The sketch was apparently enough for Boardman.  For all comment, he reminded Mavering that he had told him at Portland it would come out all right.

“Yes, you did, Boardman; that’s a fact,” said Dan; and he conceived a higher respect for the penetration of Boardman than he had before.

They stopped at a door in a poor court which they had somehow reached without Mavering’s privity.  “Will you come in?” asked Boardman.

“What for?”

“Chinaman.”

“Chinaman?” Then Mavering remembered.  “Good heavens! no.  What have I got to do with him?”

“Both mortal,” suggested the reporter.

The absurdity of this idea, though a little grisly, struck Dan as a good joke.  He hit the companionable Boardman on the shoulder, and then gave him a little hug, and remounted his path of air, and walked off in it.

XXVII.

Mavering first woke in the morning with the mechanical recurrence of that shame and grief which each day had brought him since Alice refused him.  Then with a leap of the heart came the recollection of all that had happened yesterday.  Yet lurking within his rapture was a mystery of regret:  a reasonless sense of loss, as if the old feeling had been something he would have kept.  Then this faded, and he had only the longing to see her, to realise in her presence and with her help the fact that she was his.  An unspeakable pride filled him, and a joy in her love.  He tried to see some outward vision of his bliss in the glass; but, like the mirror which had refused to interpret his tragedy in the Portland restaurant, it gave back no image of his transport:  his face looked as it always did, and he and the refection laughed at each other: 

He asked himself how soon he could go and see her.  It was now seven o’clock:  eight would be too early, of course—­it would be ridiculous; and nine—­he wondered if he might go to see her at nine.  Would they have done breakfast?  Had he any right to call before ten?  He was miserable at the thought of waiting till ten:  it would be three hours.  He thought of pretexts—­of inviting her to go somewhere, but that was absurd, for he could see her at home all day if he liked; of carrying her a book, but there could be no such haste about a book; of going to ask if he had left his cane, but why should he be in such a hurry for his cane?  All at once he thought he could take her some flowers—­a bouquet to lay beside her plate at breakfast.  He dramatised himself charging the servant who should take it from him at the door not to say who left it; but Alice would know, of course, and they would all know; it would be very pretty.  He made Mrs. Pasmer say some flattering things of him; and he made Alice blush deliciously to hear them.  He could not manage Mr. Pasmer very well, and he left him out of the scene:  he imagined him shaving in another room; then he remembered his wearing a full beard.