In obedience to Clare’s expressed wish, Johnstone made no mention that evening of the rather serious adventure on the Salerno road. They had fallen into the habit of shaking hands when they bade each other good-night. When it was time, and the two ladies rose to withdraw, Johnstone suddenly wished that Clare would make some little sign to him—the least thing to show that this particular evening was not precisely what all the other evenings had been, that they were drawn a little closer together, that perhaps she would change her mind and not dislike him any more for that unknown reason at which he could not even guess.  
They joined hands, and his eyes met hers. But there was no unusual pressure—no little acknowledgment of a common danger past. The blue eyes looked at him straight and proudly, without softening, and the fresh lips calmly said good-night. Johnstone remained alone, and in a singularly bad humour for such a good-tempered man. He was angry with Clare for being so cold and indifferent, and he was   ashamed of himself for wishing that she would admire him a little for having knocked down a tipsy carter. It was not much of an exploit. What she had done had been very much more remarkable. The man would not have killed him, of course, but he might have given him a very dangerous wound with that ugly clasp-knife. Clare’s frock was cut to pieces on one side, and it was a wonder that she had escaped without a scratch. He had no right to expect any praise for what he had done, when she had done so much more.
 
To tell the truth, it was not praise that he wanted, but a sign that she was not indifferent to him, or at least that she no longer disliked him. He was ashamed to own to himself that he was half in love with a young girl who had told him that she did not like him and would never even be his friend. Women had not usually treated him in that way, so far. But the fact remained, that she had got possession of his thoughts, and made him think about his actions when she was present. It took a good deal to disturb Brook Johnstone’s young sleep, but he did not sleep well that night.
 
As for Clare, when she was alone, she regretted that she had not just nodded kindly to him, and nothing more, when she had said good-night. She knew perfectly well that he expected something   of the sort, and that it would have been natural, and quite harmless, without any possibility of consequence. She consoled herself by repeating that she had done quite right, as the vision of Lady Fan rose distinctly before her in a flood of memory’s moonlight. Then it struck her, as the vision faded, that her position was a very odd one. Personally, she liked the man. Impersonally, she hated and despised him. At least she believed that she did, and that she should, for the sake of all women. To her, as she had known him, he was brave, kind, gentle in manner and speech, boyishly frank. As she had seen him that once, she had thought him heartless, cowardly, and cynical. She could not reconcile the two, and therefore, in her thoughts, she unconsciously divided him into two individualities—her Mr. Johnstone and Lady Fan’s Brook. There was very little resemblance between them. Oddly enough, she felt a sort of pang for him, that he could ever have been the other man whom she had first seen. She was getting into a very complicated frame of mind.
 
They met in the morning and exchanged greetings with unusual coldness. Brook asked whether she were tired; she said that she had done nothing to tire her, as though she resented the question; he said nothing in answer, and they both looked at the sea and thought it extremely   dull. Presently Johnstone went off for a walk alone, and Clare buried herself in a book for the morning. She did not wish to think, because her thoughts were so very contradictory. It was easier to try and follow some one else’s ideas. She found that almost worse than thinking, but, being very tenacious, she stuck to it and tried to read.
 
At the midday meal they exchanged commonplaces, and neither looked at the other. Just as they left the dining-room a heavy thunderstorm broke overhead with a deluge of rain. Clare said that the thunder made her head ache, and she disappeared on pretence of lying down. Mrs. Bowring went to write letters, and Johnstone hung about the reading-room, and smoked a pipe in the long corridor, till he was sick of the sound of his own footsteps. Amalfi was all very well in fine weather, he reflected, but when it rained it was as dismal as penny whist, Sunday in London, or a volume of sermons—or all three together, he added viciously, in his thoughts. The German family had fallen back upon the guide book, Mommsen’s History of Rome, and the Gartenlaube. The Russian invalid was presumably in his room, with a teapot, and the two English old maids were reading a violently sensational novel aloud to each other by turns in the hotel drawing-room. They   stopped reading and got very red, when Johnstone looked in.
 
It was a dreary afternoon, and he wished that something would happen. The fight on the preceding day had stirred his blood—and other things perhaps had contributed to his restless state of mind. He thought of Clare’s torn frock, and he wished he had killed the carter outright. He reflected that, as the man was attacking him with a knife, he himself would have been acquitted.
 
