intness had a heartache in it for her; and he was boyishly simple in
his failure to hide his suffering. He had no explicit right to suffer,
for he had asked nothing and been denied nothing, but perhaps for this
reason she suffered the more keenly for him.

A senseless resentment against Gregory for spoiling their happiness
crept into her heart; and she wished to show Hinkle how much she valued
his friendship at any risk and any cost. When this led her too far she
took herself to task with a severity which hurt him too. In the midst
of the impulses on which she acted, there were times when she had a
confused longing to appeal to him for counsel as to how she ought to
behave toward him.

There was no one else whom she could appeal to. Mrs. Lander, after her
first warning, had not spoken of him again, though Clementina could feel
in the grimness with which she regarded her variable treatment of him
that she was silently hoarding up a sum of inculpation which would crush
her under its weight when it should fall upon her. She seemed to be
growing constantly better, now, and as the interval since her last
attack widened behind her, she began to indulge her appetite with a
recklessness which Clementina, in a sense of her own unworthiness, was
helpless to deal with. When she ventured to ask her once whether she
ought to eat of something that was very unwholesome for her, Mrs. Lander
answered that she had taken her case into her own hands, now, for she
knew more about it than all the doctors. She would thank Clementina not
to bother about her; she added that she was at least not hurting anybody
but herself, and she hoped Clementina would always be able to say as
much.

Clementina wished that Hinkle would go away, but not before she had
righted herself with him, and he lingered his month out, and seemed as
little able to go as she to let him. She had often to be cheerful for
both, when she found it too much to be cheerful for herself. In
his absence she feigned free and open talks with him, and explained
everything, and experienced a kind of ghostly comfort in his imagined
approval and forgiveness, but in his presence, nothing really happened
except the alternation of her kindness and unkindness, in which she was
too kind and then too unkind.

The morning of the' day he was at last to leave Venice, he came to say
good bye. He did not ask for Mrs. Lander, when the girl received him,
and he did not give himself time to lose cou