esting one cheek against the back of one of her
clasped hands, and leaning on the table with her elbows, he began to be
teased by that silken rope round her waist.

"But you don't understand, dear," she said; and she said "dear" as if
they were old married people. "You must go to see them, and tell them;
and then some of them must come to see me--your father and sisters."

"Why, of course." His eye now became fastened to one of the fluffy
silken balls.

"And then mamma and I must go to see your mother, mustn't we?"

"It'll be very nice of you--yes. You know she can't come to you."

"Yes, that's what I thought, and--What are you looking at?" she drew
herself back from the table and followed the direction of his eye with a
woman's instinctive apprehension of disarray.

He was ashamed to tell. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking."

"What?"

"Well, I don't know. That it seems so strange any one else should have
any to do with it--my family and yours. But I suppose they must. Yes,
it's all right."

"Why, of course. If your family didn't like it--"

"It wouldn't make any difference to me," said Dan resolutely.

"It would to me," she retorted, with tender reproach. "Do you suppose it
would be pleasant to go into a family that didn't like you? Suppose papa
and mamma didn't like you?"

"But I thought they did," said Mavering, with his mind still partly on
the rope and the fluffy ball, but keeping his eyes away.

"Yes, they do," said Alice. "But your family don't know me at all; and
your father's only seen me once. Can't you understand? I'm afraid we
don't look at it seriously enough--earnestly--and oh, I do wish to have
everything done as it should be! Sometimes, when I think of it, it
makes me tremble. I've been thinking about it all the morning,
and--and--praying."

Dan wanted to fall on his knees to her. The idea of Alice in prayer was
fascinating.

"I wish our life to begin with others, and not with ourselves. If we're
intrusted with so much happiness, doesn't it mean that we're to do good
with it--to give it to others as if it were money?"

The nobleness of this thought stirred Dan greatly; his eyes wandered
back to the silken rope; but now it seemed to him an emblem of voluntary
suffering and self-sacrifice, like a devotee's hempen girdle. He
perceived that the love of this angelic girl would elevate him and
hallow his whole life if he would let it. He answered her, fervently,
that he would be guided by h