ou won't say as much for me?"

"I cannot say that I was glad to see anybody just here; this place is
always deserted, except by me."

"You come here often, and you are sorry to have your retreat broken in
upon? Don't hesitate to say so, Miss Grey, and I will promise not to
come into this part of the park--or into any part of the park for that
matter--any more. Why should I disturb you?"

He spoke with such earnestness and such evident sincerity that Minola
began to feel ashamed of her previous ungraciousness.

"That would be rather hard upon you, and a little arrogant on my part,"
she said smiling. "The park isn't mine, and, if it were, I am sure I
could not be selfish enough to wish to shut you out from any part of
it. But I am in the habit of being a good deal alone; and I fear it
makes me a little rude and selfish sometimes. I was thinking of that
just as I came up here, and saw you."

"Then you saw me before I saw you?"

"Oh, yes."

"I am afraid you must have seen a very woe-begone personage."

"Yes; you seemed unhappy, I thought."

"There is something sympathetic about you, Miss Grey, for all your
coldness and loneliness."

"Surely," said Miss Grey, "a woman without some feeling of sympathy
would be hardly fit to live."

"You think so?" he asked quite earnestly and gravely. "So do I--so do I
indeed. Men have little time to sympathize with men--they are all too
busy with their own affairs. What should we do but for the sympathy of
women? Now tell me, why do you smile at that? I saw that you were
trying not to laugh."

"I could not help smiling a little, it was so thoroughly masculine a
sentiment."

"Was it? How is that now?" His direct way of propounding his questions
rather amused and did not displease her. It was like the way of a
rational man talking with another rational being--a style of
conversation which has much attraction for some women.

"Well, because it looked upon women so honestly as creatures only
formed to make men comfortable, by coming up and sympathizing with them
when they are in a humor for sympathy, and then retiring out of the way
into their corner again."

"I can assure you, Miss Grey, that never has been my idea--nothing of
the kind, indeed. To tell the truth, I have not known much about the
sympathy of women and all that. I have lived awfully out of the world,
and I never had any sisters, and I hardly remember my mother. I know
women chiefly in poems and romances, and I