Frobisher and her sister, I never could. Don"t you see?"
"Yes, certainly. But--"
"And Alice herself told me to go and look after them," interposed Mavering. He suppressed, a little uncandidly, the fact of her first reluctance.
"But you know it was the first time you had been out together?"
"Yes."
"And naturally she would wish to have you a good deal to herself, or at least not seeming to run after other people."
"Yes, yes; I know that."
"And no one ever likes to be taken at their word in a thing like that."
"I ought to have thought of that, but I didn"t. I wish I had gone to you first, Mrs. Pasmer. Somehow it seems to me as if I were very young and inexperienced; I didn"t use to feel so. I wish you were always on hand to advise me, Mrs. Pasmer." Dan hung his head, and his face, usually so gay, was blotted with gloom.
"Will you take my advice now?" asked Mrs. Pasmer.
"Indeed I will!" cried the young fellow, lifting his head. "What is it?"
"See Alice about this."
Dan jumped to his feet, and the sunshine broke out over his face again.
"Mrs. Pasmer, I promised to take your advice, and I"ll do it. I will see her. But how? Where? Let me have your advice on that point too."
They began to laugh together, and Dan was at once inexpressibly happy.
Those two light natures thoroughly comprehended each other.
Mrs. Pasmer had proposed his seeing Alice with due seriousness, but now she had a longing to let herself go; she felt all the pleasure that other people felt in doing Dan Mavering a pleasure, and something more, because he was so perfectly intelligible to her. She let herself go.
"You might stay to breakfast."
"Mrs. Pasmer, I will--I will do that too. I"m awfully hungry, and I put myself in your hands."
"Let me see," said Mrs. Pasmer thoughtfully, "how it can be contrived."
"Yes;" said Mavering, ready for a panic. "How? She wouldn"t stand a surprise?"
"No; I had thought of that."
"No behind-a-screen or next-room business?"
"No," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a light sigh. "Alice is peculiar. I"m afraid she wouldn"t like it."
"Isn"t there any little ruse she would like?"
"I can"t think of any. Perhaps I"d better go and tell her you"re here and wish to see her."
"Do you think you"d better?" asked Dan doubtfully. "Perhaps she won"t come."
"She will come," said Mrs. Pasmer confidently.
She did not say that she thought Alice would be curious to know why he had come, and that she was too just to condemn him unheard.
But she was right about the main point. Alice came, and Dan could see with his own weary eyes that she had not slept either.
She stopped just inside the portiere, and waited for him to speak. But he could not, though a smile from his sense of the absurdity of their seriousness hovered about his lips. His first impulse was to rush upon her and catch her in his arms, and perhaps this might have been well, but the moment for it pa.s.sed, and then it became impossible.
"Well?" she said at last, lifting her head, and looking at him with impa.s.sioned solemnity. "You wished to see me? I hoped you wouldn"t.
It would have spared me something. But perhaps I had no right to your forbearance."
"Alice, how can you say such things to me?" asked the young fellow, deeply hurt.
She responded to his tone. "I"m sorry if it wounds you. But I only mean what I say."
"You"ve a right to my forbearance, and not only that, but to my--my life; to everything that I am," cried Dan, in a quiver of tenderness at the sight of her and the sound of her voice. "Alice, why did you write me that letter?--why did you send me back my ring?"
"Because," she said, looking him seriously in the face--"because I wished you to be free, to be happy."
"Well, you"ve gone the wrong way about it. I can never be free from you; I never can be happy without you."
"I did it for your good, then, which ought to be above your happiness.
Don"t think I acted hastily. I thought it over all night long. I didn"t sleep--"
"Neither did I," interposed Dan.
"And I saw that I had no claim to you; that you never could be truly happy with me--"
"I"ll take the chances," he interrupted. "Alice, you don"t suppose I cared for those women any more than the ground under your feet, do you?
I don"t suppose I should ever have given them a second thought if you hadn"t seemed to feel so badly about my neglecting them; and I thought you"d be pleased to have me try to make it up to them if I could."
"I know your motive was good--the n.o.blest. Don"t think that I did you injustice, or that I was vexed because you went away with them."
"You sent me."
"Yes; and now I give you up to them altogether. It was a mistake, a crime, for me to think we could be anything to each other when our love began with a wrong to some one else."
"With a wrong to some one else?"
"You neglected them on Cla.s.s Day after you saw me."
"Why, of course I did. How could I help it?"
A flush of pleasure came into the girl"s pale face; but she banished it, and continued gravely, "Then at Portland you were with them all day."
"You"d given me up--you"d thrown me over, Alice," he pleaded.
"I know that; I don"t blame you. But you made them believe that you were very much interested in them."