te of the clear windows, his consistency was proof against the cynical
light of New York.

It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of his
victim to become a real test for him; since he had quite put it to
himself from the first that, oh distinctly! he could "cultivate" his
whole perception. He had felt it as above all open to cultivation--which
indeed was but another name for his manner of spending his time. He was
bringing it on, bringing it to perfection, by practice; in consequence of
which it had grown so fine that he was now aware of impressions,
attestations of his general postulate, that couldn't have broken upon him
at once. This was the case more specifically with a phenomenon at last
quite frequent for him in the upper rooms, the recognition--absolutely
unmistakeable, and by a turn dating from a particular hour, his
resumption of his campaign after a diplomatic drop, a calculated absence
of three nights--of his being definitely followed, tracked at a distance
carefully taken and to the express end that he should the less
confidently, less arrogantly, appear to himself merely to pursue. It
worried, it finally quite broke him up, for it proved, of all the
conceivable impressions, the one least suited to his book. He was kept
in sight while remaining himself--as regards the essence of his
position--sightless, and his only recourse then was in abrupt turns,
rapid recoveries of ground. He wheeled about, retracing his steps, as if
he might so catch in his face at least the stirred air of some other
quick revolution. It was indeed true that his fully dislocalised thought
of these manoeuvres recalled to him Pantaloon, at the Christmas farce,
buffeted and tricked from behind by ubiquitous Harlequin; but it left
intact the influence of the conditions themselves each time he was re-
exposed to them, so that in fact this association, had he suffered it to
become constant, would on a certain side have but ministered to his
intenser gravity. He had made, as I have said, to create on the premises
the baseless sense of a reprieve, his three absences; and the result of
the third was to confirm the after-effect of the second.

On his return that night--the night succeeding his last intermission--he
stood in the hall and looked up the staircase with a certainty more
intimate than any he had yet known. "He's _there_, at the top, and
waiting--not, as in general, falling back for disappearance. He's