“Better go and tell her so.  You’re wasting your arguments on me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m convinced already.  Because people always marry their first and only loves.  Because people never marry twice for love.  Because I’ve never seen you hit before, and I know you never could be again.  Now go and convince Miss Pasmer.  She’ll believe you, because she’ll know that she can never care for any one but you, and you naturally can’t care for anybody but her.  It’s a perfectly clear case.  All you’ve got to do is to set it before her.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t try to work that cynical racket, Boardman,” said Mavering.  He rose, but he sighed drearily, and regarded Boardman’s grin with lack-lustre absence.  But he went away without saying anything more; and walked mechanically toward the Cavendish.  As he rang at the door of Mrs. Pasmer’s apartments he recalled another early visit he had paid there; he thought how joyful and exuberant he was then, and how crushed and desperate now.  He was not without youthful satisfaction in the disparity of his different moods; it seemed to stamp him as a man of large and varied experience.

XXXVIII.

Mrs. Pasmer was genuinely surprised to see Mavering, and he pursued his advantage—­if it was an advantage—­by coming directly to the point.  He took it for granted that she knew all about the matter, and he threw himself upon her mercy without delay.

“Mrs. Pasmer, you must help me about this business with Alice,” he broke out at once.  “I don’t know what to make of it; but I know I can explain it.  Of course,” he added, smiling ruefully, “the two statements don’t hang together; but what I mean is that if I can find out what the trouble is, I can make it all right, because there’s nothing wrong about it; don’t you see?”

Mrs. Pasmer tried to keep the mystification out of her eye; but she could not even succeed in seeming to do so, which she would have liked almost as well.

“Don’t you know what I mean?” asked Dan.

Mrs. Pasmer chanced it.  “That Alice was a little out of sorts last night?” she queried leadingly.

“Yes,” said Mavering fervently.  “And about her—­her writing to me.”

“Writing to you?” Mrs. Pasmer was going to ask, when Dan gave her the letter.

“I don’t know whether I ought to show it, but I must.  I must have your help, and I can’t, unless you understand the case.”

Mrs. Pasmer had begun to read the note.  It explained what the girl herself had refused to give any satisfactory reason for—­her early retirement from the reception, her mysterious disappearance into her own room on reaching home, and her resolute silence on the way.  Mrs. Pasmer had known that there must be some trouble with Dan, and she had suspected that Alice was vexed with him on account of those women; but it was beyond her cheerful imagination that she