e
was just then however by a happy chance in the Brompton Road, and he
bethought himself with a sudden light that the Oratory was at hand. He
had but to turn the other way and he should find himself soon before
it. At the door then, in a few minutes, his idea was really--as it
struck him--consecrated: he was, pushing in, on the edge of a splendid
service--the flocking crowd told of it--which glittered and resounded,
from distant depths, in the blaze of altar-lights and the swell of
organ and choir. It didn't match his own day, but it was much less of a
discord than some other things actual and possible. The Oratory in
short, to make him right, would do.

IV

The difference was thus that the dusk of afternoon--dusk thick from an
early hour--had gathered when he knocked at Mrs. Condrip's door. He had
gone from the church to his club, wishing not to present himself in
Chelsea at luncheon-time and also remembering that he must attempt
independently to make a meal. This, in the event, he but imperfectly
achieved: he dropped into a chair in the great dim void of the club
library, with nobody, up or down, to be seen, and there after a while,
closing his eyes, recovered an hour of the sleep he had lost during the
night. Before doing this indeed he had written--it was the first thing
he did--a short note, which, in the Christmas desolation of the place,
he had managed only with difficulty and doubt to commit to a messenger.
He wished it carried by hand, and he was obliged, rather blindly, to
trust the hand, as the messenger, for some reason, was unable to return
with a gage of delivery. When at four o'clock he was face to face with
Kate in Mrs. Condrip's small drawing-room he found to his relief that
his notification had reached her. She was expectant and to that extent
prepared; which simplified a little--if a little, at the present pass,
counted. Her conditions were vaguely vivid to him from the moment of
his coming in, and vivid partly by their difference, a difference sharp
and suggestive, from those in which he had hitherto constantly seen
her. He had seen her but in places comparatively great; in her aunt's
pompous house, under the high trees of Kensington and the storied
ceilings of Venice. He had seen her, in Venice, on a great occasion, as
the centre itself of the splendid Piazza: he had seen her there, on a
still greater one, in his own poor rooms, which yet had consorted with
her, having state and ancientry even i