an-like throat, too long for perfect
beauty, but not for perfect grace. When she was in earnest, her head
rose, her eyes looked straight before her, and her voice sank to a
graver note. He knew all the signs of truth, for with her it was always
very near the surface, dwelling not in a deep well, but in clear water,
as it were, open to the sky. Her truth was evidently truth, and her
jesting was transparent as a child's.

It looked a hopeless case, but he had no intention of considering it
without hope, nor any inclination to relinquish his attempts. He did
not tell himself in so many words that he wished to marry her, and
intended to marry her, and would marry her, if it were humanly possible,
and he assuredly made no such promises to himself. Nor did he look at
her as he had looked at women in whom he had been momentarily
interested, appreciating her good points of face and figure, cataloguing
and compiling her attractions so as to admire them all in turn, forget
none, and receive their whole effect.

He had a restless, hungry craving that left him no peace, and that
seemed to desire only a word, a look, the slightest touch of sympathy,
to be instantly satisfied. And he could not get from her one softened
glance, nor one sympathetic pressure of the hand, nor one word spoken
more gravely than another, except the assurance of her genuine dislike.

That was the only thing he had to complain of, but it was enough. He
could not reproach her with having encouraged him, for she had told him
the truth from the first. He had not quite believed her. So much the
worse for him. If he had, and if he had gone to Naples to wait for his
people, all this would not have happened, for he had not fallen in love
at first sight. A fortnight of daily and almost hourly intercourse was
very good and reasonable ground for being in love.

He grew absent-minded, and his pipe went out unexpectedly, which always
irritated him, and sometimes he did not take the trouble to light it
again. He rose at dawn and went for long walks in the hills, with the
idea that the early air and the lofty coolness would do him good, and
with the acknowledged intention of doing his walking at an hour when he
could not possibly be with Clare. For he could not keep away from her,
whether Mrs. Bowring were with her or not. He was too much a man of the
world to sit all day long before her, glaring at her in shy silence, as
a boy might have done, and as he would have been