Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/49

 before speaking, had had time to guess what he meant by it.

Suddenly, an impulse that he had never known before, or rather that he had always resisted, took possession of him. There was a mystery which it concerned his happiness to clear up, and he became unconscious of his scruples, of his pride, of the strength that he had believed to be in him—the strength for going through his work and passing away without a look behind. He sat forward on the grass, with his arms round his knees, and bent upon Muniment a face lighted up by his difficulties. For a minute the two men's eyes met with extreme clearness, and then Hyacinth exclaimed, 'What an extraordinary fellow you are!'

'You've hit it there!' said Muniment, smiling.

'I don't want to make a scene, or work on your feelings, but how will you like it when I'm strung up on the gallows?'

'You mean for Hoffendahl's job? That's what you were alluding to just now?' Muniment lay there, in the same attitude, chewing a long blade of dry grass, which he held to his lips with his free hand.

'I didn't mean to speak of it; but after all, why shouldn't it come up? Naturally, I have thought of it a good deal.'

'What good does that do?' Muniment returned. 'I hoped you didn't, and I noticed you never spoke of it. You don't like it; you would rather throw it up,' he added.

There was not in his voice the faintest note of irony or contempt, no sign whatever that he passed judgment on such a tendency. He spoke in a quiet, human, memorising manner, as if it had originally quite entered into his thought to allow for weak regrets. Nevertheless the complete reasonableness of his tone itself cast a chill on his companion's