er to be my
wife."

CHAPTER XXI

LOVE IN CONFLICT

The habits of a lifetime are not changed in a day. Ben Blair was
accustomed to rising early, and he was astir next morning long before
the city proper was thoroughly awake. In the hotel where he was
stopping, the night clerk looked his surprise as he nodded a stereotyped
"Good-morning." The lobby was in confusion, undergoing its early morning
scrubbing, and the guest sought the street. The sun was just risen, but
the air was already sultry, casting oppression and languor over every
detail of the scene. The bare brick and stone fronts of the buildings,
the brown cobblestones of the pavements, the dull gray of the sidewalks,
all looked inhospitable and forbidding. Few vehicles were yet in
motion--distributors of necessities, of ice, of milk, of vegetables--and
they partook of the general indolence. The horses' ears swayed
listlessly, or were set back in dogged endurance. The drivers lounged
stolidly in their seats. Even the few passengers on the monotonously
droning cars but added to the impression of tacit conformity to the
inevitable. Poorly dressed as a rule, tired looking, they gazed at their
feet or glanced out upon the street with absent indifference. It was all
depressing.

Ben, normal, vigorous, country bred, shook himself and walked on. He was
as susceptible as a child to surrounding influences, and to those now
about him he was distinctly antagonistic. Life, as a whole, particularly
work, the thing that does most to fill life, he had found good. That
others should so obviously find it different grated upon him. He wanted
to get away from their presence; and making inquiry of the first
policeman he met, he sought the nearest park.

All his life he had heard of the beauty of the New York parks. The few
people he knew who had visited them emphasized this beauty above all
other features. Perhaps in consequence he was expecting the impossible.
At least, he was disappointed. Here was nature, to be sure, but nature
imprisoned under the thumb of man. The visitor had a healthy desire to
roll on the grass, to turn himself loose, to stretch every joint and
muscle; yet signs on each side gave warning to "keep off." The trees, it
must be admitted, were beautiful and natural,--they could not live and
be otherwise; but somehow they had the air of not being there of their
own free-will.

Ben chose a bench and sat down. A listlessness was upon him that the
ozone