He had no intention of going later on to Madeira Crescent, and that is why he asked her before they separated if he mightn’t see her again after tea. The evenings were bitter to him now and he feared them in advance. The darkness had become a haunted element; it had visions for him that passed even before his closed eyes—sharp doubts and fears and suspicions, suggestions of evil, revelations of pain. He wanted company to light up his gloom, and this had driven him back to Millicent in a manner not altogether consistent with the respect which it was still his theory that he owed to his nobler part. He felt no longer free to drop in at the Crescent and tried to persuade himself, in case his mistrust should be overdone, that his reasons were reasons of magnanimity. If Paul were seriously occupied with the Princess, if they had work in hand for which their most earnest attention was required (and Sunday was all likely to be the day they would take: they had spent so much of the previous Sunday together) his absence would have the superior, the marked motive of his leaving his friend a clear field. There was something inexpressibly representative to him in the way that friend had abruptly decided to re-enter the house, after pausing outside with its mistress, at the moment he himself stood glaring through the fog with the Prince. The movement repeated itself innumerable times to his inward sense, suggesting to him things he couldn’t bear to learn. Hyacinth was afraid of being jealous even after he had become so, and to prove to himself he was not he had gone to see the Princess one evening in the middle of the week. Hadn’t he wanted Paul to know her months and months before, and was he now to entertain a vile feeling at the first manifestation of an intimacy which rested, in each party to it, on aspirations that he respected? The Princess had not been at home, and he had turned away from the door without asking for Madame Grandoni: he had not forgotten that on the occasion of his previous visit she had excused herself from staying below. After the little maid in the Crescent had told him her mistress was out he walked away with a quick curiosity—a curiosity which, if he had listened to it, would have led him to mount the first omnibus that travelled in the direction of Camberwell. Was Paul Muniment, he such a rare one in general for stopping at home of an evening, was he also out, and would Rosy in this case be in the humour to mention—for of course she would know—where he had gone? Hyacinth let the omnibus pass, for he suddenly became aware with a rueful pang that he was in danger of playing the spy. He had not been near Muniment since, on purpose to leave his curiosity unsatisfied. He allowed himself, however, to notice that the Princess had now not written him a word of consolation, as she had been kind enough to do in the old days when he had knocked at her door without finding her. At present he had missed her twice in succession,