ied glare through his spectacles. "I cannot
understand you Americans."

"Well, you must come ova to America, then, Mr. Belsky"--he had asked her
not to call him by his title--"and then you would."

"No, I could not endure the disappointment. You have the great
opportunity of the earth. You could be equal and just, and simple and
kind. There is nothing to hinder you. But all you try to do is to get
more and more money."

"Now, that isn't faia, Mr. Belsky, and you know it."

Well, then, you joke, joke--always joke. Like that Mr. Hinkle. He wants
to make money with his patent of a gleaner, that will take the last
grain of wheat from the poor, and he wants to joke--joke!'

Clementina said, "I won't let you say that about Mr. Hinkle. You don't
know him, or you wouldn't. If he jokes, why shouldn't he?"

Belsky made a gesture of rejection. "Oh, you are an American, too."

She had not grown less American, certainly, since she had left home;
even the little conformities to Europe that she practiced were traits of
Americanism. Clementina was not becoming sophisticated, but perhaps she
was becoming more conventionalized. The knowledge of good and evil in
things that had all seemed indifferently good to her once, had crept
upon her, and she distinguished in her actions. She sinned as little
as any young lady in Florence against the superstitions of society; but
though she would not now have done a skirt-dance before a shipful of
people, she did not afflict herself about her past errors. She put on
the world, but she wore it simply and in most matters unconsciously.
Some things were imparted to her without her asking or wishing, and
merely in virtue of her youth and impressionability. She took them from
her environment without knowing it, and in this way she was coming by an
English manner and an English tone; she was only the less American for
being rather English without trying, when other Americans tried so hard.
In the region of harsh nasals, Clementina had never spoken through her
nose, and she was now as unaffected in these alien inflections as in the
tender cooings which used to rouse the misgivings of her brother Jim.
When she was with English people she employed them involuntarily, and
when she was with Americans she measurably lost them, so that after half
an hour with Mr. Hinkle, she had scarcely a trace of them, and with Mrs.
Lander she always spoke with her native accent.

XXIII

One Sunday night, toward