The breakfast was Continental in its simplicity, and Mrs. Pasmer said that they had always kept up their Paris habit of a light breakfast, even in London, where it was not so easy to follow foreign customs as it was in America. She was afraid he might find it too light. Then he told all about his morning's adventure, ending with his breakfast at the Providence Depot. Mrs. Pasmer entered into the fun of it, but she said it was for only once in a way, and he must not expect to be let in if he came at that hour another morning. He said no; he understood what an extraordinary piece of luck it was for him to be there; and he was there to be bidden to do whatever they wished. He said so much in recognition of their goodness, that he became abashed by it. Mrs. Pasmer sat at the head of the table, and Alice across it from him, so far off that she seemed parted from him by an insuperable moral distance. A warm flush seemed to rise from his heart into his throat and stifle him. He wished to shed tears. His eyes were wet with grateful happiness in answering Mrs. Pasmer that he would not have any more coffee. “Then,” she said, “we will go into the drawing-room;” but she allowed him and Alice to go alone. He was still in that illusion of awe and of distance, and he submitted to the interposition of another table between their chairs. “I wish to talk with you,” she said, so seriously that he was frightened, and said to himself: “Now she is going to break it off. She has thought it over, and she finds she can't endure me.” “Well?” he said huskily. “You oughtn't to have come here, you know, this morning.” “I know it,” he vaguely conceded. “But I didn't expect to get in.” “Well, now you're here, we may as well talk. You must tell your family at once.” “Yes; I'm going to write to them as soon as I get back to my room. I couldn't last night.” “But you mustn't write; you must go--and prepare their minds.” “Go?” he echoed. “Oh, that isn't necessary! My father knew about it from the beginning, and I guess they've all talked it over. Their minds are prepared.” The sense of his immeasurable superiority to any one's opposition began to dissipate Dan's unnatural awe; at the pleading face which Alice put on, resting one cheek against the back of one of her clasped hands, and leaning on the table with her elbows, he began to be teased by that silken rope round her waist. “But you don't understand, dear,” she said; and she said “dear” as if they were old married people. “You must go to see them, and tell them; and then some of them must come to see me--your father and sisters.” “Why, of course.” His eye now became fastened to one of the fluffy silken balls. “And then mamma and I must go to see your mother, mustn't we?” “It'll be very nice of you--yes. You know she can't come to you.”