He stood near the door for a moment, and then he went toward the window. The rain had dwindled, and as he looked out he thought he saw a break in the clouds. It was full five minutes before Mrs. Randolph returned. "Oh, Mr. Stone," she began, in voluble apology, "it's a shame to keep you waiting so, but honestly I couldn't help it. You took me by surprise so, I really wasn't fit to be seen!" Mr. Stone gallantly expressed a doubt as to this last statement of hers. "It's very good of you to think that," she responded, "but I hardly hoped to see any one this afternoon, in this awful weather. How did you ever have the courage to venture out? It's so kind of you to come and visit a lonely woman, for it has been such a long day!" Mr. Stone informed her that it looked as though it was about to clear up. "Of course you sailors have to know all about the weather, don't you?" she replied. "That's the advantage of being a man--you can do things. Now a woman can't do anything--she can't even go out in the rain for fear of getting her skirts wet!" In her own ears her voice did not ring quite true. She knew that her liveliness was a little factitious. She wondered whether he had detected it. She looked up at him, and found that he was gazing full at her. She had never before recognized how clear his eyes were and how piercing. "I haven't thanked you yet for those lovely violets," she began again, hastily. "They are exquisite! But then you have always such good taste in flowers. They have made the day less dreary for me--really they have. They were company in my loneliness." He looked at her in surprise. "You lonely?" he asked. "How can that be?" "Why not?" she returned. "You have made yourself a home here," he answered, looking about the room. "You have hosts of friends in New York. Whenever I see you in society you are surrounded by admirers. How can you be lonely?" She was about to make an impetuous reply, but she checked herself. "I am not really a New-Yorker, you know," she said at last. "I am a stranger in a strange city. You don't know what that means." "I think I do," he responded. "The city is even stranger to me than it can be to you." "I doubt it," she responded. "I was once at sea alone in an open boat for three days," he went on, "and--it must seem absurd to you, very absurd, I suppose--but I was not as lonely as I am, now and then, in the midst of the millions of people here in New York."