Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/168

 there was encouragement in it—all kinds of encouragement, Henry thought as a little later he went down the hill with long plunging strides, under the stars.

"I wonder if she canned him?" he speculated. "If he got scared and lit out? I wonder who beaned me? I wonder who got the twenty thousand? I wonder who the dead man was, and how the devil two men could look so much alike and not be the same? It would be a great thing for a con man to have a double though, wouldn't it? Well, Lahleet spoiled that! Fierce for the girl, wasn't it? And she stood it like the inscrutable stoic she can be!"

Thus did things sordid and unpleasant intrude themselves into the golden glory of Henry Harrington's romance, quite as things sordid and unpleasant have a way of doing with romance in this scrambled world of ours. And the most of these speculations had to go unanswered while weeks and months of time sped by; yet they remained vividly alive in his mind, for there was so much to occupy him now that he was rather unconscious of the flight of time. All these things were but of yesterday; all their solutions must come at the latest by tomorrow; but today—ah, today! Henry was very, very busy today.