een or heard of
Harold Phipps, sufficed to satisfy him.

When he started across Central Park the sun was just setting, and he
turned off the main path and dropped down on a bench to rest for a
moment. He had acquired a taste for sunsets at a tender age, having
watched them from many a steamer's prow. He knew how the harbor of
Hongkong brimmed like a goblet of red wine, how Fujiyama's snow-capped
peak turned rose, he knew how beautiful the sun could look through a
barrage of fire. But it was of none of these that he thought as he sat on
the park bench, his arms extended along the back, his long legs stretched
out, and his eyes on a distant smokestack. He was thinking of a country
stile and a girl in white and green, in whose limpid eyes he watched the
reflected light of the most wonderful of all his sunsets.

For the third time since leaving the office, he consulted his watch.
Six-thirty! Another hour and a half must be got through before he could
see her.

A rustle of leaves behind him made him look up, but before he could turn
his head two hands were clapped over his eyes. Investigation proved them
to be feminine, and he promptly took them captive.

"It's Rose?" he guessed.

"Let me go!" she laughed; "somebody will see you."

She slipped around the bench and dropped down beside him.

"I was coming out the avenue and spied you mooning over here by yourself.
What's the trouble?"

"No trouble at all. Just stopped to get my wind a bit--and watch the
sunset."

"I think you are working too hard." She looked at him with anxious
solicitude. "I've a good notion to put you on buttermilk again."

"Good work! Put me on anything you like except dried peaches and
wienies."

"And you need more recreation," Rose persisted. "It's not good for
anybody to work all day and go to school at night. What's the matter with
us getting Cass and Fan Loomis and going down to Fontaine Ferry
to-night?"

"Can't do it," said Quin with ill-concealed pride. "Got a date with Miss
Eleanor Bartlett."

Rose sat silent for a moment, stirring the dead leaves with her shabby
boot; then she turned and laid her hand on his shoulder.

"Quin," she said, "I am worried sick about Nell and Harold Phipps."

Quin, who had been trying to beguile a squirrel into believing that a
pebble was a nut, looked up sharply.

"What do you mean?" he said. "She hasn't seen him since last summer, and
she never mentions his name."

"_Don't_ she? She hardly talks