, and mocked her with
the difference between her doctrine and practice; and they were all the
more against her because they had been perhaps a little put down by her
whimsical sayings.

"Yes," she admitted. "But we've been thirty years coming to the
understanding that you all admire so much; and do you think it was worth
the time?"

XXI.

Mavering kept up until he took leave of the party of young people who
had come over on the ferry-boat to Eastport for the frolic of seeing him
off. It was a tremendous tour de force to accept their company as if
he were glad of it, and to respond to all their gay nothings gaily; to
maintain a sunny surface on his turbid misery. They had tried to make
Alice come with them, but her mother pleaded a bad headache for her;
and he had to parry a hundred sallies about her, and from his sick heart
humour the popular insinuation that there was an understanding between
them, and that they had agreed together she should not come. He had to
stand about on the steamboat wharf and listen to amiable innuendoes for
nearly an hour before the steamer came in from St. John. The fond adieux
of his friends, their offers to take any message back, lasted during the
interminable fifteen minutes that she lay at her moorings, and then he
showed himself at the stern of the boat, and waved his handkerchief in
acknowledgment of the last parting salutations on shore.

When it was all over, he went down into his state-room, and shut himself
in, and let his misery rollover him. He felt as if there were a flood of
it, and it washed him to and fro, one gall of shame, of self-accusal,
of bitterness, from head to foot. But in it all he felt no resentment
toward Alice, no wish to wreak any smallest part of his suffering upon
her. Even while he had hoped for her love, it seemed to him that he had
not seen her in all that perfection which she now had in irreparable
loss. His soul bowed itself fondly over the thought of her; and, stung
as he was by that last cruel word of hers, he could not upbraid her.
That humility which is love casting out selfishness, the most egotistic
of the passions triumphing over itself--Mavering experienced it to
the full. He took all the blame. He could not see that she had ever
encouraged him to hope for her love, which now appeared a treasure
heaven--far beyond his scope; he could only call himself fool, and fool,
and fool, and wonder that he could have met her in the remoteness of
th