men and away from women for counsel. There was to her
perception something wise and kindly and reassuring in him; she felt
that he had lived and suffered and understood and that he was ready to
help other people to live; his heart she knew from his published works
was buried with his dead Euphemia, and he seemed as near a thing to a
brother and a friend as she was ever likely to meet. She wanted to tell
him all this and then to broach her teeming and tangled difficulties,
about her own permissible freedoms, about her social responsibilities,
about Sir Isaac's business. But now as their taxi dodged through the
traffic of Kensington High Street and went on its way past Olympia and
so out westwards, she found it extremely difficult to fix her mind upon
the large propositions with which it had been her intention to open. Do
as she would to feel that this was a momentous occasion, she could not
suppress, she could not ignore an obstinate and entirely undignified
persuasion that she was having a tremendous lark. The passing vehicles,
various motors, omnibuses, vans, carriages, the thronging pedestrians,
the shops and houses, were all so distractingly interesting that at last
she had to put it fairly to herself whether she hadn't better resign
herself to the sensations of the present and reserve that sustained
discussion for an interval she foresaw as inevitable on some comfortable
seat under great trees at Hampton Court. You cannot talk well and
penetratingly about fundamental things when you are in a not too
well-hung taxi which is racing to get ahead of a vast red
motor-omnibus....

With a certain discretion Mr. Brumley had instructed the chauffeur to
cross the river not at Putney but at Hammersmith, and so they went by
Barnes station and up a still almost rural lane into Richmond Park, and
there suddenly they were among big trees and bracken and red deer and it
might have been a hundred miles from London streets. Mr. Brumley
directed the driver to make a detour that gave them quite all the best
of the park.

The mind of Mr. Brumley was also agreeably excited and dispersed on this
occasion. It was an occasion of which he had been dreaming very
frequently of late, he had invented quite remarkable dialogues during
those dreams, and now he too was conversationally inadequate and with a
similar feeling of unexpected adventure. He was now no more ready to go
to the roots of things than Lady Harman. He talked on the way down
c