Hinkle came back in the afternoon to make a hopeful report of his failure to learn anything more of Belsky, but Gregory did not come with him. He came the next morning long before Clementina expected visitors, and he was walking nervously up and down the room when she appeared. As if he could not speak, he held toward her without speaking a telegram in English, dated that day in Rome:
"Deny report of my death. Have written.
"Belsky."
She looked up at Gregory from the paper, when she had read it, with joyful eyes. "Oh, I am so glad for you! I am so glad he is alive."
He took the dispatch from her hand. "I brought it to you as soon as it came:
"Yes, yes! Of cou'se!"
"I must go now and do what he says--I don't know how yet." He stopped, and then went on from a different impulse. "Clementina, it isn't a question now of that wretch's life and death, and I wish I need never speak of him again. But what he told you was true." He looked steadfastly at her, and she realized how handsome he was, and how well dressed. His thick red hair seemed to have grown darker above his forehead; his moustache was heavier, and it curved in at the corners of his mouth; he bore himself with a sort of self-disdain that enhanced his splendor. "I have never changed toward you; I don't say it to make favor with you; I don't expect to do that now; but it is true. That night, there at Middlemount, I tried to take back what I said, because I believed that I ought."
"Oh, yes, I knew that," said Clementina, in the pause he made.
"We were both too young; I had no prospect in life; I saw, the instant after I had spoken, that I had no right to let you promise anything.
I tried to forget you; I couldn't. I tried to make you forget me."
He faltered, and she did not speak, but her head drooped a little.
"I won't ask how far I succeeded. I always hoped that the time would come when I could speak to you again. When I heard from Fane that you were at Woodlake, I wished to come out and see you, but I hadn't the courage, I hadn't the right. I've had to come to you without either, now. Did he speak to you about me?"
"I thought he was beginning to, once; but he neva did."
"It didn't matter; it could only have made bad worse. It can't help me to say that somehow I was wishing and trying to do what was right; but I was."
"Oh, I know that, Mr. Gregory," said Clementina, generously.
"Then you didn't doubt me, in spite of all?"
"I thought you would know what to do. No, I didn't doubt you, exactly."
"I didn't deserve your trust!" he cried. "How came that man to mention me?" he demanded, abruptly, after a moment's silence.
"Mr. Belsky? It was the first night I saw him, and we were talking about Americans, and he began to tell me about an American friend of his, who was very conscientious. I thought it must be you the fust moment," said Clementina, smiling with an impersonal pleasure in the fact.
"From the conscientiousness?" he asked, in bitter self-irony.
"Why, yes," she returned, simply. "That was what made me think of you.
And the last time when he began to talk about you, I couldn't stop him, although I knew he had no right to."
"He had no right. But I gave him the power to do it! He meant no harm, but I enabled him to do all the harm."
"Oh, if he's only alive, now, there is no harm!"
He looked into her eyes with a misgiving from which be burst impetuously.
"Then you do care for me still, after all that I have done to make you detest me?" He started toward her, but she shrank back.
"I didn't mean that," she hesitated.
"You know that I love you,--that I have always loved you?"
"Yes," she assented. "But you might be sorry again that you had said it." It sounded like coquetry, but he knew it was not coquetry.
"Never! I've wished to say it again, ever since that night at Middlemount; I have always felt bound by what I said then, though I took back my words for your sake. But the promise was always there, and my life was in it. You believe that?"
"Why, I always believed what you said, Mr. Gregory."
"Well?"
Clementina paused, with her head seriously on one side. "I should want to think about it before I said anything."
"You are right," he submitted, dropping his outstretched arms to his side. "I have been thinking only of myself, as usual."
"No," she protested, compassionately. "But doesn't it seem as if we ought to be su'a, this time? I did ca'e for you then, but I was very young, and I don't know yet-- I thought I had always felt just; as you did, but now-- Don't you think we had both betta wait a little while till we ah' moa suttain?"
They stood looking at each other, and he said, with a kind of passionate self-denial, "Yes, think it over for me, too. I will come back, if you will let me."
"Oh, thank you!" she cried after him, gratefully, as if his forbearance were the greatest favor.
