“You need not apologise,” the young man answered. “One who receives your smile would be ungrateful indeed if he asked for more. That alone would render the darkest spot radiant with light and welcome to me.” The girl’s pink cheek flushed crimson, like a rose bathed in the sunset colours of the sky. “I did not think you were a man to coin pretty speeches,” she said. “Your estimate of me was a wise one. You read human nature correctly. But come and walk in the park with me. You will overtax yourself if you practise any longer. The sunlight and the air are vying with each other to-day to see which can be the most intoxicating. Come and enjoy their sparring match with me; I want to talk to you about one of my unfortunate parishioners. It is a peculiarly pathetic case. I think you can help and advise me in the matter.” It was a superb morning in early October. New York was like a beautiful woman arrayed in her fresh autumn costume, disporting herself before admiring eyes. Absorbed in each other’s society, their pulses beating high with youth, love and health; the young couple walked through the crowded avenues of the great city, as happily and as naturally as Adam and Eve might have walked in the Garden of Eden the morning after Creation. Both were city born and city bred, yet both were as unfashionable and untrammelled by custom as two children of the plains. In the very heart of the greatest metropolis in America, there are people who live and retain all the primitive simplicity of village life and thought. Mr Irving had been one of these. Coming to New York from an interior village when a young man, he had, through simple and quiet tastes and religious convictions, kept himself wholly free from the social life of the city in which he lived. After his marriage his entire happiness lay in his home, and Joy was reared by parents who made her world. Mrs Irving sympathised fully with her husband in his distaste for society, and her delicate health rendered her almost a recluse from the world. A few pleasant acquaintances, no intimates, music, books, and a large share of her time given to charitable work, composed the life of Joy Irving. She had never been in a fashionable assemblage; she had never attended a theatre, as Mr Irving did not approve of them. Extremely fond of outdoor life, she walked, unattended, wherever her mood led her. As she had no acquaintances among society people, she knew nothing and cared less for the rules which govern the promenading habits of young women in New York. Her sweet face and graceful figure were well known among the poorer quarters of the city, and it was through her work in such places that Arthur Stuart’s attention had first been called to her.