had come. If she
had taken for granted his good nature she was as justified as Kate
declared. This awkwardness of his conscience, both in respect to his
general plasticity, the fruit of his feeling plasticity, within limits,
to be a mode of life like another--certainly better than some, and
particularly in respect to such confusion as might reign about what he
had really come for--this inward ache was not wholly dispelled by the
style, charming as that was, of Kate's poetic versions. Even the high
wonder and delight of Kate couldn't set him right with himself when
there was something quite distinct from these things that kept him
wrong.

In default of being right with himself he had meanwhile, for one thing,
the interest of seeing--and quite for the first time in his
life--whether, on a given occasion, that might be quite so necessary to
happiness as was commonly assumed and as he had up to this moment never
doubted. He was engaged distinctly in an adventure--he who had never
thought himself cut out for them, and it fairly helped him that he was
able at moments to say to himself that he mustn't fall below it. At his
hotel, alone, by night, or in the course of the few late strolls he was
finding time to take through dusky labyrinthine alleys and empty
_campi_, overhung with mouldering palaces, where he paused in disgust
at his want of ease and where the sound of a rare footstep on the
enclosed pavement was like that of a retarded dancer in a banquet-hall
deserted--during these interludes he entertained cold views, even to
the point, at moments, on the principle that the shortest follies are
the best, of thinking of immediate departure as not only possible but
as indicated. He had however only to cross again the threshold of
Palazzo Leporelli to see all the elements of the business compose, as
painters called it, differently. It began to strike him then that
departure wouldn't curtail, but would signally coarsen his folly, and
that above all, as he hadn't really "begun" anything, had only
submitted, consented, but too generously indulged and condoned the
beginnings of others, he had no call to treat himself with
superstitious rigour. The single thing that was clear in complications
was that, whatever happened, one was to behave as a gentleman--to which
was added indeed the perhaps slightly less shining truth that
complications might sometimes have their tedium beguiled by a study of
the question of how a gentleman would