parting 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.

"Oh, well, you must brace up," said Boardman. "I've got to go now. She
didn't mean it, of course."

"Mean what?"

"That you were ungentlemanly. Women don't know half the time how hard
they're hitting."

"I guess she meant that she didn't want me, anyway," said Mavering
gloomily.

"Ah, I don't know about that. You'd better ask her the next time you see
her. Good-bye." He had risen, and he offered his hand to Mavering, who
was still seated.

"Why, I've half a mind to go with you."

"All right, come along. But I thought you might be going right on to
Boston."

"No; I'll wait and go on with you. How, do you go to the race?"

"In the press boat."

"Any women?"

"No; we don't send them on this sort of duty."

"That settles it. I have got all I want of that particular sex for the
time being." Mavering wore a very bitter air as he said this; it seemed
to him that he would always be cynical; he rose, and arranged to leave
his bag with the restaurateur, who put it under the counter, and then he
went out with his friend.

The sun had come out, and the fog was burning away; there was life and
lift in the air, which the rejected lover could not refuse to feel, and
he said, looking round, and up and down the animated street. "I guess
you're going to have a good day for it."