable. The faint sickle of the new moon hung low on the horizon. A towering building thrust its thin height into the air, and the yellow lights in its upper windows seemed like square panels inlaid in the deep blue of the sky. The beauty of the moment lifted him out of his present misery, and he was glad to be alive. The plash of the fountain fell on his ears and charmed them. The broad leaves of the aquatic plants swayed languidly as a gentle breeze blew across the surface of the water.

With a sigh of relief, McDowell Sutro dropped upon one of the park benches. Until he sat down he did not know how tired he was. His feet ached, and his stomach cried for food. And yet he was stout of heart. "If I've got to spend a night à la belle étoile," he said to himself, "I could have no better luck. There are beautiful stars a-plenty this evening. It's like that night in Venice when Tom Pixley and I took the two Morton girls out in our gondolas, and their aunt couldn't find us. I remember we had had a good dinner at Florian's, with an immense dish of risotto milanese—so big we had to leave some. I wish I had the chance again. I could finish it now if it was twice as much."

Over on Fourth Avenue, behind the equestrian statue of George Washington, there was a Hungarian restaurant, and from his bench at the edge of the grass McDowell Sutro could see the table right in the window at which an old man and a young woman were having dinner. He could follow every movement of their hands; he could count every mouthful they ate. At last he could bear it no longer, and he changed his seat to a bench nearer Broadway. Here he found himself facing another eating-room, in the broad windows of which many kinds of food were alluringly displayed. Men came out and lingered in the door-way long enough to light a cigarette.

When McDowell Sutro noted this, the craving for tobacco seized him. A smoke would not stay his stomach, but it would be a solace none the less. He rose to his feet and felt in all his pockets, in the vain hope that his fingers might touch some overlooked fragment of a cigar. There was something at the bottom of one of the pockets of his coat, but it mocked him by revealing itself as a match. He sank down on the bench and turned his eyes away from the restaurant, for he could not bear to gaze on the cakes and pies piled up behind the plate-glass, or to observe the smoke curling up from the lips of men who had eaten and drunk abundantly.

There was a bar-room under the hotel on the corner of Broadway, and every now and then two or three men pushed inside the swinging doors, to reappear five or ten minutes later. Farther down Broadway stood a theatre, and there was now a throng about its broad door-way. Another theatre faced the square, gay with prismatic signs and besprinkled with electric lights. McDowell Sutro watched men and women step up to the box-office of this place of amusement and buy their tickets and disappear within. He wondered why these men and women should have money to spare on a show, when he had not enough to pay for a meal and a night's lodging.

Perhaps it was the fatigue of his useless day, and perhaps it was the hypnotic influence of the revolving lights before the variety theatre, which caused the lonely young man to fall asleep. How long he slept he did not know, nor what waked him at last. But he had a doubtful memory of a human touch upon his body, and three of his pockets were turned inside out. When he discovered this, he laughed outright. The attempt to rob him then struck him as the funniest thing that had ever happened.

He must have slept for two or three hours at least, for the appearance of the square had changed. It was no longer evening; it was now night. While he looked about him he saw the doors of the theatre in Broadway pushed open, and the audience began to pour forth. A few moments later little knots of the play-goers passed him, still laughing with remembrance of the farce they had been witnessing. In another quarter of an hour the people began to come out of the other theatre, the variety show on the square, and the lights that flared above the door-way went out, all at once.

It was nearly midnight when two men sat down on the bench of which McDowell Sutro had been the sole occupant hitherto. They were tall and thin, both of them; they were clean-shaven; their clothes were shabby; and yet they carried themselves with an indescribable air, as though they were accustomed to brave the gaze of the world.

"No," said the elder of the two, continuing their conversation, "she's no good. She has a figure like a flat-iron and a voice like a fog-horn, hasn't she? Well, there's no draft in that, is there? She's a Jonah, that's what she is, and she'd hoo-doo any show. Why, the last time I was on the road she tried to queer my act. I called her down right there and then, and when the star backed her up, I was going to give my two weeks' notice; and I'd have done it, too, but I was playing cases then, and I didn't want to come back here walking on my uppers. But if I had quit, they'd have closed in a month, I tell you! They didn't know who was drawing the money to their old show; but I did! You ought to have been in the one-night towns on the oil circuit and heard me do Shamus O'Brien. That used to fetch 'em every night—I tell you it did! And it used to make her tired!"

"Did you ever see me play Laertes?" asked the younger. "I did it first in 'Frisco in '72, when Larry Barrett came out there. Well, while I was on the stage with him, Hamlet didn't get a hand. I've got a notice here now that said I was the Greatest Living Laertes."

"I played Iago once with Larry Barrett," said the first speaker, "and I gave them such a realistic impersonation they used to hiss me off the stage almost."

"Have a cigarette?" asked the other, holding out a package.

"Don't care if I do," was the answer. "I've got a match."

"That's lucky, for I haven't," said the owner of the cigarettes.

"Well, I haven't, after all," the elder actor had to confess, after a vain search in his pockets.

"Let me provide the match," broke in McDowell Sutro. "I've only one, but it's at your service."

