THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
tive innocence, that was almost like purification. The person he had wished to hurt could only be the person so unaccountably hanging about. To keep still, meanwhile, was, for this person, more comprehensively, to keep it all up; and to keep it all up was, if that seemed on consideration best, not, for the day or two, to go back to the palace.
The day or two passed—stretched to three days; and with the effect extraordinarily, that Densher felt himself, in the course of them, washed but the more clean. Some sign would come if his presence there were better; and he was at all events, in absence, without the particular scruple. It wouldn't have been meant for him by either of the women that he was to return but to face Eugenio. That was impossible—the being again denied; for it made him, practically, answerable, and answerable was what he was not. 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
290
