Of my many other dreams I would speak freely, discussing them at length with sympathetic souls, but concerning this one ambition I was curiously reticent. Only to two--my mother and a grey-bearded Stranger--did I ever breathe a word of it. Even from my father I kept it a secret, close comrades in all else though we were. He would have talked of it much and freely, dragged it into the light of day; and from this I shrank. My talk with the Stranger came about in this wise. One evening I had taken a walk to Victoria Park--a favourite haunt of mine at summer time. It was a fair and peaceful evening, and I fell a-wandering there in pleasant reverie, until the waning light hinted to me the question of time. I looked about me. Only one human being was in sight, a man with his back towards me, seated upon a bench overlooking the ornamental water. I drew nearer. He took no notice of me, and interested--though why, I could not say--I seated myself beside him at the other end of the bench. He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man, with wonderfully bright, clear eyes and iron-grey hair and beard. I might have thought him a sea captain, of whom many were always to be met with in that neighbourhood, but for his hands, which were crossed upon his stick, and which were white and delicate as a woman's. He turned his face and glanced at me. I fancied that his lips beneath the grey moustache smiled; and instinctively I edged a little nearer to him. “Please, sir,” I said, after awhile, “could you tell me the right time?” “Twenty minutes to eight,” he answered, looking at his watch. And his voice drew me towards him even more than had his beautiful strong face. I thanked him, and we fell back into silence. “Where do you live?” he turned and suddenly asked me. “Oh, only over there,” I answered, with a wave of my arm towards the chimney-fringed horizon behind us. “I needn't be in till half-past eight. I like this Park so much,” I added, “I often come and sit here of an evening.' “Why do you like to come and sit here?” he asked. “Tell me.” “Oh, I don't know,” I answered. “I think.” I marvelled at myself. With strangers generally I was shy and silent; but the magic of his bright eyes seemed to have loosened my tongue. I told him my name; that we lived in a street always full of ugly sounds, so that a gentleman could not think, not even in the evening time, when Thought goes a-visiting. “Mamma does not like the twilight time,” I confided to him. “It always makes her cry. But then mamma is--not very young, you know, and has had a deal of trouble; and that makes a difference, I suppose.” He laid his hand upon mine. We were sitting nearer to each other now. “God made women weak to teach us men to be tender,” he said. “But you, Paul, like this 'twilight time'?” “Yes,” I answered, “very much. Don't you?” “And why do you like it?” he asked. “Oh,” I answered, “things come to you.” “What things?”