Late in the afternoon the sky cleared and the red light of the lowering sun struck the crests of the higher hills to eastward. Brook went out and smelled the earth-scented air, and the damp odour of the orange-blossoms. But that did not please him either, so he turned back and went through the long corridor to the platform at the back of the hotel. To his surprise he came face to face with Clare, who was walking briskly backwards and forwards, and saw him just as he emerged from the door. They both stood still and looked at each other with an odd little constraint, almost like anxiety, in their faces. There was a short, awkward silence.
 
“Well?” said Clare, interrogatively, and raising her eyebrows a very little, as though wondering why he did not speak.
 
 
“Nothing,” Johnstone answered, turning his face seaward. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
 
“Oh!—you looked as though you were.”
 
“No,” he said. “I came out to get a breath of air, that’s all.”
 
“So did I. I—I think I’ve been out long enough. I’ll go in.” And she made a step towards the door.
 
“Oh, please, don’t!” he cried suddenly. “Can’t we walk together a little bit? That is, if you are not tired.”
 
“Oh no! I’m not tired,” answered the young girl with a cold little laugh. “I’ll stay if you like—just a few minutes.”
 
“Thanks, awfully,” said Brook in a shy, jerky way.
 
They began to walk up and down, much less quickly than Clare had been walking when alone. They seemed to have nothing to say to each other. Johnstone remarked that he thought it would not rain again just then, and after some minutes of reflection Clare said that she remembered having seen two thunderstorms within an hour, with a clear sky between, not long ago. Johnstone also thought the matter over for some time before he answered, and then said that he supposed the clouds must have been somewhere in the meantime—an observation   which did not strike either Clare or even himself as particularly intelligent.
 
“I don’t think you know much about thunderstorms,” said Clare, after another silence.
 
“I? No—why should I?”
 
“I don’t know. It’s supposed to be just as well to know about things, isn’t it?”
 
“I dare say,” answered Brook, indifferently. “But science isn’t exactly in my line, if I have any line.”
 
They recrossed the platform in silence.
 
“What is your line—if you have any?” Clare asked, looking at the ground as she walked, and perfectly indifferent as to his answer.
 
“It ought to be beer,” answered Brook, gravely. “But then, you know how it is—one has all sorts of experts, and one ends by taking their word for granted about it. I don’t believe I have any line—unless it’s in the way of out-of-door things. I’m fond of shooting, and I can ride fairly, you know, like anybody else.”
 
“Yes,” said Clare, “you were telling me so the other day, you know.”
 
“Yes,” Johnstone murmured thoughtfully, “that’s true. Please excuse me. I’m always repeating myself.”
 
“I didn’t mean that.” Her tone changed a   little. “You can be very amusing when you like, you know.”
 
“Thanks, awfully. I should like to be amusing now, for instance, but I can’t.”
 
“Now? Why now?”
 
“Because I’m boring you to madness, little by little, and I’m awfully sorry too, for I want you to like me—though you say you never will—and of course you can’t like a bore, can you? I say, Miss Bowring, don’t you think we could strike some sort of friendly agreement—to be friends without ‘liking,’ somehow? I’m beginning to hate the word. I believe it’s the colour of my hair or my coat—or something—that you dislike so. I wish you’d tell me. It would be much kinder. I’d go to work and change it—”
 
“Dye your hair?” Clare laughed, glad that the ice was broken again.
 
“Oh yes—if you like,” he answered, laughing too. “Anything to please you.”
 
“Anything ‘in reason’—as you proposed yesterday.”
 
“No—anything in reason or out of it. I’m getting desperate!” He laughed again, but in his laughter there was a little note of something new to the young girl, a sort of understreak of earnestness.
 
“It isn’t anything you can change,” said   Clare, after a moment’s hesitation. “And it certainly has nothing to do with your appearance, or your manners, or your tailor,” she added.
 
“Oh well, then, it’s evidently something I’ve done, or said,” Brook murmured, looking at her.
 
But she did not return his glance, as they walked side by side; indeed, she turned her face from him a little, and she said nothing, for she was far too truthful to deny his assertion.
 
