d."

Clementina did not understand all the implications, but she was willing
to take Mr. Hinkle's fun on trust. "I don't believe you'll convince Mrs.
Landa that Mr. Belsky's alive and well, till you bring him back to say
so."

"Is that so!" said Hinkle. "Well, we must have him brought back by the
authorities, then. Perhaps they'll bring him, anyway. They can't try him
for suicide, but as I understand the police, here, a man can't lose his
hat over a bridge in Florence with impunity, especially in a time of high
water. Anyway, they're identifying Belsky by due process of law in Rome,
now, and I guess Mr. Gregory"--he nodded toward Gregory, who sat silent
and absent "will be kept under surveillance till the whole mystery is
cleared up."

Clementina responded gayly still, but with less and less sincerity, and
she let Hinkle go at last with the feeling that he knew she wished him to
go. He made a brave show of not seeing this, and when he was gone, she
remembered that she had not thanked him for the trouble he had taken on
her account, and her heart ached after him with a sense of his sweetness
and goodness, which she had felt from the first through his quaint
drolling. It was as if the door which closed upon him shut her out of the
life she had been living of late, and into the life of the past where she
was subject again to the spell of Gregory's mood; it was hardly his will.

He began at once: "I wished to make you say something this morning that I
have no right to hear you say, yet; and I have been trying ever since to
think how I could ask you whether you could share my life with me, and
yet not ask you to do it. But I can't do anything without knowing--You
may not care for what my life is to be, at all!"

Clementina's head drooped a little, but she answered distinctly, "I do
ca'e, Mr. Gregory."

"Thank you for that much; I don't count upon more than you have said.
Clementina, I am going to be a missionary. I think I shall ask to be sent
to China; I've not decided yet. My life will be hard; it will be full of
danger and privation; it will be exile. You will have to think of sharing
such a life if you think--"

He stopped; the time had come for her to speak, and she said, "I knew you
wanted to be a missionary--"

"And--and--you would go with me? You would"--He started toward her, and
she did not shrink from him, now; but he checked himself. "But you
mustn't, you know, for my sake."

"I don't believe I quite u