Bernard was, of course, afraid that what he had told Gordon about
Angela Vivian was really the cause of a state of things which, as
between two such good friends, wore a perceptible resemblance to
alienation. Gordon had given her up; but he bore Bernard a grudge for
speaking ill of her, and so long as this disagreeable impression should
last, he preferred not to see him. Bernard was frank enough to charge
the poor fellow with a lingering rancor, of which he made, indeed, no
great crime. But Gordon denied the allegation, and assured him that,
to his own perception, there was no decline in their intimacy. He only
requested, as a favor and as a tribute to "just susceptibilities,"
that Bernard would allude no more either to Miss Vivian or to what had
happened at Baden. This request was easy to comply with, and Bernard, in
writing, strictly conformed to it; but it seemed to him that the act of
doing so was in itself a cooling-off. What would be a better proof of
what is called a "tension" than an agreement to avoid a natural topic?
Bernard moralized a little over Gordon's "just susceptibilities," and
felt that the existence of a perverse resentment in so honest a nature
was a fact gained to his acquaintance with psychological science.
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