ase, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but
so relievingly. He was conscious enough that it was only for the
moment, but good moments--if he could call them good--still had their
value for a man who by this time struck himself as living almost
disgracefully from hand to mouth. Having so well learnt the way, he
had lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself--had quite
stolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking
of the adventure when restored to his friends.

His great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as
remarkably silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey hadn't
come back. She wrote to him from Mentone, admitting that he must judge
her grossly inconsequent--perhaps in fact for the time odiously
faithless; but asking for patience, for a deferred sentence, throwing
herself in short on his generosity. For her too, she could assure him,
life was complicated--more complicated than he could have guessed; she
had moreover made certain of him--certain of not wholly missing him on
her return--before her disappearance. If furthermore she didn't burden
him with letters it was frankly because of her sense of the other great
commerce he had to carry on. He himself, at the end of a fortnight,
had written twice, to show how his generosity could be trusted; but he
reminded himself in each case of Mrs. Newsome's epistolary manner at
the times when Mrs. Newsome kept off delicate ground. He sank his
problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, of little Bilham and
the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, and he was
easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne. He
admitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly so confirmed a
haunter of Chad's premises and that young man's practical intimacy with
them was so undeniably great; but he had his reason for not attempting
to render for Miss Gostrey's benefit the impression of these last days.
That would be to tell her too much about himself--it being at present
just from himself he was trying to escape.

This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same
impulse that had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse to
let things be, to give them time to justify themselves or at least to
pass. He was aware of having no errand in such a place but the desire
not to be, for the hour, in certain other places; a sense of safety, of
simplification, which