In the afternoon, when he was most at leisure, he walked down to the Public Garden, and found a seat on a bench near the fountain where the Venus had shocked his inexperience the first time he saw her; he remembered that simple boy with a smile of pity, and then went back into his cloud of reverie. There, safely hid from trouble and wrong, he told his ideal how dear she was to him, and how she had shaped and governed his life, and made it better and nobler from the first moment they had met. The fumes of the romances which he had read mixed with the love-born delirium in his brain; he was no longer low, but a hero of lofty line, kept from his rightful place by machinations that had failed at last, and now he was leading her, his bride, into the ancient halls which were to be their home, and the source of beneficence and hope to all the poor and humbly-born around them. His eyes were so full of this fantastic vision, the soul of his youth dwelt so deeply within this dream-built tabernacle, that it was with a shock of anguish he saw coming up the walk towards him the young girl herself. His airy structure fell in ruins around him; he was again common and immeasurably beneath her; she was again in her own world, where, if she thought of him at all, it must be as a squalid vagabond and the accomplice of a thief. If he could have escaped, he would, but he could not move; he sat still and waited with fallen eyes for her to pass him. At sight of him she hesitated and wavered; then she came towards him, and at a second impulse held out her hand, smiling with a radiant pleasure. “I didn't know it was you at first,” she said. “It seems so strange to see any one that I know!” “I didn't expect to see you, either,” he stammered out, getting somehow upon his feet, and taking her hand, while his face burned, and he could not keep his eyes on hers; “I--didn't know you were here.” “I've only been here a few days. I'm drawing at the Museum. I've just got back. Have you been here all summer?” “Yes--all summer. I hope you've been well--I suppose you've been away--” “Yes, I've just got back,” she repeated. “Oh yes! I meant that!” She smiled at his confusion, as kindly as the ideal of his day-dream. “I've been spending the summer with Madeline, and I've spent most of it out-of-doors, sketching. Have you been well?” “Yes--not very; oh yes, I'm well--” She had begun to move forward with the last question, and he found himself walking with her. “Did she--has Miss Swan come back with you?” he asked, looking her in the eyes with more question than he had put into his words. “No, I don't think she'll come back this winter,” said the girl. “You know,” she went on, colouring a little, “that she's married now?” “No,” said Lemuel. “Yes. To Mr. Berry. And I have a letter from him for you.” “Was he there with you, this summer?” asked Lemuel, ignoring alike Berry's marriage and the letter from him.