“It’s the spring,” he said. “It’s the warming up of the year, the coming of the light mornings, the way in which everything begins to run about and begin new things. Work becomes distasteful; one thinks of holidays. This year—I’ve got it badly. I want to get away. I’ve never wanted to get away so much.”
“Where do you go?”
“Oh!—Alps.”
“Climbing?”
“Yes.”
“That’s rather a fine sort of holiday!”
He made no answer for three or four seconds.
“Yes,” he said, “I want to get away. I feel at moments as though I could bolt for it.... Silly, isn’t it? Undisciplined.”
He went to the window and fidgeted with the blind, looking out to where the tree-tops of Regent’s Park showed distantly over the houses. He turned round toward her and found her looking at him and standing very still.
“It’s the stir of spring,” he said.