ughtfully, "how it can be contrived."

"Yes;" said Mavering, ready for a panic. "How? She wouldn't stand a
surprise?"

"No; I had thought of that."

"No behind-a-screen or next-room business?"

"No," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a light sigh. "Alice is peculiar. I'm
afraid she wouldn't like it."

"Isn't there any little ruse she would like?"

"I can't think of any. Perhaps I'd better go and tell her you're here
and wish to see her."

"Do you think you'd better?" asked Dan doubtfully. "Perhaps she won't
come."

"She will come," said Mrs. Pasmer confidently.

She did not say that she thought Alice would be curious to know why he
had come, and that she was too just to condemn him unheard.

But she was right about the main point. Alice came, and Dan could see
with his own weary eyes that she had not slept either.

She stopped just inside the portiere, and waited for him to speak. But
he could not, though a smile from his sense of the absurdity of their
seriousness hovered about his lips. His first impulse was to rush upon
her and catch her in his arms, and perhaps this might have been well,
but the moment for it passed, and then it became impossible.

"Well?" she said at last, lifting her head, and looking at him with
impassioned solemnity. "You wished to see me? I hoped you wouldn't.
It would have spared me something. But perhaps I had no right to your
forbearance."

"Alice, how can you say such things to me?" asked the young fellow,
deeply hurt.

She responded to his tone. "I'm sorry if it wounds you. But I only mean
what I say."

"You've a right to my forbearance, and not only that, but to my--my
life; to everything that I am," cried Dan, in a quiver of tenderness at
the sight of her and the sound of her voice. "Alice, why did you write
me that letter?--why did you send me back my ring?"

"Because," she said, looking him seriously in the face--"because I
wished you to be free, to be happy."

"Well, you've gone the wrong way about it. I can never be free from you;
I never can be happy without you."

"I did it for your good, then, which ought to be above your happiness.
Don't think I acted hastily. I thought it over all night long. I didn't
sleep--"

"Neither did I," interposed Dan.

"And I saw that I had no claim to you; that you never could be truly
happy with me--"

"I'll take the chances," he interrupted. "Alice, you don't suppose I
cared for those women any more than the ground under your feet,