meanwhile marked his crisis, as I have said, was his sense of the
immediate two or three hours. He paused on corners, at crossings;
there kept rising for him, in waves, that consciousness, sharp as
to its source while vague as to its end, which I began by
speaking of--the consciousness of an appeal to do something or
other, before it was too late, for himself. By any friend to whom
he might have mentioned it the appeal could have been turned to
frank derision. For what, for whom indeed but himself and the
high advantages attached, was he about to marry an
extraordinarily charming girl, whose "prospects," of the solid
sort, were as guaranteed as her amiability? He wasn't to do it,
assuredly, all for her. The Prince, as happened, however, was so
free to feel and yet not to formulate that there rose before him
after a little, definitely, the image of a friend whom he had
often found ironic. He withheld the tribute of attention from
passing faces only to let his impulse accumulate. Youth and
beauty made him scarcely turn, but the image of Mrs. Assingham
made him presently stop a hansom. HER youth, her beauty were
things more or less of the past, but to find her at home, as he
possibly might, would be "doing" what he still had time for,
would put something of a reason into his restlessness and thereby
probably soothe it. To recognise the propriety of this particular
pilgrimage--she lived far enough off, in long Cadogan Place--was
already in fact to work it off a little. A perception of the
propriety of formally thanking her, and of timing the act just as
he happened to be doing--this, he made out as he went, was
obviously all that had been the matter with him. It was true that
he had mistaken the mood of the moment, misread it rather,
superficially, as an impulse to look the other way--the other way
from where his pledges had accumulated. Mrs. Assingham,