nforbidden, but eagerly welcome,
was impossible, and yet it was true.. But it was no more impossible and
no truer, than that a being so poised, so perfectly self-centred as she,
should already be so helplessly dependent upon him for her happiness. In
the depths of his soul he invoked awful penalties upon himself if ever
he should betray her trust, if ever he should grieve that tender heart
in the slightest thing, if from that moment he did not make his whole
life a sacrifice and an expiation.

He uttered some of these exalted thoughts, and they did not seem to
appear crazy to her. She said yes, they must make their separate lives
offerings to each other, and their joint lives an offering to God. The
tears came into his eyes at these words of hers: they were so beautiful
and holy and wise. He agreed that one ought always to go to church,
and that now he should never miss a service. He owned that he had
been culpable in the past. He drew her closer to him--if that were
possible--and sealed his words with a kiss.

But he could not realise his happiness then, or afterward, when he
walked the streets under the thinly misted moon of that Indian summer
night.

He went down to the Events office when he left Alice, and found
Boardman, and told him that he was engaged, and tried to work Boardman
up to some sense of the greatness of the fact. Boardman shoved his fine
white teeth under his spare moustache, and made acceptable jokes, but
he did not ask indiscreet questions, and Dan's statement of the fact did
not seem to give it any more verity than it had before. He tried to get
Boardman to come and walk with him and talk it over; but Boardman said
he had just been detailed to go and work up the case of a Chinaman who
had suicided a little earlier in the evening.

"Very well, then; I'll go with you," said Mavering. "How can you live
in such a den as this?" he asked, looking about the little room before
Boardman turned down his incandescent electric. "There isn't anything
big enough to hold me but all outdoors."

In the street he linked his arm through his friend's, and said he felt
that he had a right to know all about the happy ending of the affair,
since he had been told of that miserable phase of it at Portland. But
when he came to the facts he found himself unable to give them with the
fulness he had promised. He only imparted a succinct statement as to the
where and when of the whole matter, leaving the how of it untold.