Miss Milray sat looking at her.  “I don’t know about such things; but it sounds sensible—­like everything about you, my dear.  It sounds queer, perhaps because you’re talking of such a White Mountain scheme here in Venice.”

“Yes, don’t it?” said Clementina, sympathetically.  “I was thinking of that, myself.  But I know I could do it.  I could go round to different hotels, different days.  Yes, I should like to go home, and they would be glad to have me.  You can’t think how pleasantly we live; and we’re company enough for each other.  I presume I should miss the things I’ve got used to ova here, at fust; but I don’t believe I should care a great while.  I don’t deny but what the wo’ld is nice; but you have to pay for it; I don’t mean that you would make me—­”

“No, no!  We understand each other.  Go on!”

Miss Milray leaned towards her and pressed the girl’s arm reassuringly.

As often happens with people when they are told to go on, Clementina found that she had not much more to say.  “I think I could get along in the wo’ld, well enough.  Yes, I believe I could do it.  But I wasn’t bohn to it, and it would be a great deal of trouble—­a great deal moa than if I had been bohn to it.  I think it would be too much trouble.  I would rather give it up and go home, when Mrs. Landa wants to go back.”

Miss Milray did not speak for a time.  “I know that you are serious, Clementina; and you’re wise always, and good—­”

“It isn’t that, exactly,” said Clementina.  “But is it—­I don’t know how to express it very well—­is it wo’th while?”

Miss Milray looked at her as if she doubted the girl’s sincerity.  Even when the world, in return for our making it our whole life, disappoints and defeats us with its prizes, we still question the truth of those who question the value of these prizes; we think they must be hopeless of them, or must be governed by some interest momentarily superior.

Clementina pursued, “I know that you have had all you wanted of the wo’ld—­”

“Oh, no!” the woman broke out, almost in anguish.  “Not what I wanted!  What I tried for.  It never gave me what I wanted.  It—­couldn’t!”

“Well?”

“It isn’t worth while in that sense.  But if you can’t have what you want,—­if there’s been a hollow left in your life—­why the world goes a great way towards filling up the aching void.”  The tone of the last words was lighter than their meaning, but Clementina weighed them aright.

“Miss Milray,” she said, pinching the edge of the table by which she sat, a little nervously, and banging her head a little, “I think I can have what I want.”  Then, give the whole world for it, child!”

“There is something I should like to tell you.”

“Yes!”

“For you to advise me about.”

“I will, my dear, gladly and truly!”

“He was here before you came.  He asked me—­”

Miss Milray gave a start of alarm.  She said, to gain time:  “How did he get here?  I supposed he was in Germany with his—­”