“Then let me go. What will the people think if they see a great engineer violating the laws of mechanics by dragging his wife by the arm?”
“They will appreciate my motives; and, in fact, if you watch them, you will detect a thinly-disguised envy in their countenances. I violate the laws of mechanics—to use your own sarcastic phrase—for many reasons. I like to be envied when there are solid reasons for it. It gratifies my vanity to be seen in this artistic quarter with a pretty woman on my arm. Again, the sense of possessing you is no longer an abstraction when I hold you bodily, and feel the impossibility of keeping step with you. Besides, Man, who was a savage only yesterday, has his infirmities, and finds a poetic pleasure in the touch of the woman he loves. And I may add that you have been in such a bad temper all the afternoon that I suspect you of an itching to box my ears, and therefore feel safer with your arm in my custody.”
“Oh! Indeed I have not been in a bad temper. I have been most anxious to spend a happy day.”
“And I have been placidly reflective, and not anxious at all. Is that what has provoked you?”
“I am not provoked. But you might tell me what your reflections are about.”
“They would fill volumes, if I could recollect them.”
“You must recollect some of them. From the time we left the station until a moment ago, when we began to talk, you were pondering something with the deepest seriousness. What was it?”
“I forget.”
“Of course you forget—just because I want to know. What a crowded road this is!” She disengaged herself from his arm; and this time he did not resist her.
“That reminds me of it. The crowd consists partly of people going to the pro-Cathedral. The pro-Cathedral contains an altar. An altar suggests kneeling on hard stone; and that brings me to the disease called ‘housemaids’ knee,’ which was the subject of my reflections.”