At last Alice came in, and they decorously shook hands.  Mrs. Pasmer turned away a smile at their decorum.  “I will see that there’s a place for you,” she said, leaving them.

They were instantly in each other’s arms.  It seemed to him that all this had happened because he had so strongly wished it.

“What is it, Dan?  What did you come for?” she asked.

“To see if it was really true, Alice.  I couldn’t believe it.”

“Well—­let me go—­you mustn’t—­it’s too silly.  Of course it’s true.”  She pulled herself free.  “Is my hair tumbled?  You oughtn’t to have come; it’s ridiculous; but I’m glad you came.  I’ve been thinking it all over, and I’ve got a great many things to say to you.  But come to breakfast now.”

She had a business-like way of treating the situation that was more intoxicating than sentiment would have been, and gave it more actuality.

Mrs. Pasmer was alone at the table, and explained that Alice’s father never breakfasted with them, or very seldom.  “Where are your flowers?” she asked Alice.

“Flowers?  What flowers?”

“That Mr. Mavering brought.”

They all looked at one another.  Dan ran out and brought in his roses.

“They were trying to get away in the excitement, I guess, Mrs. Pasmer; I found them behind the door.”  He had flung them there, without knowing it, when Mrs. Pasmer left him with Alice.

He expected her to join him and her mother in being amused at this, but he was as well pleased to have her touched at his having brought them, and to turn their gaiety off in praise of the roses.  She got a vase for them, and set it on the table.  He noticed for the first time the pretty house-dress she had on, with its barred corsage and under-skirt, and the heavy silken rope knotted round it at the waist, and dropping in heavy tufts or balls in front.

The breakfast was Continental in its simplicity, and Mrs. Pasmer said that they had always kept up their Paris habit of a light breakfast, even in London, where it was not so easy to follow foreign customs as it was in America.  She was afraid he might find it too light.  Then he told all about his morning’s adventure, ending with his breakfast at the Providence Depot.  Mrs. Pasmer entered into the fun of it, but she said it was for only once in a way, and he must not expect to be let in if he came at that hour another morning.  He said no; he understood what an extraordinary piece of luck it was for him to be there; and he was there to be bidden to do whatever they wished.  He said so much in recognition of their goodness, that he became abashed by it.  Mrs. Pasmer sat at the head of the table, and Alice across it from him, so far off that she seemed parted from him by an insuperable moral distance.  A warm flush seemed to rise from his heart into his throat and stifle him.  He wished to shed tears.  His eyes were wet with grateful happiness in answering Mrs. Pasmer that he would not have any more coffee.  “Then,” she said, “we will go into the drawing-room;” but she allowed him and Alice to go alone.