rry--if she had made on him the
impression she desired. Once or twice I was on the point of getting into
my dressing-gown and going forth to condole with him. I was sure he
too had jumped up from his bed and was looking out of his window at the
everlasting hills.

But I am bound to say that when we met in the morning for breakfast he
showed few traces of ravage. Youth is strange; it has resources that
later experience seems only to undermine. One of these is the masterly
resource of beautiful blankness. As we grow older and cleverer we think
that too simple, too crude; we dissimulate more elaborately, but with an
effect much less baffling. My young man looked not in the least as if he
had lain awake or had something on his mind; and when I asked him what
he had done after my premature departure--I explained this by saying I
had been tired of waiting for him; fagged with my journey I had wanted
to go to bed--he replied: "Oh nothing in particular. I hung about the
place; I like it better than this one. We had an awfully jolly time
on the water. _I_ wasn't in the least fagged." I didn't worry him with
questions; it struck me as gross to try to probe his secret. The only
indication he gave was on my saying after breakfast that I should go
over again to see our friends and my appearing to take for granted he
would be glad to come too. Then he let fall that he'd stop at Stresa--he
had paid them such a tremendous visit; also that he had arrears of
letters. There was a freshness in his scruples about the length of his
visits, and I knew something about his correspondence, which consisted
entirely of twenty pages every week from his mother. But he soothed my
anxiety so little that it was really this yearning that carried me back
to Baveno. This time I ordered a conveyance, and as I got into it he
stood watching me from the porch of the hotel with his hands in his
pockets. Then it was for the first time that I saw in the poor youth's
face the expression of a person slightly dazed, slightly foolish even,
to whom something disagreeable has happened. Our eyes met as I observed
him, and I was on the point of saying "You had really better come with
me" when he turned away. He went into the house as to escape my call. I
said to myself that he had been indeed warned off, but that it wouldn't
take much to bring him back.

The servant to whom I spoke at Baveno described my friends as in a
summer-house in the garden, to which he led the w