Hitherto he had been willing to overlook her aggressive locks in consideration of her good qualities, but thereafter he came rapidly to accept the view of the well-dressed man in the omnibus, and to look upon her red hair as a crown of glory. She did not seem any more attractive to him than she did at first meeting, but he knew now that other men might be attracted also. He wondered whether there were any other men whom she knew as well as she knew him. It seemed to him that they had taken to each other at the start, and they were now very good friends indeed. But there was no reason why she should not have other friends also. The current of his retrospection was not so sweeping that he could not follow the course of the cable-car in which he was seated, and just then he saw the brown spire of Trinity Church and heard the clock strike three. He signalled to the conductor, and the car stopped before the church door and at the head of Wall Street. As he stood looking down the crooked street, washed white by the rain and looking clean in the April sunshine, he asked himself why he was going to meet Edna Leisler--and especially why it was his heart had slowed up at the suggestion that perhaps other men were as attentive to her as he was. He was not in love with her, was he? That she had made New York tolerable to him he was ready to admit, and also that he liked her better than any girl he had ever met. But if he was jealous of her, did not that prove that he loved her? These were the questions he propounded as he walked from Broadway to the old building on the top floor of which the Leislers lived. When Edna Leisler came down-stairs to meet him, with her new Easter hat, he knew the answers to these questions; he knew that he would be miserable if he were to lose the privilege of her society; he knew furthermore that he had loved her since the first day he had seen her, even though he had not hitherto suspected it. He knew also that he would never have a better chance to tell her that he loved her than he would have that afternoon; and while they were shaking hands he made up his mind that before he took her back to her mother's he would get her promise to marry him. With this resolve fixed, he took refuge in the commonplace. "Am I late?" he asked. "Five minutes," she answered. "I didn't know but what you were going to April-fool me." "Oh, Miss Edna," he cried, "you know I wouldn't do that!" "I didn't think you would really," she laughed back. "And I felt sure I could get even with you if you did." Thus lightly chatting, they came to the corner of Broad Street. "Shall we go down to the Battery?" he suggested, thinking that he might find a chance there to say what was in his heart. "Yes," she assented; "it'll be first-rate to get a whiff of the salt breeze. It's as warm as spring to-day, isn't it?"