"That's a very pretty way of looking at the matter," replied Hollister, while he gazed down into her face from his considerably taller height with a keener expression of interest and charm than he himself guessed. "Perhaps the waves congratulate Coney Island on its final success in life, and gently quote to it the old proverb about everything coming to those who know how to wait." Claire started. "Do you believe that?" she said. "_Does_ everything come to those who know how to wait?" Hollister laughed again. "You talk as if _you_ had been waiting. But I'm sure it can't have been for very long." This last sentence was put at least half in the form of a question. But she evaded it, saying with a light little toss of the head: "Hasn't everybody always something to wait for, between youth and old age?" "Tell me something about your expectations, won't you?" he asked, with the non-committal tenderness of a man whose acquaintanceship has been too brief for any serious depth to accompany his words. "You can't think how much I wish that I was one of them." "One of my expectations? You?" "Decidedly." "But how could I answer you on that point?" she returned, letting him catch in the gloom a glimpse of her sly smile. "You're only a name to me. If you'll not think my candor rude, I haven't an idea who you are." "I don't believe I should think you rude if you really were so," he said, smiling, and yet seeming to mean with much quiet force each word that he spoke. "So you want me to give an account of myself? Well, I'm a rather obscure fellow. That is, I don't believe I know more than ten people in New York at all well. I lead a quiet life; I'm what they call a Wall Street man, but I mingle with the big throng there only in a sort of business way. I was graduated at Dartmouth two years ago, and spent a year in Europe afterward. Then I came back, and began hard work. There were reasons why I should do so--I mean financial reasons. I'm not a New Yorker; I was born and reared in Providence. Do you know Providence?" "No," said Claire. "I know only New York." She was looking at him interestedly at short intervals; they had resumed their stroll again; her arm was still within his; he had continued to please her, though she felt no thrill of warm attraction toward him, however mild in degree. She had a sense of friendship, of easy familiarity. But apart from this, she was conscious, as a woman sometimes not merely will but must be, that she had won him to like her by a very easy and rapid victory. Already she was not sure but that she had won him to like her strongly as well. Her few recent words of reply had carried with them a subtle persuasion of which Hollister himself was oddly and most pleasurably conscious. He yielded to their effect, and became somewhat more free in his personal confidences.