He was still in that illusion of awe and of distance, and he submitted to the interposition of another table between their chairs.

“I wish to talk with you,” she said, so seriously that he was frightened, and said to himself:  “Now she is going to break it off.  She has thought it over, and she finds she can’t endure me.”

“Well?” he said huskily.

You oughtn’t to have come here, you know, this morning.”

“I know it,” he vaguely conceded.  “But I didn’t expect to get in.”

“Well, now you’re here, we may as well talk.  You must tell your family at once.”

“Yes; I’m going to write to them as soon as I get back to my room.  I couldn’t last night.”

“But you mustn’t write; you must go—­and prepare their minds.”

“Go?” he echoed.  “Oh, that isn’t necessary!  My father knew about it from the beginning, and I guess they’ve all talked it over.  Their minds are prepared.”  The sense of his immeasurable superiority to any one’s opposition began to dissipate Dan’s unnatural awe; at the pleading face which Alice put on, resting one cheek against the back of one of her clasped hands, and leaning on the table with her elbows, he began to be teased by that silken rope round her waist.

“But you don’t understand, dear,” she said; and she said “dear” as if they were old married people.  “You must go to see them, and tell them; and then some of them must come to see me—­your father and sisters.”

“Why, of course.”  His eye now became fastened to one of the fluffy silken balls.

“And then mamma and I must go to see your mother, mustn’t we?”

“It’ll be very nice of you—­yes.  You know she can’t come to you.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought, and—­What are you looking at?” she drew herself back from the table and followed the direction of his eye with a woman’s instinctive apprehension of disarray.

He was ashamed to tell.  “Oh, nothing.  I was just thinking.”

“What?”

“Well, I don’t know.  That it seems so strange any one else should have any to do with it—­my family and yours.  But I suppose they must.  Yes, it’s all right.”

“Why, of course.  If your family didn’t like it—­”

“It wouldn’t make any difference to me,” said Dan resolutely.

“It would to me,” she retorted, with tender reproach.  “Do you suppose it would be pleasant to go into a family that didn’t like you?  Suppose papa and mamma didn’t like you?”

“But I thought they did,” said Mavering, with his mind still partly on the rope and the fluffy ball, but keeping his eyes away.

“Yes, they do,” said Alice.  “But your family don’t know me at all; and your father’s only seen me once.  Can’t you understand?  I’m afraid we don’t look at it seriously enough—­earnestly—­and oh, I do wish to have everything done as it should be!  Sometimes, when I think of it, it makes me tremble.  I’ve been thinking about it all the morning, and—­and—­praying.”