But privately, personally, it's another affair. In
the realm of family life and the domestic affections----"
At this Verena broke in, with a nervous laugh, "Don't say that; it's
only a phrase!"
"Well, it's a better one than any of yours," said Basil Ransom, turning
with her out of one of the smaller gates--the first they had come to.
They emerged into the species of _plaza_ formed by the numbered street
which constitutes the southern extremity of the park and the termination
of the Sixth Avenue. The glow of the splendid afternoon was over
everything, and the day seemed to Ransom still in its youth. The bowers
and boskages stretched behind them, the artificial lakes and cockneyfied
landscapes, making all the region bright with the sense of air and
space, and raw natural tints, and vegetation too diminutive to
overshadow. The chocolate-coloured houses, in tall, new rows, surveyed
the expanse; the street cars rattled in the foreground, changing horses
while the horses steamed, and absorbing and emitting passengers; and the
beer-saloons, with exposed shoulders and sides, which in New York do a
good deal towards representing the picturesque, the "bit" appreciated by
painters, announced themselves in signs of large lettering to the sky.
Groups of the unemployed, the children of disappointment from beyond the
seas, propped themselves against the low, sunny wall of the park; and on
the other side the commercial vista of the Sixth Avenue stretched away
with a remarkable absence of aerial perspective.
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