The neighbourhood they traversed was characteristic of our rapidly expanding American cities.  There were rows of dwelling houses, once ultra-respectable, now slatternly, and lawns gone grey; some of these houses had been remodelled into third-rate shops, or thrown together to make manufacturing establishments:  saloons occupied all the favourable corners.  Flaming posters on vacant lots announced, pictorially, dubious attractions at the theatres.  It was a wonderful Indian summer day, the sunlight soft and melting; and the smoke which continually harassed this district had lifted a little, as though in deference to the Sabbath.

Hodder read the sign on a lamp post, Dalton Street.  The name clung in his memory.

“We thought, some twenty years ago, of moving the church westward,” said Mr. Parr, “but finally agreed to remain where we were.”

The rector had a conviction on this point, and did not hesitate to state it without waiting to be enlightened as to the banker’s views.

“It would seem to me a wise decision,” he said, looking out of the window, and wholly absorbed in the contemplation of the evidences of misery and vice, “with this poverty at the very doors of the church.”

Something in his voice impelled Eldon Parr to shoot a glance at his profile.

“Poverty is inevitable, Mr. Hodder,” he declared.  “The weak always sink.”

Hodder’s reply, whatever it might have been, was prevented by the sudden and unceremonious flight of both occupants toward the ceiling of the limousine, caused by a deep pit in the asphalt.

“What are you doing, Gratton?” Mr. Parr called sharply through the tube.

Presently, the lawns began to grow brighter, the houses more cheerful, and the shops were left behind.  They crossed the third great transverse artery of the city (not so long ago, Mr. Parr remarked, a quagmire), now lined by hotels and stores with alluring displays in plate glass windows and entered a wide boulevard that stretched westward straight to the great Park.  This boulevard the financier recalled as a country road of clay.  It was bordered by a vivid strip, of green; a row of tall and graceful lamp posts, like sentinels, marked its course; while the dwellings, set far back on either side, were for the most part large and pretentious, betraying in their many tentative styles of architecture the reaching out of a commercial nation after beauty.  Some, indeed, were simple of line and restful to the trained eye.

They came to the wide entrance of the Park, so wisely preserved as a breathing place for future generations.  A slight haze had gathered over the rolling forests to the westward; but this haze was not smoke.  Here, in this enchanting region, the autumn sunlight was undiluted gold, the lawns, emerald, and the red gravel around the statesman’s statue glistening.  The automobile quickly swung into a street that skirted the Park,—­if street it might be called, for it was more like a generous private driveway,—­flanked on the right by fences of ornamental ironwork and high shrubbery that concealed the fore yards of dominating private residences which might:  without great exaggeration, have been called palaces.