That small vow I'm glad to register here: it helps somehow, at the
juncture I seem to feel rapidly approaching, to do the indispensable
thing Lorraine is always talking about--to define my position. She's
always insisting that we've never sufficiently defined it--as if I've
ever for a moment pretended we have! We've REfined it, to the last
intensity--and of course, now, shall have to do so still more; which
will leave them all even more bewildered than the boldest definition
would have done. But that's quite a different thing. The furthest we
have gone in the way of definition--unless indeed this too belongs but
to our invincible tendency to refine--is by the happy rule we've made
that Lorraine shall walk with me every morning to the Works, and I shall
find her there when I come out to walk home with me. I see, on reading
over, that this is what I meant by "our" in speaking above of our little
daily heroism in that direction. The heroism is easier, and becomes
quite sweet, I find, when she comes so far on the way with me and when
we linger outside for a little more last talk before I go in.

It's the drollest thing in the world, and really the most precious
note of the mystic influence known in the place as "the force of public
opinion"--which is in other words but the incubus of small domestic
conformity; I really believe there's nothing we do, or don't do, that
excites in the bosom of our circle a subtler sense that we're "au fond"
uncanny. And it's amusing to think that this is our sole tiny touch of
independence! That she should come forth with me at those hours, that
she should hang about with me, and that we should have last (and, when
she meets me again, first) small sweet things to say to each other, as
if we were figures in a chromo or a tableau vwant keeping our tryst at a
stile--no, this, quite inexplicably, transcends their scheme and baffles
their imagination. They can't conceive how or why Lorraine gets out, or
should wish to, at such hours; there's a feeling that she must violate
every domestic duty to do it; yes, at bottom, really, the act wears for
them, I discern, an insidious immorality, and it wouldn't take much to
bring "public opinion" down on us in some scandalized way.

The funniest thing of all, moreover, is that that effect resides largely
in our being husband and wife--it would be absent, wholly, if we were
engaged or lovers; a publicly parading gentleman friend and lady friend.
What is it we