Dan wanted to fall on his knees to her.  The idea of Alice in prayer was fascinating.

“I wish our life to begin with others, and not with ourselves.  If we’re intrusted with so much happiness, doesn’t it mean that we’re to do good with it—­to give it to others as if it were money?”

The nobleness of this thought stirred Dan greatly; his eyes wandered back to the silken rope; but now it seemed to him an emblem of voluntary suffering and self-sacrifice, like a devotee’s hempen girdle.  He perceived that the love of this angelic girl would elevate him and hallow his whole life if he would let it.  He answered her, fervently, that he would be guided by her in this as in everything; that he knew he was selfish, and he was afraid he was not very good; but it was not because he had not wished to be so; it was because he had not had any incentive.  He thought how much nobler and better this was than the talk he had usually had with girls.  He said that of course he would go home and tell his people; he saw now that it would make them happier if they could hear it directly from him.  He had only thought of writing because he could not bear to think of letting a day pass without seeing her; but if he took the early morning train he could get back the same night, and still have three hours at Ponkwasset Falls, and he would go the next day, if she said so.

“Go to-day, Dan,” she said, and she stretched out her hand impressively across the table toward him.  He seized it with a gush of tenderness, and they drew together in their resolution to live for others.  He said he would go at once.  But the next train did not leave till two o’clock, and there was plenty of time.  In the meanwhile it was in the accomplishment of their high aims that they sat down on the sofa together and talked of their future; Alice conditioned it wholly upon his people’s approval of her, which seemed wildly unnecessary to Mavering, and amused him immensely.

“Yes,” she said, “I know you will think me strange in a great many things; but I shall never keep anything from you, and I’m going to tell you that I went to matins this morning.”

“To matins?” echoed Dan.  He would not quite have liked her a Catholic; he remembered with relief that she had said she was not a Roman Catholic; though when he came to think, he would not have cared a great deal.  Nothing could have changed her from being Alice.

“Yes, I wished to consecrate the first morning of our engagement; and I’m always going.  I determined that I would go before breakfast—­that was what made breakfast so late.  Don’t you like it?” she asked timidly.

“Like it!” he said.  “I’m going with you:” 

“Oh no!” she turned upon him.  “That wouldn’t do.”  She became grave again.  “I’m glad you approve of it, for I should feel that there was something wanting to our happiness.  If marriage is a sacrament, why shouldn’t an engagement be?”

“It is,” said Dan, and he felt that it was holy; till then he had never realised that marriage was a sacrament, though he had often heard the phrase.