“Well—­yes.”

“And I was thinking of you all that day as—­And I couldn’t bear to look at anybody that day, or speak!”

“Well, the fact is, I—­I was distracted, and I didn’t know what I was doing.  I was desperate; I didn’t care.”

“How did you find out about the yacht race?”

“Boardman told me.  Boardman was there.”

“Did he know the ladies?  Did he go too?”

“No.  He was there to report the race for the Events.  He went on the press boat.”

“Oh!” said Alice.  “Was there a large party?”

“No, no.  Not very.  Just ourselves, in fact.  They were awfully kind.  And they made me go home to dinner with them.”

“They must have been rather peculiar people,” said Alice.  “And I don’t see how—­so soon—­” She could not realise that Mavering was then a rejected man, on whom she had voluntarily renounced all claim.  A retroactive resentment which she could not control possessed her with the wish to punish those bold women for being agreeable to one who had since become everything to her, though then he was ostensibly nothing.

In a vague way, Dan felt her displeasure with that passage of his history, but no man could have fully imagined it.

“I couldn’t tell half the time what I was saying or eating.  I talked at random and ate at random.  I guess they thought something was wrong; they asked me who was at Campobello.”

“Indeed!”

“But you may be sure I didn’t give myself away.  I was awfully broken up,” he concluded inconsequently.

She liked his being broken up, but she did not like the rest.  She would not press the question further now.  She only said rather gravely, “If it’s such a short acquaintance, can you write to them in that familiar way?”

“Oh yes!  Mrs. Frobisher is one of that kind.”

Alice was silent a moment before she said, “I think you’d better not write.  Let it go,” she sighed.

“Yes, that’s what I think,” said Dan.  “Better let it go.  I guess it will explain itself in the course of time.  But I don’t want any blots around.”  He leaned over and looked her smilingly in the face.

“Oh no,” she murmured; and then suddenly she caught him round the neck, crying and sobbing.  “It’s only—­because I wanted it to be—­perfect.  Oh, I wonder if I’ve done right?  Perhaps I oughtn’t to have taken you, after all; but I do love you—­dearly, dearly!  And I was so unhappy when I’d lost you.  And now I’m afraid I shall be a trial to you—­nothing but a trial.”

The first tears that a young man sees a woman shed for love of him are inexpressibly sweeter than her smiles.  Dan choked with tender pride and pity.  When he found his voice, he raved out with incoherent endearments that she only made him more and more happy by her wish to have the affair perfect, and that he wished her always to be exacting with him, for that would give him a chance to do something for her, and all that he desired, as long as he lived, was to do just what she wished.