“I can bear to be ridiculous with you,” she whispered, with an implication which he understood.

“You haven’t been ridiculous, dearest,” he said; and his tension gave way in a convulsive laugh, which partially expressed his feeling of restored security, and partly his amusement in realising how the situation would have pleased Mrs. Pasmer if she could have known it.

Mrs. Pasmer was seated behind her coffee biggin at the breakfast-table when he came into the room with Alice, and she lifted an eye from its glass bulb long enough to catch his flying glance of exultation and admonition.  Then, while she regarded the chemical struggle in the bulb, with the rapt eye of a magician reading fate in his crystal ball, she questioned herself how much she should know, and how much she should ignore.  It was a great moment for Mrs. Pasmer, full of delicious choice.  “Do you understand this process, Mr. Mavering?” she said, glancing up at him warily for farther instruction.

“I’ve seen it done,” said Dan, “but I never knew how it was managed.  I always thought it was going to blow up; but it seemed to me that if you were good and true and very meek, and had a conscience void of offence, it wouldn’t.”

“Yes, that’s what it seems to depend upon,” said Mrs. Pasmer, keeping her eye on the bulb.  She dodged suddenly forward, and put out the spirit-lamp.  “Now have your coffee!” she cried, with a great air of relief.  “You must need it by this time,” she said with a low cynical laugh—­“both of you!”

“Did you always make coffee with a biggin in France, Mrs. Pasmer?” asked Dan; and he laughed out the last burden that lurked in his heart.

Mrs. Pasmer joined him.  “No, Mr. Mavering.  In France you don’t need a biggin.  I set mine up when we went to England.”

Alice looked darkly from one of these light spirits to the other, and then they all shrieked together.

They went on talking volubly from that, and they talked as far away from what they were thinking about as possible.  They talked of Europe, and Mrs. Pasmer said where they would live and what they would do when they all got back there together.  Dan abetted her, and said that they must cross in June.  Mrs. Pasmer said that she thought June was a good month.  He asked if it were not the month of the marriages too, and she answered that he must ask Alice about that.  Alice blushed and laughed her sweet reluctant laugh, and said she did not know; she had never been married.

It was silly, but it was delicious; it made them really one family.  Deep in his consciousness a compunction pierced and teased Dan.  But he said to himself that it was all a joke about their European plans, or else his people would consent to it if he really wished it.

XXXIX.