Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/164

 dignity invested the young Italian in this parting with the American girl; for a parting it was—a final one. Foreseeing Providence has been kind in not making us, also, foreseeing; and so we do not know what is to remain most keenly in our memories. Claire's thoughts were more annoying than acutely painful and were principally occupied with herself; she no more knew that for years afterward she was unavailingly to remember Arturo Liana as he stood looking at her now in the gray cloister than she knew that this was the last time she would ever see him.

He bowed to her gravely, and left her. "Oh, well" she murmured; and she sighed a deep sigh, in which naturally a little anger mingled with other emotions; for she could not be put at a disadvantage and remain wholly unresentful. "Well, it's what I get!" she thought, meaning that she had been punished for obeying a too virtuous gentleman's suggestions. Then, going into the long corridor in the interior of the hotel, she discovered this gentleman seated alone at a small tea table where he was lingering with some cold cups and saucers and the end of a cigarette.

She immediately placed herself in a chair opposite