At the end of an hour they took a tender leave of each other, hastened by the sound of Mrs. Pasmer’s voice without.  Alice escaped from one door before her mother entered by the other.  Dan remained, trying to look unconcerned, but he was sensible of succeeding so poorly that he thought he had better offer his hand to Mrs. Pasmer at once.  He told her that he was going up to Ponkwasset Falls at two o’clock, and asked her to please remember him to Mr. Pasmer.

She said she would, and asked him if he were to be gone long.

“Oh no; just overnight—­till I can tell them what’s happened.”  He felt it a comfort to be trivial with Mrs. Pasmer, after bracing up to Alice’s ideals.  “I suppose they’ll have to know.”

“What an exemplary son!” said Mrs. Pasmer.  “Yes, I suppose they will.”

“I supposed it would be enough if I wrote, but Alice thinks I’d better report in person.”

“I think you had, indeed!  And it will be a good thing for you both to have the time for clarifying your ideas.  Did she tell you she had been at matins this morning?” A light of laughter trembled in Mrs. Pasmer’s eyes, and Mavering could not keep a responsive gleam out of his own.  In an instant the dedication of his engagement by morning prayer ceased to be a high and solemn thought, and became deliciously amusing; and this laughing Alice over with her mother did more to realise the fact that she was his than anything else had yet done.

In that dark passage outside he felt two arms go tenderly round his neck; and a soft shape strain itself to his heart.  “I know you have been laughing about me.  But you may.  I’m yours now, even to laugh at, if you want.”

“You are mine to fall down and worship,” he vowed, with an instant revulsion of feeling.

Alice didn’t say anything; he felt her hand fumbling about his coat lapel.  “Where is your breast pocket?” she asked; and he took hold of her hand, which left a carte-de-visite-shaped something in his.

“It isn’t very good,” she murmured, as well as she could, with her lips against his cheek, “but I thought you’d like to show them some proof of my existence.  I shall have none of yours while you’re gone.”

“O Alice! you think of everything!”

His heart was pierced by the soft reproach implied in her words; he had not thought to ask her for her photograph, but she had thought to give it; she must have felt it strange that he had not asked for it, and she had meant to slip it in his pocket and let him find it there.  But even his pang of self-upbraiding was a part of his transport.  He seemed to float down the stairs; his mind was in a delirious whirl.  “I shall go mad,” he said to himself in the excess of his joy—­“I shall die!”

XXVIII.