Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/402

 and the vehicle move off in another direction than his own.

He had in fact, for the time, no direction; in spite of which indeed, at the end of ten minutes, he was aware of having walked straight to the south. That, he afterwards recognised, was, very sufficiently, because there had formed itself in his mind, even while Aunt Maud finally talked, an instant recognition of his necessary course. Nothing was open to him but to follow Kate, nor was anything more marked than the influence of the step she had taken on the emotion itself that possessed him. Her complications, which had fairly, with everything else, an awful sound—what were they, a thousand times over, but his own? His present business was to see that they didn't escape an hour longer taking their proper place in his life. He accordingly would have held his course had it not suddenly come over him that he had just lied to Mrs. Lowder—a term it perversely eased him to keep using—even more than was necessary. To what church was he going, to what church, in such a state of his nerves, could he go?—he pulled up short again, as he had pulled up in sight of Mrs. Lowder's carriage, to ask it. And yet the desire queerly stirred in him not to have wasted his word. He was just then, however, by a happy chance, in the Brompton Road, and he bethought himself, with a sudden light, that the Oratory was at hand. He had but to turn the other way and he should find himself soon before it. At the door then, 392