“I didn’t know there was, but there seems to be,” said Dan.

“Silver paper seems to be rather more for cake and that sort of thing,” suggested Boardman.  “Kind of mourning too, isn’t it—­silver?”

“I don’t know,” said Dan.  “But I haven’t got any silver paper.”

“Newspaper wouldn’t do?”

“Well, hardly, Boardman,” said Dan, with sarcasm.

“Well,” said Boardman, “I should have supposed that nothing could be simpler than to send back a lot of love-letters; but the question of paper seems insuperable.  Manila paper wouldn’t do either.  And then comes string.  What kind of string are you going to tie it up with?”

“Well, we won’t start that question till we get to it,” answered Dan, looking about.  “If I could find some kind of a box—­”

“Haven’t you got a collar box?  Be the very thing!” Boardman had gone back to the coats and trousers, abandoning Dan to the subtler difficulties in which he was involved.

“They’ve all got labels,” said Mavering, getting down one marked “The Tennyson” and another lettered “The Clarion,” and looking at them with cold rejection.

“Don’t see how you’re going to send these things back at all, then.  Have to keep them, I guess.”  Boardman finished his task, and came back to Dan.

“I guess I’ve got it now,” said Mavering, lifting the lid of his desk, and taking out a large stiff envelope, in which a set of photographic views had come.

“Seems to have been made for it,” Boardman exulted, watching the envelope, as it filled up, expand into a kind of shapely packet.  Dan put the things silently in, and sealed the parcel with his ring.  Then he turned it over to address it, but the writing of Alice’s name for this purpose seemed too much for him, in spite of Boardman’s humorous support throughout.

“Oh, I can’t do it,” he said, falling back in his chair.

“Let me,” said his friend, cheerfully ignoring his despair.  He philosophised the whole transaction, as he addressed the package, rang for a messenger, and sent it away, telling him to call a cab for ten minutes past two.

“Mighty good thing in life that we move by steps.  Now on the stage, or in a novel, 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.”