"Do you mean what you say?" exclaimed Pauline almost indignantly.
He bent his head and looked at her intently, for a moment, with a covert play of mirth under the crisp, dark flow of his mustache.
"I am afraid that I do," he replied, with another laugh.
"Then you think this grand American hospitality of which you have just spoken to be a failure—a sham?"
"No, no—far from that," he said rapidly, and with recurring seriousness. "I was only going back to the dark side of the question—that is all. You know, I told you it had both its dark and its bright side.... Come, let us leave this rabble. You have not really seen the Battery yet. Its true splendors lie just beyond...."
They were presently strolling along the stone-paved esplanade, with its granite posts connected by loops of one continuous iron chainwork. To the south they had a partial view of Brooklyn, that city which is a sort of reflective and imitative New York, with masts bristling from her distant wharves and more than a single remote church-spire telling of the large religious impulse which has given her a quaint ecclesiastical fame. But westward your eye could traverse the spacious bay until it met the dull-red semicircle of Fort Columbus, planted low and stout upon the shore of Governor's Island, and the soft, swelling, purplish hills of Staten Island, where they loomed still further beyond. Boats of all shapes and kinds were passing over the luminous waters, from the squat, ugly tug, with its hoarse whistle, to the huge black bulk of an Atlantic steamer, bound for transpontine shores and soon to move majestically oceanward through the fair sea-gate of the Narrows. A few loiterers leaned against the stone posts, and a few more lounged upon the seats ranged further inland along this salubrious marine promenade. Back among the turfy levels that stretched broadly between the flagged pathways, you saw the timorous green of hardy grass, where an occasional pale wreath of unmelted snow yet lingered. People were passing to and fro, with steps that rang hollow on the hard pavement. If you listened intently you could catch a kind of dreamy hum from the vast city, which might almost be said to begin its busy, tumultuous life here in this very spot, thence pushing through many a life-crowded street and avenue, sheer on to the rocky fields and goat-haunted gutters of dreary Harlem.
"What a glorious bay it is!" exclaimed Kindelon, while he and Pauline stood on the breezy esplanade. "There never was a city with more royal approaches than New York."
"That fort yonder," said Pauline, "will perhaps thunder broadsides, one day, at the fleet of an invading enemy. This is still such a young city compared with those of other lands.... I suppose these waters, centuries later, will see grand sights, as civilization augments."
"Perhaps they may see very mournful ones," objected Kindelon.
"But you are an evolutionist," declared Pauline, with a priggish little pursing of the lips that he found secretly very amusing. "You believe that everything is working toward nobler conditions, though you laughed at Leander Prawle, the optimistic poet, the other evening, for his roseate prophecies about the human race."