e about that. Alice blushed and laughed her sweet
reluctant laugh, and said she did not know; she had never been married.

It was silly, but it was delicious; it made them really one family. Deep
in his consciousness a compunction pierced and teased Dan. But he said
to himself that it was all a joke about their European plans, or else
his people would consent to it if he really wished it.

XXXIX.

A period of entire harmony and tenderness followed the episode which
seemed to threaten the lovers with the loss of each other. Mavering
forbore to make Alice feel that in attempting a sacrifice which
consulted only his good and ignored his happiness, and then failing in
it so promptly, she had played rather a silly part. After one or two
tentative jokes in that direction he found the ground unsafe, and with
the instinct which served him in place of more premeditated piety he
withdrew, and was able to treat the affair with something like religious
awe. He was obliged, in fact, to steady Alice's own faith in it, and
to keep her from falling under dangerous self-condemnation in that and
other excesses of uninstructed self-devotion. This brought no fatigue to
his robust affection, whatever it might have done to a heart more tried
in such exercises. Love acquaints youth with many things in character
and temperament which are none the less interesting because it never
explains them; and Dan was of such a make that its revelations of Alice
were charming to him because they were novel. He had thought her a
person of such serene and flawless wisdom that it was rather a relief
to find her subject to gusts of imprudence, to unexpected passions and
resentments, to foibles and errors, like other people. Her power of cold
reticence; which she could employ at will, was something that fascinated
him almost as much as that habit of impulsive concession which seemed to
came neither from her will nor her reason. He was a person himself
who was so eager to give other people pleasure that he quivered with
impatience to see them happy through his words or acts; he could not
bear to think that any one to whom he was speaking was not perfectly
comfortable in regard to him; and it was for this reason perhaps that he
admired a girl who could prescribe herself a line of social conduct, and
follow it out regardless of individual pangs--who could act from ideals
and principles, and not from emotions and sympathies. He knew that she
had the emotio