the loose sleeves of whose pendent
jackets, made them resemble melancholy maskers. The tables and chairs
that overflowed from the cafes were gathered, still with a pretence of
service, into the arcade, and here and there a spectacled German, with
his coat-collar up, partook publicly of food and philosophy. These were
impressions for Densher too, but he had made the whole circuit thrice
before he stopped short, in front of Florian's, with the force of his
sharpest. His eye had caught a face within the cafe--he had spotted an
acquaintance behind the glass. The person he had thus paused long
enough to look at twice was seated, well within range, at a small table
on which a tumbler, half-emptied and evidently neglected, still
remained; and though he had on his knee, as he leaned back, a copy of a
French newspaper--the heading of the _Figaro_ was visible--he stared
straight before him at the little opposite rococo wall. Densher had him
for a minute in profile, had him for a time during which his identity
produced, however quickly, all the effect of establishing
connexions--connexions startling and direct; and then, as if it were
the one thing more needed, seized the look, determined by a turn of the
head, that might have been a prompt result of the sense of being
noticed. This wider view showed him _all_ Lord Mark--Lord Mark as
encountered, several weeks before, the day of the first visit of each
to Palazzo Leporelli. For it had been all Lord Mark that was going out,
on that occasion, as he came in--he had felt it, in the hall, at the
time; and he was accordingly the less at a loss to recognise in a few
seconds, as renewed meeting brought it to the surface, the same
potential quantity.

It was a matter, the whole passage--it could only be--but of a few
seconds; for as he might neither stand there to stare nor on the other
hand make any advance from it, he had presently resumed his walk, this
time to another pace. It had been for all the world, during his pause,
as if he had caught his answer to the riddle of the day. Lord Mark had
simply faced him--as he had faced _him_, not placed by him, not at
first--as one of the damp shuffling crowd. Recognition, though hanging
fire, had then clearly come; yet no light of salutation had been struck
from these certainties. Acquaintance between them was scant enough for
neither to take it up. That neither had done so was not, however, what
now mattered, but that the gentleman at Florian's