ovel, you'd have got those things together and addressed 'em, and
despatched 'em, in just the right kind of paper, with just the right
kind of string round it, at a dash; and then you'd have had time to go
up and lean your head against something and soliloquise, or else think
unutterable things. But here you see how a merciful Providence blocks
your way all along. You've had to fight through all sort of sordid
little details to the grand tragic result of getting off Miss Pasmer's
letters, and when you reach it you don't mind it a bit."

"Don't I?" demanded Dan, in as hollow a voice as he could. "You'd joke
at a funeral, Boardman."

"I've seen some pretty cheerful funerals," said Boardman. "And it's this
principle of steps, of degrees, of having to do this little thing, and
that little thing, that keeps funerals from killing the survivors. I
suppose this is worse than a funeral--look at it in the right light. You
mourn as one without hope, don't you? Live through it too, I suppose."

He made Dan help get the rest of his things into his bag, and with one
little artifice and another prevented him from stagnating in despair.
He dissented from the idea of waiting over another day to see if Alice
would not relent when she got her letters back, and send for Dan to come
and see her.

"Relent a good deal more when she finds you've gone out of town, if she
sends for you," he argued; and he got Dan into the cab and off to
the station, carefully making him an active partner in the whole
undertaking, even to checking his own bag.

Before he bought his own ticket he appealed once more to Dan.

"Look here! I feel like a fool going off with you on this expedition. Be
honest for once, now, Mavering, and tell me you've thought better of it,
and don't want me to go!"

"Yes--yes, I do. Oh yes, you've got to go. I I do want you. I--you make
me see things in just the right light, don't you know. That idea of
yours about little steps--it's braced me all up. Yes--"

"You're such an infernal humbug," said Boardman, "I can't tell whether
you want me or not. But I'm in for it now, and I'll go." Then he bought
his ticket.

XLV.

Boardman put himself in charge of Mavering, and took him into the
smoking car. It was impossible to indulge a poetic gloom there without
becoming unpleasantly conspicuous in the smoking and euchre and
profanity. Some of the men were silent and dull, but no one was
apparently very unhappy, and perhaps if D