“I surmised as much, if only on general principles. I am subject to violent reactions myself. You’ve been good too long. If you don’t take a mild fling or two, your nervous system will dictate that you rise in the night and blow up the Prime Minister. Suppose we walk, as it isn’t raining. That, for London, is almost variety enough. Now, if you made up your mind to go on the wildest spree you could think of, what would it be? A French ball, with a hump and a limp; or a day on the Thames, if it happened to be summer, all alone with one man in a punt?”
“Let me think.” Julia had quite fallen in with his mood. “I think I’d go on a sort of platonic honeymoon with the most companionable man I knew—you, for instance—to some foreign town, one I’d never visited, and where we could hear the best music. There would be a certain excitement in avoiding English people lest they misinterpret what was eminently proper, if quite irregular.”
“I could never have conceived of such a hilarious program. But if that is your best, it would be better than nothing. As it is winter, I suppose we would shiver over our respective radiators when not at the opera.”
“Oh, there are always the museums and art galleries —”
“More and more intoxicating. My idea of complete happiness is to wear out my old shoes and the back of my neck in art galleries —”
“As it is winter, think of the exercise.”
“I prefer using a pair of dumb-bells at an open window. Do you happen to know of any musical European town where we could get food fit to eat?”
“Oh, there is always some good restaurant, and of course we could dine together —”
“And breakfast, and lunch, or I don’t go. Of course you’ll send me to a different hotel. Shall you take a sitting-room —”
“Oh, that wouldn’t do at all. Besides, it wouldn’t be necessary. We’ll be out all the time. There are always the theatres at night, when we don’t go to the opera.”