The Platz was nearly empty. One or two men in blouses clattered across the cobblestones and going into the dark church dropped on their knees. The wind was high, and now and then swept heavy clouds low across the sunlight space overhead. Lucy, as Jean had guessed, knew why the man beside her had crossed the Atlantic, and she had decided last night to end the matter at once. The tears had stood in her eyes for pity at the thought of the pain she must give him. Yet she had put on her new close-fitting coat and a becoming fur cap, and pulled out the loose hair which she knew at this moment was blowing about her pink cheeks in curly wisps in a way that was perfectly maddening. Clara, seeing the mischief in her eyes as she listened shyly to Perry, went on satisfied. There was no abyss of black loss in that girl's life! Lucy just now was concerned only for Perry. How the poor man loved her! Why not marry him after all, and put him out of his pain? She was twenty-four. Most women at twenty-four had gone through their little tragedy of love. But she had had no tragedy. She told herself firmly that there had been no story of love in her life. There never could be, now. She was too old. She was tired, too, and very lonely. This man would seat her on a throne and worship her every day. That would be pleasant enough. "I am ashamed of myself," he was saying, "to pursue you in this way. You have given me no encouragement, I know. But whenever I go to New York and bone down to work, something tells me to come back and try again." Lucy did not answer, and there was a brief silence. "Of course I'm a fool,"--prodding the ground with his stick. "But if a man were in a jail cell and knew that the sun was shining just outside, he'd keep on beating at the wall." "Your life is not a jail cell. It's very comfortable, I think." "It has been bare enough. I have had a hard fight to live at all. I told you that I began as a canal-boy." She looked at him with quick sympathy. At once she fancied that she could read old marks of want on his face. His knuckles were knobbed like a laborer's. He had had a hard fight! It certainly would be pleasant to rain down comfort and luxury on the good, plucky fellow! "Of course that was all long ago," said Perry. "I'm not ashamed of it. As Judge Baker remarked the other day, 'The acknowledged aristocrats of America, to-day, are its self-made men.' He ought to know. The Bakers are the top of the heap in New York. Very exclusive. I've been intimate there for years. No, Miss Dunbar, I may have begun as a mule-driver on a canal, but I am choice in my society. My wife will not find a man or woman in my circle who is half-cut." Lucy drew a long breath. To live all day and every day with this man!