e electricity."

Two things were evident. One was that it was perfectly impossible to
be stiff and stodgy over it, and not laugh out. The other, the obvious
absurdity of imputing any sort of motive to the serene frankness and
absolute candour of the speaker. Any sort of motive--"of _that_
sort"--said he to himself, without further analysis. He threw himself
into the laugh, without attempting any. It disposed of the discussion
of the subject, but left matters so that stolid silence would have
been priggish. It seemed to him that not to say another word would
almost have amounted to an insinuation against the eyebrows and the
teeth. He would say one--a most impersonal one.

"Do they stop at Bond Street?"

"Do you want to stop at Bond Street?"

"Not at all. I don't care where I stop. I think I meant--is there
a station at Bond Street?"

"The station wasn't opened at first. But it's open now."

What an irritating thing a conversation can be! Here was this one,
just as one of its constituents was beginning to wish it to go on,
must needs exhaust its subject and confess that artificial nourishment
was needed to sustain it. And she--(for it was she, not he:--did you
guess wrong?)--had begun to want to know, don't you see, why the man
with the hair on the back of his browned hand and the big plain gold
ring on his thumb did not care where he stopped. If he had had a
holiday look about him she might have concluded that he was seeing
London, and then what could be more natural than to break loose, as it
were, in the Twopenny Tube? But in spite of his leisurely look, he had
not in the least the seeming of a holiday-maker. His clothes were not
right for the part. What he was could not be guessed without a clue,
and the conversation had collapsed, clearly! It was irritating to be
gravelled for lack of matter--and he was such a perfect stranger! The
girl was a reader of Shakespeare, but she certainly didn't see her
way to Rosalind's little expedient. "Even though my own name _is_
Rosalind," said she to herself.

It was the readiness and completeness with which the man dropped the
subject, and recoiled into himself, that gave the girl courage to make
an attempt to satisfy her curiosity. When a man harks back, palpably,
on some preoccupation, after exchanging a laugh and an impersonal word
or two with a girl who does not know him, it is the best confirmation
possible of his previous good faith in seeming more fatherlike than
m