She did not answer; she had not heard him.  The shadows were stretching themselves over the grass, long and attenuated; the sunlight upon the trees and houses was like a thin, rosy pigment; black birds were calling each other home to beech and elm; and Ariel’s eyes were fixed upon the western distance of the street where gold-dust was beginning to quiver in the air.  She did not hear Eugene, but she started, a moment later, when the name “Joe Louden” was pronounced by a young man, the poetic Bradbury, on the step below Eugene.  Some one immediately said “’SH!” But she leaned over and addressed Mr. Bradbury, who, shut out, not only from the group about her, but from the other centring upon Miss Pike, as well, was holding a private conversation with a friend in like misfortune.

“What were you saying of Mr. Louden?” she asked, smiling down upon the young man. (It was this smile which inspired his description of her as “a revelation and a dream.”)

“Oh, nothing particular,” was his embarrassed reply.  “I only mentioned I’d heard there was some talk among the—­” He paused awkwardly, remembering that Ariel had walked with Joseph Louden in the face of Canaan that very day.  “That is, I mean to say, there’s some talk of his running for Mayor.”

“What?”

There was a general exclamation, followed by an uncomfortable moment or two of silence.  No one present was unaware of that noon walk, though there was prevalent a pleasing notion that it would not happen again, founded on the idea that Ariel, having only arrived the previous evening, had probably met Joe on the street by accident, and, remembering him as a playmate of her childhood and uninformed as to his reputation, had, naturally enough, permitted him to walk home with her.

Mr. Flitcroft broke the silence, rushing into words with a derisive laugh:  “Yes, he’s `talked of’ for Mayor—­by the saloon people and the niggers!  I expect the Beaver Beach crowd would be for him, and if tramps could vote he might—­”

“What is Beaver Beach?” asked Ariel, not turning.

“What is Beaver Beach?” he repeated, and cast his eyes to the sky, shaking his head awesomely.  “It’s a Place,” he said, with abysmal solemnity, —­“a Place I shouldn’t have mentioned in your presence, Miss Tabor.”

“What has it to do with Mr. Louden?”

The predestined Norbert conceived the present to be a heaven-sent opportunity to enlighten her concerning Joe’s character, since the Pikes appeared to have been derelict in the performance of this kindness.

“He goes there!” he proceeded heavily.  “He lived there for a while when he first came back from running away, and he’s a friend of Mike Sheehan’s that runs it; he’s a friend of all the riff-raff that hang around there.”

“How do you know he goes there?”

“Why, it was in the paper the day after he came back!” He appealed for corroboration.  “Wasn’t it, Eugene?”