For she would know; she would not, as he had been, be blind to the point of requiring the spoken word.

If he left her now it would be to the unavoidable knowledge that, as the Princess had said of him, he would be running away.

He would be running from the evidences of a moneyless, self-abnegating youth, from the plain surfaces of efficiency and womanliness, not hedged about and enfolded, but pushed to the extremity of its use.

He had, however, when he had taken that in from every side, the grace to be ashamed of it.
He was ashamed, too, of finding himself at their next meeting involved in a wordless appeal to be helped from his state to some larger grounds.
If the girl had but appealed to him he could have done with a fine generosity what he felt was beyond him to invite.

He could have married Savilla Dassonville to be kind to her; what he didn't enjoy was putting it on a basis of her being kind to him.
Miss Dassonville, however, afforded him no help beyond the negative one of not talking too much and taking perhaps a shade less interest in Venice.