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 courage before he began, "Miss
Clementina, I don't know whether I ought to speak to you after what I
understood you to mean about Mr. Gregory." He looked steadfastly at her
but she did not answer, and he went on. "There's just one chance in a
million, though, that I didn't understand you rightly, and I've made up
my mind that I want to take that chance. May I?" She tried to speak, but
she could not. "If I was wrong--if there was nothing between you and
him--could there ever be anything between you and me?"

His pleading looks entreated her even more than his words.

"There was something," she answered, "with him."

"And I mustn't know what," the young man said patiently.

"Yes--yes!"