ondered if really then there mightn't be something for her. She hadn't
been sure in coming to him that she was "better," and he hadn't used,
he would be awfully careful not to use, that compromising term about
her; in spite of all of which she would have been ready to say, for the
amiable sympathy of it, "Yes, I _must_ be," for he had this unaided
sense of something that had happened to her. It was a sense unaided,
because who could have told him of anything? Susie, she was certain,
hadn't yet seen him again, and there were things it was impossible she
could have told him the first time. Since such was his penetration,
therefore, why shouldn't she gracefully, in recognition of it, accept
the new circumstance, the one he was clearly wanting to congratulate
her on, as a sufficient cause? If one nursed a cause tenderly enough it
might produce an effect; and this, to begin with, would be a way of
nursing. "You gave me the other day," she went on, "plenty to think
over, and I've been doing that--thinking it over--quite as you'll have
probably wished me. I think I must be pretty easy to treat," she
smiled, "since you've already done me so much good."

The only obstacle to reciprocity with him was that he looked in advance
so closely related to all one's possibilities that one missed the
pleasure of really improving it. "Oh no, you're extremely difficult to
treat. I've need with you, I assure you, of all my wit."

"Well, I mean I do come up." She hadn't meanwhile a bit believed in his
answer, convinced as she was that if she _had_ been difficult it would
be the last thing he would have told her. "I'm doing," she said, "as I
like."

"Then it's as _I_ like. But you must really, though we're having such a
decent month, get straight away." In pursuance of which, when she had
replied with promptitude that her departure--for the Tyrol and then for
Venice--was quite fixed for the fourteenth, he took her up with
alacrity. "For Venice? That's perfect, for we shall meet there. I've a
dream of it for October, when I'm hoping for three weeks off; three
weeks during which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young person
who has quite the whip hand of me, is to take me where she prefers. I
heard from her only yesterday that she expects to prefer Venice."

"That's lovely then. I shall expect you there. And anything that, in
advance or in any way, I can do for you--!"

"Oh thank you. My niece, I seem to feel, does for me. But it will be