experimenting, for economy, and then
as settling, to the same rather dismal end, somewhere in England, "at
one of those intensely English places, St. Leonards, Cheltenham, Bognor,
Dawlish--which, awfully, _was_ it?"--and she now affected him for all
the world as some small squirming, exclaiming, genteelly conversing old
maid of a type vaguely associated with the three-volume novels he used
to feed on (besides his so often encountering it in "real life,") during
a far-away stay of his own at Brighton. Odder than any element of his
ex-gossip's identity itself, however, was the fact that she somehow,
with it all, rejoiced his sight. Indeed the supreme oddity was that
the manner of her reply to his request for leave to call should have
absolutely charmed his attention. She didn't look at him; she only, from
under her frumpy, crapy, curiously exotic hat, and with her good little
near-sighted insinuating glare, expressed to Mrs. Worthingham, while she
answered him, wonderful arch things, the overdone things of a shy woman.
"Yes, you may call--but only when this dear lovely lady has done with
you!" The moment after which she had gone.

III

Forty minutes later he was taking his way back from the queer
miscarriage of his adventure; taking it, with no conscious positive
felicity, through the very spaces that had witnessed shortly before the
considerable serenity of his assurance. He had said to himself then, or
had as good as said it, that, since he might do perfectly as he liked,
it couldn't fail for him that he must soon retrace those steps, humming,
to all intents, the first bars of a wedding-march; so beautifully had it
cleared up that he was "going to like" letting Mrs. Worthingham accept
him. He was to have hummed no wedding-march, as it seemed to be turning
out--he had none, up to now, to hum; and yet, extraordinarily, it wasn't
in the least because she had refused him. Why then hadn't he liked as
much as he had intended to like it putting the pleasant act, the act of
not refusing him, in her power? Could it all have come from the awkward
minute of his failure to decide sharply, on Cornelia's departure,
whether or no he would attend her to the door? He hadn't decided at
all--what the deuce had been in him?--but had danced to and fro in the
room, thinking better of each impulse and then thinking worse. He had
hesitated like an ass erect on absurd hind legs between two bundles
of hay; the upshot of which must have b