im as in
the first days when he had awed her and charmed her with his superiority
at Middlemount, and he again older and freer as she had grown since.

He came back late in the afternoon, looking jaded and distraught.
Hinkle, who looked neither, was with him. "Well," he began, "this is the
greatest thing in my experience. Belsky's not only alive and well, but
Mr. Gregory and I are both at large. I did think, one time, that the
police would take us into custody on account of our morbid interest in
the thing, and I don't believe we should have got off, if the Consul
hadn't gone bail for us, so to speak. I thought we had better take the
Consul in, on our way, and it was lucky we did."

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 litt