float down the stairs; his mind was in a delirious whirl. "I shall go
mad," he said to himself in the excess of his joy--"I shall die!"

XXVIII.

The parting scene with Alice persisted in Mavering's thought far on the
way to Ponkwasset Falls. He now succeeded in saying everything to her:
how deeply he felt her giving him her photograph to cheer him in
his separation from her; how much he appreciated her forethought in
providing him with some answer when his mother and sisters should ask
him about her looks. He took out the picture, and pretended to the other
passengers to be looking very closely at it, and so managed to kiss it.
He told her that now he understood what love really was; how powerful;
how it did conquer everything; that it had changed him and made him
already a better man. He made her refuse all merit in the work.

When he began to formulate the facts for communication to his family,
love did not seem so potent; he found himself ashamed of his passion,
or at least unwilling to let it be its own excuse even; he had a wish
to give it almost any other appearance. Until he came in sight of the
station and the Works, it had not seemed possible for any one to object
to Alice. He had been going home as a matter of form to receive the
adhesion of his family. But now he was forced to see that she might be
considered critically, even reluctantly. This would only be because
his family did not understand how perfect Alice was; but they might not
understand.

With his father there would be no difficulty. His father had seen Alice
and admired her; he would be all right. Dan found himself hoping this
rather anxiously, as if from the instinctive need of his father's
support with his mother and sisters. He stopped at the Works when he
left the train, and found his father in his private office beyond the
book-keeper's picket-fence, which he penetrated, with a nod to the
accountant.

"Hello, Dan!" said his father, looking up; and "Hello, father!" said
Dan. Being alone, the father and son not only shook hands, but kissed
each other, as they used to do in meeting after an absence when Dan was
younger.

He had closed his father's door with his left hand in giving his right,
and now he said at once, "Father, I've come home to tell you that I'm
engaged to be married."

Dan had prearranged his father's behaviour at this announcement, but
he now perceived that he would have to modify the scene if it were to
represent