“Never tried it,” said Boardman, looking critically at his fried potatoes before venturing upon them.  “If you had stayed, perhaps she might have changed her mind,” he added, as if encouraged to this hopeful view by the result of his scrutiny.

“Where did you get your fraudulent reputation for common-sense, Boardman?” retorted Mavering, who had followed his examination of the potatoes with involuntary interest.  “She won’t change her mind; she isn’t one of that kind.  But she’s the one woman in this world who could have made a man of me, Boardman.”

“Is that so?” asked Boardman lightly.  “Well, she is a good-looking girl.”

“She’s divine!”

“What a dress that was she had on Class Day!”

“I never think what she has on.  She makes everything perfect, and then makes you forget it.”

“She’s got style; there’s no mistake about that.”

“Style!” sighed Mavering; but he attempted no exemplification.

“She’s awfully graceful.  What a walk she’s got!”

“Oh, don’t, don’t, Boardman!  All that’s true, and all that’s nothing—­nothing to her goodness.  She’s so good, Boardman!  Well, I give it up!  She’s religious.  You wouldn’t think that, may be; you can’t imagine a pretty girl religious.  And she’s all the more intoxicating when she’s serious; and when she’s forgotten your whole worthless existence she’s ten thousand times more fascinating than and other girl when she’s going right for you.  There’s a kind of look comes into her eyes—­kind of absence, rapture, don’t you know—­when she’s serious, that brings your heart right into your mouth.  She makes you think of some of those pictures—­I want to tell you what she said the other day at a picnic when we were off getting blueberries, and you’ll understand that she isn’t like other girls—­that she has a soul fall of—­of—­you know what, Boardman.  She has high thoughts about everything.  I don’t believe she’s ever had a mean or ignoble impulse—­she couldn’t have.”  In the business of imparting his ideas confidentially, Mavering had drawn himself across the table toward Boardman, without heed to what was on it.

“Look out!  You’ll be into my steak first thing you know.”

“Oh, confound your steak?” cried Mavering, pushing the dish away.  What difference does it make?  I’ve lost her, anyway.”

“I don’t believe you’ve lost her,” said Boardman.

“What’s the reason you don’t?” retorted Mavering, with contempt.

“Because, if she’s the serious kind of a girl you say she is, she wouldn’t let you come up there and dangle round a whole fortnight without letting you know she didn’t like it, unless she did like it.  Now you just go a little into detail.”

Mavering was quite willing.  He went so much into detail that he left nothing to Boardman’s imagination.  He lost the sense of its calamitous close in recounting the facts of his story at Campobello; he smiled and blushed and laughed in telling certain things; he described Miss Anderson and imitated her voice; he drew heads of some of the ladies on the margin of a newspaper, and the tears came into his eyes when he repeated the cruel words which Alice had used at their last meeting.