“Flowers? What flowers?”
“That Mr. Mavering brought.”
They all looked at one another. Dan ran out and brought in his roses.
“They were trying to get away in the excitement, I guess, Mrs. Pasmer; I found them behind the door.” He had flung them there, without knowing it, when Mrs. Pasmer left him with Alice.
He expected her to join him and her mother in being amused at this, but he was as well pleased to have her touched at his having brought them, and to turn their gaiety off in praise of the roses. She got a vase for them, and set it on the table. He noticed for the first time the pretty house-dress she had on, with its barred corsage and under-skirt, and the heavy silken rope knotted round it at the waist, and dropping in heavy tufts or balls in front.
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.”