unsmiling sombre stream not made up of lives but of mere unconsidered
existences whose joys, struggles, thoughts, sorrows and their very hopes
were miserable, glamourless, and of no account in the world. And when
one thought of their reality to themselves one's heart became oppressed.
But of all the individuals who passed by none appeared to me for the
moment so pathetic in unconscious patience as the girl standing before
me; none more difficult to understand. It is perhaps because I was
thinking of things which I could not ask her about.

In fact we had nothing to say to each other; but we two, strangers as we
really were to each other, had dealt with the most intimate and final of
subjects, the subject of death. It had created a sort of bond between
us. It made our silence weighty and uneasy. I ought to have left her
there and then; but, as I think I've told you before, the fact of having
shouted her away from the edge of a precipice seemed somehow to have
engaged my responsibility as to this other leap. And so we had still an
intimate subject between us to lend more weight and more uneasiness to
our silence. The subject of marriage. I use the word not so much in
reference to the ceremony itself (I had no doubt of this, Captain Anthony
being a decent fellow) or in view of the social institution in general,
as to which I have no opinion, but in regard to the human relation. The
first two views are not particularly interesting. The ceremony, I
suppose, is adequate; the institution, I dare say, is useful or it would
not have endured. But the human relation thus recognized is a mysterious
thing in its origins, character and consequences. Unfortunately you
can't buttonhole familiarly a young girl as you would a young fellow. I
don't think that even another woman could really do it. She would not be
trusted. There is not between women that fund of at least conditional
loyalty which men may depend on in their dealings with each other. I
believe that any woman would rather trust a man. The difficulty in such
a delicate case was how to get on terms.

So we held our peace in the odious uproar of that wide roadway thronged
with heavy carts. Great vans carrying enormous piled-up loads advanced
swaying like mountains. It was as if the whole world existed only for
selling and buying and those who had nothing to do with the movement of
merchandise were of no account.

"You must be tired," I said. One had to say