“I don’t know what I’m going home for,” he said hoarsely to Boardman.

“Kind of a rest, I suppose,” suggested his friend.

“Yes, I guess that’s it,” said Dan.  “I’m tired.”

It seemed to him that this was rather fine; it was a fatigue of the soul that he was to rest from.  He remembered the apostrophic close of a novel in which the heroine dies after much emotional suffering.  “Quiet, quiet heart!” he repeated to himself.  Yes, he too had died to hope, to love, to happiness.

As they drew near their journey’s end he said, “I don’t know how I’m going to break it to them.”

“Oh, probably break itself,” said Boardman.  “These things usually do.”

“Yes, of course,” Dan assented.

“Know from your looks that something’s up.  Or you might let me go ahead a little and prepare them.”

Dan laughed.  “It was awfully good of you to come, Boardman.  I don’t know what I should have done without you.”

“Nothing I like more than these little trips.  Brightens you up to sere the misery of others; makes you feel that you’re on peculiarly good terms with Providence.  Haven’t enjoyed myself so much since that day in Portland.”  Boardman’s eyes twinkled.

“Yes,” said Dan, with a deep sigh, “it’s a pity it hadn’t ended there.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  You won’t have to go through with it again.  Something that had to come, wasn’t it?  Never been satisfied if you hadn’t tried it.  Kind of aching void before, and now you’ve got enough.”

“Yes, I’ve got enough,” said Dan, “if that’s all.”

When they got out of the train at Ponkwasset Falls, and the conductor and the brakeman, who knew Dan as his father’s son, and treated him with the distinction due a representative of an interest valued by the road, had bidden him a respectfully intimate good-night, and he began to climb the hill to his father’s house, he recurred to the difficulty before him in breaking the news to his family.  “I wish I could have it over in a flash.  I wish I’d thought to telegraph it to them.”

“Wouldn’t have done,” said Boardman.  “It would have given ’em time to formulate questions and conjectures, and now the astonishment will take their breath away till you can get your second wind, and then—­you’ll be all right.”

“You think so?” asked Dan submissively.

“Know so.  You see, if you could have had it over in a flash, it would have knocked you flat.  But now you’ve taken all the little steps, and you’ve got a lot more to take, and you’re all braced up.  See?  You’re like rock, now—­adamant.”  Dan laughed in forlorn perception of Boardman’s affectionate irony.  “Little steps are the thing.  You’ll have to go in now and meet your family, and pass the time of day with each one, and talk about the weather, and account for my being along, and ask how they all are; and by the time you’ve had dinner, and got settled with your legs out in front of the fire, you’ll be just in the mood for it.  Enjoy telling them all about it.”