"Thank you," was the response. "Can I not offer you a cigarette?"

"I don't care if I do," the young man answered, involuntarily repeating the phrase he had just heard, as he thrust out his hand eagerly.

The first whiff of the smoke was like meat and drink to him; and in the sensuous enjoyment of the luxury he almost neglected to respond to the remark addressed to him. But in a minute he found himself chatting with the two actors pleasantly. Although they had been to California more than once, they knew none of his friends; but it cheered merely to hear again the names of familiar landmarks. There was more than a suggestion of haughtiness in the way they both condescended to him; but he did not resent this, even if he remarked it. Human companionship was sweet to him; and to drop into a chat with casual strangers on a bench in Union Square at midnight, even this diminished the desolation of his loneliness.

The talk lasted perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then the two other men rose to go. McDowell Sutro stood up also, as though he were at home and they were his guests.

"Come over and have a drink," said the elder of the two.

And again the young man answered, "I don't care if I do."

He would rather have had food than drink, but he could not tell two strangers that he was hungry.

As they passed before the statue of Lafayette and crossed the car tracks, he wondered whether the saloon where they were going to was one of those which set out a free lunch.

When they entered the bar-room his eyes swept it wolfishly, and then fixed themselves at the end of the counter, where there were broad dishes with cheese and crackers and sandwiches. He could hardly control himself; he wanted to rush there and snatch the food and devour it. But shame kept him standing near the door with the two actors, though his gaze was fastened on the dishes only a few feet from him.

The barkeeper set the bottle before them, and they poured out the liquor. Then they looked at each other and said, "How!"

The elder actor half finished his drink at a single gulp. As he set down his glass he caught McDowell Sutro staring at the free lunch.

"That's not a bad idea," he said, moving along the bar—"not half bad. I'll take a sandwich myself. I feel a bit hollow to-night. I got three encores after I gave them the 'Pride of Battery B,' and I need something to build me up. Have a sandwich?"

"I don't care if I do," responded the hungry man, as his fingers closed on the bread. Yet when he took the first mouthful it almost choked him.

Five minutes later he had said good-night to his two chance acquaintances and he was again back in the square. The scant food he had been able to take lay hard in his stomach, and the liquor he had drunk, little as that was also, was yet enough to make his head whirl. He did not walk unsteadily, although he was conscious that it took an effort for him to carry himself without swerving.

The bench on which he had been sitting was now occupied by four very young men in evening dress, who were gravely smoking pipes, as though they were trying to acquire a taste for this novel pastime. So he went to the centre of the square, where he stood for a while looking at the aquatic plants and listening to the spurtle of the fountain.

All the seats around the fountain were occupied by men and women, most of whom seemed to have settled themselves for the night, as though they were used to sleeping there. McDowell Sutro found himself speculating whether he, too, would soon be accustomed to spending his nights in the open air, without a roof over him.

One solid German had fallen into a slumber so heavy that his snore became a loud snort. Then a gray-coated policeman waked the sleeper by smiting the soles of his feet with the club.

"This park ain't no bedroom," said the policeman, "and I ain't goin' to have you fellows goin' to sleep here either! See?"

After walking three or four times around on the outer circle of the little park, the young man found a vacant seat on a bench near the corner of Broadway and Seventeenth Street. The brilliantly lighted cable-cars still glided swiftly up and down Broadway with their insistent gongs, but they were now fewer and fewer; and the cross-town horse-cars passed only two or three an hour. The long day of the city was nearly over at last, and for the two or three hours before dawn there would be peace and a cessation of the struggle.

As he sat back on the bench, sick with weariness, the occupant of the seat next to him aroused herself. She was an elderly woman, with grizzled hair.

"I beg your pardon—if I waked you up?" said the young man.

"You did wake me up," she answered, "but I forgive you. It's only cat-naps I get anyway nowadays. I haven't stretched my legs out between the sheets and had my fill of sleep for a month of Sundays. And I'm a glutton for sleeping if I've the chance. But I'm getting used to sitting up late," and she laughed without bitterness. "What time is it now?" she asked.

McDowell Sutro involuntarily lifted his hand to the pocket of his waistcoat, and then he dropped it quickly. Blushing, he answered, "I don't know—I—"

"Time's up, isn't it?" she returned, with a laugh of understanding. "I haven't got my watch with me either; I left it in my other clothes at my uncle's. But Mr. Tiffany is a kind-hearted man, and he keeps a clock all lighted up for us to see. Your eyes are younger than mine—what time is it now?"

McDowell Sutro looked intently for half a minute before he could make out the hour. At last he answered, "It's almost half-past one, I think."

"Then I've a couple of hours for another nap before the sparrows wake us all up," she returned. "Is it the first night you have come to this hotel of ours?"

"Yes," he replied.

"I thought so," she continued, "by your feeling for your watch. You'll get out of the way of doing that soon."

His face blanched with fear that she might be predicting the truth. Would the time ever come when he should be used to sleeping in the open air?

The old woman turned a little, so that she could look at him.

"It's a handsome young fellow you are," she went on; "there's more than one house in town where they'd take you in on your looks—and tuck you up in bed, too, and keep you warm."

