To Smith, lover of his city as he was, these truths were peculiarly obvious; and to Helen Maitland, seeing them largely from the angle of Smith's vision, they became the truth no less. She remembered with some surprise her quite recent dislike of New York, and her even more recent chill of distaste and dread, when she came from the Park, which had checked for the moment the liking she felt springing to life. Of course it was loneliness; but here was a man who had told her that New York's loneliness was one of its greatest charms, and who regarded the apparent heartlessness of the city as one of its most inspiring tonics. Somehow, and apparently most naturally, she found it was coming to seem so to her. If a man wishes to interest a woman, he does well to speak to her of his enthusiasms; and if he desires to alienate her interest, he will do well to forget them. Smith, who cared deeply for New York, and who was moving unconsciously along the sunny way that led to Helen Maitland, found that never two enthusiasms welded so readily as these. Part of this, no doubt, was due to the city's own influence, but probably the greater part was due to his own genuine understanding and affection for the town itself. And Helen had not been the readiest of converts, for in the first place, coming as she did from Boston, her sympathies were not with the larger city. She had found its confusion rather tiresome, its contrasts perhaps a little crude, its poverty somewhat distressing, and its wealth a trifle vulgar. With Smith, a new viewpoint was hers, and her old conceptions, which now seemed hopelessly provincial, melted like mist before the sun. Smith knew his city as a maestro knows his instrument, and their voyages together were like incursions into an enchanted space where time was not. He seemed to know exactly what had been in every nook and corner of the town at every period of its career. Once they stood on Broadway near Columbia University, on whose granite wall was fixed the plate which told of Washington's muster upon those very heights; and Smith had built up for her, not as an historian, but as an actor in the drama, the picture before her eyes. He showed her the old Jumel Mansion farther up town, and they went back together a century and a half to all the strange sights those old halls had seen. Perhaps the softest spot in Smith's sympathies was held by the Knickerbockers--those sturdy old citizens who seemed all of them somehow to have taken something of the mold of their redoubtable leader and the greatest of them all, Peter Stuyvesant. Smith was familiar with them all, from Peter down. And old Minuit, the Indian, selling his island for a song, was so much a matter of reality to Smith that Helen came to believe in him also as a real individual. "There he is now!" Smith once suddenly remarked, as they turned a corner and found themselves almost in the arms of an exceptionally spirited cigar-store figure.