either of
the women that he was to come back but to face Eugenio. That was
impossible--the being again denied; for it made him practically
answerable, and answerable was what he wasn't. There was no neglect
either in absence, inasmuch as, from the moment he didn't get in, the
one message he could send up would be some hope on the score of health.
Since accordingly that sort of expression was definitely forbidden him
he had only to wait--which he was actually helped to do by his feeling
with the lapse of each day more and more wound up to it. The days in
themselves were anything but sweet; the wind and the weather lasted,
the fireless cold hinted at worse; the broken charm of the world about
was broken into smaller pieces. He walked up and down his rooms and
listened to the wind--listened also to tinkles of bells and watched for
some servant of the palace. He might get a note, but the note never
came; there were hours when he stayed at home not to miss it. When he
wasn't at home he was in circulation again as he had been at the hour
of his seeing Lord Mark. He strolled about the Square with the herd of
refugees; he raked the approaches and the cafes on the chance the
brute, as he now regularly imaged him, _might_ be still there. He could
only be there, he knew, to be received afresh; and that--one had but to
think of it--would be indeed stiff. He had gone, however--it was
proved; though Densher's care for the question either way only added to
what was most acrid in the taste of his present ordeal. It all came
round to what he was doing for Milly--spending days that neither relief
nor escape could purge of a smack of the abject. What was it but abject
for a man of his parts to be reduced to such pastimes? What was it but
sordid for him, shuffling about in the rain, to have to peep into shops
and to consider possible meetings? What was it but odious to find
himself wondering what, as between him and another man, a possible
meeting would produce? There recurred moments when in spite of
everything he felt no straighter than another man. And yet even on the
third day, when still nothing had come, he more than ever knew that he
wouldn't have budged for the world.

He thought of the two women, in their silence, at last--he at all
events thought of Milly--as probably, for her reasons, now intensely
wishing him to go. The cold breath of her reasons was, with everything
else, in the air; but he didn't care for them any more than