passage of his
history, but no man could have fully imagined it.

"I couldn't tell half the time what I was saying or eating. I talked at
random and ate at random. I guess they thought something was wrong; they
asked me who was at Campobello."

"Indeed!"

"But you may be sure I didn't give myself away. I was awfully broken
up," he concluded inconsequently.

She liked his being broken up, but she did not like the rest. She would
not press the question further now. She only said rather gravely, "If
it's such a short acquaintance, can you write to them in that familiar
way?"

"Oh yes! Mrs. Frobisher is one of that kind."

Alice was silent a moment before she said, "I think you'd better not
write. Let it go," she sighed.

"Yes, that's what I think," said Dan. "Better let it go. I guess it
will explain itself in the course of time. But I don't want any blots
around." He leaned over and looked her smilingly in the face.

"Oh no," she murmured; and then suddenly she caught him round the neck,
crying and sobbing. "It's only--because I wanted it to be--perfect. Oh,
I wonder if I've done right? Perhaps I oughtn't to have taken you, after
all; but I do love you--dearly, dearly! And I was so unhappy when I'd
lost you. And now I'm afraid I shall be a trial to you--nothing but a
trial."

The first tears that a young man sees a woman shed for love of him are
inexpressibly sweeter than her smiles. Dan choked with tender pride and
pity. When he found his voice, he raved out with incoherent endearments
that she only made him more and more happy by her wish to have the
affair perfect, and that he wished her always to be exacting with him,
for that would give him a chance to do something for her, and all that
he desired, as long as he lived, was to do just what she wished.

At the end of his vows and entreaties, she lifted her face radiantly,
and bent a smile upon him as sunny as that with which the sky after a
summer storm denies that there has ever been rain in the world.

"Ah! you--" He could say no more. He could not be more enraptured than
he was. He could only pass from surprise to surprise, from delight to
delight. It was her love of him which wrought these miracles. It was all
a miracle, and no part more wonderful than another. That she, who had
seemed as distant as a star, and divinely sacred from human touch,
should be there in his arms, with her head on his shoulder, where his
kiss could reach her lips, not only u