“Then I’m right,” he said, with an interrogation, after a long pause.
 
“Don’t ask me, please! It’s of no importance after all. Talk of something else.”
 
“I don’t agree with you,” Brook answered. “It is very important to me.”
 
“Oh, nonsense!” Clare tried to laugh. “What difference can it make to you, whether I like you or not?”
 
“Don’t say that. It makes a great difference—more than I thought it could, in fact. One—one doesn’t like to be misjudged by one’s friends, you know.”
 
“But I’m not your friend.”
 
“I want you to be.”
 
“I can’t.”
 
“You won’t,” said Brook, in a lower tone, and almost angrily. “You’ve made up your mind against me, on account of something   you’ve guessed at, and you won’t tell me what it is, so I can’t possibly defend myself. I haven’t the least idea what it can be. I never did anything particularly bad, I believe, and I never did anything I should be ashamed of owning. I don’t like to say that sort of thing, you know, about myself, but you drive me to it. It isn’t fair. Upon my word, it’s not fair play. You tell a man he’s a bad lot, like that, in the air, and then you refuse to say why you think so. Or else the whole thing is a sort of joke you’ve invented—if it is, it’s awfully one-sided, it seems to me.”
 
“Do you really think me capable of anything so silly?” asked Clare.
 
“No, I don’t. That makes it all the worse, because it proves that you have—or think you have—something against me. I don’t know much about law, but it strikes me as something tremendously like libel. Don’t you think so yourself?”
 
“Oh no! Indeed I don’t. Libel means saying things against people, doesn’t it? I haven’t done that—”
 
“Indeed you have! I mean, I beg your pardon for contradicting you like that—”
 
“Rather flatly,” observed Clare, as they turned in their walk, and their eyes met.
 
“Well, I’m sorry, but since we are talking   about it, I’ve got to say what I think. After all, I’m the person attacked. I have a right to defend myself.”
 
“I haven’t attacked you,” answered the young girl, gravely.
 
“I won’t be rude, if I can help it,” said Brook, half roughly. “But I asked you if you disliked me for something I had done or said, and you couldn’t deny it. That means that I have done or said something bad enough to make you say that you will never be my friend—and that must be something very bad indeed.”
 
“Then you think I’m not squeamish? It would have to be something very, very bad.”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Thank you. Well, I thought it very bad. Anybody would, I should fancy.”
 
“I never did anything very, very bad, so you must be mistaken,” answered Johnstone, exasperated.
 
Clare said nothing, but walked along with her head rather high, looking straight before her. It had all happened before her eyes, on the very ground under her feet, on that platform. Johnstone knew that he had spoken roughly.
 
“I say,” he began, “was I rude? I’m awfully sorry.” Clare stopped and stood still.
 
“Mr. Johnstone, we sha’n’t agree. I will   never tell you, and you will never be satisfied unless I do. So it’s a dead-lock.”
 
“You are horribly unjust,” answered Brook, very much in earnest, and fixing his bright eyes on hers. “You seem to take a delight in tormenting me with this imaginary secret. After all, if it’s something you saw me do, or heard me say, I must know of it and remember it, so there’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t discuss it.”
 
There was again that fascination in his eyes, and she felt herself yielding.
 
“I’ll say one thing,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t done it!”
 
She felt that she could not look away from him, and that he was getting her into his power. The colour rose in her face.
 
“Please don’t look at me!” she said suddenly, gazing helplessly into his eyes, but his steady look did not change.
 
“Please—oh, please look away!” she cried, half-frightened and growing pale again.
 
He turned from her, surprised at her manner.
 
“I’m afraid you’re not in earnest about this, after all,” he said, thoughtfully. “If you meant what you said, why shouldn’t you look at me?”
 
She blushed scarlet again.
 
“It’s very rude to stare like that!” she said,   in an offended tone. “You know that you’ve got something—I don’t know what to call it—one can’t look away when you look at one. Of course you know it, and you ought not to do it. It isn’t nice.”
 
“I didn’t know there was anything peculiar about my eyes,” said Brook. “Indeed I didn’t! Nobody ever told me so, I’m sure. By Jove!” he ............