should be in the
place at all. He couldn't have been in it long; Densher, as inevitably
a haunter of the great meeting-ground, would in that case have seen him
before. He paid short visits; he was on the wing; the question for him
even as he sat there was of his train or of his boat. He had come back
for something--as a sequel to his earlier visit; and whatever he had
come back for it had had time to be done. He might have arrived but
last night or that morning; he had already made the difference. It was
a great thing for Densher to get this answer. He held it close, he
hugged it, quite leaned on it as he continued to circulate. It kept him
going and going--it made him no less restless. But it explained--and
that was much, for with explanations he might somehow deal. The vice in
the air, otherwise, was too much like the breath of fate. The weather
had changed, the rain was ugly, the wind wicked, the sea impossible,
_because_ of Lord Mark. It was because of him, _a fortiori_, that the
palace was closed. Densher went round again twice; he found the visitor
each time as he had found him first. Once, that is, he was staring
before him; the next time he was looking over his _Figaro_, which he
had opened out. Densher didn't again stop, but left him apparently
unconscious of his passage--on another repetition of which Lord Mark
had disappeared. He had spent but the day; he would be off that night;
he had now gone to his hotel for arrangements. These things were as
plain to Densher as if he had had them in words. The obscure had
cleared for him--if cleared it was; there was something he didn't see,
the great thing; but he saw so round it and so close to it that this
was almost as good. He had been looking at a man who had done what he
had come for, and for whom, as done, it temporarily sufficed. The man
had come again to see Milly, and Milly had received him. His visit
would have taken place just before or just after luncheon, and it was
the reason why he himself had found her door shut.

He said to himself that evening, he still said even on the morrow, that
he only wanted a reason, and that with this perception of one he could
now mind, as he called it, his business. His business, he had settled,
as we know, was to keep thoroughly still; and he asked himself why it
should prevent this that he could feel, in connexion with the crisis,
so remarkably blameless. He gave the appearances before him all the
benefit of being critica