He dressed himself as quickly as he could, and went down into the hotel vestibule, where he had noticed people selling flowers the evening before, but there was no one there with them now, and none of the florists’ shops on the street were open yet.  He could not find anything till he went to the Providence Depot, and the man there had to take some of his yesterday’s flowers out of the refrigerator where he kept them; he was not sure they would be very fresh; but the heavy rosebuds had fallen open, and they were superb.  Dan took all there were, and when they had been sprinkled with water, and wrapped in cotton batting, and tied round with paper, it was still only quarter of eight, and he left them with the man till he could get his breakfast at the Depot restaurant.  There it had a consoling effect of not being so early; many people were already breakfasting, and when Dan said, with his order, “Hurry it up, please,” he knew that he was taken for a passenger just arrived or departing.  By a fantastic impulse he ordered eggs and bacon again; he felt, it a fine derision of the past and a seal of triumph upon the present to have the same breakfast after his acceptance as he had ordered after his rejection; he would tell Alice about it, and it would amuse her.  He imagined how he would say it, and she would laugh; but she would be full of a ravishing compassion for his past suffering.  They were long bringing the breakfast; when it came he despatched it so quickly that it was only half after eight when he paid his check at the counter.  He tried to be five minutes more getting his flowers, but the man had them all ready for him, and it did not take him ten seconds.  He had said he would carry them at half-past nine; but thinking it over on a bench in the Garden, he decided that he had better go sooner; they might breakfast earlier, and there would be no fun if Alice did not find the roses beside her plate:  that was the whole idea.  It was not till he stood at the door of the Pasmer apartment that he reflected that he was not accomplishing his wish to see Alice by leaving her those flowers; he was a fool, for now he would have to postpone coming a little, because he had already come.

The girl who answered the bell did not understand the charge he gave her about the roses, and he repeated his words.  Some one passing through the room beyond seemed to hesitate and pause at the sound of his voice.  Could it be Alice?  Then he should see her, after all!  The girl looked over her shoulder, and said, “Mrs. Pasmer.”

Mrs. Pasmer came forward, and he fell into a complicated explanation and apology.  At the end she said, “You had better give them yourself.  She will be here directly.”  They were in the room now, and Mrs. Pasmer made the time pass in rapid talk; but Dan felt that he ought to apologise from time to time.  “No!” she said, letting herself go.  “Stay and breakfast with us, Mr. Mavering.  We shall be so glad to have you.”