第76章

"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 passed, and then it became impossible.

"Well?" she said at last, lifting her head, and looking at him with impassioned 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 Icared for those women any more than the ground under your feet, do you? Idon'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 noblest. 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 he 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 Class 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.""I don't know what I did. I was perfectly desperate.""Yes; it was my fault. And then, when they came to meet you at the Museum, I had made you forget them; I'd made you wound them and insult them again. No. I've thought it all out, and we never could be happy.

Don't think that I do it from any resentful motive.""Alice? how could I think that?--Of you!""I have tried--prayed--to be purified from that, and I believe that I have been.""You never had a selfish thought."

"And I have come to see that you were perfectly right in what you did last night. At first I was wounded.""Oh, did I wound you, Alice?" he grieved.

"But afterward I could see that you belonged to them, and not me, and--and I give you up to them. Yes, freely, fully."Alice stood there, beautiful, pathetic, austere; and Dan had halted in the spot to which he had advanced, when her eye forbade him to approach nearer. He did not mean to joke, and it was in despair that he cried out:

"But which, Alice? There are two of them.""Two?" she repeated vaguely.

"Yes; Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne. You can't give me up to both of them.""Both?" she repeated again. She could not condescend to specify; it would be ridiculous, and as it was, she felt her dignity hopelessly shaken. The tears came into her eyes.

"Yes. And neither of them wants me--they haven't got any use for me.

Mrs. Frobisher is married already, and Miss Wrayne took the trouble last night to let me feel that, so far as she was concerned, I hadn't made it all right, and couldn't. I thought I had rather a cold parting with you, Alice, but it was quite tropical to what you left me to." A faint smile, mingled with a blush of relenting, stole into her face, and he hurried on.