He had now no scruple about giving her time to arrive, but she didn't arrive, and when he went away still missing her he was profanely and consentingly sorry.

If her absence made the tangle more intricate, that was all her own doing.

By the end of another year it was very intricate indeed; but by that time he didn't in the least care, and it was only his cultivated consciousness that had given him scruples.

Three times in three months he had gone to church without finding her, and he felt he hadn't needed these occasions to show him his suspense had dropped.

Yet it was, incongruously, not indifference, but a refinement of delicacy that had kept him from asking the sacristan, who would of course immediately have recognised his description of her, whether she had been seen at other hours.