to let me feel that, so far as she was concerned, I hadn't made it
all right, and couldn't. I thought I had rather a cold parting with you,
Alice, but it was quite tropical to what you left me to." A faint smile,
mingled with a blush of relenting, stole into her face, and he hurried
on. "I don't suppose I tried very hard to thaw her out. I wasn't much
interested. If you must give me up, you must give me up to some one
else, for they don't want me, and I don't want them." Alice's head
dropped lover, and he could come nearer now without her seeming to know
it. "But why need you give me up? There's really no occasion for it, I
assure you."

"I wished," she explained, "to show you that I loved you for something
above yourself and myself--far above either--"

She stopped and dropped the hand which she had raised to fend him off;
and he profited by the little pause she made to take her in his arms
without seeming to do so. "Well," he said, "I don't believe I was formed
to be loved on a very high plane. But I'm not too proud to be loved for
my own sake; and I don't think there's anything above you, Alice."

"Oh yes, there is! I don't deserve to be happy, and that's the reason
why I'm not allowed to be happy in any noble way. I can't bear to give
you up; you know I can't; but you ought to give me up--indeed you ought.
I have ideals, but I can't live up to them. You ought to go. You ought
to leave me." She accented each little sentence by vividly pressing
herself to his heart, and he had the wisdom or the instinct to treat
their reconciliation as nothing settled, but merely provisional in its
nature.

"Well, we'll see about that. I don't want to go till after breakfast,
anyway; your mother says I may stay, and I'm awfully hungry. If I
see anything particularly base in you, perhaps I sha'n't come back to
lunch."

Dan would have liked to turn it alt off into a joke, now that the worst
was apparently over; but Alice freed herself from him, and held him off
with her hand set against his breast. "Does mamma know about it?" she
demanded sternly.

"Well, she knows there's been some misunderstanding," said Dan, with a
laugh that was anxious, in view of the clouds possibly gathering again.

"How much?"

"Well, I can't say exactly." He would not say that he did not know, but
he felt that he could truly say that he could not say.

She dropped her hand, and consented to be deceived. Dan caught her again
to his breast; but he had