"I must earn my living, somehow," she responded, "and I can't paint, and I can't embroider, and I can't teach whist, and I'm not young enough to go on the stage--so I'm to settle down as the matron of a girl's school in Milwaukee. The place has been offered to me, and I intend to accept it." "When must you be there?" he inquired. "Oh, I don't know," she answered. "Next week some time, or perhaps not till next month. I'm not sure when." John Stone rose to go. "Then I may come to see you again--Evelyn?" he asked. Her heart throbbed a little as she heard her name from his lips. "Oh yes," she replied, cordially. "Come and see me as often as you can. I hate to be as lonely as I was this afternoon." And she held out her hand. "Good-by, then," he responded, and he raised her hand again and kissed it. When he had gone she walked restlessly to and fro for several minutes. At last she opened her desk and took out the unfinished letter and tore it up impatiently. Then she went to the window and peered out. Twilight was settling down over the city, but the sky was leaden, with not a gleam of sunset along the horizon. Lights were already twinkling here and there over the vast expanse of irregular roofs across which she was looking. The rain was heavier than ever, and it fell in sheets, now, as though it would never cease. Yet the solitary woman looking out at the dreary prospect did not feel so lonely as she had felt two hours earlier. She had meant to accept John Stone, and she had rejected him. But it was a comfort to her to know that somewhere in the immense city that spread out before her there was a man who really loved her. (1898) [Illustration: An Idyl of Central Park] It was nearly five o'clock on an afternoon early in May when Dr. Richard Demarest bicycled up Fifth Avenue and into Central Park. He looked at his watch to make sure of the hour, and then he dismounted on the western side of the broad drive, whence he could see everybody who might seek to enter the Park long before they were likely to discover him. He had reason to believe that Miss Minnie Contoit, who had refused to marry him only a fortnight before, and whom he had not seen since, was going to take a little turn on her wheel in the Park that afternoon. As it had happened, he had gone into the club to lunch that morning, and he had met her only brother, with whom he had always carefully maintained the most pleasant relations. By ingeniously pumping Ralph Contoit he had ascertained that the girl he loved was going out at five with her father and her grandfather. The brother had been even franker than brothers usually are.