half there was to be
known she would not have understood. That night on the platform Lady Fan
had given her own version of what had taken place on the Acropolis at
sunset, and Brook had not denied anything. Clare did not reflect that
Lady Fan might very possibly have exaggerated the facts very much in her
statement of them, and that at such a time Brook was certainly not the
man to argue the case, since it had manifestly been his only course to
take all the apparent blame on himself. Even if he had known that Clare
had heard the conversation, he could not possibly have explained the
matter to her--not even if she had been an old woman--without telling
all the truth about Lady Fan, and he was too honourable a man to do
that, under any conceivable circumstances.

He was decidedly and really in love with the girl. He knew it, because
what he felt was not like anything he had ever felt before. It was
anything but the pleasurable excitement to which he was accustomed.
There might have been something of that if he had received even the
smallest encouragement. But, do what he would, he could find none. The
attraction increased, and the encouragement was daily less, he thought.
Clare occasionally said things which made him half believe that she did
not wholly dislike him. That was as much as he could say. He cudgelled
his brains and wrung his memory to discover what he could have done to
offend her, and he could not remember anything--which was not
surprising. It was clear that she had never heard of him before he had
come to Amalfi. He had satisfied himself of that by questions, otherwise
he would naturally enough have come near the truth and guessed that she
must have known of some affair in which he had been concerned, which she
judged harshly from her own point of view.

He was beginning to suffer, and he was not accustomed to suffering,
least of all to any of the mental kind, for his life had always gone
smoothly. He had believed hitherto that most people exaggerated, and
worried themselves unnecessarily, but when he found it hard to sleep,
and noticed that he had a dull, unsatisfied sort of misery with him all
day long, he began to understand. He did not think that Clare could
really enjoy teasing him, and, besides, it was not like mere teasing,
either. She was evidently in earnest when she repeated that she did not
like him. He knew her face when she was chaffing, and her tone, and the
little bending of the delicate, sw