ates, but now the advantage was too
great: really, in a sense, it was hardly fair to them.

He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he
perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened
her animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new
beauty were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people
they had come to Venice to avoid.

Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being
with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering
with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn't see too plainly
how they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to
Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that
she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that
henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this
fear he said carelessly: "Oh, all the same, it's rather jolly knocking
about with them again for a bit;" and she answered at once, and with
equal conviction: "Yes, isn't it? The old darlings--all the same!"

A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy's
independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions;
if she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of
becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier
he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment
he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be
agreed with monotonous.

Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for
the married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that
Susy's subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then
it never occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were
superfluous, since their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the
special understanding on which their marriage had been based not a trace
remained in his thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever
renounce each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the
ghost of an old joke.

It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability,
that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him
the least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast
dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. The