Having come to this conclusion, his aimless walk quickens, and changes into a purposeful striding through streets and Piazzas, till he finds himself standing at the door of 12_a_. He looks up at the _entresol_ windows--they are all open, but no one is either sitting in or looking out at them. It is as he had thought. The window is too public for them; neither can they be at the piano, for not a sound of either voice or instrument is wafted down to him. He runs up the stone stairs, and rings the electric bell. The standing before the unopened portal, and the trembling jar of the bell, bring back to him, with a vividness he could do without, those other long-ago days--they seem to him long ago--when he stood there last, with no easy heart even then, but yet with how different anticipations. He has found it hard enough to bear the brunt of Byng's furious inhuman joy when alone with him. How will he stand it when he sees them together? He is recalled from these reflections by the opening of the door, and the appearance in it of the ministering angel who has usually admitted him into his Eden--Annunziata. It strikes him that Annunziata looks older and more dishevelled than ever, and is without that benevolent smile of welcoming radiance which her hard-featured face generally wears. Nor does she, as has been her wont, stand back to let him pass in almost before he has put his question, as if she could not admit him quickly enough. But to-day she stands, on the contrary, in the doorway without a smile. In a second the idea flashes across Jim's mind that Byng has forbidden anyone to be let in. It turns him half sick for the moment, and it is with an unsteady voice that he stammers: "The Signora? The Signorina?" Annunziata lifts her shoulders in a dismal shrug, and stretches out her hands: "Gone!" "_Gone?_ You mean gone out driving?" Then remembering that her English is as minus a quantity as his Italian, he adds in eager explanation, "En fiacre?" She shakes her head, and then nods vaguely in the direction of the whole of the rest of the world--the whole, that is, that is not 12 bis. "No, _gone_!" "But _where_? _Dove?_" cries he, frantic with irritation at his own powerlessness either to understand or be understood. Again she shakes her head. "I do not know; they did not say." He gathers this to be her meaning, and hurriedly puts another query. "When? _Quando?_"