Mavering sprang at him with a demand for the reason of his being there.
“I thought it was you as I passed,” said Boardman, “but I couldn't make sure—so dark back here.”
“And I thought it was you, but I couldn't believe it,” said Mavering, with equal force, cutting short an interior conversation with Mr. Pasmer, which had begun to hold itself since his first glimpse of Boardman.
“I came down here to do a sort of one-horse yacht race to-day,” Boardman explained.
“Going to be a yacht race? Better have some breakfast. Or better not—here. Flies under your bacon.”
“Rough on the flies,” said Boardman, snapping the bell which summoned the spectre in the black jersey, and he sat down. “What are you doing in Portland?”
Mavering told him, and then Boardman asked him how he had left the Pasmers. Mavering needed no other hint to speak, and he spoke fully, while Boardman listened with an agreeable silence, letting the hero of the tale break into self-scornful groans and doleful laughs, and ease his heart with grotesque, inarticulate noises, and made little or no comments.
By the time his breakfast came, Boardman was ready to say, “I didn't suppose it was so much of a mash.”
“I didn't either,” said Mavering, “when I left Boston. Of course I knew I was going down there to see her, but when I got there it kept going on, just like anything else, up to the last moment. I didn't realise till it came to the worst that I had become a mere pulp.”
“Well, you won't stay so,” said Boardman, making the first vain attempt at consolation. He lifted the steak he had ordered, and peered beneath it. “All right this time, any way.”