At night and on Sunday mornings he could sit for hours absorbed in the tiresome pages of real estate news in his paper.

He went out for strolls in the evenings; one night he asked Ethel to come along; and his talk to her about buildings, the growth of the city by leaps and bounds, now in this direction, now in that, caught her imagination at once.

Joe felt the town as a living thing, as she had felt it that first night.

Different?
Yes, this was business.

But even business, to her surprise, as Joe saw and felt it, had a strange thrilling romance of its own.
And she soon noticed something else that drew her to Joe.