He did one of the most singular things he ever did in his life--a thing that puzzled him even at the time, and with regard to which he often afterward wondered whence he had drawn the ability for so remarkable a feat--he simply spent a fortnight at Blanquais-les-Galets.

It was a very quiet fortnight; he spoke to no one, he formed no relations, he was company to himself.

It may be added that he had never found his own company half so good.

He struck himself as a reasonable, delicate fellow, who looked at things in such a way as to make him refrain--refrain successfully, that was the point--from concerning himself practically about Angela Vivian.

His saying that he would find out the banker in the Rue de Provence had been for the benefit of the femme de chambre, whom he thought rather impertinent; he had really no intention whatever of entering that classic thoroughfare.
He took long walks, rambled on the beach, along the base of the cliffs and among the brown sea-caves, and he thought a good deal of certain incidents which have figured at an earlier stage of this narrative.