any fears, so many
interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating
too; don't you find it so?"

It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to
reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith
in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in
walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish
hopes and fears, plans and operations? "I have no doubt," said he after
a moment's pause, "that I have felt this exhilaration of which you
speak. Certainly the hurrying masses in Broadway awaken a far different
sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road."

"Yet the road has its companionships," she murmured. "In the city one
thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude
compels you."

"Compels _you_," he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it,
remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but
reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. "Not
every one has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom
back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not
reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even
experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space
and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care
and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,"
observing her gaze of wonder. "You thought riches brought ease; if you
ever come to think, 'most of men' you will learn that the wealthy man is
the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day."

She shook her head with a sudden doubt. "It is a problem," she said,
"which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve."

"No," assented he; "and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail
to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn't this the place where I found
you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?"

"Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cushion now;
and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish
eyes! The gates are of pearl now," she said, pointing to the
snow-covered slopes in the west. "I wish the sky had been clear to-night
and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those
domes of ice and snow."

"It would leave me less to expect when I come again," he responded
almost gayly. "The next