desk in his smoking-jacket
when he came to him, rather early, and on the desk were laid out the
properties of the little play which had come to a tragic close. There
were some small bits of jewellery, among the rest a ring of hers which
Alice had been letting him wear; a lock of her hair which he had kept,
for the greater convenience of kissing, in the original parcel, tied
with crimson ribbon; a succession of flowers which she had worn, more
and more dry and brown with age; one of her gloves, which he had found
and kept from the day they first met in Cambridge; a bunch of withered
bluebells tied with sweet-grass, whose odour filled the room, from the
picnic at Campobello; scraps of paper with her writing on them, and
cards; several photographs of her, and piles of notes and letters.

"Look here," said Dan, knowing it was Boardman without turning round,
"what am I to do about these things?"

Boardman respectfully examined them over his shoulder. "Don't know what
the usual ceremony is," he said, he ventured to add, referring to the
heaps of letters, "Seems to have been rather epistolary, doesn't she?"

"Oh, don't talk of her as if she were dead!" cried Dan. "I've been
feeling as if she were." All at once he dropped his head among these
witnesses of his loss, and sobbed.

Boardman appeared shocked, and yet somewhat amused; he made a soft low
sibilation between his teeth.

Dan lifted his head. "Boardman, if you ever give me away!"

"Oh, I don't suppose it's very hilarious," said Boardman, with vague
kindness. "Packed yet?" he asked, getting away from the subject as
something he did not feel himself fitted to deal with consecutively.

"I'm only going to take a bag," said Mavering, going to get some clothes
down from a closet where his words had a sepulchral reverberation.

"Can't I help?" asked Boardman, keeping away from the sad memorials of
Dan's love strewn about on the desk, and yet not able to keep his eyes
off them across the room.

"Well, I don't know," said Dan. He came out with his armful of coats and
trousers, and threw them on the bed. "Are you going?"

"If I could believe you wanted me to."

"Good!" cried Mavering, and the fact seemed to brighten him immediately.
"If you want to, stuff these things in, while I'm doing up these other
things." He nodded his head side-wise toward the desk.

"All right," said Boardman.

His burst of grief must have relieved Dan greatly. He set about
gathering up the r