"Perhaps I'm better off here," he remarked, feeling that he was expected to say something.

"This isn't a bad hotel of ours, this isn't," she returned; "it's well ventilated, for one thing. Of course you can go to the station-house if you want. I don't. I've tried it, and I'd sooner sleep in the snow than in the station-house, with the creatures you meet there. This hotel of ours here keeps open all night; and it's on the European plan, I'm thinking—leastwise you can have anything you can pay for. When the owl-wagon is here, you can get a late supper—if you have the price of it. I haven't."

"Neither have I," he answered.

"Then there's two of us ready for an invite to breakfast," she responded, cheerily. "If any one asks us, it's no previous engagement will make us decline, I'm thinking."

He made no answer, for his heart sank as he looked into the future.

"Are you hungry now?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered, simply.

"So am I," she replied, "and I can't get used to it. Hunger is like pain, isn't it? It don't let go of you; it don't get tired and let up on you. It's a stayer, that's what it is, and it keeps right on attending strictly to business. Sometimes, when I'm very hungry, I feel like committing suicide, don't you?"

"No," he responded—"at least, not yet; I haven't had enough of life to be tired of it so soon."

"Neither have I," was her answer. "Sometimes I'm ready to quit, but somehow I don't do it. But it would be so easy; you throw yourself in front of one of those cable-cars coming down Broadway now—and you'll get rapid transit to kingdom come. But they don't sell excursion tickets. Besides, being crunched by a cable-car is a dreadful mussy way of dying, don't you think? And to-day's Friday, too—and I don't believe I'd ever have any luck in the next world if I was to commit suicide on a Friday."

"This isn't Friday any longer," he suggested; "it's Saturday morning."

"So it is now," she rejoined; "then we'd better be getting our beauty-sleep as soon as we can, for the flower-market here will wake us up soon enough, seeing it's Saturday. And so, good-night to you!"

"Good-night!" he responded.

"And may you dream you've found a million dollars in gold, and then wake up and find it true!" she continued.

"Thank you," he replied, wondering what manner of woman his neighbor might be.

She said nothing more, but settled herself again and closed her eyes. She was dressed in rusty black, and she had a thin black shawl over her head. She had been a very handsome woman—so she impressed the young man by her side—and he was wholly at a loss to guess how she came to be here, in the street, at night, without money and alone. She seemed out of place there; for her manner, though independent, was not defiant. There was no rasping harshness in her tones; indeed, her talk was dashed with joviality. Her speech even puzzled him, although he thought that showed her to be Irish.

Turning these things over in his mind, he fell asleep. He dreamed the same dream again and again—a dream of a barbaric banquet, where huge outlandish dishes were placed on the table before him. The savor of them was strange to his nostrils, but it brought the water to his mouth. Then, when he made as though to help himself and stay his appetite, the whole feast slid away beyond his reach, and finally faded into nothing. The dream differed in detail every time he dreamed it; and the last time the only dish on the board before him was a gigantic pasty, which he succeeded in cutting open, only to behold four-and-twenty blackbirds fly forth. The birds circled about his head, and then returned to the empty shell of the pasty, and perched there, and sang derisively.

So loudly did they sing that McDowell Sutro awoke, and he heard in the trees above him and behind him the chirping and twittering of countless sparrows.

He recalled what the old woman had said—that the birds would wake them up. Probably they had aroused her first, for the place on the bench next to him was empty.

He rose to his feet and looked about him. It was almost daybreak, and already there were rosy streaks in the eastern sky. A squirrel was running up and down a large tree in the middle of the grass-plot behind the bench on which he had been sleeping. In the open space at the northern end of the square there were a dozen or more gardeners' wagons, thick with growing flowers in pots, and men were arranging these plants in rows upon the pavement. Another heavy wagon, loaded with roses only, rolled across the car track and disturbed a flock of pigeons that swirled aloft for a moment and then settled down again. A moist breeze blew up from the bay, and brought a warning of rain to come later in the day.

The sleepers on the other benches here and there throughout the square were waking, one by one. McDowell Sutro saw one of them go to the drinking-fountain and wash his hands and face. He followed this example as best he could. When he had made an end of this his eye fell on Tiffany's clock, which told the hour of half-past four. A few minutes later the first rays of the sun began to gild the cornices of the tall buildings which towered above the Lincoln statue.

Within the next hour and a half the cable-cars began to pass down-town more frequently, and the cross-town cars from the ferries also came closer together. The gardeners' wagons and the plants taken from them filled the broad space at the upper end of the square. Milk-carts rattled across the car tracks that bounded the square on all four sides. The signs of the coming day multiplied, and McDowell Sutro noted them all, one after another, with unfailing interest, despite the gnawing pain in his stomach. It was the first time he had ever seen the awakening of a great city.

He walked away from Union Square as far as Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, and again as far as Third Avenue and Fourteenth Street; but he found himself always returning to the flower-market. At last a hope sprang up within him. Among the purchasers were ladies not strong enough to carry home the heavy pots, and perhaps he might pick up a job. This was not the way he wanted to earn his daily bread, but never before had he felt the want of the daily bread so keenly.