“What is that poor boy doing, I wonder?” said Mrs. Brinkley to herself.

XXXVII.

The next morning Dan Mavering knocked at Boardman’s door before the reporter was up.  This might have been any time before one o’clock, but it was really at half-past nine.  Boardman wanted to know who was there, and when Mavering had said it was he, Boardman seemed to ponder the fact awhile before Mavering heard him getting out of bed and coming barefooted to the door.  He unlocked it, and got back into bed; then he called out, “Come in,” and Mavering pushed the door open impatiently.  But he stood blank and silent, looking helplessly at his friend.  A strong glare of winter light came in through the naked sash—­for Boardman apparently not only did not close his window-blinds, but did not pull down his curtains, when he went to bed—­and shone upon his gay, shrewd face where he lay, showing his pop-corn teeth in a smile at Mavering.

“Prefer to stand?” he asked by and by, after Mavering had remained standing in silence, with no signs of proposing to sit down or speak.  Mavering glanced at the only chair in the room:  Boardman’s clothes dripped and dangled over it.  “Throw ’em on the bed,” he said, following Mavering’s glance.

“I’ll take the bed myself,” said Mavering; and he sat down on the side of it, and was again suggestively silent.

Boardman moved his head on the pillow, as he watched Mavering’s face, with the agreeable sense of personal security which we all feel in viewing trouble from the outside:  “You seem balled up about something.”

Mavering sighed heavily.  “Balled up?  It’s no word for it.  Boardman, I’m done for.  Yesterday I was the happiest fellow in the world, and now—­Yes, it’s all over with me, and it’s my own fault, as usual.  Look; at that!” He jerked Boardman a note which he had been holding fast in his band, and got up and went to look himself at the wide range of chimney-pots and slated roofs which Boardman’s dormer-window commanded.

“Want me to read it?” Boardman asked; and Mavering nodded without glancing round.  It dispersed through the air of Boardman’s room, as he unfolded it, a thin, elect perfume, like a feminine presence, refined and strict; and Boardman involuntarily passed his hand over his rumpled hair, as if to make himself a little more personable before reading the letter.

“Dear Mr. Mavering,—­I enclose the ring you gave me the other day, and I release you from the promise you gave with it.  I am convinced that you wronged yourself in offering either without your whole heart, and I care too much for your happiness to let you persist in your sacrifice.

“In begging that you will not uselessly attempt to see me, but that you will consider this note final, I know you will do me the justice not to attribute an ungenerous motive to me.  I shall rejoice to hear of any good that may befall you; and I shall try not to envy any one through whom it comes.—­Yours sincerely,” “Alice Pasmer.”